Authors: Tom Campbell
‘So you didn’t really believe that about the doorwoman? That was so obviously just a ruse to stop me from coming.’
‘Why would he do that? I thought you were getting on well.’
‘Because he wanted you to himself. Because he’s gay and doesn’t like women.’
‘Well, I guess everyone is a bit gay. There are degrees, aren’t there, like everything else. He’s never said anything.’
‘Fuck knows. He probably doesn’t even know himself. I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that all men under the age of forty aren’t worth the bother. You’re all so useless and self-absorbed.’
They sat looking at each other across the small, unsteady tabletop. Rachel was looking prettier than James had ever seen her, but she was no Harriet – her legs weren’t rubbing against his, and her hands remained around her drink. So if anything was going to happen then it would need James to take the lead. But the problem, of course, was that he was a planner. He could give advice, take a view and have opinions, but he couldn’t make decisions.
‘You’re not going to Nottingham, are you?’ said Rachel.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘But it is a really great opportunity. You should feel pleased that they want you.’
‘I know, I am. It’s just not the right time.’
‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Rachel.
‘Are you really?’
‘Yes, of course I am. The office wouldn’t be the same without you.’
James drank some of his gin and tonic. It didn’t seem to work the way it had before. Instead of warming and strengthening him, he could feel it softening and curdling, making him feel older and weaker. Perhaps it was a drink for grandmothers after all. Or perhaps it only worked if you drank it in wine bars and private clubs.
James’s phone beeped. There was a message from Felix: ‘I think you should come now.’
Felix was different from James and Rachel, and always willing to take command. In certain industries, it had always been understood that a bad decision was preferable to no decision at all – particularly advertising, where there was little verifiable distinction between the two. Felix made calls – whether it was on the value of a brand of toothpaste or the quality of the girls at a strip show. And because he made his calls with authority, in an upper-class voice or curt text message, people tended to follow.
‘Are you being summoned?’ said Rachel.
‘Well, not summoned, but yes – I think I might head down there. That is, if you haven’t got any other plans.’
But of course she didn’t. The problem, of course, was that Rachel was a town planner too.
‘Well, I guess you ought to get going then.’
‘I don’t have to go. I don’t have to do anything.’
‘No, you should go. I should go. It’s late.’
Rachel was standing up and buttoning her coat. She was doing it very quickly, but it was hard for James to tell if she was upset with him or not. Maybe she just wanted to go home.
‘Aren’t you going to finish your drink?’
‘No, I’m fine. This wine is horrible anyway. I think I’ll just head off now.’
‘You would have definitely hated the club,’ said James.
‘Yes, I’m sure.’
They walked out together, the barman nodding sadly at the only remotely attractive and economically viable couple in his pub, and now they were back out on the Euston Road. They turned to face one another and to say goodbye.
‘Well, I’ll be off then. The station’s just there,’ said Rachel.
‘I really like your hair,’ said James.
‘Yes, you told me that earlier.’
‘Oh yes. Well, see you in the office tomorrow?’
‘I’ve got some days off. I won’t be in again until Wednesday.’
‘Oh? You didn’t say. Are you doing anything exciting?’
‘No. No plans. Maybe I’ll do some spring-cleaning. I’ve still got unused holiday that I have to take before the end of the month.’
‘Oh, okay. Well, have a great weekend then.’
They moved closer to say goodbye, and as they did so, James kissed her. It was a hesitant and incoherent kiss – technically poor and open to misinterpretation. He was too tall, and he needed Rachel to raise her face up to his, but either she was unwilling or was no more skilled than he was, for her lips did no more than brush ineffectively against his. Alcohol wasn’t going to help either – they had drunk just enough to get into this situation, but not enough to do anything about it. It was no good – somebody had to take the lead, just like Alice had done all those years ago. But there was no one chairing, they had no agenda or PowerPoint to guide them. James turned one way, Rachel turned the other and in two seconds they were apart again, facing one another as if nothing had happened.
The traffic on Euston Road had picked up, and a double-decker bus drove past at speed. Rachel shivered in the breeze and took a step back from the road, and also from James.
‘Goodnight then,’ said James.
‘Yes, goodnight.’
Rachel turned towards King’s Cross station. James went the other way, back into town, walking headlong into a Thursday night. In the countryside, as James knew, you were up against the weather, which amplified your mental state and physically obstructed and buffeted you. But it was so much worse in the city, where the whole economy was against you. Every interaction and regulation made things difficult to progress, and unlike Felix he had no natural talent for attracting taxis. He stopped at street corners, he waited by road junctions, he held out his arm against the oncoming traffic and wondered why nothing happened. The gin and tonics were starting to work at last, but only to make him bold enough to feel bad-tempered.
It was a full fifteen minutes before he was in the back of a taxi going south and checking his phone again. He had two text messages. The first was from Felix: ‘Am making my peace with the doorwoman here. Suggest you stand down.’
Well, it was fucking inconsiderate, but maybe it was for the best. James had to go to work tomorrow, and not in an advertising agency. Did he really want to stay up late, drink more gin and listen to Felix make prophecies about Western civilisation? Besides, if he was really doing something with the doorwoman, then so much the better – it would certainly make things easier all round if Felix was sleeping with women rather than touching his knee.
The other message was from Rachel: ‘Sorry to be dopey, but was that meant to be a KISS kiss??’
Before he could think of a reply she had sent another one: ‘Whatever it was meant to be, it was nice. See you next week xx’
14
In estimating provision from private residential or mixed-use developments, boroughs should take into account economic viability and the most effective use of private and public investment.
–
The London Plan
, Section 3.71
The office of Galbraith & Erskine was in Canary Wharf – the land of the developers, built by the private sector for the private sector. All that government had ever done was decontaminate the land, build an underground line, hand over the property rights and then get out of the way. It was the biggest thing to have happened in London in thirty years and James had written an essay about it for his A levels. But again, somehow, he had never actually made it here before.
It was now quite important that something happened here, for the night before he had sent Graham Oakley an email telling him that he didn’t want the job in Nottingham. It was a friendly, direct, well-written email, and had taken only three minutes to write, read once over and send. He was learning to be more decisive, that most attractive of male qualities. He was changing, he was becoming a more successful human being and a less effective government administrator, but he needed to do it faster – his kiss with Rachel was proof of that. For what it was worth, he was probably becoming less nice as well, but in truth that should probably have happened a long time ago. The private sector, working with developers, meetings in Canary Wharf – these were all logical next steps.
He had arrived early, and found a coffee bar at the top of the square. But unlike everyone else there, he wasn’t studying his phone, he was sitting on a stool by the window and making a survey. Around him were some of the tallest buildings in Europe and none of them were more than twenty-five years old. With no small-minded local authority to get in their way, cheered on by investors and the Docklands Corporation, the architects had done whatever they wanted. They had taken the blueprints from Hong Kong and built upwards – it was all they knew how to do, it was the only way anyone could tell if a building was good or not. And now, or so he’d been told, they were all going off to the Middle East to do the same thing there, to build gigantic towers that couldn’t be corrupted or damaged by the people who lived there. By the end of the century, every city in the world would look like this. Well, maybe he should just accept it – become one of the people who got well paid for making it happen, rather than badly paid for failing to stop it.
Nobody dawdled in Canary Wharf, everyone had a purpose and moved quickly across the squares, anxious not to be in the open air and unproductive. There were no post offices for people to huddle outside, no library steps where tramps could drink cans of cider. There was no graffiti or litter either – the public space was respected and well cared for, probably because it wasn’t actually owned by the public. It wasn’t really used by the public either, except to walk between the towers and then in July to eat lunch from boxes of sushi. A hundred yards away, ignored, was the river Thames.
All of the people that James could see made a significant contribution to the wealth of the nation while making the world a worse place to live in. They worked in business services, and spent their lives helping international corporations to pay less tax, acquire commercial rivals, exploit monopoly positions, evade environmental regulations and skirt legal responsibilities. They were central to the functioning of the modern economy. Twenty thousand other people travelled in every day to make them coffee, serve them lunch and guard the buildings. It was, everyone had agreed, a tremendous success, the sort of place that Laura would approve of. To his right, in a tower on the corner of the square, was the law firm where Adam worked.
James too was here on business. Although not, strictly speaking, Southwark Council business. He had got better at this, and hadn’t bothered calling in sick. He had just put ‘external meeting’ in his calendar and left the office without telling anyone. He hadn’t told Felix either. Felix would only have warned him against it, and then given an illuminating but unhelpful lecture on modern business practices. It was the problem with having a friendship on a pro bono basis – you only got the advice and guidance that he wanted to give you. And, anyway – what did it have to do with him?
Felix Selwood. There was no doubt he’d come into James’s life at the right time, that he had helped him, been generous, and that he knew some valuable things: strip bars, drug dealers, aesthetics, metaphysics and what was going to happen to capitalism. But were they really going to be friends? In theory, there were good reasons why James ought to feel grateful to Felix, but of course he felt no such thing. He knew that just because there was such a word as gratitude, it didn’t mean that it existed. Not really, and certainly not between adult men. If you gave someone what they desperately needed, then all you ever got back was relief and resentment. Anyone who worked in the public sector knew that.
No, if anything, it was Felix who ought to thank James. For two months James had been, just like Erica had said, one of his projects. He had allowed Felix to boss him, to instruct him, practise his speeches, elaborate on his worldview. There were few greater pleasures. Whatever other motives he might have, and there could be all sorts, that would be plenty. It was time that James got to do some things for Felix – to buy him expensive drinks, introduce him to useful business contacts and make informative pronouncements on the property market. It would serve him fucking well right.
He hadn’t told Rachel either. He hadn’t spoken to her since that night in Bloomsbury, but he knew she wouldn’t want him to be here – for sound reasons, but also probably some selfish ones as well. If he was ever going to try and kiss her again, then it would be so much easier if he worked somewhere else and earned more than her, but that didn’t necessarily mean she’d be celebrating his success. After all, he never did for any of his friends. But you had to look out for yourself in this world, no one else was going to do it for you. That was the true message of Canary Wharf.
James rose abruptly. He was still early, but he needed to get going, for Canary Wharf was no place for brooders. It was a place where people got things done, where decisions were made and deals were struck. He left the coffee bar and marched diagonally across the square. There was no doubt, he fitted in well – dark suited with briefcase and square glasses, his head up and focused on the task ahead. The spring air was thin and mild, and he was caffeinated, confident, purposeful. It was, for once, a good cause: he was doing something for himself instead of the council, instead of for Lionel.
The doors of the tower opened silently before him. Inside, it was like being in a small airport. There were security guards and electronic gates, a marbled bank of receptionists with headsets. There was a coffee shop identical to the one he’d just been in, and a large copper-plated cube suspended on a steel rod, an abstract artwork, which looked exactly like the type of thing that town planners put in the middle of shopping centres, except this one hadn’t been vandalised. He gave his name, showed some identification and was efficiently processed and directed towards a lift.