My Fair Man. Jane Gordon

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ hooting with laughter as she tried to understand Jimmy’s Geordie idioms.

      ‘Haddaway, man?’ Claire said in mocking imitation of Jimmy’s pronunciation of his favourite phrase. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

      He was clearly shocked by her language. In fact, Hattie had already discovered, he never resorted to using the guttural expletives that commonly punctuated Claire’s conversation. The worst words in his albeit limited vocabulary were ‘shite’ and ‘bugger’.

      There was, as Hattie had hoped and suspected, something rather dignified about the man Jon would dismiss as worthless.

      ‘“Haddaway, man”,’ said Hattie, ‘means “Get away with you” or “Would you ever?” Am I right Jimmy?’

      He looked across at her gratefully. She had become an interpreter for him in this strange new world. For he found the language of these women totally incomprehensible. He was fascinated by Claire’s transatlantic accent – and rather disappointed to discover that it was Canadian – but she spoke so fast that he found it difficult to keep up with her words. In fact there was little about either of the women that Jimmy understood. The women in his own life – those in his vast dysfunctional family – were very different creatures and whilst he was at times mesmerised by the attention of two such attractive and confident females, he didn’t trust them.

      He was sufficiently worldly, though, to realise that going along with Hattie’s research could be of benefit to him even if, along the way, he had to endure their mocking patronage. And if he had to choose one of them as his protector, then it would be Hattie, even if it meant staying in this odd place and accepting the disapproval and contempt of her man. So he agreed to their plans, and to staying on in her flat.

      When Claire departed for home late that afternoon Hattie set about creating Jimmy his own area within the vast living space. Although their home was the height of fashion – what estate agents now described as a New York loft – it was ill-suited to house guests. There were no doors on the ground floor except to the kitchen and just the one big bedroom and bathroom upstairs so that Hattie had to fashion Jimmy a room by putting together two Japanese screens and offer him a foldaway futon to sleep on.

      ‘There is one thing, Jimmy. Toby really doesn’t like smoking. I don’t mind, in fact I used to smoke before I met him …’

      ‘Aye?’ he said.

      ‘So when you want a cigarette, do you think you could go and stand outside the front door … so the smoke doesn’t pollute the flat…?’ she said nervously.

      Then she turned her attention to Rex. The dog, she explained, would need to be a little more house-trained if he were to live with them.

      ‘But he pittles in street,’ said Jimmy.

      ‘I know he does but he, well, he smells rather dreadful, Jimmy. Couldn’t we give him a bath?’

      ‘Rex hates water,’ said Jimmy.

      Rex, Hattie was beginning to suspect, hated everything apart from food and Jimmy. He growled every time Hattie or Claire inadvertently went near him, and he barked in a shrill, neurotic fashion every time the doorbell or the phone went. Worse, he clearly had a digestive problem which – perhaps aggravated by the sushi he had eaten for breakfast – resulted in regular emissions of offensive ozone-eroding wind. Hattie had grown up with dogs – her father had always had a brace of Labradors for shooting and her mother was never parted from her beloved West Highland terrier – but try as she might she could find nothing about Rex that was remotely attractive. She accepted, though, that the dog represented the closest thing to family in Jimmy’s life and she supposed she would have to establish some sort of relationship with him.

      ‘We have to clean him, Jimmy. We’ve got to do something to try and remove the bad smell from under Toby’s nose,’ she said, although she doubted if pickling the dog in Chanel No. 5 or Eternity would make Toby more tolerant of him.

      Hattie ran a bath filled with pungent bubbles and Jimmy carried the reluctant, whimpering dog and immersed him in the warm water.

      There followed a terrible scene in which Rex fought, scratched, clawed and finally bit his way out of the bath, displacing gallons of water over Hattie, Jimmy and the floor, before disappearing back into his favourite place under the kitchen table.

      Hattie was touched by the way in which Jimmy tried to calm him, singing to him and gently drying him with one of her expensive white waffle towels. When he had finished and the dog had calmed down enough to stop shivering and whining Jimmy turned to Hattie.

      ‘I’ll need me stuff, like,’ he said, ‘if I’m staying a while.’

      ‘Your stuff?’ said Hattie, who had assumed that all Jimmy had in the world were the clothes he had once stood up in, his sleeping bag and the couple of carrier bags she had noticed when she had first encountered him.

      ‘Yeah, me bits an’ pieces, like. They’re in a left luggage box at King’s Cross,’ he said, pulling a key from the pocket of Toby’s jeans.

      ‘Well, of course we should get them,’ Hattie said, smiling at him. ‘Now, if you want.’

      ‘OK,’ he said, jumping up.

      Outside in the street Hattie hailed a black cab, to the astonishment and wonder of Jimmy who had not, it quickly emerged, ever travelled in one before. On the journey to the station he was enchanted by the two pull-down seats and moved from one to the other in the excited fashion of a small child on a big adventure.

      Indeed, Hattie thought as she paid off the taxi and followed Jimmy through to the dirty, depressing station interior, he had many of the more endearing qualities of a child. He was enthusiastic, questioning, responsive and direct. He said what he meant, even if on occasion she could not quite understand his dialect or comprehend the words he used.

      ‘This is where I came when I left home, like,’ he said thoughtfully, pointing up at the departure board on which a dozen or so inter-city trains – coming from Northern towns she had never heard of, let alone visited – were indicated.

      ‘When was that? How old are you, Jimmy, and how long have you been in London?’

      ‘Must be going on five years now. I’m twenty-three,’ he said, lighting up his third cigarette since they had left the flat.

      ‘And what did you think of this place when you arrived?’

      ‘Big,’ he said simply, drawing on his cigarette.

      Hattie wondered what he had expected of London, and if he was disappointed by what he did find.

      ‘Where did you go when you arrived? Did you know anyone here?’ she asked him gently.

      ‘Na,’ he said.

      ‘So what did you do?’

      ‘I got by, did a bit of labouring, like, now and then. There’s people, like, that offer you a place to stay.’ He paused and looked across at Hattie. ‘Not people like you, mind. Hard people, mean people, what pretend they’re going to help you and just sook ya in, like …’

      She was aware of the fact that the young and homeless were often preyed on by unscrupulous shadowy men who led them into desperate and corrupt lives. She wondered a little guiltily, СКАЧАТЬ