London Calling - James Craig [41]
Waking just before one o’clock, he lingered in bed for a while, thinking about nothing in particular. Eventually he got up, had a shower, got dressed and headed outside. Crossing the one-lane, one-way thoroughfare, he stepped into Il Buffone, a tiny 1950s-style Italian café on the other side of Macklin Street. Inside, there was just enough room for the counter and three shabby booths, each of which could sit four people – or six at a squeeze. It was then a case of risking a random dining companion inside or taking one of the small tables outside on the street, where the exhaust fumes came for free.
Carlyle always preferred to stay inside, where he could sit under a crumbling poster of the Juventus Scudetto winning squad of 1984. That was the team of Trapattoni and Platini, higher beings from a different era. Even on the busiest of days, a few moments spent contemplating their achievements were, to Carlyle’s way of thinking, always time well spent.
It was now after two o’clock and the lunchtime rush was coming to a close, so Il Buffone was largely empty. A couple of businessmen lingered over their lattes, discussing the chances of some big order materialising. Each was puffing on a cigarette, in casual contravention of the smoking ban. Carlyle looked questioningly at Marcello, the owner, who just shrugged and turned to the Gaggia coffee machine.
‘Ciao. Buon giorno. Come stai?’
‘I’m good, Marcello,’ Carlyle replied to the back of the man’s head. ‘You?’
‘Fine,’ Marcello shouted back to him, over the hissing of the machine. ‘Cathy’s visiting her mother today, so I’m on my own, but it’s OK. What you havin’ now? Lunch or breakfast?’
It was a difficult decision to make, for Carlyle was normally a morning visitor to the café, and choosing lunch would require some extra thought. He couldn’t be bothered with that, so he plumped for breakfast.
‘The usual?’ Marcello asked.
‘Si, grazie.’ Having now exhausted the complete range of his Italian vocabulary, built up painstakingly over the years, Carlyle nodded respectfully to Trapattoni and Platini and slid into the rear booth to wait for his regular daily rations comprising of a double macchiato with a chunky raisin Danish.
Marcello Aversa had come to London more than thirty years earlier, for a week’s holiday. In that short time he’d managed to fall in love with an English girl, get engaged and find himself a job. Carlyle never ceased to feel impressed every time Marcello told the story. It must have been quite a trip. Thirty years on, still married to Cathy, he was coming to the end of a career that had seen him running various clubs, restaurants and bars in north London and the West End.
Four years ago they had taken on a lease for the café, the idea being to give their youngest daughter a start in the business. However, the reality of five-thirty starts, five mornings a week, plus dealing with customers, the council and the health-and-safety people, had proved too much for the girl. She had chucked it in after less than a month and was last heard of backpacking around Chile. Marcello and Cathy were left trying to cover the final years of the lease, while hoping to get someone to take it off their hands.
Carlyle’s wife and daughter were regulars here. Marcello and Cathy doted on Alice, which meant, inevitably, that Helen loved them. That meant, in turn, that Carlyle felt obliged