The Planner (33 page)

‘People know about it. That’s the real problem. Never mind Lionel – senior management must have already read about it. You know the Comms Team monitor stuff like this all the time.’

‘The gallery was full of journalists, bloggers, Internet twats. What have they said?’

‘Here, listen to this one. It’s probably the most problematic, because it actually mentions your job title. Well – Lionel’s job title. You can imagine what he made of that.’

Rachel read aloud from her mobile phone.
‘There was unexpected drama last night at the opening of a new exhibition at the Shaw Gallery in Whitechapel. James Crawley, Director of Planning at Southwark Council, was detained by police after attempting to vandalise several of the works on show with an unidentified young woman. It is not clear what the motives for the attack were. Many of the attendees were under the impression that they were witnessing a piece of performance art, and it was only when the police—’

‘Fuck, okay, stop reading. I don’t want to hear any more. For one thing, I can’t bear all the exaggerations and factual inaccuracies. Where did they get the idea that I’m the director here? None of that will actually go in the newspapers, will it?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘Search me. Personally, I wouldn’t have thought it was much of a story, but I guess that’s what the Internet is for. I don’t think your parents are going to read it in the
Daily Mail
if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘I bet what you’ve just read was written by a poisonous witch called Felicity. I hardly know her, but she would have loved the chance to do me over – she’s that sort.’

‘No,’ said Rachel, peering into her phone. ‘That was written by someone called Alice Baum.’

James nodded silently. He probably should have guessed that. It would have had nothing to do with him being peculiar and hostile with her boyfriend. It wasn’t vengeance or high drama, that had never been her thing – and anyway, he wasn’t important enough to her for that. It was just a good little story.

‘Well, I guess you better get your things. Much better to do it quickly, before everyone turns up. I’ll walk out with you.’

She was right – the office was almost empty, and that had to be a good thing. For the last time, he looked up at the bright overhead lighting that you couldn’t moderate, the square windows you weren’t allowed to open, the grey computers and black telephones. He looked at the kitchenette, with its sink full of unwashed mugs. It had been a depressing place to work but it had at least been restful, it had been safe. There were, he suspected, many worse jobs than being a planner in a local authority.

Ian Benson was sitting at James’s desk, typing things into his computer.

‘Just deactivating your hard drive and switching your accounts off. It’s council policy. No hard feelings. Have you got any personal files you want me to back up for you?’

‘No, don’t worry. I never used it for anything other than work. And I never saved anything on the desktop either – all my files are on the server.’

‘That’s very commendable,’ said Ian. ‘Not like the others. It’s a shame you’re leaving.’

James started to clear his desk with a black bin liner. It didn’t take long – he had also been one of the very few to adhere to the office clean-desk policy. Nor did he have many possessions. There were no framed photos of loved ones or pictures of baby elephants. Almost everything on the desk was the property of Southwark Council – apart from the electric stapler, which he had bought for himself, and his own little planners’ toolkit – dividers, compass, triangle and coloured pencils, which his parents had given him as a present when he got his first job, but he’d never actually used. As he could have told them, it was all done on computers.

‘I googled you just now,’ said Ian. ‘Got an absolute shit storm. You’re famous, basically.’

James nodded. You didn’t have to be much of a planner to know that it was not meant to have turned out like this. So much for the vision, so much for the strategy. Although, despite everything, he still didn’t know for sure if he had overplanned it or not.

‘Maybe see you out clubbing again one night?’ said Ian.

‘Yeah, maybe,’ said James. ‘Thanks for everything.’

Rachel and James got into the jerky, treacherous lift that still hadn’t been serviced. They travelled down and through reception, moving against the thick flow of Southwark Council finance managers, policy officers, regulators, inspectors and administrators arriving for work. The men in charcoal suits, the women in long dark skirts, all looking in a way that James had never quite noticed before: purposeful, necessary and salaried.

And now they were outside, standing on the steps for the last time. Rachel lit a cigarette, but James had quit smoking. He looked out on to the busy street, where everything was still conforming closely to his worldview: drivers stuck in queues beeped their horns pointlessly, cyclists went through red lights and pedestrians dropped litter. The rush-hour traffic hadn’t peaked yet: as they both knew from Neil Tuffnel’s studies, this wouldn’t happen for at least another twenty minutes.

‘You’ll be fine,’ said Rachel. ‘There’s a whole world out there. God – in six months’ time you’ll be saying it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you. That’s what everyone who loses their job always says.’

But James wasn’t so sure. After all, he was James Crawley and he was a town planner. What else was he going to do? Sit on a beach in Vietnam selling hair bands? Secure venture capital investment for a high-growth nano-technology start-up? The truth was – he wasn’t going to be fine. He was actually pretty badly fucked.

‘At least we got you three months’ notice. That will keep you going for a bit. You know, Lionel didn’t have to do that.’

‘And what about after that? Do you think I can get back?’

‘Well, obviously not here.’

‘No, but somewhere else. I can still be a planner, can’t I?’

Rachel blew out cigarette smoke and paused to think. But, unlike with Lionel, he didn’t think she was doing it for effect.

‘Look, it’s the public sector. You can be incompetent and lazy. But you can’t fuck up in the way you did. What did Lionel say to you?’

‘I don’t really want to talk about it. But he’s not giving me a reference.’

‘Well, whatever, your problem is that you are no longer regarded as a safe pair of hands. And in public administration, that is always a basic requirement. No one wants a planner, however brilliant, who smashes up artworks and gets into fights with the police. The whole point of being a planner is that the public have no idea who you are.’

Rachel was right. Even in places like Nottingham, especially in places like Nottingham, that kind of thing mattered. Could he go and work for a developer? But that seemed unlikely too – it was influence rather than planning skills that they were interested in. Developers didn’t give a fuck about skills. He wouldn’t be going to many more football matches now. Nor was it likely that he’d get invited to many art exhibitions either. Although he could, he supposed, still go to the odd book launch.

‘You know what – this isn’t necessarily going to make you feel any better, but it looks like I’m going to get a promotion out of this. Lionel had a word with me before you came in. Nothing’s settled, but he wants to enlarge my role, and give me some of your responsibilities. It helps him out, what with the budget cuts.’

James nodded. Yes, he could see that. It made a lot of sense. No need to replace him with someone new. No recruitment costs or redundancy payouts – from the perspective of the public good, it had worked out rather well.

‘Christ – the others are going to be in a state about you going like this. It’s not the kind of thing they’re good at dealing with. Neil is going to most probably pass out.’

‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. Christ, what a fuck-up.’

‘Well, don’t worry about that now,’ said Rachel. ‘I’ll give them all your love. We can arrange leaving drinks or something when things have quietened down.’

James checked his phone. There was a text message from Harriet: ‘OMG! Crazy night!! I’m OK. Felix took me back to his place. Hope you don’t mind xx’

Did he mind? He probably would a great deal at some point, but not yet – there were too many other things to mind about. At least biologically, things were starting to stabilise. He was starting to feel normal again, neither saturated with bad chemicals or emptied of all the good ones. The problem with that, of course, was that he was now beginning to feel terrible – almost as terrible as he ought to be feeling. There was still no word from Felix. Or maybe, that was the message? He was, after all, a master of communication. He had first contacted him with a two-word email, maybe Harriet was the medium he’d chosen for saying goodbye.

‘Look, you’ll get over this. I guarantee it. You’ll be able to walk back into the Red Lion for a drink and laugh about this in a couple of months. And you’ll be earning so much money with your new job that you’ll be buying the drinks.’

‘I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. I don’t want to talk about it, but I don’t think Lionel and me are going to meet again anytime soon.’

‘Lionel will be okay. He’s upset more than cross. I’ll talk to him about your reference when he’s calmed down. You know, believe it or not, I think he had it in his head that you were after his job. That’s the kind of thing that sends him over the edge.’

‘And what about you?’ said James.

‘Me?’

‘Will I see you again soon?’

They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment and James offered up a smile. But it was much too late now. There had been too many mistakes and bad decisions, too many things that had either been done badly, or else not at all. Rachel looked away, back towards the street.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Rachel. ‘There’s no reason why we can’t be friends.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘I’ll call and we can go for a coffee or something. I’ll still need someone to rant to about this place.’

Rachel flicked her cigarette stub on to the pavement, and turned to go back inside. She gave him a hearty, non-metropolitan shake of the shoulders. It was almost an embrace, full of warmth and strength, but it was no more loving than the one he had got from Angus at the football match.

‘Well, you know how it is. I’ve got a housing meeting to go to. That new guy from the community team is going to be there. Honestly, you’re the lucky one.’

‘Oh God, yes – him. Useless. Hope it goes okay.’

‘It’ll be okay.
You’ll
be okay. I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks.’

‘Yes. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

The world is urbanising. James had been taught that at school when still quite young, and he’d never forgotten it. Cities were terrible, everyone knew that – they spread diseases and made people ill, they brought people too close together, so that they did harmful things to one another and to themselves. But still they came. All round the world, people were coming. They were coming to Sao Paolo, they were coming to Lagos and to Shanghai, and they were still coming to London. Most of the world was emptying, but the parts that mattered were filling up. The human race was agglomerating for the next, maybe the final, stage of the drama. And against all this, against the masses with all their problems and unreasonable demands, their malice and squalid hopes, there stood nothing other than the planners – the regulators and the lawmakers. The best intentioned, but not the bravest, with the wisdom to know that something had to be done, but not the means or the strength to do very much about it. There weren’t very many of them, there was no way nearly enough, and now there would be one fewer.

James walked down the road with his plastic bag of possessions, which was awkward to hold in his hand, but too light to hoist over his shoulder. He was heading north, towards the river, but he had little idea what he would do when he got there. He looked up. It was an unusually bright spring morning and the sky, at least, looked exactly like it did in his masterplan poster.

A Note on the Author

Tom Campbell read history at Edinburgh University
. Fold
, his first novel, was published by Bloomsbury in 2011 to critical acclaim. He lives in London with his wife and three sons.

Also available by Tom Campbell

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