My Fair Man. Jane Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ occurred to Hattie that Toby and Rex had a lot in common right now. Both were behaving in a territorial fashion that was positively primeval. They both needed muzzling, growling and snarling as they sought to demonstrate their supremacy.

      Toby’s exit up the stairs had a liberating effect on Jimmy, who jumped up, reached into the cupboard and returned to the table clutching a jar of crushed sun-dried tomato paste, the closest thing to ketchup he had yet found in this strange, foreign kitchen. Standing up, with the plate in his hand, he began to eat the food – now covered in the rich, red sauce – with more enthusiasm while he walked up and down the room.

      Hattie suspected that long before he was reduced to squatting on the streets Jimmy had got used to eating wherever and whenever he could. And almost never at a table. He was happiest, she had already noted, pacing up and down while he ate.

      ‘Why don’t you finish that in front of the television, Jimmy,’ she said, ‘while I go and check up on Toby?’

      Putting her own plate on the sheet steel work surface she left him alone and went upstairs.

      Toby was lying in bed channel hopping in a slightly less furious fashion than Jimmy had done earlier. He looked up at her with a cold hard face.

      ‘How long is this going to go on, Hattie?’

      ‘Well, I’ve got just under three months to achieve the transformation,’ she said gaily, ‘so I suppose till about August.’

      ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m sure Jon wasn’t really serious about that bet. He certainly wouldn’t expect us to put up with this kind of upheaval for some bloody wager about a brain-dead bum like that.’

      ‘It was you who said that Jon is always serious about his bets. And anyway, what makes you think he’s brain dead?’

      ‘Those teeth for a start.’

      ‘You mean no orthodontic care when he was a child might indicate a low IQ?’

      ‘Low life, Hattie. He’s low life. Anyone with any sense could see that. Christ, he eats like a pig. He can barely speak, for Christ’s sakes. And what he does say is virtually unintelligible.’

      ‘He’s limited by his education, Toby. He didn’t go to Charterhouse—’

      ‘It’s more than that, Hattie. He’s on the same evolutional level as his bloody dog. He’s not even house-trained. He pees in the sink, he smokes and he can’t sit still to eat. And it’s quite clear from this evening that he’s rarely come into contact with a knife or fork before.’

      ‘You are so fucking bourgeois, Toby. All you are saying is that he is not what you would classify as civilised. But that’s just conditioning. You can teach people to eat with a knife and fork and to pull the chain on the loo – which incidentally you forget to do every morning when you pee – but what you cannot teach anyone is sensitivity. It’s insensitivity that makes a man into an animal, Toby …’

      ‘You really are serious, aren’t you? You’d really put that animal before anything else in your life – our relationship, my happiness. Can’t you see it’s intolerable for me to have to live with him in my home?’

      ‘It’s my home, Toby …’

      ‘You always used to say our home, Hattie.’

      ‘Oh Toby, you know this means a lot to me. It might strike you as absurd and selfish behaviour but actually I am trying to help Jimmy. To take the animal – as you call it – out of the man and give him a chance to be something else than a creature that skulks around the streets and sleeps in shop doorways.’

      ‘Fine but not here, Hattie.’

      ‘Do you know something, Toby, this boy has awoken something in me. Oh, I know that I have always had what you and Jon sneeringly used to refer to as a social conscience but I have never before been able to make the difference in the way I can with Jimmy. Every day I see people who are so damaged by what has happened in their lives that it is almost impossible to help them. But I can only do so much for them. With him I have the chance to really achieve something. I believe that beneath that animal you see there is a fine human being with the potential to achieve great things. It’s as if he were new, do you understand, raw, waiting to be transformed into something special? If you don’t like it you can go back and live in your flat for a while.’

      ‘He could turn out to be Frankenstein’s monster.’

      ‘Oh, I hardly think so, Toby. Look at him. He has, apart from those teeth and tattoos, a quite extraordinary beauty.’

      ‘So that’s it then? That’s what you see in him?’

      ‘Don’t be so stupid, Toby. I am not the slightest bit interested in him in that way,’ she said with a giggle as Toby confirmed the jealousy she’d earlier suspected. ‘I am just saying that he has outstanding natural grace and beauty. And more than that, he has got – I don’t quite know how to express it – something.’

      Toby’s face softened as his fear of Hattie’s attraction to Jimmy receded. His insecurity – so rarely expressed by a man who carefully controlled all his emotions – touched what was left of Hattie’s love for him.

      ‘Is that your only objection, that I might find him attractive?’ she said, laughing and reaching a hand out to hold his in the comforting way you might take the hand of a small, unsure boy.

      Toby leant across and kissed Hattie passionately, thrusting his tongue into her mouth in a way that he hadn’t since they first met. Kisses had slipped out of his sexual repertoire long ago and she found herself unusually aroused.

      Toby fought to unbutton her shirt and undo her bra, without releasing his mouth from hers.

      ‘Do you want me, Hattie?’ he said urgently. ‘Look at me, look how big I am …’

      He pushed her hand down to touch his penis and then started to grab at her jeans, unzipping them and pulling them down quite roughly. When she was naked he entered her and began to make love more powerfully than he had done since their first days together.

      ‘I’m going to fuck you and fuck you and fuck you,’ he roared.

      ‘SSH! Toby, he might hear us …’

      ‘I want him to fucking well hear us. This is our home, not his,’ said Toby as he thundered into her, and the bed, unaccustomed to such frenzied action, banged against the wall in an unmistakable rhythm that she felt sure could be heard above the sound of the television in the room below.

Chapter Six

      An hour or so later, after Toby had fallen into a deep and obviously contented sleep, Hattie got up, slipped on her dressing gown and went downstairs. She felt unduly anxious about Jimmy. She supposed her concern about his overhearing their noisy lovemaking was linked to the maternal instinct he had aroused in her. At any rate she couldn’t think of any other explanation for the need to check if he was all right before she herself slept.

      Since there were no lights coming from the big open space living area she assumed he was asleep and made her СКАЧАТЬ