plastic-seated chairs in rows, deliberately banging the legs into each other with a noisy crash.
‘Gerass, I owe you,’ Gioia shouted across the room at a stocky, dark-haired young man carrying the chairs in from a van outside. Gioia’s younger brother Gerassimos could be relied upon to obtain almost anything that was needed. It never did to enquire the source of the alcohol, tinned foods, vans, bicycles, car radios he produced, but Gioia relied upon him – often. She calculated that the good she was doing probably outweighed the dodgy deals he was involved with and that, at the end of the day, the scales of justice balanced out evenly.
At the far end of the large hall a couple of teenagers were fixing the bulky black PA system, every few minutes letting loose a burst of noisy feedback. Despite the fact that it was a chilly October afternoon and the Chapel was heated only by ranks of Dimplex heaters, everyone was working up a sweat. Kendra was aware of Gioia’s escalating tension. The evening had taken weeks of preparation and string-pulling. Despite the seemingly haphazard aura of the Chapel and Gioia’s unconventional appearance, Kendra had learnt that the world she had constructed was tightly controlled. Nothing was left to chance. Her darkly leonine appearancebelied an ordered intensity that never let up. Or not that Kendra had ever seen.
‘Come on, you guys – we’ve only got a couple of hours, and we haven’t even started on the bar yet.’ The Chapel didn’t have an alcohol permit, but Gerassimos had figured out a way that you could skirt around this inconvenience by selling drink from a temporary bar outside at the back. Due to his contacts in catering, they could make a nice profit on the bottles of Italian beer and plastic glasses of cheap Italian wine. He had a friend who gave him a good deal on Frascati.
As Kendra placed the bright-yellow paper programme she had photocopied on each chair, she was surprised by how apprehensive she felt about the evening. She knew it was important for Gioia.
‘This whole place is like a house of cards,’ her boss had explained. ‘You build one thing on the next and, if you fuck it up, the whole thing comes tumbling down. The reason I’ve got these guys performing tonight is because Chrissie Hynde did a number here last year. Bless. Long story. But it meant that word went out this was an OK gig for them. That’s how I got Ricky tonight.’ Ricky was on the verge of signing a deal with Island Records – they’d loved his demo tape. He’d been at school with Gioia in Glasgow, she said, and it had been ten years, but now she was calling in an old favour.
Kendra leant on the mop and looked at the hall. The part usually taken up by the office area had been transformed into a makeshift backstage area, the part where the kids would play volleyball turned into the auditorium, and a clumsy, irregular lighting rig established to override the fluorescent strips that normally lit the room with their ugly glow. For a moment, she saw it through the eyes of Annie and Sal. She had thought she wanted them there, to be a part of this new world of hers, but now she was not so sure.
As the eastern docks of London were colonized by the new corporate city being built, their old warehouses and inlets replaced with architecturally unremarkable office blocks and wine bars, the western end of the Thames remained comparatively unchanged. Large houseboatswith their ramshackle decks and bohemian aura remained moored just off the King’s Road, and the storage spaces of Lots Road had kept their original facades even if, inside, they were filled with fabric wholesalers and television production companies.
It was a major achievement, as the Tania Torrington PR press release stressed, for Chelsea Bridge to be the first restaurant in this part of central London with a waterside terrace: ‘
With this unique location, Chelsea Bridge is the perfect place to unwind with an after-work cocktail
‘Gerass, I owe you,’ Gioia shouted across the room at a stocky, dark-haired young man carrying the chairs in from a van outside. Gioia’s younger brother Gerassimos could be relied upon to obtain almost anything that was needed. It never did to enquire the source of the alcohol, tinned foods, vans, bicycles, car radios he produced, but Gioia relied upon him – often. She calculated that the good she was doing probably outweighed the dodgy deals he was involved with and that, at the end of the day, the scales of justice balanced out evenly.
At the far end of the large hall a couple of teenagers were fixing the bulky black PA system, every few minutes letting loose a burst of noisy feedback. Despite the fact that it was a chilly October afternoon and the Chapel was heated only by ranks of Dimplex heaters, everyone was working up a sweat. Kendra was aware of Gioia’s escalating tension. The evening had taken weeks of preparation and string-pulling. Despite the seemingly haphazard aura of the Chapel and Gioia’s unconventional appearance, Kendra had learnt that the world she had constructed was tightly controlled. Nothing was left to chance. Her darkly leonine appearancebelied an ordered intensity that never let up. Or not that Kendra had ever seen.
‘Come on, you guys – we’ve only got a couple of hours, and we haven’t even started on the bar yet.’ The Chapel didn’t have an alcohol permit, but Gerassimos had figured out a way that you could skirt around this inconvenience by selling drink from a temporary bar outside at the back. Due to his contacts in catering, they could make a nice profit on the bottles of Italian beer and plastic glasses of cheap Italian wine. He had a friend who gave him a good deal on Frascati.
As Kendra placed the bright-yellow paper programme she had photocopied on each chair, she was surprised by how apprehensive she felt about the evening. She knew it was important for Gioia.
‘This whole place is like a house of cards,’ her boss had explained. ‘You build one thing on the next and, if you fuck it up, the whole thing comes tumbling down. The reason I’ve got these guys performing tonight is because Chrissie Hynde did a number here last year. Bless. Long story. But it meant that word went out this was an OK gig for them. That’s how I got Ricky tonight.’ Ricky was on the verge of signing a deal with Island Records – they’d loved his demo tape. He’d been at school with Gioia in Glasgow, she said, and it had been ten years, but now she was calling in an old favour.
Kendra leant on the mop and looked at the hall. The part usually taken up by the office area had been transformed into a makeshift backstage area, the part where the kids would play volleyball turned into the auditorium, and a clumsy, irregular lighting rig established to override the fluorescent strips that normally lit the room with their ugly glow. For a moment, she saw it through the eyes of Annie and Sal. She had thought she wanted them there, to be a part of this new world of hers, but now she was not so sure.
As the eastern docks of London were colonized by the new corporate city being built, their old warehouses and inlets replaced with architecturally unremarkable office blocks and wine bars, the western end of the Thames remained comparatively unchanged. Large houseboatswith their ramshackle decks and bohemian aura remained moored just off the King’s Road, and the storage spaces of Lots Road had kept their original facades even if, inside, they were filled with fabric wholesalers and television production companies.
It was a major achievement, as the Tania Torrington PR press release stressed, for Chelsea Bridge to be the first restaurant in this part of central London with a waterside terrace: ‘
With this unique location, Chelsea Bridge is the perfect place to unwind with an after-work cocktail
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