I was standing on the pavement outside the Lahore Kebab House, Hendon, after a three-hour lunch, waiting for a minicab. Fifty of us had sat down at a flower-laden table to samosas and champagne, kebabs and Valpolicella. Amid a convivial uproar, our host had stood, tapped his water glass with his spoon, and made a speech of thanks and welcome. Last year, to our host’s transparent consternation, his speech was hijacked by Lord Charles, the ventriloquist’s dummy, who’d made obscene remarks about some of the guests. Today his speech was again persistently interrupted, this time by Sooty on the one hand, and by Sweep on the other, whispering irrelevant comments in his ear. At this early stage I was sitting next to an endlessly interesting Scot who’d started out in life playing left back for St Mirren. The Valpolicella was out of this world, it dawned on me after about the third glass.
A biting wind was blowing up the high street and no sign of a minicab anywhere. I didn’t know, and I didn’t much care, what I was going to do next, or where I should go, or even what was to become of me, so it didn’t much matter. Then two women bearing poinsettias came out. They were hoping for a minicab also, they said, leaning tipsily together for mutual support. What about we share the next minicab that came along, they said, and go back to their place for a party? Both were blonde and slender under their long winter coats and they exuded a pleasant kind of recklessness. Good idea, I said.
Next, a racehorse trainer whom I hadn’t noticed at the lunch, but recognised from off the telly, came out, also in search of a minicab. I think he might have had a few, too. He was heading south, he said. ‘Come back to our place!’ chorused the tipsy blondes. The racehorse trainer’s cheerful face became momentarily downcast, even slightly bitter. He couldn’t, unfortunately, he said. The tipsy blondes lolled back their heads and wailed in sulky disappointment.
Then a smart gent with a tweed overcoat and expensive glasses came out and offered his cigarettes around, as if the more people who took one, the happier it would make him. He presented the packet of Lucky Strikes with both hands, humbly, imploringly, as though it really was his supreme privilege to be able to offer something that everybody wanted. He’d have given the entire packet away if he could have found enough takers. I hadn’t seen that oriental-like combination of generosity and humility, I thought, for many years.
Then a minicab pulled up and the pair of tipsy blondes, the cheerful racehorse trainer, the generous smoker and I got in and settled ourselves among the poinsettias. Unfortunately, we had to evacuate immediately because the minicab turned out to be for someone else.
Two seconds later another minicab arrived and the driver of this one gravely indicated that he was at our service. We bundled in, again carefully settling the poinsettias between us. The racehorse trainer volunteered to sit in the boot. I sat in the front passenger seat. As we nosed forward into the slow traffic, the racehorse trainer made a complaint to the driver about a nasty smell in the boot. Then he embarked on this comic shtick, in the form of a bitter soliloquy, about what a fastidious man he is, and how sensitive he is to nasty smells. The generous smoker produced an opened and almost full bottle of Valpolicella from the depths of his overcoat and eagerly passed it around. When it was the driver’s turn, he politely and regretfully shook his head.
United now by our little comedy of errors, by the cigarettes, by the cosy warmth of the cab, by our southward direction of travel, by our shared concern for the poinsettias’ well-being, by the racehorse trainer’s running commentary on the smell, by the circulating bottle of Valpolicella, by Lionel Richie singing ‘Say You, Say Me’ on the radio and, united above all by that camaraderie to be found among inebriate flotsam everywhere, we began singing, together with Lionel, the chorus of ‘Say You, Say Me’.
Even the racehorse trainer briefly forgot about the smell and his voice could be heard from the back, blending plangently with ours. And as we sang, I looked around in the darkness at the sporadically illuminated faces, and I was overcome with love for every one of us, even for myself. For we had arrived at a pitch of harmonious understanding, it seemed to me, that I hadn’t thought humanly possible, least of all in any sort of company with me in it, and I wanted us all to live together in a commune planted with poinsettias, the minicab driver also, and we’d all drink Valpolicella, and be this well dressed, and this well fed, and sing together like this, for the rest of our days.
Comments