The Planner(38)

Harriet guided James through it all, holding him tightly towards her as they continued their journey north, away from the noise and the crowds. She was a native, in the way that hardly anyone in London ever was, and she feared nothing. People in Camden were always getting drunk and fighting, and it had one of the highest homicide rates in the country, but she walked its backstreets with the strength of character and misplaced confidence of a sex worker. And luckily for James, he had drunk all of that vodka – he was protected not just by Harriet, but by his own diminished sense of danger. They crossed a canal full of poorly concealed secrets and headed to the east, where it was quieter and darker, but by no means safer.

And then suddenly it was light again – there was light everywhere. Not the whites, reds and violets of Camden Town in a late capitalist bloom, but a deep, totalitarian yellow. It was something of a surprise, but it served James right for not concentrating. For they had gone down an unpromising narrow footpath, and it had abruptly opened, as footpaths in London often do, into the middle of a gigantic housing estate.

‘This is where I live,’ said Harriet.

Harriet had clearly chosen her accommodation on different criteria from himself, for these were, indisputably, London council flats with all that that entailed. It was very unusual for James to be somewhere like this in anything other than a professional capacity. Even if the estate was no longer owned by the local authority, and they hardly ever were any more, it would at least have been built by one, constructed in an age when town planners ruled the world and architects had to do what they were told, and when buildings looked dreadful but cities were magnificent.

All the textbook design faults were here: the indefensible space, the communal garden that everyone was meant to care for but no one ever did, the flat roofs with their primitive drainage, the high unbroken walls which failed to make anyone feel safe, the uniform facades and fittings that suggested oppression rather than cohesion, and the laborious steps, elevated walkways and treacherous ramps that intimidated visitors and exhausted the residents. As it had been made before the 1990s, no one had tried to make it more cheerful with wooden cladding or dashes of pink brickwork. The graffiti, like the architecture, was also lacking in irony. It wasn’t humorous or even especially offensive – just a half-hearted attempt to make the rippled concrete walls uglier than they already were.

‘Okay, I know, it’s probably not what you were expecting, and it does look pretty foul, but the rent is really low and – you’ll see – the flat is great.’

‘I really like it,’ said James.

‘You’re so sweet,’ she said. ‘I actually think you’re telling the truth.’

As she said this, she stopped suddenly, besides a well-meaning but badly damaged notice board and, pulling him roughly towards her, she started to kiss him again. And now it seemed to James that she even kissed like a housing estate – open but unyielding, her over-sized, poorly designed mouth firmly held his. Above their heads was a mural of smiling farm animals standing under a lumpy rainbow, painted twenty years ago by delinquent teenagers before the local youth club lost its funding. The light, or maybe something else, started to make a loud buzzing noise. Abruptly, Harriet stopped kissing him and took his hand. They continued up the stairwell.

But as soon as she opened the front door, it was clear things were going to be more complicated. Harriet hadn’t really explained to him beforehand, but there were at least a dozen people in her flat, though it was difficult to tell for sure because they kept moving around so much. Apart from a strange, horrible man with tattoos on his hands, who sat at a table constructing and distributing cannabis joints, James was certain that he was the oldest person there. Many of the girls were pretty, but it was difficult to be certain exactly which ones, and there were lots of men there too – some of whom would have to be classed as rivals, but others who were simply colourful distractions and tremendously gay, with exaggerated mannerisms and squeaky voices. There was an elegant black stereo system in the middle of the room playing low-frequency dance music at a volume that James estimated to be significantly higher than the 85-decibel threshold admissible in an inner-London residential area.

Harriet introduced him without any great skill or attention to detail to a group sitting on cushions, and immediately disappeared. James, who was determined at this stage not to be disheartened, sat down and attempted to join in. It wasn’t easy. The problem wasn’t just that there were so many of them or that he wasn’t terribly good at this kind of thing, it was that they were all so incredibly young. They didn’t argue about the government’s macroeconomic policies, they didn’t even talk about music and clothes shops. What they talked about was each other. It was a difficult conversation to contribute to – a group of people he’d never met before, all of them several inches shorter than him, were talking about other people he’d never met.