Urbane Jungle

 Hugo Kane-Smithwick stood outside the station in a state of impatient agitation. His driver was late again! Honestly, this was getting to be too much he thought to himself. Twice last week he’d been left standing here like a buffoon for minutes at a time but today was a step too far. He checked his watch again, seven minutes! Seven minutes he’d been stood here like he didn’t have anything better to be doing with his time. In truth his plans for the evening didn’t extend much further than dinner and a bath, perhaps a nap in the study if he found the time. Not bloody likely now though was it!

 A thought occurred to him, why not simply stroll home? Afterall he was in the prime of his middle age was he not? The weather was cooperative, as clear and crisp an autumn afternoon as one could wish for. A second thought came to him, which represented something of a brainstorm by Hugo’s standards. This one was less invigorating; did he know the way home from here? He knew the basic direction and it wasn’t far, the drive was no more than five minutes, but he’d never really paid much heed to the specific route. When he needed to head into the city, he went from his townhouse steps to the car, from the car directly to the first-class cabin of the train, then when the train stopped he went directly into another car. It all ran smoothly, and he must have made the journey hundreds of times at this stage but when he tried to picture that initial gap between home and station it was all a bit hazy.

 Maybe it would come to him as he walked. Yes, he was sure that it would. After all, it was not like he was some cosseted infant, was it? No, of course not. The Kane-Smithwicks weren’t layabouts who just sat about. Although mother and father did, and continued to do, a prodigious amount of sitting. They always said exertion was terribly unbecoming and best left to the lower classes. Come to think about it, while he had no memory of his grandparents, every depiction of them he had ever seen showed them sitting solemnly in austere chairs. But, at some point he was absolutely certain a Kane-Smithwick must have exhibited some real vim, otherwise where did all the bloody money come from?

 It was this hypothetical get up and go ancestor that inspired Hugo as he set off in the direction he was semi-certain home was. He wasn’t one to be intimidated by bustling crowds of common folk, oh no. His parents of course would be horrified by such proximity to the general masses. The great unwashed is what they had always dismissively referred to them as. Hugo though considered himself more of a man of the people. Well, maybe not OF the people, that was a bit of stretch. A man adjacent to the people would perhaps be more fitting. Removed from, but not wholly ignorant of. Hadn’t he once kicked a football when at boarding school? He was pretty sure he had. He prided himself on the congenial and familiar atmosphere he fostered with the house staff as well. Nothing like the silent and serious home he'd grown up in where the help where to be neither seen nor heard. No, far from it, in his house it was totally fine if he occasionally caught sight of someone cleaning. He was very considerate like that, always had been. Only the other day he had made an enquiry as to the health of his valet’s family while breakfast was served.  The valet had said “They’re well, sir. Thank you, sir.” It was quite the repartee they had.

 So far nothing looked particularly familiar to Hugo, but he was unperturbed. It was bracing to be out and about like this. The street was lined with various vendors selling their wares, while plebs went back and forth in all manner of odd getups. He smiled as he imagined his drivers worry when he got to the station, if he ever bloody arrived, only to find Hugo gone. Wait until Penelope heard about this as well, she’ll be positively horrified.

 Needing to cross a street now, Hugo strode confidently out into the road holding his hand out to signal an approaching taxicab to halt. It slammed on the brakes while blaring the horn. While the driver lent out the window and unloaded a barrage of expletives, Hugo obliviously sauntered on. He made eye contact with a tracksuit clad youth whose attention had been drawn by the near accident.

“The Traffic today,” he shrugged knowingly. That was definitely something ordinary people said.

“You what??” spat back the youth, clearly alarmed at being addressed by this traffic stopping stranger.

Hugo didn’t understand the question, his previously impenetrable confidence faltered somewhat as he looked at this scowling questioning expression. He wished he hadn’t said anything now.

“Indeed!” he exclaimed and carried on at an even brisker pace. 

Still nothing rang a bell of familiarity as he took in his surroundings, and he was starting to get hungry. An exotic array of unfamiliar smells emanated from many of the establishments he passed but these aromas were as unfamiliar as their locations. It was essential he keep his strength up though. He chose a place at random and tentatively stepped inside.

It was cramped but very well lit, perhaps to its own detriment. A selection of flimsy tables and chairs were scattered around a black and white tile floor. To the back was a chest high blue counter behind which was the grubby metallic exterior of a kitchen. Occupying the counter was a robust looking woman exuding extreme boredom.

“Yeah,” she said as Hugo approached.

“Yes?” he parroted back at her, eyebrows raised and unsure of what the steps to this conversational dance were.

“What you want?”

“Food please.” Now we were getting somewhere.

The woman rolled her eyes and raising her hand tapped on a chalkboard above her head. Hugo squinted at the spindly and mostly unintelligible chalk scribbles.

“Bacon Butty?” he said hesitantly more as a question than anything else.

“Bacon Butty” she yelled back into the kitchen.

The interaction appeared to now be over. Hugo inspected one of the chairs but decided against sitting. One of the tables was occupied by a man and a woman who didn’t seem to have noticed the awkward counter interaction. Hugo had been taught that it was the height of bad manners to rest ones elbows on the table but these two sat in such a way that they managed to rest not just their elbows, but their upper arms and chest on the table as well. Remarkable.

“Bacon Butty” the woman said again. Her laconic style was nothing if not efficient.

Hugo understood this iteration of the statement to mean that whatever he’d ordered was now ready. He approached the counter and took what appeared to be a small carboard container, warm to the touch.

“Five pound,” she mumbled.

“Eh pardon?”

“Five pound,” she enunciated as if talking to a child. She then held out her hand and pointed to her palm to help illustrate the point for this imbecile.

“Ah, I see.” Hugo had not until right this moment given any consideration to payment. Being a gentleman, he didn’t carry finance on his person. It being uncouth in the extreme.

“Five Pound mate! You deaf?”

“I wonder if you could possible provide me with your account details and I’ll have my man wire you the requisite five pounds tomorrow.”

“You what??”

There was that question again. Does she mean how? He wondered to himself. She was moving around behind the counter now, clearly agitated.

“Dave!” she shouted back into the kitchen, “get out here.”

Hugo was new to this world and hadn’t had time to develop what you might call ‘street smarts’ but even he knew that hanging around for Dave was probably a bad idea. Before he had time for a second thought he was running as fast as his dress shoes could carry him, carboard box in hands. He ran aimlessly, the wind whistling in his ears and soon replaced by the sound of his beating heart. It had been quite some time since he had cause to run like this.

As he slowed down, he approached a small roadside park and needing to catch his breath he made a beeline for the biggest bush he could see. Crouching amongst the crunch of autumn leaves he was invisible from the road.

What a disaster! He’d been mixing with the working class an hour at most and he was already a fully fledged criminal. Peering out from his bush fortress there was no evidence anyone had given chase. But was that a siren in the distance he could hear? Oh my god what was the jail time for bacon butty theft? Five or ten years surely! Maybe he could claim temporary insanity. It was getting dark and cold now. He’d worked up a sweat with that unexpected bout of exertion and he could feel his shirt sticking to him under his jacket.     

Suddenly he heard a noise, a rustling sniffing rummage. A small white dog of undeterminable breed was sniffing around the bush. Normally Hugo loved dogs, there was nothing he enjoyed more than heading down to his country estate to go hunting with his pack of hounds. But right now, he was extremely focused on maintaining his hiding place.

“Go away!” he hissed.

The little mut started barking furiously and from inside the park young woman approached the bush.

“Shnowy! What’s the matter?” she asked rhetorically. “What have you found?”

There wasn’t really much in the way of alternative options. Hugo stood up, his top half emerging from the bush in as unsurprising and non-threatening a manner as he could convey, to no avail.

The woman screamed without restraint. The kind of scream usually reserved for babies and Hollywood jump scares.

“AAaaaaaggghh! HELP! HELP! There’s a pervert in the bushes!”

 For the second time in quick succession Hugo found himself trying to break the land speed record. He’d exited the bush so quickly he’d torn his trousers and jacket quite badly, and somewhere along the way had shaken one of his shoes clean off.

 Eventually, when he couldn’t hear the screaming anymore and was growing legitimately worried that he was going to have a heart attack he slowed down to a dejected walk. He didn’t look for another hiding place, that hadn’t helped.

 It was fully dark now and Hugo was really starting to feel desperate. To his amazement he realized he still had the carboard box in his hand, all be it he’d crushed it a little bit in the excitement, and it had long lost all warmth. Opening it he took out what appeared to be a greasy sandwich. It wasn’t much to look at, but he was starving now. The first bite was unbelievable. He greedily devoured the whole thing and was trying to get the last crumbs out of the box when he suddenly recognised a car parked on the sidewalk. Then just as suddenly he recognised the sidewalk itself, the road, the houses, the lampposts, the trees. He was home, the proud homestead of the Kane-Smithwicks, standing at the bottom of his own steps.

 As he rang the bell of the giant dark blue door to his house, he looked at his watch, it was only 7:00PM. He wondered absent mindedly if his butler, Rupert, knew where to purchase another one of these bacon buttys.