‘Even something as simple as dispensing sugar in cafés is not straightforward,’ said Alex. ‘As I see it, there are three main options: shaker, cubes or bowls, each with its own disadvantages and advantages.’
‘Shakers are prone to clogging.’
‘Cubes can be too big.’
‘A bowl and spoon is messy,’ said Sahra, pointing to the spray of crystals on the counter.
‘We’ve only listed disadvantages,’ said Alex. It was true.
Luke and Nicole came back from playing flipper. Luke was all for going somewhere else — another bar, a club — but the other three were sleepy, ready to leave. Luke was never tired (unless, as Sahra would later point out, he was doing something he didn’t want to do). The four of them stood outside the café, saying goodbye.
‘We’re having a dinner on Saturday,’ Nicole said to Sahra. ‘Would you like to come?’ She and Luke had hatched this plan with Alex while Sahra was in the toilet.
‘I’d love to.’
‘It’s at my apartment,’ said Nicole. ‘I’ll give you the address.’
Luke watched Nicole write it on the receipt for the coffees, which she then handed to Sahra. Love a woman, thought Luke, love her handwriting: neat (surprisingly), bold, the A a triangle, the I dotted with a small circle, the E three horizontal lines, unjoined.
Although the dinner was at Nicole’s apartment it was Luke who was doing the cooking. He was peeling, boiling, chopping and frying when first Alex and then Sahra arrived. Nicole was laying the table. Music was already playing loud. This, claimed Luke, was one of the secrets of the successful dinner: no background music but, from the start, pounding music at a volume that meant the door-bell could only be heard in the breaks between tracks. The other secret was to get everyone high and drunk as soon as possible. The final secret was that the first two weren’t secrets at all, that people knew exactly what they were in for, so that there was no question of people arriving for an evening of chatting and eating rather than a fully-fledged head bang. It worked. Even Miles — who arrived with three bottles of red wine but without his wife — claimed that the previous night he had deliberately stayed in (unusual), drunk nothing (unbelievable) and gone to bed early (unheard of) so that he could be on top form for this evening. Ahmed arrived with a new girlfriend — Ahmed always had a new girlfriend — called Sally. They were both taken aback by the leg of prosciutto hanging on a hook, still untouched. Ahmed picked up a pair of mirror sunglasses that he found on one of the filing cabinets.
‘Try them on,’ said Nicole. They turned out to be mirrored both ways. All he could see was a magnified reflection of his eyes and eyelashes and, at the edges, the distended outline of the window behind his head. There were always things like that in Nicole’s apartment: weird things, fun bits and pieces she’d come across that no one else would have bothered with. The big mirror, the one from Belgrade, had been turned against the wall. The guests took it in turns to try on the pointless glasses and to ask Luke if he wanted ‘help’ but by now the cooking had reached such a frenzy of activity that he scarcely had time to answer. If Luke was into something he was into it totally — and cooking was definitely one of the things he was into. Nobody cooked like him. He had pioneered an idiosyncratic version of fusion cuisine or world food, combining ingredients, herbs and spices from distinct culinary territories, flinging them into meals that were endlessly diverse but which were always immediately, recognizably his. Like many good cooks he was a kitchen fascist: weeping, Nicole chopped the odd onion, but Luke preferred to do everything himself, manufacturing incredible meals at high speed and minimal expense. Eight people, he said, could eat like kings for only twenty francs a head when he cooked.
There was only just enough room around the table for seven people. Nicole served the first dish, a green papaya salad. As they were about to eat Luke leaped up and asked if everyone was warm enough, turning up the heater before anyone had a chance to reply.
‘Have you noticed how he loves to regulate temperature?’ said Alex. ‘It’s one of those charming little idiosyncrasies that we hate about him.’
‘It’s true,’ said Nicole. ‘I’ve never noticed before but it’s true. “Would you like a little more ice in that?” “Shall I warm that up a bit?” The first time he came here he spent the entire evening rearranging beers in the fridge. All he said was, “Hmm, they’re not quite cold enough yet.”’
Luke nodded in happy acknowledgement without ceasing to trowel food into his face. Despite being the last to serve himself he was the first to finish. He got up from the table and went back to the cooker. He handed plates of the main course to Nicole who carried them to the table.
‘It looks great Luke,’ said Alex. ‘But what is it?’
‘Something midway between Malaysian Reng Dang and Moroccan Tajine. Stew to a savage like you.’ By the time Luke sat down again the talk was of England, a country everyone had visited.
‘It was freezing when we were there last December,’ said Miles, opening more wine (Miles was always opening more wine). ‘People kept dying trying to rescue their dogs from frozen lakes. The dogs lived. The owners died. The pathos.’
‘I was fourteen when I went,’ said Sally. ‘I remember the names of pubs. The Dog and Duck. The Fox and Hounds. The White Horse. I thought it was a law that all pubs had to be named after animals.’
‘I was fifteen,’ said Sahra. ‘Everywhere seemed to be called something Hampton: Littlehampton, Minchinhampton, Wolverhampton.’
‘I had to visit my aunt in Alton,’ said Nicole. ‘She said it was exactly fifty-five minutes from London. I spoke hardly any English. So I got on my train and I waited and waited and nowhere called Alton came up. Eventually, about two hours later, the train stopped at Southampton—’
‘You see, I was right,’ said Sahra. ‘Another Hampton—’
‘Yes, exactly. So I asked the station manager and he was very kind and said the train had divided and I was on the wrong half of the train. What I had to do was go back to some other station — I forget the name, something else Hampton — and then take the train that went along the other branch. So I waited for a train back to wherever it was, went there and waited for a train to Alton. Before I got on I asked the station manager which train to get on and he was very kind as well and pointed me to a train and I got on. And this train went past exactly the same places as the last one and I ended up in Southampton again and saw the original station manager. “What are you doing here again?” he says. “You’re supposed to be in Alton.” I told him what happened and he said I had to do the same thing again: go back to the station where the train divides and then make absolutely sure I got on the train to Alton. By the time I got there my aunt was distraught. The police were looking for me. The fifty-five-minute journey to Alton had taken seven and a half hours.’
‘That’s England in a nutshell,’ said Alex. ‘Trains dividing, places called Hampton, kindly station managers. Simple journeys taking all day.’
‘When I was twenty-one I spent Christmas with my boyfriend’s family in Hampshire,’ said Sahra. ‘We had lunch. The afternoon seemed to last all day. His mother was very polite. The father hardly said a word. Every now and again she would say to him, “Are you still with us, Trevor?” Then he’d drift off until she asked him again: “Are you still with us, Trevor?”’
‘That’s England,’ said Luke.
‘Deep England,’ said Alex.
‘The other thing I remember was the television,’ said Nicole. ‘Nothing but snooker.’ This got the biggest laugh of the evening: it was the first time anyone had heard of this game that rhymed with hooker.