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The Gardens were full now, of middle-income white-collar drones. They moved about in gaggles, clucking at each other in that babbling whine that amused him so much. There was a kind of rhythm to it, he decided, a rising and falling tone that made no sense at one level, like static. But at another level, if he tuned into one or another individual voice, he could hear the common chorus: “He-said-this-did-that, would-you-believe-they-said-this, it’s-just-not-fair”.
Vincent had a sneaking affection for these creatures, if he admitted his own private thoughts to himself. Their high-minded concepts of their own worth to the world at large, the thought that the fable of ‘fairness’ was their due right and their perpetual amazement and chagrin when the reverse was proved to them time and again, made them seem all fluffy and vulnerable. Like silly monkeys cavorting in a zoo cage.
A girl sat on a bench near-by and he looked her over. Her straight blonde hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, shown off to effect against her black business-like blouse.
She had a soft line to her lips and a high palate that brought her teeth to a cute overbite. She was intent on her book and scalded herself periodically as she tried to simultaneously read and drink coffee from a wax paper cup with a plastic lid.
Vincent admired the slight extra weight in the girl’s thighs, rounded and soft beneath the pinstriped trousers that matched her top.
Mentally, Vincent put her on his ‘come back to’ list and as he passed her he stroked the back of the bench possessively. She looked up from her reading to scowl at his back.
This was a difficult hunt, he decided. The recent rural ones down in Wales had been easier and less populated areas were notorious for their stubborn unwillingness to give up their fruits.
It had been the encounter with the new Gaffer that had done it. He felt more than a little humiliated by the dressing down the petty baron had given him. He’d overturned a centuries old tradition and cast it aside like it meant nothing. Vincent was a creature of tradition.
There was a sunny girl, hair the colour of copper, with wide full breasts she was proud to show off in a tight-fit, spotless white t-shirt. She walked with a group of companions and when she laughed at her friends joke she carried the mirth in her face when she turned to see Vincent approach.
“Big Issue?” He asked. She shook her head and the smile faded gradually away.
On the corner was a group of three, two girls and a young man, loitering with little obvious purpose.
The man was the least noticeable of the trio, unremarkable in a battered black leather jacket and jeans. One girl stood and berated the man loudly as Vincent observed from the park railings. A lurid green dress hung untidily from her broad frame, clashing with overdone scarlet lipstick and heavy blue eye-shadow. It was a look calculated to break the rules of the style magazines, defiance writ large in tastelessness. Vincent liked it.
The other girl sat on the pavement stabbing intently at the buttons of her mobile phone. The knees of her jeans were ripped through and gaping and on her wrist a collection of leather straps were buckled tight presenting an array of metal decorations up her arm. Periodically she would stop her button mashing to push her long hair away from her face.
Vincent pondered the girl sat on the pavement. She shared her friends disregard of conformity but her demeanour was less aggressive and she struck him as the more vulnerable of the two.