Iain Sinclair - Dining on Stones

At around 2.30 p.m., give or take, a woman with a child came through the door, to gossip with customers (maybe off-duty staff) at the back of the restaurant; coat on, holding firmly, right to the point of nuisance, to the tugging, excited kid — then passing her over to the manager (who had already put on his jacket). Tidied his hair in the mirror. They kissed — and the child, chattering now, securing a few fingers of her father’s large hand, led him through the close-packed tables, never looking back until they were safely outside, on the parade, when she turned to give her mother a wave, through a window, which had to be wiped and polished, daily, to counter the abrasive quality of the salt air. All of them, man, woman, child, notably, commendably, neat. Clean. Wholesome.

Kaporal, undomestic, incomplete in his bachelor state, sentimental as Ford Madox Ford (banished from Kent), approved. He liked family restaurants, chrome and Formica, paper napkins and pale-blue plastic tablecloths. With, freshly rinsed, every morning, artificial daisies in narrow, green-glass holders. Or daisy-type flora (Kaporal didn’t do flowers). White and yellow, anyway.

‘Allo, mister. You want sal-mon and broccoli? Chef don’t ’ave broccoli today, very nice spinach.’

The broccoli was always off and the spinach never really worked (too bitter), but Kaporal didn’t care. Warm, soft food on a pasta base. The woman was charming, the mother.

‘Maria,’ he said. For the pleasure of it. Having her name in his mouth. She smiled, came back.

‘Which pasta?’

‘I think … spaghetti.’

He laughed.

‘Always spaghetti.’

She touched his hand, lightly.

‘Something to drink, mister?’

‘Carafe. Red.’ ‘Another … litre ?’

‘Litre.’

No hint of disapproval in her voice. Admiration. If he didn’t fool himself. Collusion in her voice, her smile. All things being equal, she’d sit down. Help him to dispose of the second carafe (bevelled glass, hospital retort, sample).

Light and fruity (pink mouthwash), blushful Hippocrene. Purple-stained lips. Maria’s fingerprints on the curve of the dusty glass.

Trying not to burn, mopping his brow, being decent about the cigarettes (limiting himself, two to the hour), Kaporal gazed out of the window.

Should I sit at the big round table and catch the lowering sun in my eyes? Or shift further inside — and risk scalding my back on a radiator? These were decisions, strategies, to be deferred. Indefinitely.

Pasta joint, seafront. Out of season. Tony Hancock in The Punch and Judy Man ? Certainly not. Hancock was hopelessly exposed on the big screen. Black-and-white face like a map of Australia, blank with wrinkles. A radio face. Better to imagine than to see. Kaporal was John le Mesurier, afternoon bars. Cuckolded. Kaporal was the afterlife of Oliver Reed ( The Damned , Losey not Visconti, Weymouth). Ollie Reed in his pomp: The System . Michael Winner with Nic Roeg as DOP. A between-movies actor wintering in Guernsey, cheap booze, empty annex of money-launderers’ hotel.

So Kaporal romanced. Playing with the masks, ransacking buried memory files. A life lived by proxy.

David Hemmings, he was in it, The System , 1964. Two years before Blow-Up . Mike Winner to Antonioni. Culture shifts: beach photographer, marine melancholy ( I Vitelloni re-made by Ken Russell), to urban chancer with studio and agent and primitive car phone in open-top Roller. Lunch with bundles of prints, a book about to be published, in a fashionable trattoria. Tasting sauce in the kitchen. (Kaporal could do that. He was five years younger than Hemmings.)

It could still happen. With Maria. If not Antonioni.

He was pissed, rambling. Muttering to himself. He fitted the environment. Non-judgemental, easygoing (plastic tablecloth). Noisy kids tolerated, reps and scammers (jackets off). Women getting squiffy on a succession of single glasses.

Open all day. Always busy. Not now.

The guy from the Adelphi Hotel at the window table (seats six): alone. Single coffee. It’s like a uniform for those guys, black leather blouson, dark trousers, new trainers. Six-o’clock shadow three hours early. Mobile phone and cigarette packet on display. They’re not allowed to take paid employment for six months after coming ashore, checking in to the Warrior Square hostel (decorative wrought-iron balconies, permanent building work).

The economic migrant protected his coffee cup with an arm, whenever Maria approached — another table, the door. He wouldn’t let her view the brown stain, all that was left of his refreshment. Edgy, bristling. Missing a newspaper.

It was the mildest of environments: cup of tea, chocolate and pineapple bombe , meatballs and tomato sauce, any combination you fancy, no hierarchy of values for Maria. Eat or sit. Chat or stay silent. Smoke or sniff the plastic flowers.

The pink ones on the migrant’s table, the vase he moved disdainfully, making room for his phone and fags, were carnations. Kaporal sported those in his buttonhole at one of his weddings — Kentish Town? Carnations, pinks. A froth of candy petticoats. Stiff petticoats, layered. Broderie anglaise. Gingham. Ponytails. Bardot. Annette Vadim (née Stroyberg). Mylene Demongeot: in an over-coloured pin-up postcard. On a swing? Gillian Hills (a Brit) in Beat Girl .

How well this pizza place represented itself. The kitsch Aztec mirror with the angular panels. The golden sunburst clock. The purple/red/blue Mediterranean seascapes: tame Fauve, unwild Derain. Matisse with an ulcer, painting in snow mittens while chained to a chair in a Beirut cellar. A sense of non-specific celebration: light, gilt, summertime, well-meaning but hopelessly unsympathetic bands of colour (sour yellow with loud pink, red trim like an aspirational migraine). The music, borderline Muzak, was getting at him now, film themes, tribute bands. Times when he’d nursed a second drink in a Streatham wine bar, waiting for a woman to text-message the fact that she wasn’t coming: not today, not ever.

Football. Coming over, walking the promenade, Kaporal had perched on the railings to watch a kickabout. Balkan boys. On the lower promenade and then, when the tide retreated, on a scraped section of beach, a few yards of only slightly tilted sand.

Achmed watched with him. Drin played, participated. Kaporal never had much time for organised sport, team games, but even he recognised that the Albanians didn’t go at it like, say, the black or Turkish or black Irish or doughwhite Scrubs locals. The inner-city tarmac firms and fence casuals, the red dirt-and-weed oafs. Arsenal and West Ham tops with baggy, many-pocketed bottoms. Or tight jeans, name trainers, steelcaps, loafers. Only the young kids had the full kit. All ages swore and shouted. From the off. Screamed.

The Albanians on the pebbled beach never made a sound. They took their jackets off (some of them), but otherwise played as they were. The pattern was neat, discernible (even by Kaporal). A few paces, short steps, neutralise opponent, pass. Move. Receive, pass. In silence . With terrifying intensity and concentration. Triangles. Back to defender, foot on ball. Pass, pass, pass. No shots on goal. No hoofing. Tripping, shirt-tugging. No action in the penalty box. An unwritten rule. Advance until you achieve a position from which a shot might, speculatively, be taken, then let the ball go to the opposition — who will return the favour as soon as they see the whites of your goalkeeper’s eyes. Backwards and forwards, slowly, then at pace. Up and down. Without a word being said. Without appeals to an imaginary referee. Without elbows in the windpipe, shirt tugs, spitting, shin rakes, instep stamps, theatrical collapses, or any of the sophistications of the English game.