We opened our restaurant, which never did acquire a name, by simply turning over the open/closed sign hanging on the door. The big pots were steaming and we had clean white cloths on the tables. A cassette player broadcast soft classical music from the top of the fridge.
“What if no one comes, Benji? All this food.”
“They’ll come.” He was wonderful at being reassuring. “And if they don’t come, we’ll take it over to Hereford Road.”
A group of four Italian students from one of the language schools in Westbourne Grove pushed open the door, chattered, then nearly left at the sight of us, the nervous proprietors, and the empty tables. “Buona sera,” offered Benji, which won him a stream of questions. He replied in Italian. They sat down. In the kitchen so narrow that we touched each time we passed, he whispered, “'You never know when an Italian ex-wife might be useful.”
Benji insisted on not charging our first customers. “They’ll be back,” he said. “They’ll bring their friends.” Our only income on the first night came from three large men arriving late, after the pubs had closed. One stumbled as he sat, but they were all fastidiously polite: “That’s wonderful, darling. That’s a treat.”
I put out the food, tidied the table and watched them from the corner as they tried and failed to transport food from the dishes to the plates: “Will you look at that? Making a mess of the lass’s laundry.”
“Drunken Englishmen,” I said quietly to Benji. “Supposing they get angry and don’t pay.”
“Scots, Marcella. Don’t say English. Big mistake.” I hadn’t even guessed there was a mistake to make. I had a lot to learn.
“Three Special Brews when you can,” one called out to Benji, and, “Will you drink with us, Jimmie? Make it four.”
They left at midnight, leaving an untidy pile of screwed-up notes on the table. “Fifteen pounds,” I announced, “for the night.” We stretched out at one of the tables with its white cloth still undisturbed, our feet tangling.
“It went well,” declared Benji.
I looked at him: he was serious. “We didn’t make any money.”
“No. In the retail business, they call it a loss leader. It’s a good start.”
“Benji, where are we sleeping tonight?”
My bed in the living room at Hereford Road was not private and, bit by bit, I was discovering that Benji had no home. He had the use of homes, but no home. There was a house in the process of being converted into flats where the owner liked Benji to stay so that squatters would not move in. Sometimes he stayed in the houses of wealthy acquaintances who were temporarily abroad. Sometimes he was someone’s guest. There was an upstairs office off the Edgeware Road that belonged to a Malaysian insurance broker he worked with, and sometimes he slept there, on the enormous white leather couch that was its central piece of furniture. There were times when he drove his car all night and napped in it. The ageing white Mercedes was the closest thing he had to a permanent home and the car phone was the closest thing to an office. I kept seeing cars like his on the TV news, being driven through places like Beirut by fighters or refugees, flags flying from their windows.
There is one image of Benji from a later time that always returns to me. Unknown to him, I am looking down on him from the flat in Westbourne Grove. His car is parked on the double yellow lines opposite Whiteley’s, its flashers flashing. Benji, in a business suit, is leaning against its side and holding the phone to his ear. The door is open, partly blocking the pavement and netting friends and business acquaintances as they pass. Benji leaning against his car, speaking into his phone, shaking hands; he looks so happy out there. I’m sure he is not thinking of me.
In reply to my enquiry, Benji said, “Talbot Road”— the half-converted house. “They’ve finished the glass doors for the penthouse. I’ve put a bed up there. We can see all of London without getting up.”
I loved it when Benji was right. I counted up the occasions of his good judgement as proof against something I could not name. He was right about the restaurant and I loved him for it. Foreign students from the language schools became our regular customers and by the end of the first week I knew some of them by name. Word got around that we sold good food very cheaply. By the end of the first month, it had taken on the feel of a family: noisy, smoky, friendly, a success. My customers called out my name when they saw me in the street.
MAYBE BELONGING IS NO MORE THAN A PLACE'Saccomodation of our habits. I started some Bayswater habits. Now I was someone, not no one, I was able to enter Le Cafe and sit on the other side of the Arab teapots in its window. My days started late, and a croissant and cap- pucino at Le Cafe was my first appointment. I did my sums for the restaurant at their gaudy perspex tables, sitting on their brass chairs. After I had made my lists for supplies—Benji did the shopping—I allowed myself to read the newspaper. I chose The Guardian, because Geoffrey had read The Guardian and I wanted to seem serious. I sat at the window table, my accounts book closed, sipping my coffee and reading my serious newspaper. Already a Londoner, I thought.
Benji was absent during the days, to-ing and fro-ing across London, doing his little bit of this and little bit of that, talking to people, shaking hands, making contacts for vaguely defined future purposes. I did the kitchen preparation in the afternoon, and before we opened at six I established another habit. Each day I would walk the length of Westbourne Grove to the Porchester Baths in Queensway, where I would swim for ten minutes or so before dressing
