In the Sicilian Cart
AFTERTHOUGHT
By JOHN WELLS
STILL reeling from Mr Christopher Booker's aston- ishing assault on the mini- skirt in a recent number of the Weekend Telegraph, I made my spiritual prepara- tion for the opening of `La Carretta,' the unusual Sicilian restaurant just off Camaby Street, with con- siderable care. The invita- tion was written in discreetly self-effacing English with a slight Italian accent and a suggestion of hunch- shouldered obsequiousness: explaining that `La Carretta' meant The Sicilian Cart,' it said that the restaurant had been planned as a rendezvous `both for the leisurely diner and the businessman- in-a-hurry.' There was a fleeting reference to the possibility of a `tete-à-tete dinner,' and a modest claim that this was London's first Sicilian restaurant and that the dishes would be 'served with a style and a panache never imagined in London before.' But there was no overt reference to the two waitresses whose photographs appeared on the invitation, both wearing what ap- peared to be sequined backless evening dresses worn back to front.
The more intriguing of the two photographs, it is true, was described in the text as being 'not just a Sicilian pipe-dream': this showed two suave Italianate businessmen, not apparently in a hurry, looking with a kind of shrewd concen- tration into the almost unnaturally vivacious eyes of their single lady companion, who was wearing a respectable black dress and showing only a suggestion of shoulder. The unnatural vivaciousness may perhaps have sprung from a desire to compete with the girl standing beside her, seductively sliding a plate of pheasant on to the table with one hand and laying the other, with fingers splayed, on her sequinned hip, while her breasts peer, shy and suspicious, slightly to left and right of centre.
Having absorbed as much as possible of the atmosphere from the printed page, I arrived at the romantic little alley where the restaurant is situated a few minutes early in order to avoid being trampled to death. The paved pas- sage is one of those where, anywhere else in Soho, blue-chinned men in luminous blue suits come and breathe in your face and remark, `Twelve different girls. They're naked and they dance,' in that particular sing-song grimy bore- dom voice they affect, and where grubby scrubbers lurk in doorways smoking and beckon- ing lasciviously from the shadows. In Lowndes Court, however, the reception group beneath the light of the doorway was quietly polite, re- strained, and suggested rather the sort of group that gathers outside a church hall before a meeting of the church men's club.
Men shifted from one foot to the other, bowed nervously and smiled as they were introduced, and the language seemed to be predominantly Italian. Inside was a roomful of men, all wearing dark suits and talking in low voices under the dim lights, and two tables with cocktail scraps which had already for the most part been eaten. There was already an atmosphere that was diffi-
cult to define, but which was midway between the conspiratorial familiarity of those really breaking the law and the nervously loud hearti- ness of a rugger club outing to the Folies Bergere. The girl in the cloakroom was quite normally dressed in a little cape and a long dress with a front, and no nudies appeared to have so far arrived.
It became clear that any hope I had of obtain- ing yet another glittering scoop for the SPECTATOR was doomed from the start: most of the men present had thick notebooks and short stubby pencils, both of which they held in tight against their waistcoats as they talked out of the sides of their mouths to waiters and staff. A huge camera and heavy boxes of equipment were being carried in, and there was a good deal of whispering about the BBC news. I there- fore settled down to enjoy the mingled emo- tions of those about to grab the scoop, growing perceptibly impatient now as the promised naked breasts had still not so far been glimpsed.
Looking round at the representatives of the press, it was difficult to believe that any single one of them had never before set at least eyes on a naked breast, and yet it was clear that the excitement of some shared experience, perhaps of the sheer bum-titty-bum vulgarity of it all, was setting a few eyes gleaming more brightly behind thick glasses and stirring up more and more the feeling of being at a rugger club party. The Italians slipped in and out of the crowd, sustaining the sense of expectant tension by whispering in each other's ears and looking at their watches, and the Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotchmen reverted more and more to the aggressive camaraderie of the saloon bar, tell- ing dreadful old jokes about the Crucifixion, as if they were consciously hypnotising each other into a state of pagan exultation for the Babylonian Feast to come.
Almost before anyone could point his camera or turn on the television floodlights, the first pair of breasts appeared coming down the stairs. Immediately the roar of pagan incantation was stilled, and the sacred objects were flooded with white light. Cameras whirred, a fat man in a sheepskin jacket pushed backwards into the crowd as they were carried forward, their owner smiling with admirable lack of self-consciousness like a model at a dress show, and there were shouts and instructions about where to hold the tray of goodies she was carrying. The sense of shock. seemed to fade with the television lights, and by the time the girl had smiled her way to the other end of the room most of the shout- ing was over. The next girl stimulated a rather weaker reaction from the crowd: particularly pale of flesh, she seemed uncertain whether the tray should be used as a support or as a shield, and had finally settled for an intermediary position, but so low down that even the most hardened strip-club regulars seemed momentarily baffled by the anatomical problem. There were a few more shouts about safety in numbers, and taking a chance as you only live once, but interest finally shrivelled altogether.
I couldn't help being impressed by the restraint and human consideration of the rugger men in the physical presence of their erotic dream; although few things could have a more anaphrodisiac effect, except perhaps the pieces of cold, pink jelly served on the hors-d'oeuvre tray. I think it was the sight of naked flesh actually working that did it. Perhaps the New Puritans' fears about the shortness of the mini- skirts would be best allayed by leaving them off altogether at work, and insisting on ankle-length bombasine in the evenings.
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