Postcard #20

London, 1976: A Trifle in the Monster City

The boy from Marseille cleans tables. I work behind the counter, but we take breaks together and he teaches me French poetry and slang in a Provencal accent. He’s a dark-haired outlaw come to London to evade military conscription.

It’s 1976. I’m young. The National Theatre is newly open and a lot of people hate it. It’s “an aesthetic of broken forms,” writes one tentatively hopeful critic, while Prince Charles complains that it looks like a nuclear power station. But I like it. Grey concrete, layered horizontals, sharp angles, immense, complex. A city itself. A city for the monster city.

I find a job in the actors’ canteen. Meet the French boy who carries pocket editions of Baudelaire, Eluard, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Not a bad start, I tell myself. But I’m still a kid from Michigan, a Dorothy astray, not knowing whether to stay or go, what’s humbug and what’s not.

The actors arrive during intermission. They’re in costume, playing Shakespeare, Beckett, and Marlowe, but we watch them eat. One night, here is Ralph Richardson.

“What have you got for pudding?” he booms, jovial but commanding.

I dare not check the menu board behind me. I work from memory, like an actor.

We’ve got Trite,” I say, certain this is what I have read on the menu.

Ralph glances above my head at the board, then laughs. Heartily and long, but descending into tenderness.

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Trite. Adjective. (Of a remark) lacking originality or freshness.

Trifle. Noun. A thing of little value or importance. British: a cold dessert of sponge cake and fruit covered with layers of custard, jelly, and cream.

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I’d not heard of Trifle, but it’s what I served Ralph that day, together with a helping of lexical muddle. Thereafter, when he came through the canteen, Ralph would look for me and - with fond voice and smile - ask if we had any Trite for pudding.

Ralph Richardson and a French draft refuser were my first Londoners. They’re gone now. I’m gone too. But the National Theatre is still there. Thank goodness for buildings. And Trifle.