To shop for clothes with my father is to be reminded of human misfortune. The charity stores of London's King's Road are his turf. "I'll be at Cancer," he's likely to say as he moves from one to the next. "If I'm not there I'll be at MS."

He's a dandy with an eye for a bargain. Nothing delights him more than to find a Savile Row suit for 10 pounds or a Jermyn Street shirt for one or — maximum — two. I like good material and a dashing cut also, but I don't have his patience. He's fairly chuckling with delight as we stroll down Picadilly. He's wearing a beautiful double-breasted flannel suit from Henry Poole. I'm wearing a Neiman Marcus blazer. "Do you realize that I could get 25 of these suits for the price of that blazer," he says. I shrug and let him win the point. We're heading to a dinner that a friend of his has organized at one of the elite London Clubs and we're getting into character. At the bus stop in Fulham we were boulevardiers. By the time we get to the door of Boodle's on St. James Street we're jolly decent chaps.

We walk down some stairs from the street level. The walls are lined with fairly generic club paintings: lacquered 19th century racehorses and long-deceased members with mutton-chop whiskers. The last step leaves us standing in front of the ever-so-slightly raised eyebrows of a maitre d' who turns to leave us squirming in this no man's land that's neither bar nor dining room. This is the purgatory of the non-initiated. The price of non-membership.

"Let's go to the bar," my father says with a disparaging grunt. He is an old-fashioned New York anglophile, the kind who didn't prove their allegiance to England with a Ralph Lauren wardrobe but rather with a mastery of the full range of English nasal sounds. Compliments, questions and put-downs.

Dining at a London club combines the style of dining at an elegant restaurant with the casual feeling of dining at home. One meets the other guests at a table at the bar and introductions are made in the easy atmosphere of a cocktail party, not with the imminent arrival of food. Ten of us polish off a double-magnum of champagne and head into the dining room.

The hostess leads us to a long table. For such a small group as this she has no need for place cards. She already knows where everyone is sitting, and once informed, everyone takes their place and begins the important business of the night, which is not the eating of food but the making of conversation.

White wine is poured. A warm smoked haddock and poached quail egg salad is placed in front of me. The greens and the mustard vinaigrette make a good combination with the flaky texture of the fish, but the quail eggs seem like unnecessary decorative additions. The change of course is like an elaborate pas de deux where everyone switches the direction in which he is facing and with no noticeable awkwardness goes from laughing at a final witty remark to putting out conversational feelers with a new companion.

The sommelier now pours red wine from a decanter and simultaneously the main course comes out: noisettes of venison with brown chanterelles and foie gras butter. The guests are delighted. The word love suddenly has three l's. Fabulous a similar amount of f's. This may be better than the glorified nursery food that they're accustomed to eating at clubs but I am less impressed. The venison filet indeed is f-f-fabulous, but the "brown chanterelles" are actually oyster mushrooms and the foie gras butter is oily and much too rich for an already rich meat. What venison needs is not creation but a classic venison sauce like a Grand Veneur.

The other guests, however, have fairly inhaled the course. Seeing clean plates, the hostess raises her voice ever so slightly. For the dessert course she would like a new seating arrangement for the table. I find myself sitting beside the hostess, who has impressed me more and more with the clear directness of her social skills. It is not too late for another example. The young sommelier leans over her shoulder and asks if he "should open another bottle of claret, Madam?" The hostess defers to me, and seeing most glasses still have wine and we're eating dessert, I say that it's probably not necessary. He obviously misunderstands me and soon appears with a full decanter. Instead of shrieking at him, the hostess simply thanks him as he pours her another glass. If your club is an extension of your home, then he is not a sommelier but a butler. If he is to be spoken to it will be after the guests have left.

Next day is much more simple. I meet my father trolling the thrift stores of Chelsea and we wander over to the Chelsea Arts Club for lunch. Here he is a member. The entrance is a small, unmarked door on a quiet Chelsea street. I've never been quite sure what the requirements of membership are, whether it's a calling in art or a horror of last calls. It is a bohemian club, Chelsea bohemian, and perfectly located so that most members can stagger home.

The dress code is casual here. Particularly at lunch, when many working artists take a lunch break from their nearby studios. Anyone who showed up in a suit — who wasn't Leo Castelli — would be frowned upon. There is a large billiard table at the bar and people sit around drinking and talking. We get two half pints of Guinness and head out to the garden. As I pass the fireplace I hear one old member ask another, "I say, have I had lunch?"

A warm winter light warms us outside. A cast-iron Barry Flanagan hare leaps behind us. It is a good spot to have a drink with your father. Lunch is a good time to do it. For some reason I think that having lunch with your father is better than having dinner. It includes him in the day and I like that feeling, for him and for me. He tells me the latest installment of the club's slapstick routine. Installing a bust of a famous member in the garden, the members managed to dig up the remains of the club's old cat. It is not meant to be hysterically funny — it's just a story to tell sitting in the winter sun in the garden before lunch.

We take our empty glasses inside and go over to the dining room for lunch. There is a very large table in the middle of the room that can sit about 30, where anyone eating alone can have some conversation while they eat. It's where artists in a rush sit. We take a table behind them. It is a comfortable room. The walls are lined with green baize and there are donated paintings covering all the available space. This is a more relaxed place than Boodle's. A different universe really.

The manager knows my father. He doesn't wear a tie. He supervises the dining room and also helps the waitress to bring food. I look at the menu of the day.

Chicken Broth.
Whole Lemon Sole with Butter Sauce.
Rice Pudding with Poached Plums.

My father orders this, though he tells me in advance that I'll have to eat his rice pudding since it will be too much for him. I decide to order à la carte. I ask for poached egg salad with fine herbs and griddled calves liver with shallot gravy. We order a bottle of wine. The rest of the afternoon is a write-off. But sometimes in the winter in London with your father, that's just fine too.
Feb. 5, 1997