When the elderly Vauxhalls from No. 6 arrived for tea, there were still no chairs in Khan and Nisha's lounge. At the fourth knock, Khan cracked open his door reluctantly, a wooden smile in place. He stood there stiffly between his door and its jamb, like an intransigent cork. He offered a sweaty palm. In the hour since his polite invitation to tea had been unexpectedly accepted, he'd rehearsed a dozen desperate excuses: He‘d developed the Ebola virus, their washing machine had flooded the lounge, he had to travel immediately to Katsina Ala... He spent a full minute in the doorway, but when the meaningless exchanges of 'brilliant!', ‘delighted!‘ and ‘how lovely you look!' had tapered off he still hadn't marshalled the spunk to deploy any of the preposterous lies. So he sighed and held his door wide open for the Vauxhalls to come through.
  
(Their name was not ‘Vauxhall': by the end of the very conversation in which they were introduced, Khan and Nisha had forgotten their neighbours' names. Lacking the guts to seek another introduction, they'd thenceforth referred to them - behind their backs - by the name of their car.)
  
It wasn't a lounge to be ashamed of. Its walls were spotless white. Its main feature was the window whose rich-purple drapes (eight hundred pounds at Marks & Spencer) could be seen from the street. But it was also an empty lounge, that was the embarrassing problem. Had it been carpeted or rugged, tactful guests like the Vauxhalls would have plonked down casually on the rugs - as though it was the most natural thing in the world, to sit on the floor in a house that went on the rental market the year before at £500 per week. But the flooring was a curt, wall-to-wall terrazzo, which would have been wickedly frigid as December neared the Christmas mark. Polite bottoms silly enough to make contact would have frozen within the minute.
  
As it was, the Vauxhalls stepped into the lounge and paused, a little stunned, and for all their Englishness, a little at a loss as to what to say, or do. There was no TV, that treasure trove of conversational nuggets. There were no pictures on the wall. There was nothing to snag the bewildered eyes drifting helplessly around the whiteness of the startling emptiness.
  
The Vauxhall woman cleared her throat on her way to making one of her ‘put-everyone-one-at-ease' comments, but her cough echoed inelegantly in the humongous lounge, and she held her tongue. For she was above everything, an elegant lady; a little smug, a little hard of hearing, but gifted with a dress sense that dispensed inferiority in the ranks of women half her age. So she shifted from foot to foot. Her red shoes were her finest but least comfortable pair. A tea next door had seemed the perfect occasion to air them, a casual enough event to slip shoes off under a table.
  
It was not to be.
  
The Vauxhall man hid his disapproval behind an egalitarian smile, which he carefully restrained from becoming a condescending smirk. Although their host and hostess were the newest tenants on the street, it was already a year since their Mitsubishi first arrived at No. 8. Surely that was time enough, with their IT jobs, to buy some twenty square metres of carpets on credit. And a sofa or two. It was the sheer contrast that threw the Vauxhalls off-balance. On the street front, they seemed to be doing very well: Khan‘s expensive Mitsubishi was upstaged only by the 6-month old Mercedes parked in front of the stockbroker of No. 19. They had even gone away in June, making three ‘this-is-wonderful' phonecalls from Nairobi, Casablanca and Crete. This wasn't the sort of house one expected to walk into, and stand.
  
Khan finally stopped fiddling with the lock and turned to his guests. He groomed his designer beard as his wooden smile flickered and died. ‘Is it warm enough already? I could switch the boiler on...'
  
‘It's fine.' lied the Vauxhall woman, ‘Just perfect!'
   
‘I‘m as warm as toast.‘ Agreed the Vauxhall man edging hopefully towards the kitchen. Next door, they'd fitted a dining table into their own kitchen, but Khan lifted an index finger that stopped him in his tracks.
  
‘Cocktails will be served here in one minute.' he said with false cheerfulness.
   
‘Where's your wife?' asked the Vauxhall woman.
   
`In bed with the ‘flu, she asked me to apologise.' Said Khan, hurrying away.

Khan entered the kitchen, a collapsed DIY project, and took a deep breath. Of course ‘bed' was a euphemism for the mattress on which Nisha was rolling right then. She wasn't so much down with the ‘flu as dying of shame upstairs. They'd had their first quarrel in ages when she learnt that the couple next door were coming to tea.
   
In the living room, the Vauxhall man leaned towards his wife‘s better ear. ‘Cocktails? I thought you said tea!' he whispered through clenched teeth,
   
‘It's a tea cocktail,' called Khan from behind the thin kitchen door.
   
The Vauxhalls grimaced and hunched their shoulders in embarrassment. Then they relapsed into the dogged smiles with which they mollified awkward situations.
   
The kettle whistled briefly and Khan poured three steaming cups. He tossed in the teabags, and widened the crack of the kitchen door. ‘Milk? Sugar?'
  
“None for me and all for Anne.” replied the Vauxhall man, reciting a formula he obviously used regularly.

Khan's brows rose as he grabbed a pencil. He was grinning in spite of himself as he scribbled ‘Anne!!' on the Monday newspaper that lay by the sink. At least one good thing had come out of the disaster: he knew her name again. Perhaps she'd also use her husband's name before the catastrophic tea was done. He laid out three handsome cups on a beautiful pewter tray, knocking over the bottle of milk by the sink in the process. He soaked up the spill with the Monday newspaper, which he dumped hurriedly down the bin. He poured some queen cakes into a matching pewter bowl. He paused to admire the sight: the tray had fluted handles and soft dimples in which the base of the ceramic saucers sat. He made a grand re-entry into the lounge, the effect of which was largely undone when, having served his guests, he was forced to set the grand tray on the terrazzo floor. He lifted up his own cup and put a brave face on it.
   
After all, it was not the end of the world.
  
‘I suppose you‘re wondering,' he began, ‘“they‘ve got no furniture”.'
   
‘Nah!' protested the Vauxhall man, whose mind had been incapable of any competing thought.
   
‘Go on!' persisted Khan, ‘your minds are going: “bailiff? High court judgement?”'
   
‘We also redecorated our lounge.' suggested Anne, nibbling distractedly at a cake. ‘Chucked out everything and started all over. Was that ‘86 or ‘87 Dear?'
   
‘'89.' He replied.
   
Anne shrugged. She was much less talkative than usual. Her tight shoes were killing her. She fought the urge to kick them off: the floor looked cold - and without a chair, there was no elegant way of struggling back into them at the end of the visit.
  
Khan opened his mouth but found it impossible to continue. The previous direction of his conversation seemed suddenly so juvenile and gutless. It was nobody's business that he had no chairs in his living room. He had no duty to explain. He lifted his teacup to his mouth, but the breathless rise of steam warned him off just in time and he set it back on its saucer without a sip. His guests had likewise made two abortive passes at their tea. He tried to think of something carefree but intelligent to say, but all he could think was that Anna attended a weekly bingo at No. 42; by weekend, the entire street would know that, despite their state-of-the-market Mitsubishi, the lounge at No. 8 was an empty warehouse. The uneasy silence stretched out.
  
The scalding tea required a decent quarter-hour to cool before it could be sipped without injury to the mouth. Even after the cups were empty, the visit also needed to run another quarter-hour or so before it could be ended with dignity. That barren and compulsory hour stretched before Khan like a custodial sentence. He realised, powerfully, that though he was in the presence of strangers, his empty lounge had deprived him of the usual currency of small-talk. What did he know of the Vauxhalls anyway? The only religion he had seen them practice was the religious washing of their car on Sunday mornings. That was all Khan knew of his neighbours. Every time their eyes met over the garden fence, the residents of No. 6 and No. 8 exchanged warm smiles. Occasionally, they bumped into each other at the newsagents. One party would threaten: ‘one day we really must get together and do tea', and the other would agree: ‘absolutely'.
   
And then he got careless! That very evening, his banter had deviated from the usual generalities into an unintentional invitation. Rather than the usual 'one day...' he had started ‘how about...' and ...Hannah had gone: ‘Delighted! We'll be over within the hour!'
  
The silence slowly became oppressive. The usually chatty Hannah seemed muzzled by the empty lounge and her feet's distress. Besides, the electrifying gossip she'd been dying to share over tea (the Vice Squad had raided No. 36, carting away a truckload of exhibits) seemed wholly inappropriate in the light of their current surroundings. Her husband was steeling himself to raise the steaming cup of black and bitter tea to his lips.
  
Suddenly, the gross unfairness of it all became too much for Khan to bear: Nisha, a decent conversationalist in her own right, was rolling around upstairs while he bore the full brunt of the family's embarrassment. Resolutely, he set his saucer down on the pewter tray. He straightened up brightly. ‘I'll just see if Nisha is better.' he said, excusing himself.
   
Upstairs, Khan opened the door to their bedroom. Nisha lay across the dressed mattress which lay directly on the wooden floor. ‘Her name is ...Helga.‘ Announced Khan victoriously. Her eyes were clenched shut, her teeth were gritted tight. She'd never speak to him again. He brought his lips close to her ears and lied: ‘Helga's sorry about your ‘flu, she's coming upstairs to commiserate.'
   
Nisha leapt to her stockinged feet, wild eyes darting around her disgraceful bedroom.
  
‘No, no, no!' She whispered, patting her hair as she hurried downstairs. Khan took her place on the mattress, groaning, wondering how he would ever show his face in their neighbourhood again. As she went downstairs, she was murmuring, ‘Helga, Helga,' determined not to let the name slip away again. She was a small slip of a woman with a few strands of prematurely greying hair. She had been born beautiful. The worry lines were entirely her own work. She had endured a life of ghastly deprivations to attain her station, and reputation, in society. And she'd never forgive her loose-tongued husband. Never. She paused just before she turned into the lounge: to straighten up to her full five feet six inches; to tweak a collar into place; to steel herself for the most embarrassing scene of her life. Then a whispered exchange from the lounge came to her ears:
  
‘Did you catch her name?' came Helga's excited voice.
  
There was a splutter and a curse, then a teacup chinked its saucer angrily. The Vauxhall man grunted, ‘What?'
  
‘Sorry Dear,' said Helga, ‘I was talking about the Mitsubishi woman. Her husband called her "Geisha".'

© 2003 Chuma Nwokolo, Jr.