The Planner (5 page)

‘So I need to go and see the sights of Brixton and get mugged in Dalston?’

‘Well, there’s a bit more to it than that. Living in a modern city is an art form. What you need is some kind of plan to acquire and experience all the things in London that really matter. And curiously, you don’t seem to have one.’

Felix was right. Planning worked – James believed in planning. Or at least, without a plan you’re fucked. Even a bad plan, and they almost always were, had to be worth something. And James didn’t just need any plan. What he needed was a
masterplan
: a comprehensive and all encompassing strategy for his own development. Christ, he was a
planner
. If he could draft plans for affordable housing provision and traffic calming measures, then he should be able to come up with a plan for himself.

‘Perhaps it isn’t so odd. It’s certainly a familiar literary conceit – professional accomplishment belying personal incompetence. The distinguished chemist who doesn’t know how to make an omelette; the Mafia boss unable to control his teenage daughter. We might have the same thing here.’

James knew hardly anything about London. He had studied it and worked on it – you could say it was his profession. But that was the problem with being a town planner. You spent your time describing a city, but not living in it. He had taken instruction in how to be as detached and objective as possible and in the process he had become self-detached: he knew a great deal about the city’s air quality, but had no idea what to do with himself on a Saturday afternoon.

‘Look, you really shouldn’t go to Nottingham. Not until you’re sure that you’ve done all you can here.’

‘It’s actually a good job offer. I know you don’t think it’s what my life needs, but professionally it would be a big step up.’

‘All you need to do is make a plan and start implementing it. And if it doesn’t work out then take the Nottingham job. How long did you say you have to decide?’

‘About two months, I suppose.’

‘Well, there you go. Two months – that’s an enormous length of time in my sector. In two months products can undergo the most profound transformation.’

‘In my sector, it takes two months to write an economic impact assessment. Nothing has ever happened in two months.’

‘Believe me, in that time, all of London’s treasures can be opened up to you. You’re also good-looking – albeit in a not-very-exciting English way. That will make it easier.’

In all likelihood, thought James, Felix was a wanker. His name and profession were a giveaway. Plus, there was his appearance: the surly brown eyes, the unfriendly narrow nose and thin lips that seemed to be on the verge of breaking into a laugh but never did. He even smelt like a wanker – when he leaned in close, there was a zesty, menthol smell, as if he’d just that minute come out of one of his adverts for an upmarket brand of shower gel. And yet, for all that, there was no doubt that he wanted to help James, that he was being kind. Who knows, maybe he
was
kind.

‘Do you want another drink?’ said James.

‘That would be good,’ said Felix. ‘But I don’t think you should spend too much time in pubs like this. There aren’t many personal development opportunities here.’

James looked around him. It was Lionel’s favourite pub – a middle-manager’s pub, a pub where he could sit, safe in the knowledge that, in here, he would always be the one on the highest pay grade. Even James could tell that it wasn’t very nice. It wasn’t unsafe or anything – it wasn’t glamorously foul enough to attract thieves or drug dealers. It just didn’t attract anyone – except for environmental officers and town planners. At lunchtime it served sausage and chips and pies with thick crusts that sometimes made Lionel’s gums bleed. It had a dartboard and a fruit machine with a £4.80 maximum jackpot, which no living person had ever witnessed.

‘I’ve been coming here for years,’ said James. ‘I’ve sort of come to like it.’

‘That’s the danger. You’ve ended up liking all kinds of things that aren’t good for you.’

At the other end of the bar were numerous members of Southwark Council’s Planning, Community and Environment Directorates. Not everyone of course, but enough – a representative sample of the profession. Neil Tuffnel was there, drinking beer and trying to dislodge a peanut that was stuck in his teeth. Rachel had a pint of Guinness and a packet of crisps. Rupinder was at a table with a glass of lemonade that would last her all night, a useless pillock called Shahid was telling jokes to a dimwit called Phil Struthers. None of them were bad people, some of them were even quite good at their jobs, but you’d never want to be one of them. And James was one of them.

‘You’re right,’ said James. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

Just twenty minutes later and they
were
somewhere else. It wasn’t very difficult, and James couldn’t help be impressed again by Felix’s speed and decision-making powers. It had taken no more than a swift, two-mile journey in a taxi, which Felix had put on expenses, and here they were – in a private members’ club in Covent Garden. It was only after they arrived that it occurred to him that he hadn’t even said goodbye to Rachel.

James wasn’t sure if he approved of the concept or not – he almost certainly didn’t, but he was prepared to gather the evidence. He knew that the first thing to do, always, was to make your survey. Survey before plan: the principle of Patrick Geddes, his second favourite town planner of all time. Whether it was the streets of nineteenth-century Edinburgh or a club in Covent Garden, you needed to observe, to study, to use the senses and understand how it functioned. It was only then that you were allowed to intervene and to ruin things.

He would have to accept that even on a preliminary viewing, it was a great deal better than being in the Red Lion. The lighting was sophisticated, with lamps strategically positioned in corners and above little round tables. Not too bright, nobody liked that, but not too gloomy either. The people here needed to be well lit, for they hadn’t come to huddle in the shadows, to have too much to drink with nobody other than the person they had come with. They had come in the hope, in the expectation, of being noticed – of interacting in interesting ways with interesting people.

It helped as well that they weren’t drinking pints of bitter. Felix had ordered two glasses of a new brand of whisky which he had spent much of last year preparing and planning for. The whisky was Scottish, but tasted as if it had been distilled in outer space. James could detect all the things that Felix had told him he should be aware of, plus some extra ones which he may have imagined all by himself: cinnamon, nutmeg, flavours with powerful propensities and exotic dangers. He was having, he realised, a brand experience, and it was a lot better than a normal one.

But the really important difference was not the quality of the interior design or whisky, but the other people. In places like this, you weren’t even paying for the quality of service or better-looking bar staff. What you were paying for was a higher quality of fellow customers. Looking around, James was fairly confident that he was the only person there who worked in the public sector.

A woman strode over to join them at the bar. A tall woman with high, but not broad, shoulders and short dark hair. She had small, crinkled, black-olive eyes, which implied intelligence and an all-girls’ school prettiness.

‘Hello, lovely, I didn’t think you were around today.’

‘Ah, Erica – I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, this is James. He’s new here.’

‘Well, I’m sure he’ll settle in well,’ said Erica, looking at James carefully. ‘He’s tall and handsome, that’s the main thing.’

‘James is a planner as well,’ said Felix. ‘A really important one.’

‘Oh, that’s great,’ said Erica. ‘I’m just an account manager, so of course I’m totally in awe of all planners and their mighty brains. Where do you work?’

‘Well, I’m based in South London, but I don’t work for an advertising agency.’

‘So you’re an independent consultant?’

‘Yes, I guess so. I tend to have public sector and not-for-profit clients.’

Technically, it wasn’t clear to James whether he had just lied or not. It was something he didn’t have much experience of, and wasn’t very good at. He was wondering if he should try and start the whole conversation again, but Felix intervened at this point with a series of questions about what Erica was doing.

Once she’d left, Felix turned to James. ‘I think it’s encouraging that you lied just then.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ said James. ‘It just sort of happened.’

‘Don’t worry. I think it shows potential. You just need to stay truthful to the big things, that’s all. But first you need to decide what they are.’

They had some more whisky and Felix talked about Marxism. James went to the toilets and confirmed for himself that they were quite unlike the ones in the Red Lion. It was now eleven o’clock, but Felix, with his short, lean body, had a surprisingly hardy constitution, and was still dispensing high-quality advice.

‘Of course, I’m flawed. I’m very glad of it. This is the era of the flawed hero. Think about it – think of the stories of our age. The maverick cop who infuriates his boss but solves the crime, the high school weirdo who beats the jocks and gets the girl. If you want to be a hero, then you need to be flawed. In fact, you’ve
got
to be – there is no other sort. Not any more.’

Where was James’s flaw? He wasn’t sure if he really had one. Instead he had professional development needs – skills gaps, limitations and weaknesses. He wasn’t as good at Microsoft Access as he wanted to be, and his PowerPoint presentations weren’t very compelling. At a push, he supposed he had insecurities – he often felt lonely and worried about money, but they hardly counted in the same way.

‘So I need to get some flaws, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Well, to begin with, you could try to get yourself a bit more disliked by people. You need to stop fearing authority. In the end, they’ll admire you more for it.’

‘I don’t fear authority, I just respect it,’ said James.

Although actually, this wasn’t true. James did fear authority. He was for instance frightened of pretty much every member of the senior management team at Southwark Council. God, he’d even been scared of
Lionel
for the first two months. It just so happened that he liked authority as well. That was okay, wasn’t it – to both fear and like the same thing? It wasn’t as if he liked people
because
he was frightened of them. He was reasonably certain on that point.

‘Fear or – to put it more bluntly, cowardice – is, of course, the great inhibitor. The backbone of all conservative philosophies, the nourisher of suspicion and cynicism, the obstacle to progress, invention and improvement.’

Just then Erica returned with two other people, Camilla and Daniel. Camilla was an intimidating, antagonistic woman who immediately frightened him, but he was sure it was because of her anger rather than her status. It was partly deliberate, for while she could do little about the stern mouth, her chestnut hair had been tightly pulled back from her forehead, so the hairline was pre-emptively hostile. Daniel was compact, blond and savagely good-looking. He was twenty-seven years old and an international expert on social-media marketing.

‘It could be said with some justification that Daniel is the most famous person in the room,’ said Felix. ‘He’s got a blog that is actually read by people who aren’t other bloggers, and a Twitter persona with more than forty thousand followers.’

‘Oh, that’s great,’ said James. ‘I don’t really do Twitter or anything, but will definitely check it out. What’s it called?’

‘The recreational libertarian,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s a semi-fictionalised account of modern urban living, aimed at high-income professionals who haven’t been ensnared by the wrong kind of liberalism.’

At this point, Camilla initiated a discussion in a startling, creaking voice by declaring that advertising agencies would cease to exist in three years’ time, a statement which Erica and Felix proceeded to accept, expand upon, challenge and refute. It was a strange conversation: Camilla appeared to have little mastery of her emotions, and she spoke with unfathomable grievances. Meanwhile, Daniel started explaining to James about a flamboyant business scheme, which was intended to convert his popularity on the Internet into a source of revenue through branded content arrangements with a number of commercial partners. James felt sure that it would succeed.

Camilla left to go to the bathroom, at which point everyone started talking about her. In that respect, at least, it was just like the Red Lion
.

‘Okay, everyone can stand down,’ said Erica. ‘We’ve got about ten minutes before I have to go and fish her out.’

‘I’d forgotten what a hysterical disaster that woman is,’ said Daniel. ‘My God, I wouldn’t want to be managing that one.’

‘Camilla is the client, the brand manager,’ explained Felix, ‘and Erica is the account director. A large part of her job is therefore to keep Camilla feeling happy and loved.’

‘Is that easy?’ asked James.

‘Christ, no – she’s a nightmare,’ said Erica. ‘A twenty-four-hour walking psycho-drama. But in my own way, I’ve become fond of her. That’s what happens. Now, what I really need is for one of you to give her an almighty fuck tonight. She hasn’t had sex for six months. It’s no wonder that the relaunch is going so badly.’