The restaurant was dimly lit and elegant. Asha and I felt so sophisticated which at nearly seventeen is a very big deal. I had been saving for this for ages, working Saturdays in John Smith and Son, the booksellers in St Vincent Street. I had also worked in my auntie’s Italian café 2 nights a week. Asha had worked in her family restaurant at weekends and every penny had been squirrelled away for this trip. Her seventeenth birthday.
We had come to London on an overnight bus, huddled together and giggling under a blanket. Not because it was cold but because under the blanket we could cuddle and stroke each other, run our fingers up and down warm skin. For a while she slept with her head on my shoulder. She made adorable little snuffly sounds as she slept and I stayed awake just to listen to her.
We stayed in Hackney with some lovely relatives of Asha’s. The questions began.
‘Where is your boyfriend, bhanji?’ said her auntie, her khala. ‘Your mammy told me you have a lovely boyfriend’.
‘No, auntie, no boyfriend’. Asha’s hand was clutching mine under the table. ‘No boyfriend’.
‘Well Asha, you are getting old now. You need to find a nice boy’
Seventeen is not old I thought, watching and feeling out of control. This world, so warm and loving was not my world, not our world. In Glasgow we had friends who went to gay bars, we danced together and kissed in the safety of numbers. Granted we were careful on buses and in the street although sometimes we couldn’t help holding hands. It was 1969.
The aunties fed us well but on the Saturday night we had a reservation at the posh restaurant. We had heard about it from someone we met at a disco in Glasgow, a beautiful guy who, it turned out, worked as a rent boy in Kings Cross. One of his friends, or a client or maybe a sugar daddy had taken him there and he told us about the dim lighting and the polite waiters and the subdued music.
‘Best place we ever visited’ he said. ‘Everyone was so nice.'
I had the impression that he hadn’t had many waiters being polite before. He might have mentioned food but we weren’t that bothered to be honest. It was the EXPERIENCE we craved. Being grown up and out on the town in London. Magic! At least that’s what we had hoped for, whispered about, planned for months since we met the beautiful Ron in the Citizens theatre bar. It was going to be so special.
That night, back in Glasgow, after the disco, I said ‘let’s go there, for your birthday. I’ll check out the price of the bus and the restaurant’.
‘What, to London? Are you bloody mad?’ They’ll never let me go.'
‘Come on, they will. We can visit your auntie – the one I met last Christmas. The one who said you should come to London.’
‘She did say that, didn’t she?’
So we planned, and whispered and hoped and now here we were. We took a bus from Hackney to central London. Asha looked amazing. I was so proud that she was my date – even if her auntie thought I was her friend who had joined her on the trip.
‘Very good you have a nice friend Asha but when will you get a boyfriend? Has your friend got a boyfriend?’
‘No auntie, no boyfriends anywhere’.
We replayed the boyfriend conversation laughing our heads off as we walked to the restaurant. At last we entered and, yes, it was just like Ron had said – dim lighting, elegance and subdued music. The polite waiters? Not so much.
‘I’m sorry, we don’t seem to have a reservation in that name.'
Asha and I looked at each other. Was it the colour of her skin? My broad Glaswegian accent? The fact we were obviously together in a together kind of way? Whatever the reason, we were not welcome. Typically, Asha went quiet and tried to leave. Typically, I lost my temper, became more Glaswegian and basically caused a scene. Crying, Asha dragged me out and I went because I couldn’t bear to see her so upset. I didn’t smash anything!
We had chips in the rain and went back to Hackney. The aunties could see Asha was upset but we didn’t tell them why. They had enough of that treatment themselves. We didn’t need to add to it.
Over 50 years gone. Our paths moved apart but I'll always love my first sad love and I love that we are still friends.