The Planner (25 page)

‘They say that all art aspires to music, but surely what it really aspires to is pornography,’ said Felix. ‘It is not the transcendental, but the deeply elemental that truly brings us joy and wonder.’

‘Is that your way of telling us that you’ve got a lob-on?’ said Carl. ‘Well, it’s cost us about three hundred quid, but I’m glad we got there in the end. Let’s get some more drinks.’

The pricing structure was entirely different from the other places. There were no membership fees, and they weren’t obliged to order any bottles of wine. However, while the transparency was to be welcomed, James suspected that it was still costing them a fortune. It was difficult to know for sure as Carl was expertly handling the money, and every so often all they had to do was give him another ten pounds, some of which he then put in a jar on the table. As long as they did this, it seemed likely they could stay there for as long as they liked.

That was the main thing, because whatever the cost, James didn’t ever want to leave. Here surely was all that one ever needed for a successful evening. The room was under-furnished, but not like in the last place which made you suspect it was about to close down, but in an East London way, as if it had just started up. The exposed brick walls had been freshly whitewashed, without any misjudged ornamentation, and nothing was broken or malfunctioning. The lavatories were well managed, with bolt locks on the cubicles, and the bar at the back of the room was pleasingly rudimentary with no electronic till, serving a limited range of spirits and bottles of lager from countries with low levels of per capita GDP. It was true that James had counted at least a dozen breaches of environmental, buildings and health and safety regulations, and that as a responsible planning officer and citizen he would have to ring a colleague in Hackney Council and get the place closed down, but that was something to think about next week. For the moment, it was all about the moment.

‘One of the good things about getting older is that young women become more attractive,’ said Carl reflectively. ‘I’m sure that they weren’t all as good-looking as this when I was in my early twenties, but now I would fuck any girl under the age of twenty-five, unless she was disabled or something.’

‘That’s a lovely sentiment,’ said Felix. ‘You’re quite right: all young people are beautiful. But fortunately, hardly any of them ever realise. It stops them from being insufferable.’

As James looked, the girls onstage were becoming prettier and prettier. Their teeth were getting brighter, their lips larger and their smiles less ambiguous. More and more often, they seemed to be catching his eye, and throwing him generous smiles. They must have been doing it to the others too, of course he knew that, but there was no doubt that their eyes were resting on his the longest. Was it because he looked more handsome? Better still, was it because he looked more affluent?

It was some time before James noticed that Felix’s hand was on his leg. He must have placed it there very gently, but now he was warmly squeezing his knee. Thinking about it, it wasn’t really such a surprise. Something like this was bound to happen.
Because I am human, nothing human is alien to me –
isn’t that what Felix had once said? And Felix was, undeniably, a fellow human. There should be nothing alien about humans, male humans, touching one another. He needed to just sit back and be cool with it. At the same time, though, it was very important that he didn’t encourage him to do anything else.

‘Of course,’ said Felix. ‘There is another place we can go where we can do more than just look at girls. Somewhere a bit more innovative.’

‘You mean gay?’ said Carl.

‘Is it further east?’ said James.

Felix nodded. ‘Yes, quite a bit further. I’m afraid we’d need to go beyond Hackney.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Carl.

‘Well, I’m up for it,’ said James, safe in the knowledge that it wasn’t going to happen.

‘Fuck that,’ said Carl. ‘I’ve got a girlfriend at home, remember. Why the fuck would I start chasing around Essex with you benders. Let’s just stay here.’

‘Well, let’s have another drink and think about it,’ said Felix. ‘We’re in no particular hurry.’

‘I’ll get some more beers,’ said James.

As he said this, he got quickly to his feet and Felix’s hand fell away before coming to lie on the table. That was, James felt, a better place for it to be.

‘Good one,’ said Carl. ‘And why don’t you get a round of vodka shots while you’re at it.’

‘Good idea,’ said James, and headed towards the bar.

Being happy, leading a rich and rewarding life: it’s difficult. It requires organisation, hard work, deferred gratification and a talent for cultivating small pleasures. It takes a huge amount of
planning
. You need to nurture friendships with nice and interesting people, read popular science books, prepare wholesome meals for yourself, get to know your neighbours and go for walks in the countryside. To really make it work, you should ideally also go swimming twice a week, volunteer to do things for the benefit of the local community, become informed about the world and develop reasonable opinions that can be defended at supper parties. And yet, the problem was, at the end of all this, you will never, ever feel as mightily good as James was feeling right now. Maybe that’s why the dipsomaniacs drinking tins of cider outside the public library in Crystal Palace were always smiling. They had discovered the secret of happiness on planet Earth. It was just a matter of getting the internal biochemistry right, of being drunk and feeling loved. That wasn’t necessarily the same thing as
being
loved, of course, but provided you felt like this and were in a place like this, then did it really matter all that much?

13

21 March

Every opportunity to bring the story of London to people and ensure the accessibility and good maintenance of London’s heritage should be exploited.

–
The London Plan
, Section 7.32

‘So James tells me that you’re his favourite and most brilliant colleague,’ said Felix.

‘Oh God, really? Is that the best he can manage?’ said Rachel.

They were in the John Stuart Mill, a pub in Bloomsbury that looked much like the Red Lion in Southwark. James had chosen the venue – not on the grounds of convenience or cost, but rather on the basis of history, memories and emotional attachment. In short, he had chosen poorly.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as just being in Bloomsbury. As any town planner could have told you, they were in the Bloomsbury Conservation Area: fifty hectares of streets and squares with protected planning status. It would, James knew, have its own preservation strategy and detailed rules and instructions governing window frames, the height of lampposts and the dimensions of shop signs. The local planning officers would have to spend their time arguing about satellite dishes and loft extensions, and dealing with the Area Management Committee, which would be composed of highly educated, bad-tempered residents who spent their lives protecting the local heritage, opposing social-housing developments and increasing the value of their properties.

‘James – you’re receiving the highest quality advice from both the public and private sector. I hope you’re finding it illuminating.’

‘And what’s the consensus?’ said James.

‘I’m not sure there is one,’ said Rachel.

‘Well, whatever happens, I think the main thing is that the process is a very good one,’ said Felix. ‘You can be confident that you’re going to make the right decision. And I’m confident that you’re not going to go.’

‘Deputy Director,’ said Rachel. ‘If you don’t fuck it up, you could be Director in four years. They must really like you up there. It’s a unitary authority, isn’t it?’

‘Yep, it has been for about ten years.’

‘That’s very good,’ said Rachel. ‘Deputy Director at a unitary at the age of thirty-two. It normally takes people a lot longer than that.’

‘Obviously I’ve only got a limited understanding of what you’re talking about,’ said Felix, ‘but it tallies with everything I’ve been saying: James is a talent.’

It hadn’t been James’s intention, but they had been talking about the job in Nottingham. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, after all, Felix and Rachel were his advisors and they were giving him advice. There were some difficulties with this, for they had different worldviews and conflicting values and priorities. The overriding problem, though, was that until this evening Rachel hadn’t been aware that there
was
a job in Nottingham.

‘You’ve clearly been discussing this together for a while,’ said Rachel. ‘But Felix – I’m not sure you’re really aware of what a good opportunity it is.’

‘That might be true, but my advice has been of a different kind,’ said Felix.

‘Well, yes, but rather an uninformed kind.’

‘James, sorry to speak as if you’re not in the room, but I think we have to accept that he has made great progress over the last two months.’

‘You mean that you’ve taken him out clubbing and he now likes football.’

‘Well in the modern world, those aren’t trivial achievements.’

‘You know, Nottingham wasn’t that bad,’ said James. ‘I was pretty happy there.’

‘That’s my point – you were happy. No one ever does anything of significance when they’re happy.’

‘I’m worried that you’re not taking this seriously,’ said Rachel. ‘This job is a big deal. You don’t get offers like this very often in town planning. You could spend years in London trying to get to this level.’

‘Do you know your accent is a total delight? I could listen to it all day. You sound like a 1980s Labour MP.’

James looked out of the window, slightly wishing that he
wasn’t
in the room. Across the road was a crescent of Victorian red-brick houses, all with white sash windows and blue wooden doors with brass letter boxes, and none any higher than the permitted three storeys. There were mature plane trees planted at regular intervals, and broad pavements with black railings and high kerbs.

‘Sorry about the pub,’ said James. ‘I haven’t been here for ages and I’d forgotten what it was like.’

‘Yes, it is a bit gloomy here. You don’t often get to see walls this colour any more.’

‘The pub’s fine,’ said Rachel. ‘But I’ve never liked Bloomsbury. It’s so dead. Give me Southwark any day. Nothing ever happens round here.’

But James knew otherwise – lots of things happened here, or at least they had. For up the road and over the square, on the edge of the conservation area, was his old student hall of residence. As with everything else, it looked exactly the same. It was here, in the last months of the twentieth century, that James’s parents had driven him from Leicester, his sister feeling carsick and the boot filled with everything they could possibly imagine he would need, little of which proved to be useful. His mother had been excessively anxious, and his father had got lost twice on the North Circular.

James himself had been no more than a proto human. A skinny eighteen-year-old whose bones hadn’t yet stopped growing, with naive hair, a face that was too soft and optimistic, eyes stuck behind terrible glasses. He might have fled if it hadn’t been for the fact that the first person he had met, Carl, had looked even less impressive, with white plasticine arms and an outcrop of spots on his chin that would stay with him until he turned twenty-one.

‘So do you want the usual?’ said Felix, holding up his glass.

James nodded, and Felix went to the bar.

‘So the usual is gin and tonic now?’ said Rachel. ‘It’s what my granny drinks.’

‘It’s not like that any more. Some friends of Felix rebranded it.’

‘That was good of them. Where would we be without advertising executives?’

There were some students here tonight, sitting on benches around a long wooden table. Tuition fees and mass graduate unemployment didn’t seem to have dented their spirits, and they were being as annoying as ever. In fact, they were probably worse than before, because instead of books they now had mobile computers and media devices, and instead of looking like beat poets from San Francisco, they were dressed like rap singers from Los Angeles. James shook his head. Few things were more likely to make you feel sad and old than coming to places where you had once been happy and young.

‘So I hope this isn’t a set-up. If it is, then it’s not going to happen.’

‘Don’t you like him?’

‘He’s charming and posh – the things that I least like in a man. And he’s too small – I like men to be at least four inches taller than I am. Plus, if that wasn’t enough, he’s almost certainly gay.’

‘I don’t know why you would think that – you barely know him. He’s always flirting with girls.’

‘Christ, you really don’t have a clue, do you.’

James finished his drink. Maybe Felix was gay, and maybe he wasn’t. It was probably some kind of progress that people couldn’t even tell any more. The key thing was not to get weird about it. Yes, something a bit strange had happened in the club, but so what? It was nothing he couldn’t handle. Being comfortable with having gay friends was one of the things that all grown-up heterosexuals were now expected to do.

‘Well, whatever, gay or not, I can’t believe this is the guy who’s been keeping you away from the Red Lion.’