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My Fair Man
Jane Gordon
A modern Pygmalion story with a twist, by the bestselling author of STEPFORD HUSBANDS.Hattie George is a woman with a mission. A dedicated socialist, she wants to make the world a better place. Teased by her friends, especially her best friend’s boyfriend, Jon, she bets that she can transform Jimmy, a young Geordie who lives on the streets and sells the Big Issue, into a drop-dead gorgeous, man-about-town – in just a few weeks.With his taste for brown sauce and brown ale, and his very different table manners, Jimmy will never turn the heads of the chattering classes or change Jon’s cynicism. Or will he? As Hattie’s mission is launched, there is more than one transformation taking place, resulting in chaos, hilarity, heartbreak and misunderstanding. Just who is trying to impress who?MY FAIR MAN is a modern fairy tale and a witty portrayal of men, women and contemporary society, in which Jane Gordon explores with humour, sympathy and incisiveness the important issues of gender, class, and different people’s motivations.
JANE GORDON
My Fair Man
For Jack
I shall make a duchess of this draggletailed guttersnipe
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
Contents
Cover (#ud71d31e3-cb90-5353-a01f-99aba04c11dc)
Title Page (#u29ff4d6f-c8e6-54b5-a7dc-aa774efa426b)
Chapter One (#ulink_f567ee15-fdbf-537e-b1a4-6fffad37bbcb)
Chapter Two (#ulink_e909333f-e995-55bd-b7ce-8171a65ca41d)
Chapter Three (#ulink_08a9da28-f245-5cc9-a31f-0387675c3a2d)
Chapter Four (#ulink_d0cd5dda-3fb6-510d-b340-46bc7bbb7349)
Chapter Five (#ulink_1ff5c81a-de94-5eb1-ae9b-05ae5f98e641)
Chapter Six (#ulink_ae7f8554-bec5-58b5-8c2a-4e6821e1994d)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Glossary of Geordie Words and Expressions (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Jane Gordon (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_1d4c4f82-bf32-56ea-a6af-6b6a6900a7d4)
It was raining when they came out of the Opera House. A misty but insistent drizzle that soaked through Hattie’s clothes. She shivered and Toby took pity, ordering her to wait with the others beneath the protective canopy of the theatre whilst he went in search of a cab.
Hattie hated opera. She had never understood why so many of her friends regarded it with such reverence. Try as she might she had never managed to progress beyond the Opera Made Easy CD that Toby had bought for her at the beginning of their relationship. It seemed to her that most of the three-and-a-half-hour so-called great works could be condensed into one memorable three-and-a-half-minute track (Pavarotti singing ‘Nessun dorma’ was her favourite). But this particular evening’s epic – Aida – didn’t contain a single moment that could move her.
In the interval, as she and Toby had stood sipping drinks with Jon and Claire in the opulent bar, Hattie’s mind kept slipping back to the child she had seen at work that day. Opera, she had long since concluded, had no place in the real world.
‘It’s all so élitist,’ she complained, ‘and I don’t just mean the £100 seats and Princess Michael in the royal box and all these awful Radio 4 types pushing and shoving their way to the white wine. I mean the storylines. Why do operas fall for the same old class clichés? Why is there always some peasant love interest who will eventually be exposed as an aristocrat? Why can’t a peasant be a peasant and not the noble son or daughter of some exiled king?’
‘Because, Hattie,’ Jon had replied in that tone that made her want to slap him, ‘despite all your fantastic socialist theories the truth is that life is like that. If Aida had been a real slave girl no one would have cared what happened to her.’
‘Why should where she came from – who she was – matter?’ said Hattie, rising, as usual, to Jon’s taunts.
‘Class, Hattie,’ said Toby. ‘It wouldn’t have worked, would it, if they had been from different social classes?’
Class had always been a great divide between Hattie and Toby, the subject of some vehement arguments. She had always managed to hang on to the notion that all men were equal. What separated them, she passionately believed, was not their DNA make-up, or their genetic heritage, but the place and the circumstances in which they were born. And the way in which, during their developmental years, they were nurtured and cultivated by those closest to them. Lord knows, she had seen enough evidence of the damage done to the human pysche by neglect, cruelty and irresponsibility. In her work she had come to understand that what really mattered was not money, or privilege, or the cultural claptrap that Toby so revered, but love. Although of course Verdi – and the rest of tonight’s enraptured audience – didn’t see it like that.
Even now, as they fought for territory outside the Opera House amidst the teeming crowds and the relentless rain, she still felt angry about their interval discussion.
‘Let’s shelter over there,’ said Jon. ‘We’ll never see Toby through all these people …’
They moved across the street and huddled in the deep doorway of a branch of the Halifax. While they waited, the constant fine rain spraying onto them as cars and cabs swept past, Claire turned to Hattie.
‘You’re too sensitive,’ she said gently. ‘You always want to see the best in people. I mean, I understand what you are trying to say about opera – it has become a kind of symbol of cultural and social superiority. But Toby and Jon are right – you take things too seriously. It’s not real, it’s just a silly musical fairy tale. Besides, I don’t think that even you – with your high moral principles – really believe all that nonsense about nurture ruling over nature …’
‘Of course I do, Claire,’ Hattie protested. ‘I don’t just believe it, it’s what I’ve spent the last ten years of my life trying to do, I don’t want to be boring, I know I take things too seriously, but I do wish that sometimes you would listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen the way in which kindness and consideration can made an abused, tortured child blossom—’
‘What the hell has that got to do with a night at the opera, Hattie?’ said Jon, glancing over at Claire and raising his eyebrows. ‘Why don’t we leave the discussion for dinner? That’s if they hold on to our table. If Toby doesn’t hurry up and find a cab we’re going to be half an hour late.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hattie said contritely, ‘but I’ve had a terrible day …’
She knew – because of patient confidentiality – that she couldn’t tell her friends the distressing details of her day or attempt in any way to justify her mood this evening. Instead she smiled at them and tried to swallow her pride – and her principles.
Then, as the three of them backed further into the darkened doorway, a piercing yelp erupted behind them.
‘Christ Almighty, I’ve trodden on something!’ shouted Jon.
‘What was it?’ said Claire, clearly alarmed.
‘A bloody dog.’ Jon jumped clear of the doorway.
Seconds later they heard another noise – a gutteral explosion that was definitely human – from behind them.
‘Haddaway, man …’
‘Pardon?’ enquired Jon.
‘Haddawayanshite,’ came the reply in what Hattie thought might be some northern provincial accent.
‘I think,’ said Hattie in her clipped, cut-glass English, ‘he is telling us to shut up and leave him and his dog alone.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Jon irritably as his eyes made contact with the shape that had emerged from a pile of old bags and clothing behind them. ‘Why doesn’t he move on?’
There was, Hattie noticed as the man came closer to them, a horrible smell in the air that she sincerely hoped came from the dog skulking beside him. The figure’s hair hung in dreadlocked clumps around his face, obscuring his features and making it difficult to discern his age, though Hattie suspected he was very young.
‘For heaven’s sake, Jon, have you no compassion?’ she whispered, anxious not to offend the poor misfit before them. ‘Can you imagine what it would be like to be homeless?’
‘Oh spare me any more social comment this evening, please, Hattie.’
The man seemed unconcerned by their presence. In fact, Hattie realised as he slumped back against the cash-dispensing machine, he seemed oblivious to everything but the mongrel dog he was now comforting.
‘Perhaps, Hattie, he can’t get his card in the machine. Maybe his swipe’s gone,’ Jon whispered.
Hattie was incensed by Jon’s sarcasm. Moreover, the contrast between this sad, stinking stranger and the splendour of the Opera House over the road heightened her feeling of alienation from this whole evening.
‘Maybe he is trying to tell us something about ourselves,’ she muttered, bending down to stroke the whimpering dog but recoiling quickly when it snapped angrily at her.
‘Are you trying to imply that he’s making some kind of political statement, Hattie? Homeless man living in the doorway of a building society?’ said Jon.
‘For God’s sake, you two, stop arguing. Here’s Toby with the cab,’ said Claire impatiently.
Hattie held back as the others ran towards the taxi, unsure now whether she could bear to sit through dinner this evening.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said plaintively to the figure propped up against the wall. ‘I wish I could do something to help you …’
‘Bugger off,’ he spat back at her.
‘Here,’ said Hattie, searching in her bag for some money to give him, ‘take this …’
She was aware of his surprise at the generosity of her offering. He looked closely and steadily at her from large, unusually bright, blue eyes and then began hunting through a series of carrier bags that were situated, she could now make out, beside his sleeping bag.
‘Ha this, hinny,’ he said, thrusting a dog-eared copy of the Big Issue at her.
‘Hattie!’ screamed Toby from the cab. ‘Will you hurry up? We’re late enough as it is.’
She jumped in the back of the cab and pulled down one of the little seats. As the taxi moved away from the kerb she glanced back at the man, crouched down and gently stroking his dog, and wondered what tragedies in his life had led him to that doorway.
Even Hattie was cheered by their arrival at the restaurant. She wasn’t sure what had chilled her more this evening – the relentless rain, the pathos of the homeless boy or Jon’s behaviour. But warmed by the bright lights and the prospect of food she determined to forget about the incident in the doorway.
It was the kind of place that Toby loved, not for its food, but for its fashionableness. On the way to their table he had been acknowledged by several people – fellow lawyers, and political contacts Hattie presumed – whom he knew.
As they sat down Jon turned to Hattie and smiled in a placatory way. ‘Hattie, let’s forget our differences for the rest of the evening.’
She smiled back at him even though, however amusing he might be, she knew she could never forget their differences. Jon was a partner in one of the most successful advertising agencies of the moment – Riley, Toppingham and Futura – with a reputation as one of the best creative brains in the country. But despite his apparent political affiliations – he had been responsible for a recent highly praised campaign for the Labour Party – Hattie was wary of him. She disapproved of his professional devotion to what she saw as the brutal business of manipulating the public and she found his bleak cynicism depressing. But as he was Toby’s oldest – and probably only – friend she made an effort to tolerate him.
Hattie was rather fond of Claire, Jon’s companion this evening, despite the fact that she too made her living out of hype – or at any rate out of securing good publicity for a series of rather dubious clients. She was far preferable to any of the other empty women that Jon usually had in tow. Claire – an ex-girlfriend whom he had somehow managed to turn into a friend – had only joined them this evening because the latest woman in Jon’s life was, somewhat typically, married.
Hattie was very hungry, and eager to see the menu and order. There had been no time for lunch that day and she was not even sure that she had eaten breakfast, but her companions were more intrigued by the other diners and the décor.
Hattie, who had no curiosity about the famous, or infamous, was becoming aware of the dampness of her hair and the rain-spattered state of her clothes. Muttering her excuses she made her way down the brightly lit steel stairs to the loos.
She stood and looked at her reflection in the mirror for a second and pondered on the differences between herself and the sleek females who surrounded her. She didn’t really belong in this chic place, or rather she didn’t really want to belong. She was as uncomfortable here as she had been in the Opera House. And as much an outsider as the man camped in the Halifax doorway.
Not that Hattie wasn’t vain, in her own way. It was just that it wasn’t the way of these women. She didn’t really care about clothes or make-up, and she certainly wouldn’t put herself through the agony of wearing the kind of shoes – curious spike-heeled mules – that she had noticed a number of the women struggling to walk on.
Pushing a comb through her hair and putting a touch of Lipsyl on her dry mouth, she straightened her dress, sprayed herself with scent and made her way back up the slippery steel stairs. As she moved towards the table several other diners nodded in recognition.
‘Hattie spends so much of her time worrying about life’s underdogs that I always forget she has such a splendid pedigree herself,’ Jon said as he watched her dodging between tables.
‘Give her a break, Jon. It’s not as if she has ever really bothered with all her good contacts,’ said Claire equitably, ‘and nor has she profited by them.’
‘But Hattie doesn’t need to profit by them, does she? What with the trust fund and—’
‘Jon!’ said Claire, darting him a warning look as Hattie sat back down at the table.
At this point the food arrived and the distribution of the various designer dishes (‘French Vietnamese,’ declared Toby in an authoritative manner) prevented further argument. Hattie ate hungrily as Claire attempted to lighten the atmosphere with the kind of gossip that she loved.
‘Did you see Nigella’s review of this place in Vogue?’
