Authors: Tom Campbell
‘All right, I hear all that. But it’s just a bit much to get criticism from Lionel, that’s all. I mean – he’s fucking
Lionel
.’
James was swearing a lot more these days as well. Swearing and smoking – it wasn’t clear at this point if he was growing up or just behaving more and more like a teenager.
‘Lionel isn’t stupid,’ said Rachel. ‘He might not be able to do much planning any more, but he can still recognise a problem when he sees one. He’s got a sixth sense for spotting major fuck-ups. That’s why he’s been able to last so long.’
‘Hold on – are you saying that I’m a fuck-up?
‘I’m saying you’re a
potential
fuck-up. That’s all. And Lionel knows it.’
James didn’t much like the sound of that. After all, it wasn’t as if he lacked ambition. That was the good thing about hierarchies: there was a clear path, an established step-by-step route between where he was now, and where he wanted to be. He could chart it out on a sheet of paper – a brief description of what he could reasonably expect to be doing at thirty-five, at forty, at fifty, at sixty, along with the associated salary and benefits. But all that depended upon him having a career in the first place – on not fucking up. Or, at least, not unless he had somewhere else he could go.
‘What are these cuts that people have started talking about? I didn’t think they had anything to do with us.’
‘Well, now – there’s my point. If you’d been putting the hours in with us at the pub you’d have heard about them. At the very least, you ought to take me out for our drink.’
‘But I thought we’d gone through all that.’
‘There’s talk of another restructure. Nothing like as big, but it might impact on Environment and Planning. They need to trim the budget by half a million.’
James blew out his cigarette smoke irritably. Down the road, smoking in their own huddle, stood several overweight members of the post room, with their natural allies from the Facilities Team. He looked at them wistfully. Yes, they faced dangers and diseases – bad teeth, proletariat cancers, deep-seated nutritional problems – but they were safe from so many things: from organisational restructures, Strategy Delivery Assessments and from old university friends in high-income tax brackets.
‘This Felix you’ve been hanging out with. I’m not sure he’s good for you.’
‘Felix? You haven’t even met Felix.’
‘I don’t have to. You’ve been going on about him enough. He sounds sinister, the sort of person that would fuck you up for his own amusement.’
‘That’s rubbish. He’s just a friend, that’s all. It’s good to be going out with different people for a change. Doing different things. I can’t spend my whole life in the Red Lion. I don’t want to look like Lionel in twenty years.’
‘You know, you need to give Lionel a bit more credit,’ said Rachel. ‘He’s held down that job for ten years. He’s survived elections; he’s survived restructures. He’s put up with politicians and the most awful pricks. There’s a reason for that. Don’t underestimate him.’
‘I don’t underestimate him. I’d like him to work harder, and be a bit more dynamic and he could support us more and not look so knackered all the time, but I know his strengths better than anyone. I’ve been working for him for years now. He’s a good friend, basically.’
‘And that’s another thing: you shouldn’t trust him too much either. That’s one of your biggest faults. It’s an endearing one, but it’s still a fault. You know what they used to say in the war: never trust a survivor until you know what he did to survive.’
James looked out across the street he knew so well. It was getting warmer – people were going out more, and as a result they were breaking more rules. Cars were driving in cycle lanes and cyclists were jumping traffic lights. Pedestrians were failing to control their dogs. Even Rachel flicked her cigarette butts on to the pavement, for street cleaning was the responsibility of another directorate. It all looked so very different from his masterplan poster.
‘Okay, so you’re saying I should neither underestimate nor trust Lionel.’
‘I’m saying you should respect him, but you shouldn’t think of him as a friend – it’s not helpful. He’s your boss. I’m giving you some very good advice here. God knows why, you don’t really deserve it.’
James was tender-minded, a sentimentalist, sensitive to the realities of suffering, but also to its symbols. This, along with everything else, would need to change. He could see that, and it had nothing to do with Felix – it was what his profession demanded. To try to understand what happened in a single street in a single day would crush the toughest mind, but there was a whole city that needed to be understood, appraised and treated. If he couldn’t be a computer processor, then he could at least be more like Rachel.
‘Should I trust anyone we work with?’ said James, throwing his cigarette to the ground.
‘No, probably not.’
‘But I can trust you, right?’
Rachel turned to look up at him. Her eyes were steady and loyal. They were, he realised, also surprisingly pretty – a gentle light brown, with good-humoured flecks and long eyelashes that curled upwards like her black hair.
‘Oh yes. That’s all right. You can trust me.’
12
Boroughs should take an evidence-based approach to managing the night-time economy.
–
The London Plan
, Section 4.37
There was no denying it, he was making tremendous progress. It was less than two months since that wretched night in that wretched restaurant, since he’d met Felix and surrendered to his counsel, and now, here he was – in a sex club in Soho. It was a testament to the advice of his mentor, but also to his own determination and strength of will. Above all, it was a testament to the power of planning.
As part of this, he was getting much better at the worrying-about-money thing. It was just as well: if you were going to fret about spending money in a place like this, then you might as well just leave now and take the night bus home. He had already bought a small round of unremarkable drinks that had cost over twenty pounds, and he knew there was every chance that Felix would order a cocktail next time. But he was starting to be more courageous about it. He was learning to rationalise personal consumption on a different, more sophisticated, non-rational basis.
It was important not to be churlish about money for, with characteristic generosity and skill, Felix had designed an entire evening for them. And it was Felix, of course, who had suggested it in the first place. He had been quite right, of course, James should have done this years ago. It was yet another rite of passage that he’d somehow failed to complete in his twenties, and was still well worth doing now. True, London was no longer one of the world’s premier capitals of the sex industry, there was far too much Asian competition, but it was still a world city with open markets, high-income residents and a steady flow of immigrants in need of employment. And it still had Soho, which James had first heard alarming stories about from sixth formers while revising for his GCSEs in the library at South Leicester Grammar School, but which, in all those years of living in London, he had never investigated any further.
But here he was at last and, actually, he had done more than just go to a sex club. He had in fact
joined
one. That, as Felix and Carl had explained, was how these places generally worked. So James now, and again at some cost, had a lifetime membership to the Black Kitten on Poland Street. He even had a black plastic card with his name printed on it in gold letters. It hadn’t taken very long to arrange – an almost pretty woman had efficiently typed his details into a laptop computer, taken his photograph with a digital camera and produced a card for him then and there on a desktop printer. A cloakroom attendant who looked like he was dying from tuberculosis but had wonderful manners had taken their coats, and then gently pointed them down a wide flight of red-carpeted stairs.
But downstairs, after all that, it hardly felt like a sex club at all. For one thing, and this was an obvious giveaway, there were other women there. Well-dressed professional women who had, presumably, paid to be there. In fact, he wouldn’t have been completely surprised to bump into Alice. Something else he hadn’t been expecting was that the room was well lit, and James was looking at the audience carefully – he was starting to pay more attention to them than to the girls on the stage. Not that they would have minded – the kinds of people who came to this place were sufficiently attractive that they actually wanted to be seen by other people. They weren’t on their own or in suspicious little huddles; they weren’t, and he could see this might be a problem, pornographers.
Meanwhile, the woman onstage wasn’t really undressing at all – to all intents and purposes she was doing a piece of contemporary dance. The music was difficult to process, without an obvious melody or rhythm. People were clapping appreciatively, but not for anything that was remotely arousing or even enjoyable: they seemed to be applauding her for acts of technical difficulty and creative interpretation. It was very much like something funded by the Arts Council. Her costume was a particular source of dismay – a disorientating drama of velvet stockings, peacock feathers, multi-coloured hair clips, silk scarves and hooped bracelets. It was difficult to be sure what was really going on, but James was convinced that she was actually wearing more clothes by the end than when she’d started.
‘This wine isn’t bad at all,’ said Felix.
Carl grunted. ‘I didn’t come here for the wine.’
‘What do you think of the place?’ said Felix, turning to James.
James wasn’t sure what to say. It was telling how quickly his excitement and fear had evaporated. There didn’t seem anything here to get worked up about. Even Rachel probably wouldn’t have minded: it wasn’t exciting and it wasn’t frightening, and it certainly wasn’t erotic. It was much like anywhere and everything else – not all that good and too expensive. It was a shame: it was actually mildly gratifying how disappointing everything was. Perhaps it was a sign that he was growing up.
Another girl came onstage. She had cropped black hair, and was dressed in a dark pinstripe suit, with an umbrella and bowler hat, which, after a minute or so, she elaborately removed. She had a button nose and was undeniably pretty, but to no discernible purpose. She might as well have been an award-winning piece of contemporary fiction. James and Carl both turned to look at Felix to see if he could explain it to them.
‘What you need to realise,’ said Felix, ‘is that there is an art to eroticism. And, like all the arts, greater study and understanding leads to richer appreciation and enjoyment.’
James turned back to the stage and tried again. It occurred to him that the girl’s act must contain some kind of satirical content, and that she was parodying the international banking system. Maybe she was going to do something horrendous and symbolic with a roll of bank notes. She started to loosen her tie. She did, James noted, have very pretty bare feet, but that didn’t compensate for the black moustache that was pencilled above her lip, or her straight hips and short legs or the fact that she was wearing a suit.
It needed Carl to get them out of this mess. Like the parable of the Emperor’s New Clothes, somebody had to point out to everyone else that they weren’t the only person to have noticed that the woman they were all looking at wasn’t actually naked.
‘What the fuck is this dogshit?’ he said. ‘We’ve been here for almost an hour and I haven’t even seen any tits yet. We urgently need to go somewhere else.’
‘I’m in total agreement,’ said James.
‘I’m actually enjoying this,’ said Felix. ‘But very well, come on. I’ve got somewhere else for us to go.’
They didn’t have to go very far. Felix led them out and they turned into Berwick Street, and then into a poorly lit lane, where there was a micro-cluster of strip bars, flamboyant specialist retailers and two more sombre wholesalers, both claiming to export across Europe and the Middle East. Between these was the ‘XXX.com Club’ in white plastic lettering on a black plastic board with a half-hearted ring of red and yellow light bulbs around the doorway. Its name was senseless, and presumably dated from a time when website addresses were considered exotic. Little attempt was being made to attract customers, and the principal function of the stout man standing outside the door seemed to be to stop people coming in rather than to entice them. But maybe that was a good thing – it was hard to be sure how the market signals worked in this industry.
Carl wavered. ‘Are you sure this place is any good?’
‘It’s the sex industry,’ said Felix. ‘Nobody knows anything, and competitive pressures are weak. But last time I came here it was excellent.’
They went in, and Felix led the negotiations with an undernourished woman behind the counter. The strange thing was, this place was even more expensive: the relationship between class, quality of service and money had broken down. There were no application forms or membership cards – instead they paid twenty-five pounds each to be allowed in for the night, and had to order at least one drink every hour.
Felix and James sat in a leather booth in the corner of a room that didn’t seem to have been refurbished since the economic boom before last. The lighting was eccentric, and the mirrored walls were speckled and blackened and incapable of reflecting anything other than ghosts and psychic disturbances. Carl came back from the bar with a bottle of white wine, perplexed and bad-tempered.