The Planner (29 page)

‘Meetings ahead of a competitive tender?’ said Paul.

‘Well, meetings like this one, I suppose.’

There was a pause. The atmosphere had become brittle. It wasn’t like being in a meeting with Rachel and Neil Tuffnel. There was no munching of chocolate biscuits while people tried to come up with friendly things to say to one another.

‘So, just to be clear,’ said Robert, ‘provided we could demonstrate the various outputs that you’re looking for, there’s no requirement for us to be in a consortium with a housing association or anyone else.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And although the council has overall targets, the outputs for Sunbury Square can still be negotiated with senior officers.’

‘Yes. To a certain extent, yes.’

‘Right,’ said Simon. ‘I’ve got to head off. I’m meant to be in another meeting. But this has been very useful.’

Simon rose, and nodded to Paul.

‘James – we must see you again soon. Either here or at the football, of course.’

He left the room, and Paul followed him out. James had the impression that they were now going to talk about what he’d just told them.

‘It’s not like Simon to take such an interest in a project at this stage,’ said Robert. ‘I think he really likes this one. He likes you too.’

Robert and James talked some more. They talked about a proposed development off the Old Kent Road and an application to turn a school in Peckham Rye into flats, and made some speculations about the retail property market. After a while they began to talk about the football again and Robert checked his email. It dawned on James that there was no longer a good reason for him still to be there. In his briefcase he had a copy of his CV and two of his best research reports, but they wouldn’t be needed. The interview was over.

Margarita said goodbye tenderly as James left the office and travelled back down in the lift. There was no doubt, just like at the football, he had been looked after beautifully. They had been generous hosts, they had shared confidences and listened respectfully to him. But something hadn’t happened. Had he done anything wrong? No, he didn’t think so. He had been helpful, he had spoken openly and generally behaved, as far as he could tell, like a businessman. In fact, if anything, he might have been a bit too helpful. No doubt, he had passed the test, but the problem was – he wasn’t sure now if there had actually been one. He had expected things to be a bit more resolved than this. Ambiguity and miscommunication, meetings that finished inconclusively – this was the kind of thing that went on at Southwark Council. It wasn’t the sort of thing he thought that property developers did.

James passed back through the entrance, which was just as busy as before, and out into Canary Wharf again. The sky was darkening, but people were still crossing the squares, moving briskly between the towers. Lights were coming on, the coffee shops were emptying, but the bars were filling up, for even Canary Wharf had a night-time economy. It wasn’t hard to visualise himself here – no longer in the Red Lion with Rachel, but in a modern, well-lit bar with blond-wood seating, drinking a bottle of chilled white wine, exchanging market intelligence with Paul, Robert, Margarita – maybe giving Adam a call and getting him to join them, and then ordering a large Mediterranean mezze platter on expenses.

It wasn’t hard to visualise, but was it going to happen? In any case, did he really want to work for Galbraith & Erskine? He wasn’t so sure that he did now. Drinking wine with Margarita was one thing, but he wasn’t convinced that hanging out with the likes of Paul would be a recipe for long-term happiness. The crucial thing was how much they got paid. It needed to be a lot: there didn’t seem much point in still earning significantly less than Adam and Carl, but no longer being able to look down at what they did for a living.

There had been, he could now see, a lack of clarity in his objectives. What he had really wanted most of all was for Simon Galbraith to like him. But that didn’t seem like an especially sensible ambition. What did he want his affection and admiration for if it wasn’t to get a job? As he walked down into the underground station through the fast-moving and efficient private sector crowds, it occurred to him that maybe he should have spoken to Felix after all.

15

28 March

In a city as dynamic as London it is impossible to anticipate all the ways in which change will happen.

–
The London Plan
, Section 8.8

‘Okay,’ said Felix. ‘What we’ve got to do now is put them all together.’

Art, recreational drugs, anonymous sexual encounters, high-end shopping, financial irresponsibility, alcohol free at the point of purchase. It was what cities were for, it’s what they were – an agglomeration of reckless promises. And it was what London did better than any other city. It was still the capital of possibilities and unsustainable desires, the place where you could commit an unlimited number of mistakes and moral atrocities.

That was, if you thought about it, what planning was all about: to let liberty flourish, to design a place in which people from all around the world could come and make themselves unhappy in as many ways as possible. And nothing, absolutely nothing he could think of, better exemplified this than where he was now. For James was at the opening of a visual art show in East London. He was at a private view – an event attended exclusively by trendsetters, opinion formers, thought leaders and, unusually, a town planner from Southwark Council.

For once, the venue was everything that James had hoped for. For nearly a hundred years it had been a printworks. Steel beams still passed above their heads from which brackets and belts would once have hung, connected to cast-iron printing presses and their crates of paper, binding machines, refuse bins and tanks of ink and glue. But those had all gone – rendered uncompetitive by East Asia and replaced by white walls and economically productive empty space. It was, thought James, exactly the kind of B2 light-industrial site that was ideal for an art gallery – the planning permission would have been an easy decision.

James had gone straight there. He no longer needed to meet up beforehand for a heart-warming gin and coaching session. Unlike with the book launch, the nightclub or football match, James was going alone. Well, not quite alone – he had taken Harriet with him. It wasn’t exactly a date, he was through with those, and anyway he’d decided that the concept was flawed. Rather, it was an evening out to which he had happened to bring along an attractive young woman. It was, as Felix might have said, an intelligent piece of repositioning.

Of course, he had thought about asking Rachel to come. But they had only seen each other once that week, in a waste-­management meeting, and besides, she would have hated it here. But what did that say about her?

‘This place looks ace,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s totally my sort of thing.’

Outside, James knew, East London was unravelling. The factories had closed, the bankers had fucked up, the buildings were falling down and the buses had stopped working. Everyone was going mentally ill. But that was okay – because he was on the inside. He might not be that far away, but he was insulated from all the ones who had to queue, all those people in shopping centres who still drank beer in carpeted pubs and in public consultations said that crime was their biggest concern. He was with the artists, the creative entrepreneurs and the middlemen who made everything work. The only criminals here were drug dealers, and they had all been invited. It was London’s cockpit, the East. It wasn’t Soho where the story had now come to an end, and it wasn’t Camden – it wasn’t indiscriminate and tasteless. It wasn’t even like Clerkenwell, which had got too clever for its own good. It wasn’t necessarily very strategic, but nonetheless it was the direction that London was moving in – the visual artists and the town planners, the ones that were any good, all knew it.

‘Felix! It’s so good to see you. It’s been absolutely ages.’

‘Harriet – I didn’t know you were coming.’

Felix looked at James with a craftily raised eyebrow, as if he had done something that he would regret. That was, of course, perfectly possible. The main thing was that he was making decisions, even if they were ill advised, and that Harriet was looking very pretty. Possibly more dishonest, but definitely pretty – the weeks in Morocco had lightened her long hair, put deep round freckles on her forearms and darkened her face, so she could hide her inconsistencies better than ever.

‘Well, you needn’t look so grumpy about it. James invited me. It serves you right for not calling me any more.’

‘Well, never mind all that,’ said Felix. ‘Let’s get a drink. Ah, here we are.’

A woman walked past with a tray of beautiful drinks – tall slim glasses containing a range of pastel-coloured liquids, sprigs of dark-green mint and slices of unexpected fruit.

‘All the drinks are vodka-based cocktails,’ explained Felix. ‘It’s being sponsored by a drinks brand that we’re relaunching. They need to be associated with prize-winning contemporary artists instead of Glaswegian alcoholics.’

James nodded. ‘That’s very good planning,’ he said.

He sipped his cocktail. Apart from the vodka, he had no idea what was in it, but it was a nice pink colour, and sweet and strong. He could probably drink about ten of them. Harriet had seen someone across the room and disappeared. James wasn’t surprised. She was highly social, capable of interacting in a number of original ways, and anyway – didn’t she have at least a bit of a degree in art history?

‘Well, you look very good,’ said Felix. ‘Harriet is looking good too. I like her brown. I just hope she doesn’t do anything that damages your brand capital.’

‘Not at all, she’ll thrive here.’

It was a Thursday night, the greatest night of the week. Friday nights were for out-of-towners and weekends in London were an intractable problem, but Thursday nights were for everyone that mattered. And how would he deal with tomorrow morning after all these cocktails? Well, if the worse came to the worse, he would simply call in sick again. And what could Lionel do about it? It wasn’t as if he was going to bump into Ian Benson and Alex Coleman
here
.

Felix came over and introduced him to someone, who in turn introduced him to an artist called Derek. Again, it was nothing to worry about. He was short, had a northern accent and thankfully didn’t want to talk about art. In fact, as Felix had told him, only bankers did that. All that artists ever talked about was money. Derek was sufficiently naive about how government worked to think that James might be able to help him in some way and was interested in all the different kinds of money which required filling in application forms: Arts Council grants, residency awards, bursaries, British Council travel funds. It was exactly the type of money that James was comfortable with, and he was soon giving advice. Making it up as he went along, just like they did in the private sector, he made the ingenious suggestion that artists could qualify for local authority key-worker status, and that he could get subsidised accommodation in new developments. Derek, who was currently living with his sister in Croydon, was deeply impressed.

Having built up his confidence with this quick win, it was time to move on to the next room. This one had even more going for it. It was a large bright room, full of horrible paintings and beautiful women. But, encouragingly, it was striking how unattractive the men were. A lot of them looked like they had studied Computer Science at university. They had thick-framed glasses, dry skin and unstrategic hair. They looked physically weak, shallow-chested, short-legged and incapable of protecting the people they cared for. It wasn’t that James was just missing the point. He probably was, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, at a fundamental level, he was the best-looking man in the room. He was, in fact, good-looking. It was a new and important insight, and worth pausing to think about. People had, from time to time, told him so, but for some reason he had never believed it until now.

‘Hello, what’s your name? We’ve met before haven’t we?’

A woman had come suddenly into his line of vision, and was now standing directly in front of a painting of a bunsen burner, which he had, in any case, been struggling to make sense of.

‘Yes, I think we have. I’m called James. Your name is Felicity, you work as a newspaper columnist and we met at a book launch a couple of months ago.’

‘Oh, very well done! Yes, I remember. You were with Felix. Is he here tonight?’

‘So you cover art as well as books?’

‘Of course! I’ll be found wherever the beautiful people are.’

There was, James could tell, plenty of irony in what she had just said, but still probably not enough. For Felicity herself was anything but beautiful. It was yet another sign of the progress he had made that he had no doubts about that. He was getting more confident making ethical and aesthetic judgements – they were, he was starting to realise, very often the same thing. Things he hadn’t noticed about Felicity when they had met before were clear now – her slanted face, the small gloating eyes. And her deep voice, which he had once been so impressed with, was clearly just the consequence of too many high-tar cigarettes.

‘Well, maybe you can write something about me,’ said James. ‘I’m sure your readers would enjoy hearing about the glamour of local government.’

‘Hmm, I’d have to work in an angle somehow. Maybe if you did something scandalous. Readers aren’t really interested in public-sector types unless they do something wrong.’