The Planner(82)

‘Well, you look very good,’ said Felix. ‘Harriet is looking good too. I like her brown. I just hope she doesn’t do anything that damages your brand capital.’

‘Not at all, she’ll thrive here.’

It was a Thursday night, the greatest night of the week. Friday nights were for out-of-towners and weekends in London were an intractable problem, but Thursday nights were for everyone that mattered. And how would he deal with tomorrow morning after all these cocktails? Well, if the worse came to the worse, he would simply call in sick again. And what could Lionel do about it? It wasn’t as if he was going to bump into Ian Benson and Alex Coleman here.

Felix came over and introduced him to someone, who in turn introduced him to an artist called Derek. Again, it was nothing to worry about. He was short, had a northern accent and thankfully didn’t want to talk about art. In fact, as Felix had told him, only bankers did that. All that artists ever talked about was money. Derek was sufficiently naive about how government worked to think that James might be able to help him in some way and was interested in all the different kinds of money which required filling in application forms: Arts Council grants, residency awards, bursaries, British Council travel funds. It was exactly the type of money that James was comfortable with, and he was soon giving advice. Making it up as he went along, just like they did in the private sector, he made the ingenious suggestion that artists could qualify for local authority key-worker status, and that he could get subsidised accommodation in new developments. Derek, who was currently living with his sister in Croydon, was deeply impressed.

Having built up his confidence with this quick win, it was time to move on to the next room. This one had even more going for it. It was a large bright room, full of horrible paintings and beautiful women. But, encouragingly, it was striking how unattractive the men were. A lot of them looked like they had studied Computer Science at university. They had thick-framed glasses, dry skin and unstrategic hair. They looked physically weak, shallow-chested, short-legged and incapable of protecting the people they cared for. It wasn’t that James was just missing the point. He probably was, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, at a fundamental level, he was the best-looking man in the room. He was, in fact, good-looking. It was a new and important insight, and worth pausing to think about. People had, from time to time, told him so, but for some reason he had never believed it until now.

‘Hello, what’s your name? We’ve met before haven’t we?’

A woman had come suddenly into his line of vision, and was now standing directly in front of a painting of a bunsen burner, which he had, in any case, been struggling to make sense of.

‘Yes, I think we have. I’m called James. Your name is Felicity, you work as a newspaper columnist and we met at a book launch a couple of months ago.’

‘Oh, very well done! Yes, I remember. You were with Felix. Is he here tonight?’

‘So you cover art as well as books?’

‘Of course! I’ll be found wherever the beautiful people are.’

There was, James could tell, plenty of irony in what she had just said, but still probably not enough. For Felicity herself was anything but beautiful. It was yet another sign of the progress he had made that he had no doubts about that. He was getting more confident making ethical and aesthetic judgements – they were, he was starting to realise, very often the same thing. Things he hadn’t noticed about Felicity when they had met before were clear now – her slanted face, the small gloating eyes. And her deep voice, which he had once been so impressed with, was clearly just the consequence of too many high-tar cigarettes.

‘Well, maybe you can write something about me,’ said James. ‘I’m sure your readers would enjoy hearing about the glamour of local government.’

‘Hmm, I’d have to work in an angle somehow. Maybe if you did something scandalous. Readers aren’t really interested in public-sector types unless they do something wrong.’

There was a tap on his shoulder and James looked round to see Harriet beaming at him. She had brought someone with her: a sinister old man, as tall as James, and therefore eerily tall, with milk-white skin and slow-moving features. He wore dark glasses and a black leather hat with a wide brim.

‘This is Jacob. He says that he’s the most important person here,’ said Harriet. ‘And the way to tell that is because no one knows who he really is. You can’t even google him!’

‘Good to meet you,’ said James, reaching out his hand. ‘Are you an artist?’

Jacob smiled. A comic book, twisted smile, and extended a long hand with curved fingernails. He was almost certainly the oldest person there – his skin was pulled back tightly and his skull was starting to show through his face. It was possible that he had been in the Nazi Party.