The young man left the station and made his questing way along the retail parade as dusk stole up. His progress was purposeful yet pensive. He had never been to this place before, and though he’d travelled there in hope, his arrival was marred by foreboding.
Part of that was a gnawing dread that he’d soon be entering social waters in which fish like him struggled to swim. Another part was his immediate surroundings, onto which, following a shallow dive into local history, he had projected a risk of hostility.
He hurried on, past growling street cleaning machines and market traders dismantling stalls. By now, he was both slightly comforted and unhappily confirmed in feeling out of place: the people on the street, variously absorbed in matters other than him, were browner than he’d expected; at the same time, his Waitrose carrier bag made him feel more conspicuous with every stride.
At last, fraying slightly from the effort of trying not to look lost, he found the door he was looking for next to a shuttered shop. The door’s orchid-pink paint looked new. Its knocker was a replica of a stiletto-heeled shoe.
The young man rapped out a diffident one-two. The door swung open to reveal an unlit hall. This contained an old-fashioned welcome mat, a tailer’s dummy in waiter’s garb and a bicycle hung on a wall. Ahead was a darkened flight of stairs.
The young man stepped inside. A light came on.
‘Good evening,’ said a voice from above.
The young man looked up. The voice belonged to a young woman, looking down.
‘Are you Ben?’ she inquired. ‘I hope so. Otherwise, you are an uninvited stranger who might turn out to be unpopular.’
The young man was disconcerted. Yet he was not lost for a reply.
‘Yes, I am Ben,’ he said. ‘But I am nonetheless a stranger and could turn out to be unpopular anyway.’
‘What a marvellous answer,’ the young woman replied. ‘Welcome, Ben. I’m Genevieve. Would you mind closing the door?’
Ben did as he was asked. He climbed the stairs. He tried not to over-smile: though pleased with his badinage, he didn’t want to let it show. His host, at once pale and bright, wore a green cocktail dress with white polka dots. A feather fascinator topped off her ensemble.
As Ben ascended to the landing, Genevieve offered a hand. It hung delicately from her narrow wrist. As Ben took and shook it, Genevieve averted her gaze. Then, she turned back to him and smiled.
‘Follow me!’ she said, spryly. She spun on her ballet pumps and led the way towards a reddish glow, the smell of cooking and the sound of a piano in pain.
Ben followed her into a low-lit kitchen diner. The room had scarlet walls. Strings of fairy lights were strung across it. Two people sat at a table set for six. On the far side of the room, the piano and its torturer were lost in shade.
‘This is Ben!’ Genevieve said, ushering in her guest with a little stage bow, as if he were a magician and she, his awed assistant. The star performance, though, was hers.
‘Evening Ben,’ said the people at the table.
They rose as one from chairs that faced each other from either side of a bowl brimming with some kind of purple dip
‘Good evening,’ Ben replied, with an involuntary, ingratiating stoop. He accepted first the proffered handshake of the man, whose grip, firm and nobbly, invited affable male complicity. The woman’s hand had a calfskin quality evoking Nivea and maternity.
‘I’m Val,’ the woman said.
‘I’m Ray,’ said the man.
They spoke with open vowels. Warm glints of expectation lit their eyes.
Genevieve clapped her hands. ‘And now the supper club line-up is complete!’
Ben felt the obverse of completeness: frigid beside the glow of Val and Ray, plain next to the glister of his host. Yet he was damned if he would socially fragment.
The piano had fallen silent.
‘Hi Ben,’ said its tormentor, rising with a gauzy rustle as the folds of a preposterous frock unfurled. ‘I’m Ming. As in vase.’
She announced this with a blend of pride and weariness, as if pre-emptively confirming that she was indeed named after an imperial dynasty, and that her need to do so was the price of bearing its lustre.
‘Hi Ming,’ said Ben.
The piano was a turquoise upright.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ said Ming, noticing Ben notice it. ‘Shame I’m so crap at playing it.’
She parodied mortification. Ben laughed defensively. He couldn’t think of a response to Ming’s self-deprecation that wouldn’t involve lying. For a moment, he was lost in her brown eyes.
‘Sit down, Ben, sit down!’ urged Genevieve, relieving him of both his dilemma and his carrier bag. ‘May I look?’ she asked, as if the answer ‘no’ was any sort of option.
Before Ben had time to say anything at all, the bottle the bag contained was held aloft.
‘Ooh la-la!’ Genevieve exclaimed. ‘Délicieuse!’ She wafted off to the worktop nook, skirt swishing, fascinator quivering.
Ben was cautiously encouraged. He’d spent more on the wine than he could prudently afford, but hoped his high-risk investment would pay.
As he took his seat, he again caught Val’s gaze. She had apple cheeks and a peachy smile. ‘I’m with him,’ she said, nodding at Ray.
‘And I’m with her,’ said Ray, nodding at Val. He held a Kettle Crisp in his right hand. It was poised above the contents of the bowl, a mauve lagoon, which he contemplated with a blend of interest and uncertainty.
‘Are you local?’ Val asked Ben. ‘We are.’
‘Not really,’ replied Ben. ‘I haven’t lived in London long.’
‘I can tell that from your accent,’ said Val,’ as if she and Ben were complicit in exposing a harmless yet mildly embarrassing secret.
‘Yes, well, it’s a bit of a giveaway. I’m actually from just outside of Leeds.’
‘A northern lad!’ said Ray, dipping his crisp.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Ben, accepting the stereotype with good grace. There were others available to Ray, which would have been less equably indulged.
‘And where have you come from today?’ inquired Val.
‘From Fitzrovia,’ said Ben. ‘I share a flat there.’
‘Oh, I say!’ responded Val. ‘Very grand! And what brings you all out here?’
‘I saw the invite on Instagram,’ Ben explained, sensing as he spoke that something more would be required and not knowing quite what. He heard himself plough on: ‘I’ve never been here and, um, it looked like fun.’
‘Oh, round here is famous for fun,’ said Ray, his dipped crisp still uneaten.
‘I’ve heard that,’ Ben lied, opting, in the seeming absence of irony in Ray, for the safety of earnest affirmation.
‘Always has been,’ said Ray, hinting at deep insights to come. ‘It just isn’t widely known.’
Only now did his crisp reach its destination, terminating with a foursquare crunch.
‘Don’t get him started,’ said Val.
Ray grinned and digressed. ‘Egyptian beetroot,’ he said, mid-mastication, with a note of pleasant surprise. ‘Very nice.’
Ben seized an opportunity. ‘I think I’ll join you,’ he said, taking a crisp for himself.
‘It’s quite exotic,’ said Val, doing the same.
‘Vegan, apparently,’ said Ray, with an almost interplanetary sense of discovery.
Ming had joined Genevieve at the worktop. Now, they approached the table together, carrying the main course. Each placed a large ceramic pot on the table and removed the lid.
‘Sweet potato and black bean quinoa chilli,’ Genevieve announced.
‘Teriyaki tofu rice,’ declared Ming. ‘It’ll put hairs on your chest.’
‘Looks lovely!’ Val exclaimed. ‘I must have a go at making these myself!’
Ray nodded his agreement, perhaps mainly out of loyalty, though two rapid return visits to the North African dip hinted at receptiveness to innovation.
Ming, synthetic layers undulating as she went, stepped across to an old-fashioned record player, set up near the piano. It stood on four spindly legs and had a lid.
Genevieve tripped lightly to the fridge and returned bearing a green glass bowl that resembled a bouquet of lettuce leaves. ‘Apple cabbage salad with cider vinaigrette,’ she said, placing it delicately between the hot dishes.
From the record player’s single speaker came a low cyclical crackling, followed by a tinny bossa nova.
‘My dad had a record player like that!’ exclaimed Val, spotting the music’s source. She did a little wobble to the rhythm.
‘We all did at one time,’ said Ray, with gentle gravity.
‘That’s what my granddad says,’ Ming remarked, then put a hand to her mouth, the full palm, to demonstrate how profound was her chagrin. ‘Sorry, no offence.’
‘None taken!’ chuckled Ray. ‘I’m older than I look!’ He snapped his fingers in time to the groove. ‘Like being on Strictly, this!’
Ming flapped a hand next to her cheek to make it plain she was still flustered and lowered herself into her end-of-table chair, adjusting her bodice mid-descent.
Ben continued to acclimatise. He noticed that all the crockery, like the record player and the attire of Ming and Genevieve, were of a style from a distant past. And he could hardly un-notice the cruet, with its phallic oil flask and salt and pepper shakers shaped like breasts.
‘Darling, would you mind?’ asked Genevieve. Ben snapped out of his reverie. In one hand, Genevieve held the bottle he had brought, in the other, a corkscrew. ‘I’m such a weakling,’ she said, with a roll of her eyes, a tut of self-reproach and a beseeching smile.
‘Oh, of course,’ said Ben, getting the message and suppressing his alarm. The corkscrew was of the cheap, inferior type, setting a physical test he wasn’t sure he’d pass. As he bent to his task, Genevieve, still standing, clapped her hands and spoke.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, you will have noticed that we have one empty seat. It is saved for our Bulgarian friend Ivan, who may arrive later, or, on the other hand, may not! With him, you never know!’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Ming, with sledgehammer weariness.
‘And so, dear friends,’ continued Genevieve, ‘as I used to say in gay Paris – bon appetit!’
Ben drew the cork from the bottle with a comedy pop that helped him to conceal his relief.
‘Bon appetit!’ said everyone else.
***
As the evening aged, the vibe harmonised. What had seemed to be mis-matched ingredients became a winning fusion. Ray, fully reconciled to the unfamiliar cuisine, got into his stride, telling, between mouthfuls, local history tales of scary abbesses, massive motor plants and legendary fishing fleets. Val smiled and chipped in, augmenting, nodding, gently correcting. Ming rocked back and forth, eyes wide and mouth open in demonstrative awe. ‘I never knew that!’ she intermittently declared. ‘Lived here all me life and I had no idea.’
Ben rationed his glances at Genevieve and Ming, trying not to panic when they were spotted.
With the arrival of dessert, a choice of vegan passionfruit or vegan raspberry cheesecake, came Genevieve’s exposition of her retail venture in the shop beneath their feet, her vision of combining collaborative recycling with artistic creativity, fuelled by the spirit of community.
‘It is a shop, but it is also a place to meet, debate and share,’ she said, moving her head with neat economy from side to side, as if to replicate the balances of nature. ‘I think of it as a little palace of delights,’ she continued. ‘But it is also where we start to save the world.’
‘Well, we all need to be doing some of that,’ said Ray, with due sobriety.
‘And where do you fit in with all of this, Ming?’ Val inquired.
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Said Ming. ‘I’m just her helper, really.’
‘Oh, Ming, you are so much more than that!’ Genevieve cried. ‘You are my partner! My collaborator! My guide! What would I, a girl from nowhere, know of this east London, erm, milieu, if not for you?’
‘Well,’ said Ming, to the gathering in general, ‘put it that way….’
Ivan arrived, pale, wiry, self-effacing and slightly dazed. Genevieve did his communicating for him, recounting his childhood arrival from Stara Zagora, his rejection of a position with his family’s food importation firm, and his heroic opening of a bicycle repair shop in a council-funded pop-up unit down the road.
As if to validate his wrist full of friendship bracelets, Ivan became earnestly solicitous towards Ben, gravely stating that he was ‘pleased to be meeting you’, before earnestly inquiring about Hindu gods and explaining to him what a Brompton was.
It emerged that Ivan had first encountered Genevieve when approached by her in distress about a flat tyre and worrying brakes. Soon, he had moved into the flat above hers, for a rent that was ‘extremely OK’.
Ben absorbed this information with a display of interest that masked a greener feeling. Visiting the bathroom, his inner turbulence intensified. He’d never seen a jam jar full of tampons. He’d never seen so many bras. They hung vertically on a drying rack like celebratory streamers resting between triumphs. Ben shockingly felt then gallantly repelled an urge to touch.
And yet, returning to the table chatter, which by this time had become quite merrily familiar and even ribald – Ming, accepting the cruet, told Genevieve, to hoots of approval, how much she liked her tits – Ben, sentence by sentence, quip by quip, rose above his anxiety.
He occupied by increments a convivial, defensible niche where he combined being from Yorkshire, with being a Singh with being a Big Brain, this latter facet acquired when, succumbing to friendly pressure from the others, he owned up to being a shopkeeper’s son who had gone from local state school to Oxford University and was now working as a graduate apprentice with a West End property consultancy.
‘Is that posh for estate agent?’ asked Ray. ‘We’re up-and-coming round here, you know.’ He tapping the side of his nose, confidentially.
‘I expect you are,’ said Ben, pretending the matter had not previously crossed his mind. ‘Like a lot of east London, these days.’
‘Got a bit to go before we’re like Fitrovia,’ remarked Val, with a nurturing sort of curiosity.
‘The flat is owned by the company I work for,’ Ben explained. ‘It used to be part of an office block, but it’s gone out of date and so they’ve converted it to resi – residential use, that is. We beginners get to live there for a while. It gives us time to find our feet.’
‘So, what did you want to visit us for?’ asked Ming, adding hastily, ‘not being rude.’
Ben’s reply carried the most conviction of any words he had spoken during the evening so far. ‘I want to see all of London,’ he said. ‘It’s such an amazing city. There’s just…’ Ben paused, almost theatrically. ‘There’s just so much of it.’
‘Can’t argue with that,’ said Ray.
‘I am thinking this also,’ Ivan said.
And at that point, as if impelled by some sudden surge of longing, immodesty or joy, Ben got up, walked over to the piano, sat down and began to play. He played A Foggy Day. He played it well.
‘Blimey,’ he only bangs the old Joanna too,’ said Ming.
‘Oh, I know this one!’ said Val. ‘Frank Sinatra!’
‘Ella Fitzgerald, I thought,’ said Ray. ‘Her and what’s his name…Satchmo.’
‘Nineteen forties? Fifties?’ asked Val.
‘It was on the radio when we were growing up,’ Ray said. He began to croon: ‘A foggy day…in London town. Had me low. Had me down….’
Ivan clapped along.
‘This is marvellous,’ cried Genevieve. She jumped to her feet, stepped back from the table and shimmied gawkily towards a retro Gaggia, which had begun to steam.
Ben noticed this through the darkling illumination; noticed, once again, Genevieve’s novel combination of quirkiness and grace; noticed, though unconsciously, how that blend made artifice seem real.
He kept on playing. And when he got to the end, Val, Ray and Ivan clapped and cheered, Genevieve cried ‘Allez allez!’ and Ming banged the table, wanting more.
John Vane is a pen name used by Dave Hill, editor and publisher of On London. Buy his London novel Frightgeist: A Tall Tale of Fearful Times here or here. Follow him on Bluesky.