The Planner(90)

‘The problem is,’ said Lionel, at last. ‘I don’t even want to save you.’

‘Lionel, I’m really sorry.’

‘Are you aware of how much trouble you’ve caused me?’

‘I know, I know. I’m so very sorry.’

‘I’m not even talking about your antics last night.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been speaking with developers, haven’t you?’

‘No. Well – yes, you know we all deal with them. It’s part of the job sometimes.’

‘You’ve been speaking to Simon Galbraith.’

His body had been empty, but now James could feel it softly filling up again with something. He wasn’t sure what. It felt like cold morphine, the opposite of adrenalin, something that made him congested and slow-moving.

‘Yes, I met him at a football match not long ago.’

‘You just met him once?’

‘Well, once or twice. I met him another time as well.’

Thinking on your feet, making stuff up, lying – it was something that people in the private sector were so much better at. James’s body had gone cold, but his head was hot – prickly, as if exposed to a great heat – and he didn’t know what to do with his eyes. Lionel, on the other hand, had rarely looked calmer.

‘How do you know I met Simon? Have you been speaking to him?’

‘Oh, I know Simon Galbraith. I’ve known him for years. I know him so well that he gave me a friendly call two days ago to tell me what a nice, ambitious young man you are, how helpful you’ve been, but that he was a bit concerned with how open you were about various matters – so much so, that he was wondering if he ought to mention it to a senior council member whom he happens to know.’

‘But why did he do that? I don’t understand,’ said James, although it was all too clear what had happened. He’d been fucked over – by the richest and most charming man he had ever met.

‘Because he’s a developer. He’s a bastard. And he wants very much to do things in this borough, which means that he wants to stay friendly with me. Unless you could have been more valuable to him than my goodwill, then you were fucked.’

‘I didn’t really tell him anything he didn’t know already. Honestly I didn’t.’

Lionel decided not to say anything for a while. He looked around the room airily – another gimmick, just like his melodramatic pauses. Was it possible that he was enjoying this? Lionel, so ineffective in all those meetings, was good at something after all. He was good at sacking people.

‘You know, he’s always asking me to go to the football with him. Either that or it’s Wimbledon or the theatre or something. That’s how these people work. Once you owe them something, you’re in trouble. Once you enjoyed his hospitality and wanted to please him he had you. And, do you know what’s really bloody annoying? Because of you, now I do owe him something.’

‘So is that really why I’m going? I’ve worked here for nearly four years, and I’m going to have to leave for saying some things to a developer who I barely know?’

‘No, not really. You were probably fucked anyway. Your nonsense last night saw to that. You’ve lost your job. What I’m telling you now is that you’ve screwed your career as well. You won’t get a reference from me. You could have been a good planner. But I think you’re going to have to do something else now.’

It had never been difficult to pity Lionel – he was, after all, pitiful. And if he could pity him then James had thought that, when the time came, he could destroy him, he could replace him. Not for what he’d done, but for what he was – for what he was like, for his non-aerodynamic personality, corduroy hair, brown shoes and 1970s accent. He was called Lionel, and he wasn’t even Jewish. But it wasn’t going to work out that way after all. It was Lionel who was going to destroy him.

‘You better clear your desk,’ said Lionel. ‘We can sort everything else out later, but I think you better just go now. You’ll get your three months. Someone from HR will be in touch with you.’

That was it. His last ever meeting at Southwark Council was over and, for once, it hadn’t overrun. James got up to go. Lionel had already turned away, and was pretending to do something on his computer.

Rachel was waiting in the corridor. He looked at her with trepidation and a sudden gust of hope. Would she save him somehow? Was that still possible? No, of course not – and it wasn’t just that Rachel couldn’t help him, she wouldn’t. He could see that. And maybe she was right not to. She was looking at him curiously but not tenderly, her arms folded and with an authoritarian plumpness around her mouth.