Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

The restaurant was bright, low-ceilinged, with prints of fishermen and kite flyers on the walls. There was a large bar area where lone Japanese men were eating and drinking in silence, but a waitress directed Mick and Judy towards the other side of the restaurant, somewhere more convivial, less inscrutable.

A sort of stage or platform, some eighteen inches high, had been built to cover most of the dining area, but then square holes had been cut into that stage, forming cavities big enough to accommodate small wooden tables, which had been duly set in them, so that their tops projected through the holes and stood some twelve inches above the level of the stage. Diners then sat on the edge of the cavity, on legless chairs, their knees under the tables in the usual western way. It was strange but Mick could see how it worked. Far stranger to him was the row of shoes running along the main aisle of the restaurant, deposited there by the diners. He looked at Judy and said, “When in Japan,” and he kicked off his own shoes, walked across a stretch of the raised platform and lowered himself into the cavity around their table.

Judy arranged herself opposite him and asked, “Have you eaten Japanese before?”

“Sure,” he said, but in a way that made her doubt him.

The waitress came with the flapping, laminated menus, knelt beside the table and handed them over. Mick looked at the brightly coloured pictures of food with captions in Japanese. The images were informative enough in terms of form, less so in terms of content. Rice and fish and noodles were easily identifiable but that told only a small part of the story.

“What do you like to eat?” she said, trying to be helpful.

He had to think hard before admitting, “Junk mostly.”

“I don’t think they serve that here.”

He looked at the menu again and said, “You’ve got to admit it’s slightly strange, coming to London to eat in a Japanese restaurant.”

“Where else would you go? Sheffield?”

“Tokyo?” he suggested.

“It’s a long way just for lunch. Maybe we should be in an eel and pie shop.”

“No, I tried that.”

“You like raw fish?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

“I love it,” Judy said. “I’d never even heard of eating raw fish until I read The Old Man and the Sea . The old man catches fish and cuts them up and eats them immediately, and I just knew I’d love it. But when your mother comes from Streatham…In Japan there are restaurants that have tanks of water set in the kitchen floor like ponds and the chef reaches into the tank and catches a fish when he gets an order for one.”

Mick did not look very impressed by all this talk of raw fish so Judy said, “Maybe you should have tempura; that’s fish and vegetables deep fried in batter.”

He looked even less impressed. “Sounds a bit tame,” he said.

They studied the menus in silence until the waitress returned.

Without consulting Judy, but with a reckless confidence that Judy admired, he ordered the sashimi. She was pleased. She hadn’t intended that this lunch should be a test for him, yet she was glad he was coping so effortlessly.

“What have you been doing?” she asked.

“Oh, not much, listening to the radio.”

“Oh yes?”

“And the reason I won’t sleep with you has nothing to do with you being a Londoner, and nothing to do with you being half-Japanese either.”

He was aware that he had been talking very loudly so he clammed up completely.

“Well, that’s some consolation,” Judy said with enormous self-possession.

“And, as a matter of fact,” he was now speaking in a loud, hissing whisper, “I think it’s a bit bloody much. I don’t know you at all, but I turn on my radio and hear the most intimate details about you.”

“Sometimes it’s easiest that way.”

“Why’d you do it? Why do you call the phone-ins?”

“It’s cheaper than a therapist. And it’s supposed to be anonymous.”

“And I don’t want you phoning up the radio and telling them anything about me.”

“I bet you don’t.” And she had to stop herself laughing at him.

“And that’s another good reason for not sleeping with you. You blab to radio stations.”

As though to prove that she was capable of not blabbing she sat in silence for a long time. Mick, feeling that perhaps he’d been a bit rough on her, finally said, “You come here often?”

“I’ve never been here before,” she said.

“How did you know about it?”

“I read a review in the paper. I read a lot of restaurant reviews. It’s a London habit, I guess.”

“It would have to be.”

He glanced around the restaurant and he liked its air of formal calm. There was no music and nobody was speaking loudly. There were several pairs of Japanese women eating together. It was a little patch of calm and foreignness in the centre of the big city.

Then, without preamble, he said, “So what’s it like to be Japanese?”

She laughed. Had the question come from anyone else she would have been deeply insulted, but coming from Mick it somehow wasn’t nearly so bad or so crass. His naivety carried with it a built-in irony.

“I can’t say what it’s like to be Japanese any more than I can say what it’s like to be English. Could you?”

It was a new and surprising thought for him and yet he didn’t have to think very long before he said, “Yeah, I think so,” and although she probably wouldn’t have pressed him on it, he began to describe how it felt.

“Well, we’re used to thinking of ourselves as the best country in the world, which is obviously bullshit because we’re not the best at anything any more. We don’t make the best cars or tanks or aeroplanes, we don’t make the best watches or steel or televisions. We don’t even make the best television programmes any more. And we’re not the best at football or cricket or athletics. And we’re not the richest or most democratic country in the world. But, you know, we still think we’re the best.”

She smiled. She had expected something much less knowing from him.

“If you’re only half-English, maybe you only feel half of that.”

“Or none of it,” she added, and she was ready to end the conversation there, but Mick had hit his stride.

“And, you know,” he continued, “it’s a long time since we lost a war, which is a good thing, I think. I mean, I’m not in favour of wars, but if you do get involved in one I think it’s better to win it than lose it, although not necessarily. I mean…well, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, you must know all about that stuff.”

“No more than a lot of English people,” she said.

“And you know, they say in England we haven’t been invaded since 1066, but the way I see it we’re invaded every day of the year: American films, French wine, Indian restaurants, German cars, Japanese everything, foreign tourists, foreign immigrants.”

“And how do you feel about that?” she asked.

“That’s the point I was trying to make. I feel fine. I don’t mind being invaded at all. I really like it.”

“You’re full of surprises, Mick, you know that?”

“You thought I was going to say something about bloody foreigners.”

She didn’t want to admit it, but, yes, she’d thought he might have displayed some sort of distasteful if amusing xenophobia.

“Maybe you’re prejudiced,” he said.

“Aren’t we all?”

The waitress returned, knelt again and set two black lacquer trays in front of them on the table. Mick looked at his not with surprise but with enormous curiosity. He handled his chopsticks deftly and began to negotiate the slivers of raw fish. As he put them in his mouth his expression showed thoughtful concern as though the food was a cause of deep contemplation.