The Planner (15 page)

James realised that in no way was he going to be able to seduce this girl. Yes, she was distressed, but it was the wrong kind of distress. He needed self-pity, defeat and despair to work with, but she was just dysfunctionally angry and there was plenty of venom, but very little sorrow in her sobbing. What on earth had Harriet done to her? In truth, it could be almost anything – slept with her boyfriend, taken her drugs, stolen her money. After all, they lived on a housing estate in Camden, a place where other people’s property was rarely respected, and they weren’t old enough to know any better. Or maybe Harriet hadn’t done anything much at all – that was so often the problem with weeping young women. He took some reflective gulps from his can of beer and returned to the living room.

It was actually even worse now. A few people had left, but many more had turned up, and he couldn’t at first see where he would be able to sit. It had got much noisier, and the average age seemed to have fallen even further. There was still no sign of Harriet. He sat down in front of a peculiar-looking girl who didn’t seem to be talking to anyone else. Maybe she was lonely? She had a wide nose and big gums, and if they had been at school together in the East Midlands, she would be the sort of girl you would safely befriend. But this was Camden, and a different set of aesthetic criteria, criteria that he didn’t fully understand, had to be applied. And so James decided that he would try to sleep with her instead.

‘Hi, I’m James,’ he said.

‘I’m Cordelia,’ she said. ‘What are you?’

‘I work in planning,’ said James.

‘Oh, like in advertising. That’s really cool.’

‘No, a different type of planning. I’m a town planner.’

Cordelia looked at him blankly. It was clear that she had terrible manners.

‘What do you do? Do you work? Are you a student?’

‘I’m a jewellery designer,’ she said.

James looked at her unhappily. He should have guessed – she was wearing the biggest and ugliest bracelet he had ever seen. A lump of red plastic, possibly a melted Lego block, with another yellow block screwed on top.

‘Oh, that’s really great. I was actually admiring your bracelet. Did you make it yourself?’

‘Yes, that’s right, and this necklace as well, and these rings.’

James hadn’t noticed before, but now that he looked more carefully he saw that everything she was wearing was preposterous. She looked like the housing estate mural, a childish arrangement of primitive objects and bright colours. She looked mentally ill. Was it just that she was hopeless at jewellery design or was he missing something important? After all, he was probably at least four years older than her.

‘So, did you study jewellery at college?’

‘No, I taught myself. I just seem to have a flair for it.’

‘Yes, I can really see that.’

It was a shame, but they had run out of things to say. What, after all, could a jeweller and a town planner talk about? The scale was all wrong, and neither of them had the charm or imaginative powers to overcome their predicament. And now James was certain, absolutely certain, that she wasn’t in the least bit attractive.

There was still no sign of Harriet, but he hadn’t entirely given up. He took another gulp of beer and this time he went over to the other side of the room, as far away from the music as he could, where a young man was sitting on his own with his back against the wall. James sat alongside him and leant over.

‘Hi,’ said James, ‘I’m James.’

‘I’m Felix.’

‘Oh really? That’s funny. One of my best friends is called Felix.’

But this Felix didn’t seem particularly interested by the news.

‘So do you know Harriet?’ said James.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Felix. ‘Everyone knows Harriet. She’s a fabulous public asset.’

James realised that he had made another mistake. Young men were always so much worse than young women, but it wasn’t just that. There were several clues that James should have spotted before he even went near him. There were the formidable black-framed glasses and the feminine good looks, the crisp black clothing and neat dark hair. Most of all there was the way he sat, composed and impressively at ease with himself. He wasn’t squealing like any of the others – he was under thirty years old, but he was on his own, and didn’t look in the least as if he minded. He wasn’t even smoking or playing with his mobile phone.

‘So, are you a designer?’ said James.

‘I’m an architect,’ said Felix.

‘Oh really? I work in town planning. At Southwark Council.’

Felix nodded, but didn’t say anything.

‘So I expect you deal with planners?’

‘No, not really – I try to avoid them if I can help it. I like to keep more focused on the creative side of things.’

‘So who do you work for?’

Felix worked for an architecture company that even people who weren’t architects had heard of, and which was responsible for some of the most expensive and unnecessary buildings in the world. He was creating the future, rather than merely trying to improve it. He was designing museums and contemporary art galleries, international conference centres and retail complexes. Above all, he was designing hotels, which were now the most important buildings of them all.

‘Have you ever done anything in Southwark?’

‘No,’ said Felix. ‘South of the river isn’t really my thing.’

‘What about the rest of London?’

‘We have done, of course, but not much now. All the action is elsewhere. London is dying. The whole country is, and Europe’s no better. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Singapore. That’s where the money and talent is. That’s where the ambition is. I’ll probably relocate in a few months. There’s not enough going on here.’

‘So are all the architects leaving?’ asked James hopefully.

‘The good ones,’ said Felix. ‘But I’m sure there will still be more than enough left to do conservatories in Basingstoke.’

James didn’t say anything. They sat together in silence for a while.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any stimulating drugs?’ said Felix.

James shook his head. He got to his feet, at least that way he got to end the conversation, and looked over the room. It was louder and more colourful than ever. He suddenly felt very tired. That was the problem with being thirty-two. You were so old. Who wants to be old? Nobody ever wants to be old. But nobody should ever want to be young either. Nobody should ever wish to be so witless, so fearful and so fucking irritating.

It was no good – he would have to go home. That was obvious. The question was how. It was the eternal problem. In all his years of living in London, he still hadn’t found a satisfactory solution. How did anyone ever get home at night? When you thought about it, it was rather extraordinary that they did. Tonight his options were particularly bleak. It was either forty pounds in a taxi, a complicated series of night buses or else a three-hour existential walk. Either way, he would have to head back out into Camden alone, and the effects of the novelty vodka had long worn off. Perhaps, he should have just spent the night with Rachel and the others in the Red Lion.

There was little point in saying goodbye to anyone. Harriet was missing, it was technically impossible to have a conversation with Cordelia, the girl in the kitchen was still crying, and Felix was an amazing bastard. No, it would be better if he just quietly left. He got to his feet and tiptoed around the bodies, the burgundy rugs and maroon cushions, the wine bottles and cans of beer. Young people were so untidy, so careless, so irresponsible, so
dirty
, and this was their own flat – this was the private realm. No wonder the housing estate had failed and Camden was fucked.

But then, just as he reached the hallway, Harriet reappeared. That was of course yet another thing about young people – they were so inconsistent. She had bare feet, and looked at him affectionately and with a kindly smile. She was twenty-eight years old, she had a precarious job in a time of great economic uncertainty, and for many more years the most valuable things she would own would be her fridge and digital music system. But she was sexually adventurous, brave, wiser than she looked, and improbably happy. She was also almost certainly off her head on drugs.

‘There you are! I do hope you’re not trying to leave. I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ she said.

That was highly unlikely – the flat wasn’t
that
big. Of course, the question was what had she been doing for the last hour, and who with? But the important thing was not to ask or worry about it. It was worrying about things that caused all the problems, and which made people so unattractive and unsuccessful, which made them so old. And James had made up his mind not to worry. It was the crucial lesson. Harriet took his hand, and led him away from the front door and back down the hallway.

‘Now, because I don’t really know you all that well, I’m not going to have sex with you,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ said James.

‘But,’ she continued, ‘depending on how we get on, I might suck you off.’

‘Okay,’ said James, and he followed her into a bedroom.

9

1 March

A growing London population is likely in itself to support an expanding economy, with growing demand for leisure and personal services.

–
The London Plan
, Section 1.18

James needed to be on drugs – proper drugs. It had been obvious that at some point this would have to happen, this would be something that he would just have to do. It was 2013 and everyone was taking them, unless they had a very cool reason why they shouldn’t – a conviction for smuggling, or else if they’d already fucked up their livers and hearts by taking too many. But James had no such excuses.

Once upon a time, of course, it had only been slum-dwellers and the aristocracy who took them. The class system still counted for something, it always did, but now the distinction was only really in the type and quality of the drugs they took. James, of course, was a lower-middle-class drug user, and as a result he had never got any further than boasting that he’d smoked some particularly potent cannabis. But that was hopeless – he wasn’t seventeen any more. He needed to be able to look people squarely in the eye and tell them how dismal their cocaine was. And that meant having some drugs of his own to consume and allocate. Not all the time, of course – it wasn’t part of the plan to become an addict, and apparently that never happened anyway. But he did need to take enough of them to know better.

It was here that, once again, Felix came in, for it seemed he was on very good terms with a professional drug dealer. It was much easier for Felix, who didn’t reside in the English class system, who wasn’t bound up in the conventions and fears that ruled other people’s lives. He was class-blind, as comfortable hanging out with thieves and criminals as he was with advertising executives and aspiring politicians. It was almost certainly, of course, because he was so upper class.

So it was only to be expected that Felix had access to a supply of cocaine. The real surprise was where they had to go to get it. Lacking both personal knowledge and a sound economic model of spatial distribution for the sector, James had assumed that you either bought drugs on the streets of Hackney or the salons of Mayfair. But no – instead they would have to head out west, out to the very ends of the suburbs. For it was here, it seemed, that all the serious drug dealers lived and worked.

‘There are many advantages to suburban living if you’re a drug dealer of any significance,’ explained Felix. ‘A low crime rate, easy parking, good access to national road networks, neighbours who mind their own business. It’s only the small-time crooks, the ones who peddle to students and get caught all the time, who actually live near their customer base.’

They were in a cafe in Notting Hill, round the corner from where Felix lived. James knew its heritage, had studied it, for the entire area had once been a battleground in the class war. But that was a long time ago, and it was now principally a site of historic and cultural interest, a successful node in London’s leisure economy popular with the sons and daughters of internationally famous businessmen.

And where was James meant to be? Well, it was Friday morning and right about now the surface transport meeting was about to start, but courageously James had
pulled a sickie
. It was his first one ever, another small but significant milestone. And, after all, why the fucking hell not? He worked in the public sector. The average British employee took 7.5 days’ sick leave each year, and he didn’t have to check the figures to know that it was bound to be higher in government where everyone was always so weak and ill. But in six years he had never taken a single one. He had even come into work when he was sick. He had sat feverish and unhappy, watching PowerPoint presentations that made extensive use of Clipart and saying nothing in meetings where nothing happened. That meant he was owed at least forty backdated days. And the really instructive thing was that no one seemed to be interested in the slightest. He’d spoken briefly on the phone to an unquestioning colleague and he didn’t have to put on a croaky voice or pretend that he had a chest infection or that his knob had turned blue. And, anyway, if it came to it, he
was
sick. He was, almost certainly, mentally ill. Of course, he should really have rung Rachel, but they still hadn’t gone for their drink together and, besides, she was different – she
would
have suspected something.