The Planner(85)

‘Gosh, that sounds very impressive. I should get someone at the paper to do something about it.’

‘I actually have a press officer working for me – a young man called Alex. But yes, of course, I’d be very happy to talk to someone about it.’

James took a long and deep drink. He was sure he was saying brilliant things, but it was possible that he was saying them too quickly. A waitress walked past, and he swapped his cocktail for another – a blue one this time, which looked as if it might be more soothing.

‘Are you okay?’ said Alice. ‘You look a bit rattled.’

‘No, I’m fine,’ said James. ‘Just a lot going on at the moment, you know how it is.’

One of the very few people who had actually been looking at the art walked over to join them.

‘Now, James,’ said Alice. ‘I’d like you to meet the significant other in my life. This is Sam. I’ve got to go and talk to someone for work, but I think you’ll get on well together – both of you are dedicated public servants.’

James looked at him with wild interest. He wasn’t just shorter than James, that was to be expected, he was short, with a neat, compact body. And while he would acknowledge that Sam looked healthy, he could see there was no great strength there – it was more a case of not eating red meat and playing badminton once a week. He was wearing a charcoal-grey suit that was no more expensive than James’s, and he had a round face and round glasses.

‘Oh, right, and what do you do?’ said James. ‘Are you in Whitehall?’

‘No, at the moment I’m working at Camden Council, in social services.’

‘Oh, so you don’t work in the media?’

‘God – no fear,’ said Sam. ‘The media? No, that’s Alice’s thing. I wouldn’t go near it.’

James, the listener, wasn’t really listening. He was finding it difficult to concentrate. He raised the blue cocktail to his mouth and fished out an ice cube. He was overheating, and he needed something to help cool down. Alice was right – he felt fucking rattled.

‘So, you’re not a lawyer, or a doctor?’

‘No, but I do work with a lot of them.’

‘Are you a psychotherapist?’

‘No, though I often work with them as well. Like I said, I work in social services.’

‘So you’re a social worker?’

‘Well, not technically. I’m actually training to be one. I’m studying part-time, but yes – that’s the plan. At the moment, I’m more involved on the management and policy side of things, but I’d like to be more frontline.’

James looked at him in wonder. A perfectly objective judgement of Sam, accounting for all possible traces of rivalry and envy, was that he wasn’t good-looking. He was probably clever and good at his job, driven by strong moral purpose and a humane worldview. But he wasn’t good-looking.

‘Alice said that you worked in town planning?’ said Sam. ‘That’s really interesting. I’ve just started working with some planners myself on a new integrated health scheme. It’s fascinating to see the approach they bring.’

It occurred to James that he was behaving oddly, but so long as he was aware of this, it couldn’t be that serious. It was only if he didn’t know when he was being strange and aggressive that he ought to worry – in which case, of course, he wouldn’t anyway. Carl had been right that evening when they had gone clubbing – cocaine made you clever, which meant that this stuff must make you really clever.

‘So, are you Jewish then?’ said James. ‘Is that what’s going on?’

‘Uh, no,’ said Sam. ‘No, I’m not. I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.’

Sam was looking at him in a way that James didn’t especially like, but there didn’t seem much he could do about it. He didn’t seem cross – he had patient eyes and a social worker’s concern for another’s well-being. Sam didn’t even need to be Jewish – he was just the most grown-up person there, and James knew that the one thing that all women want in a man, the single most essential and attractive quality, is for him to be a grown-up.

‘Well, good to meet you – was interesting to talk. I ought to go and see where Alice is.’

James wasn’t sure if he had vanquished an enemy or suffered some kind of obscure but damaging defeat. It was something to be thought through later. In the meantime, he felt a great need to move on quickly – not to retreat or run away, but to be somewhere else.

He went into the third and final room. It was much smaller and quieter. This was a good thing because he needed to be on his own for a bit. He was, he was reasonably certain now, feeling unwell. Surely this couldn’t be cocaine? Either that or Marcus’s stuff hadn’t really been cocaine at all. Or perhaps it was just a question of how much money you spent on it. In which case, it served him right – he should have learnt by now that anything given to him for nothing was bound to be extremely expensive. The truth was, he didn’t really know anything about recreational drugs. Nor did he know anything about the contemporary art sector, literary fiction or professional football. He didn’t really know enough about anything – except for Southwark Council’s social-housing policies. He thought he had for a while, but now he knew otherwise. That was the problem with cocaine – it made you clever, clever enough to realise that you weren’t very clever at all.