James was a young man – his bedroom was a testament to that – but there was plenty of other evidence. Every day his body produced high quantities of purposeless testosterone and troubling adrenalin. His spine was straight, his fat tissues low – possibly too low, for his diet was rudimentary and his meals irregular. He had stopped growing, but his short-sightedness had not yet stabilised and his wisdom teeth could still on occasion cause great sorrow. His collection of personal anecdotes and misadventures was small. He had no expertise in negotiating with drug dealers, nightclub bouncers or landlords. He would often wake in the middle of the night from sinister dreams. He had never owned a property, never bought a sofa and all of his personal possessions could fit into three suitcases. He was still attracted to women significantly older than him. He was over-sensitive – it was easy to hurt his feelings and he thought too much about what other people said about him. He worried about how the universe would end, and whether he had slept with enough women.
James was an old man. He paid more than the minimum into the staff pension scheme and he had multiple insurance policies. He fretted about utility bills and didn’t like getting into debt. It was getting harder and harder to sleep soundly. He found it impossible to sustain a conversation with anyone under the age of twenty-five, though increasingly he found women much younger than him attractive. More and more, he tended to buy clothes on the basis of how comfortable they were. He had an unreasonable fear of dogs of any size, teenagers in hooded tops and beggars. He could no longer take his body for granted – for no good reason, he would experience an unpleasant stiffness in his back, often felt weary after lunch and his mouth hurt if he brushed his teeth vigorously. He worried about dying, and he knew that he hadn’t slept with enough women.
James picked up his mobile phone and before getting into bed sent a text message to Felix: ‘You’re right. Need self-improvement, a worldview and much more. Will u help?’
It was half past two in the morning, but the reply came back immediately. ‘Asking for help is 30 per cent of the solution. See you next week.’
4
5 February
London is a great city for night-time entertainment and socialising.
– The London Plan, Section 4.36
‘I’m not going to promise that you’ll enjoy this,’ said Felix.
‘I know that,’ said James.
‘But it is necessary that you go through with it.’
‘I know,’ said James.
They were going to a book launch. It had been Felix’s suggestion and James had immediately accepted. He knew that it was no longer sufficient to simply have professional and social interests: James needed a cultural life. He needed a hobby. He knew you could build entire friendships and personalities around such things, but it was important to choose the right one. Literature, theatre – these were perfectly reasonable choices. Crafts, contemporary dance, heritage – these were clearly dead ends, while going to the cinema every so often simply wouldn’t cut it. And music? Well, you had to be careful. It was probably too late for him to be jumping up and down in front of long-haired guitarists in Camden, but then again he wasn’t ready to sit down in a dinner jacket and come up with intelligent things to say at the end of an opera. So Felix had made the decision for him.
‘It’s my opinion,’ said Felix, ‘that even in 2013, a book launch is still a perfectly respectable way to spend a Tuesday night in London.’
James had his doubts, but he wasn’t really in a position to nurture them, for while he understood the concept of a book launch, the format was almost completely unknown to him. It didn’t help that he didn’t know the geography either, for he was a long way from home. They were in a theatre bar off Islington High Street, a part of the city that filled him with foreboding.
‘We better have another gin and tonic here. I warn you now: the quality of the wine at this thing will be outrageous. These are publishers, remember, not advertising agencies, and in certain important respects they haven’t got a clue. Of course, these days they haven’t got any money either.’
Earlier that day, James had spent almost an hour writing an email to Graham Oakley saying he would like to consider the job offer. As far as he could, he was going to keep his options open. There were good reasons for going back to Nottingham, even Felix had acknowledged that, and he didn’t want to turn it down just because he now had a friend who took him to book launches. It had been, he thought, a pretty good email: positive, open, truthful, even, and the reply from Graham had been every bit as accommodating as he’d expected. So he had two months to make London work for him, to implement his self-development plan.