The Planner(93)

‘Look, you’ll get over this. I guarantee it. You’ll be able to walk back into the Red Lion for a drink and laugh about this in a couple of months. And you’ll be earning so much money with your new job that you’ll be buying the drinks.’

‘I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. I don’t want to talk about it, but I don’t think Lionel and me are going to meet again anytime soon.’

‘Lionel will be okay. He’s upset more than cross. I’ll talk to him about your reference when he’s calmed down. You know, believe it or not, I think he had it in his head that you were after his job. That’s the kind of thing that sends him over the edge.’

‘And what about you?’ said James.

‘Me?’

‘Will I see you again soon?’

They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment and James offered up a smile. But it was much too late now. There had been too many mistakes and bad decisions, too many things that had either been done badly, or else not at all. Rachel looked away, back towards the street.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Rachel. ‘There’s no reason why we can’t be friends.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘I’ll call and we can go for a coffee or something. I’ll still need someone to rant to about this place.’

Rachel flicked her cigarette stub on to the pavement, and turned to go back inside. She gave him a hearty, non-metropolitan shake of the shoulders. It was almost an embrace, full of warmth and strength, but it was no more loving than the one he had got from Angus at the football match.

‘Well, you know how it is. I’ve got a housing meeting to go to. That new guy from the community team is going to be there. Honestly, you’re the lucky one.’

‘Oh God, yes – him. Useless. Hope it goes okay.’

‘It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. I’ll give you a call in a couple of weeks.’

‘Yes. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

The world is urbanising. James had been taught that at school when still quite young, and he’d never forgotten it. Cities were terrible, everyone knew that – they spread diseases and made people ill, they brought people too close together, so that they did harmful things to one another and to themselves. But still they came. All round the world, people were coming. They were coming to Sao Paolo, they were coming to Lagos and to Shanghai, and they were still coming to London. Most of the world was emptying, but the parts that mattered were filling up. The human race was agglomerating for the next, maybe the final, stage of the drama. And against all this, against the masses with all their problems and unreasonable demands, their malice and squalid hopes, there stood nothing other than the planners – the regulators and the lawmakers. The best intentioned, but not the bravest, with the wisdom to know that something had to be done, but not the means or the strength to do very much about it. There weren’t very many of them, there was no way nearly enough, and now there would be one fewer.

James walked down the road with his plastic bag of possessions, which was awkward to hold in his hand, but too light to hoist over his shoulder. He was heading north, towards the river, but he had little idea what he would do when he got there. He looked up. It was an unusually bright spring morning and the sky, at least, looked exactly like it did in his masterplan poster.