The Planner(8)

‘Actually, I didn’t think that meeting was so very bad,’ said James.

‘Oh, come on – don’t be a sop. And you know we’ll have to do it all over again with that knob from Transport for London.’

Rachel didn’t just smoke cigarettes. She also drank half pints of Guinness, and ate packets of crisps in the pub. Her dark hair was formless and unprincipled without being especially innovative. She had a Midlands accent, which had probably held back her career, and a weakness for hyperbole and melodrama. She thrived on organisational discord and personal misfortunes, and adored restructures.

But Rachel’s strengths were immense and well known. There were no stars or heroes in planning, but there were stoics and know-alls, and she was the finest of them: industrious, wildly competent and with an in-depth understanding of social-housing regulations. She could talk about many other things too, for she was also the most friendly and conversationally skilled town planner in the team, possibly in all of London. James suspected it might have had something to do with her education. Rachel had studied geography just like him, but at Newcastle or Hull or somewhere else where you actually had a good time and made friends that didn’t go on to make you unhappy for the rest of your life.

‘Well, time to go back inside,’ said James. ‘I’ve got loads to do.’

‘We’ve always got loads to do. Generating work is what this organisation does. Even if there wasn’t such a thing as Southwark, everyone at Southwark Council would still be busy.’

For the entire afternoon, James sat at his desk and worked. Although he could perform in meetings, this was what he did best, his default state. That had been apparent from an early age. Even by the standards of ten-year-old boys he had brought unusual levels of care to his pie charts and cross-section diagrams. He was diligent. He was very good at absorbing knowledge – at learning facts and remembering things in the correct order. In another age, before databases and search engines, when clerks and administrators ruled the world, he would have thrived, but you needed to be able to do other things now. You needed to do the kinds of things that Carl or Adam could do – to think on your feet, to say things that sounded perfectly credible even if you weren’t sure if they were true, and to be able to make stuff up.

Part of the problem, although he hadn’t quite appreciated this at the time, was that James had gone to what was probably the worst school in the country. A school that had given him no educational gifts or valuable professional contacts, like Adam’s had, but no life skills either. If it had been one of those mad inner-city comprehensives attended exclusively by the children of the criminal classes and recently arrived immigrants, then he might have got something genuinely useful out of it: a bit of hard-won character, some street-wise toughness. But no – he had gone to school in the semi-urban dreary pleasantness of Leicester, and it had been, of all things, a grammar school. And the problem with grammar schools was that they were full of grammar schoolboys – nerdy little shits desperate to study Computer Science at university and with no greater ambition than to earn more money than their parents and to have children who would grow up to earn more than them.

‘Do you want a drink?’ said Rachel. ‘I’m going for one with Lionel and Neil.’

James looked up. It was now five o’clock, and the office was emptying.

‘I might join you in a bit,’ said James.

But still he worked. He read the draft supplementary planning guidance on retail development, underlining in thick pink marker the sections that were significant, or else making undulating lines in the margins, where something was unclear. What were other people’s jobs like? Adam would be at his desk, his head down, doing much the same as him, but more lucratively. Alice’s job was indistinguishable from socialising and at the moment she was probably drinking Prosecco and having a well-informed discussion with an attractive male who was in a position to further her career. And what was Felix Selwood doing right now? Giving a presentation without the use of PowerPoint, confidently pitching something to clients, preparing some dastardly marketing campaign? For some reason, James would like to know about him more than anyone. He had been very good to him that night in the restaurant and, what’s more, he hadn’t actually needed to be. It wasn’t what you’d expect from an advertising executive.

James’s knowledge of such things was limited: he had only had two jobs and unlike many of his contemporaries, he hadn’t thought long and hard over his choice of career. He hadn’t deliberated over a dazzling set of adventures and rewards, in which one weighs up the respective merits of a high salary against stock options, wielding power and influence against international travel. But nor had he blundered into it. Local government was, he knew, a refuge for many, but he at least hadn’t ended up there because the professions were too daunting and business too disgusting. No, this was it – and he wasn’t under any illusion, as so many others were, that it was merely transitory. There was no Plan B. He didn’t play in a rock band on Friday nights and he wasn’t studying part-time for a qualification in art conservation. He wasn’t even, for some reason, saving any money.