The Planner (14 page)

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get a cab back to my place.’

Outside, on the street, in the back of the taxi, Harriet was in control – everything she did was quick and authoritative. She removed his glasses again but this time it was done more gently, looked into his eyes for a full second, and then kissed him firmly and comprehensively. It was the most accomplished kiss that James had ever had in his life. She pushed him into the corner of the leather seating and held his face with both hands. There could be no doubt that she was highly trained in all of this. Meanwhile, they were travelling north at great speed. James wasn’t sure exactly where, his vision was obscured, but he knew that it was further and further from home.

‘Let’s get out here,’ said Harriet, suddenly pulling herself away. ‘I need some air and some cigarettes. I need some chocolate.’

The taxi stopped at her prompting, but Harriet had neglected to negotiate a price beforehand, and so James had to hand over an incredible amount of money to the driver before they could climb out. He looked warily around him – he hadn’t been here for some time, but he knew exactly where they were. Some years ago, James had chosen to live in South London. It had almost certainly been the wrong decision, but he had self-identified and there was little he could do about it now. But that was okay, because he had studied Camden Town in depth for his planning certificate and knew exactly how it worked. He had read its strategy documents, gone over its numbers and written a high-scoring essay about it.

So he knew that the planning framework for Camden Town had for many years been predicated on the development of its night-time economy. It had been a pioneering and influential approach. You didn’t need factories any more, everyone knew that, but it had turned out you didn’t need business parks or offices either. You didn’t even need prize-winning shopping centres and generous car parking, and you certainly didn’t have to spend millions of pounds on arts centres and museums. All you really needed was lots of young people getting drunk and spending money in foolish ways. It was a winning strategy, and for years now Camden had had one of the fastest-growing economies in the country.

James had to acknowledge that it was all very dynamic and entrepreneurial. Everywhere he looked, in the bars and on the streets, in the shops which never closed, outside the churches that never opened, older people were making money by selling younger people things that they shouldn’t have but very much wanted: strong European lager, spirits mixed with caffeine and sugar, a wide variety of recreational drugs, fried food with high levels of fat and salt, contraband cigarettes and unlicensed forms of transport. James had never been to West Africa, but he imagined that the cities there looked a lot like Camden Town.

‘God, I love it here,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m feeling much better now.’

As a result of its wildly successful local economy the public realm was ruined. It looked the very opposite of James’s masterplan poster: the street furniture was broken, the pavements were littered with bin bags, soggy cardboard boxes, broken glass and polystyrene cartons, and the signage had been vandalised. The frontage of the bars, cafes and restaurants were strikingly unattractive, shrewdly designed to disorganise the senses and encourage sub-optimal decision-making. The pollution was post-industrial but nonetheless immense, for it was a product rather than merely a by-product of all the activity. All around were light, noise and misdirected energy, and the thinness of anything that tried to contain them.

It seemed to have been raining in North London, for the neon and sodium lighting of Camden’s night-time economy was reflected in shiny roads and dirty puddles. There was a stiff, cold breeze. Cars, buses, taxis, minicabs, scooters, and intoxicated young pedestrians were inharmoniously sharing a badly designed junction. Horns honked, pub doors opened sending out pub noise. Lost male undergraduates, young and new to the city, blundered across the road with their bottles of beer, recklessly trusting the traffic to stop for them. Girls with too much make-up and not enough clothes walked behind them. There were teenagers here too – white ones huddled together, brave enough to come to Camden on a Friday night, but not to do anything else. And there was at least one authentic lunatic – a man whose age was impossible to calculate, and who sat on a traffic island pulling menacing faces at anyone who dared to catch his eye. It occurred to James that for an economy dedicated entirely to pleasure, it was striking how unhappy everyone looked. The only people who seemed to be really enjoying themselves were a pair of alcoholic tramps, laughing manically in a supermarket shop front.

Harriet guided James through it all, holding him tightly towards her as they continued their journey north, away from the noise and the crowds. She was a native, in the way that hardly anyone in London ever was, and she feared nothing. People in Camden were always getting drunk and fighting, and it had one of the highest homicide rates in the country, but she walked its backstreets with the strength of character and misplaced confidence of a sex worker. And luckily for James, he had drunk all of that vodka – he was protected not just by Harriet, but by his own diminished sense of danger. They crossed a canal full of poorly concealed secrets and headed to the east, where it was quieter and darker, but by no means safer.

And then suddenly it was light again – there was light everywhere. Not the whites, reds and violets of Camden Town in a late capitalist bloom, but a deep, totalitarian yellow. It was something of a surprise, but it served James right for not concentrating. For they had gone down an unpromising narrow footpath, and it had abruptly opened, as footpaths in London often do, into the middle of a gigantic housing estate.

‘This is where I live,’ said Harriet.

Harriet had clearly chosen her accommodation on different criteria from himself, for these were, indisputably, London council flats with all that that entailed. It was very unusual for James to be somewhere like this in anything other than a professional capacity. Even if the estate was no longer owned by the local authority, and they hardly ever were any more, it would at least have been built by one, constructed in an age when town planners ruled the world and architects had to do what they were told, and when buildings looked dreadful but cities were magnificent.

All the textbook design faults were here: the indefensible space, the communal garden that everyone was meant to care for but no one ever did, the flat roofs with their primitive drainage, the high unbroken walls which failed to make anyone feel safe, the uniform facades and fittings that suggested oppression rather than cohesion, and the laborious steps, elevated walkways and treacherous ramps that intimidated visitors and exhausted the residents. As it had been made before the 1990s, no one had tried to make it more cheerful with wooden cladding or dashes of pink brickwork. The graffiti, like the architecture, was also lacking in irony. It wasn’t humorous or even especially offensive – just a half-hearted attempt to make the rippled concrete walls uglier than they already were.

‘Okay, I know, it’s probably not what you were expecting, and it does look pretty foul, but the rent is really low and – you’ll see – the flat is great.’

‘I really like it,’ said James.

‘You’re so sweet,’ she said. ‘I actually think you’re telling the truth.’

As she said this, she stopped suddenly, besides a well-meaning but badly damaged notice board and, pulling him roughly towards her, she started to kiss him again. And now it seemed to James that she even kissed like a housing estate – open but unyielding, her over-sized, poorly designed mouth firmly held his. Above their heads was a mural of smiling farm animals standing under a lumpy rainbow, painted twenty years ago by delinquent teenagers before the local youth club lost its funding. The light, or maybe something else, started to make a loud buzzing noise. Abruptly, Harriet stopped kissing him and took his hand. They continued up the stairwell.

But as soon as she opened the front door, it was clear things were going to be more complicated. Harriet hadn’t really explained to him beforehand, but there were at least a dozen people in her flat, though it was difficult to tell for sure because they kept moving around so much. Apart from a strange, horrible man with tattoos on his hands, who sat at a table constructing and distributing cannabis joints, James was certain that he was the oldest person there. Many of the girls were pretty, but it was difficult to be certain exactly which ones, and there were lots of men there too – some of whom would have to be classed as rivals, but others who were simply colourful distractions and tremendously gay, with exaggerated mannerisms and squeaky voices. There was an elegant black stereo system in the middle of the room playing low-frequency dance music at a volume that James estimated to be significantly higher than the 85-decibel threshold admissible in an inner-London residential area.

Harriet introduced him without any great skill or attention to detail to a group sitting on cushions, and immediately disappeared. James, who was determined at this stage not to be disheartened, sat down and attempted to join in. It wasn’t easy. The problem wasn’t just that there were so many of them or that he wasn’t terribly good at this kind of thing, it was that they were all so incredibly young. They didn’t argue about the government’s macroeconomic policies, they didn’t even talk about music and clothes shops. What they talked about was each other. It was a difficult conversation to contribute to – a group of people he’d never met before, all of them several inches shorter than him, were talking about other people he’d never met.

James gave up trying to participate, and decided instead to watch them with an ironic detachment. He was older than his companions and so he would act older. He would be
calmer
than them. It wasn’t very difficult, for it was striking how excitable they all were. It was something of a puzzle: why weren’t they more anxious and deflated? Hadn’t everyone agreed that this was a terrible time to be young? But instead of worrying about global warming and the economic crash and debt and house prices, they just made an amazing amount of noise. Everything seemed to delight or surprise them. They laughed at things that weren’t in the least bit funny, and squealed at things that weren’t frightening, and then laughed some more. It was like being on the night bus
.

James got up and tried to find Harriet, but it was surprisingly difficult. The flat was much larger than had first seemed, that was one of the features of post-war social housing, and the long narrow hallway, with its row of white wooden doors, was unpromising. He was very keen not to burst into anyone’s bedroom unwanted, while the bathroom, which James knew might well be a focus for activity, was empty. He tried the kitchen, but there was nothing going on there except a woman sitting at the table on her own, sobbing loudly, with her head in her hands.

James had little direct experience of weeping young women. He had never been sufficiently successful with girls to make it happen very often, and Alice had never felt the need to get tearful about anything, except injustices in the developing world. But he knew that it was a mysterious phenomenon, and that their motives were almost always unfathomable. Women really did weep with joy, for instance, or after reading a nineteenth-century novel. And at other times they were capable of doing it on purpose.

So he could easily get this badly wrong, and it was unlikely to be straightforward – he could be certain that the girl wasn’t crying because her ankle was sprained or her pet cat had died. It was tempting to slip back out, but he knew that wouldn’t be possible. Although almost always the best thing to do, he was unable to watch another human being crying without doing something about it.

With immense caution, he said, ‘Are you okay?’

She paused for a moment and then continued crying, without making a meaningful reply. But at least she wasn’t doing it with any greater intensity, so he could be confident that he wasn’t making things worse.

‘Can I get you a glass of water or something?’

That was even better. She looked up at him and gently shook her head. She was pretty with chaotic black hair, big eyes and dramatic lips, but that may have just been an effect of the crying. It didn’t always come off, but James knew that if done correctly, it could be an ingenious way for a woman to become more attractive.

‘Do you live here?’ said James.

The girl nodded, and then rested her head back down on her arms.

‘So, do you live with Harriet?’ asked James.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘I’m James. I’m a friend of Harriet’s.’

‘She’s a fucking bitchface,’ said the girl.

James nodded calmly. She was probably right, even if she wasn’t being very grammatical about it. It was the best explanation for why he was now in a flat in Camden and why they had drunk so many vodkas, almost all of which he had paid for. Of course, she was a bitchface. What did he expect – she was young. That was the whole problem with London: there were too many young people there.

He went over to a handsome red fridge in the corner of the room and helped himself to a can of beer. Maybe he should try to sleep with this girl instead? She was attractive, it was practically certain that Harriet wouldn’t mind much, and the fact that she was so distressed ought to make it a great deal easier. He sat down next to her at the table and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. He tried to speak as softly as he could.

‘Are you okay? Do you want me to do anything?’

‘I really want you to fuck off,’ said the girl.