The hatcheck girl

Notes for my memoir.

Around that time I spent a lot of time at the club. I believed, quite rightly, that having a degree would open doors. Lots of my friends believed the same thing. What they didn’t know, what they didn’t appreciate, was it also imbued me with superhuman powers. I could see their eyes glazing from several tables away as I approached. Their faces, so animated, would suddenly go slack. Pricilla, my girlfriend, was the worst of those jokers. Her little outsized upper lip would twist and curve and settle into a rigor mortis of playful disdain, which I interpreted as: you’re not having me tonight. I’d sidle up and stand beside her. Over cocktails she explained it was no one’s fault; it was just the fault of sex; and her being the fair sex it was more my fault than hers.

I remonstrated with her by lifting my eyebrows a tad excessively. That must have fired off some rogue neurons, because I could feel my lips moving and could hear myself whispering:
‘Three months. You’ve been having your periods for three months! Come now Prou.’

‘That’s aural rape.’ She pulled a pepper spray out of her handbag. Don’t ask which type of handbag, because after a while all those thirty thousand pound bags look the same. It was the type of bag girls like Prou sling over their shoulder to go to the club. The type of bag they don’t mind losing in the cab home because they’re mass produced by some dago company. The pepper spray was handmade. It made my eyes water. I couldn’t breathe and thought I was going to die on the spot. Prou took no chances. She set off her attack alarm, which sounded like the start of World War III. I didn’t even feel the kick in the shin. I did feel the follow through on my crown jewels. One had to admire her pluck in deciding not to fuck and, sticking with her decision, whatever the personal cost. She may have lost a boyfriend, but she’d gained a lifelong admirer. I pitied any of those yobbo types that tried to snatch at Prou’s purse.

The waiters arrived during the kerfuffle. They made noises about flinging me out. They didn’t appreciate it was all over, a bit of hi-jinks. It’s not their fault, of course. The lower class, menial type, don’t understand nuance. They did, of course, understand who my father was.

If it wasn’t for people like him there would be no hors d’oeuvre. No hatcheck girls. No waiters. No chefs you were on first name terms with, even though you didn’t like him. If it wasn’t for people like me they would still be carry a spoon like spade across fields with muck on it and be eating pigswill out of a bucket.

But, to be fair, the hatcheck girl was rather fetching. The problem is one of incompatibility. I’ve got the full weight of an Oxbridge education. She’s got a piddling degree from one of those spruced up polytechnics that are falling down. My plan, even then, was to become a politician and desiderate the resources of my keen intellect in making the nation better and myself richer. She had probably done some hat-checking degree and I supposed that was where her interests lay. If she’d consulted me, or even any of my intellectually weaker Oxbridge chums, we could have advised her on future trends. I could have swished aside her long silken black hair and whispered in her ‘shell like’, (willing using the argot of the lower manual classes, when it was for a good cause); I could have whispered: ‘Nobody ever wears hats now, not since Jack Kennedy, haven’t you noticed?’

In fact, I did say that. But it was in that bright and breezy way that everybody loved so much and nobody could take offence at. She looked lick-spittle clean. I was sure she’d do well in life. Beautiful women often do. I could see her going all the way and becoming a waitress, where she’d learn the rudiments of manners by observation of a better class of people. Her fringe seemed to be over her eyes and she didn’t seem to hear of see me, so I passed her prissy little cloakroom again and said the same thing.

‘Fuck off,’ she said, proving she still had a long way to go.

I smiled back at her. Good breeding does not allow one to show that one is annoyed and thus giving the other an advantage.

‘What?’ I enquired, raising the stakes, but not my eyebrows.

‘You heard. Fuck off.’

I left her standing. I’d have a word with Harvey in the morning and get her sacked. Insolence was contagious and there was no knowing where it would all end. My car was waiting, but I dismissed the custodian of the umbrella. I didn’t mind getting my hair wet. I needed time to think. The problem of the lower classes, as I saw it, was they just wanted to get drunk and don’t realize they need to get up for work in the morning, even, as in the hatcheck girl’s case, there won’t be any work in the morning. They just didn’t understand progress and order. They didn’t understand the ramifications of the common good. They were more interested in venting their petty spleen and mouthing off. It was all quite simple really. The poor are poor because they want to be poor, and the rich are rich because they want the poor to be poor too. It was then that I realised we had a common goal. One that made our nation great. ‘Let’s work together’ I wrote on the cuff of my shirt. I used that phrase when I was first selected to run. I’ve changed it about a bit since then, spruced it up. I’m sure you’ve heard it somewhere. I’d call it my finest achievement.