The Marx Sisters (15 page)

‘When I got back to the office and saw again the drawings I’d made, I began to feel very uneasy. The existing buildings might be inconvenient, impossible to modernize, an underdevelopment of a prime site. But to replace them with acres of dead standard office floors seemed somehow obscene. Talk about monoculture! After a couple of hours in the real Jerusalem Lane, the idea of trying to breathe life into those dead drawings seemed just hopeless.’

Out of the corner of his eye Jones saw Brock glance at his watch.

‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I called in at the Lane a couple of times over the next week or so, trying to figure out what to do, and one of those times I found myself outside the second-hand bookshop up at the top end of the Lane. It would have been the seventeenth of July, because I remember it was the first anniversary of my divorce. It’s funny, isn’t it, that I can remember that date when I could never remember our wedding anniversary. Anyway, I thought I might find an architectural book as an anniversary present to myself. I didn’t have much success. The place was a jumble, and even the bloke who owned it—Kowalski was his name, a Pole—didn’t seem to have much idea of what he had, or where it was. I worked my way back through the rooms of the shop, all piled with books in shelves and boxes, the way you do in old bookshops—you know, imagining you’re going to turn up an old Wendingen edition of Wright or something—until I came to the back room.
There was a whole stack of old music scores in there, I remember, and books were heaped anyhow on the floor, and above them there were a few framed prints. One of them caught my eye. It was the frame I noticed first, quite an ornate thing. It contained what at first I thought must be an abstract drawing, a bit like a Paul Klee perhaps, made up of a grid of lines scribbled in black ink on dirty white paper.

‘Mr Kowalski took it down from its nail on the wall and brought it through to the window at the front of the shop, to let me see it more clearly in the light. He used his handkerchief to wipe the glass on the front, I remember, and I saw that the scribbled lines were in fact lines of writing, done in a hurry with an old-fashioned steel pen, with spots and splashes of ink in places. Kowalski pointed to a date in the top corner, which we were able to decipher as “30 April 1867”. The word beside it might have been “Hanover”, but the script was so untidy and illegible that it was impossible to make anything else out. Kowalski explained that it was a letter, written in a way that was sometimes done in those days, to economize on paper. Its author had written first in one direction in the normal way, and then turned the page through ninety degrees to cover the sheet with a second layer of writing, which, if the script itself had been more intelligible, would have been quite readable against the first.

‘I was rather taken with it. I liked the strong abstract grid pattern and also the puzzle of a text that might be decoded. I bought it from Mr Kowalski for a tenner, which I thought was probably a lot less than the frame would have been worth on its own.

‘That evening I sat down with a magnifying glass and tried to decipher the letter. Some phrases were legible and it seemed that the writer was suffering from “carbuncles”.’ Jones grinned. ‘I rather liked that. A couple of names were clear as well. There was a “Dear Fred” at the beginning, and a “Gumpert”, who seemed to be advising the writer to take
arsenic for the carbuncles. There didn’t seem to be a signature, so I guessed the letter continued on the other side. I opened the back of the frame, and found I was right. I suppose I’d been hoping it might have come from someone famous, and I was a bit disappointed to find it signed by someone called “Mohr”. I still couldn’t make much sense of what the letter said, anyway, because at least half of it was in German.

‘I gave up, but the next day I phoned a friend who works for Lufthansa and speaks German. I faxed the two sides of the letter through to her, and she worked on it over her lunch hour. In the afternoon she faxed back her reply.’ He looked round. ‘We should have a copy here, actually. Since we started to do so much work through the fax machine, Sophie automatically keeps a copy of all incoming and outgoing faxes in a central file. I’m terrified about site instructions and sketch details and so on flying around unrecorded and going astray. I should be able to lay my hands on the translation if you can just hang on.’

‘Mr Jones,’ Brock broke in, sounding somewhat weary, ‘is this all absolutely relevant, this letter? I think you lost me somewhere back there.’

‘I’m sorry’—Jones took a deep breath—‘but yes, to be perfectly honest, it is relevant. Shall I fetch us some more coffee while I’m up?’

When he left the room, Brock muttered, ‘I always worry about people who keep saying “to be perfectly honest” and “to tell the truth”. It sounds like the verbal equivalent of crossing your fingers when you tell a lie.’

‘Do you think he’s lying?’ Kathy asked. But Brock only grunted and got to his feet, stretching his back stiffly.

Hanover, 30 April 1867

D
EAR
F
RED
,

Your letter arrived this morning and greatly cheered me after another wretched night suffering from a sudden outburst of carbuncles in places that make it intolerable to sit for more than a few minutes at a time. How I shall survive the journey back to London in a week or two with those swine eating into my behind I cannot conceive. I am quite resolved to take Gumpert’s advice and resume taking arsenic, although it makes me stupid. At least the book is off my hands at last and I need not keep a clear head for that any longer. How great a weight lifted from my shoulders! Tonight I shall take your advice and get mercilessly drunk.

Meissner proves to be a quite excellent fellow, despite his dreadful Saxon accent. Printing has already started, and he talks enthusiastically about Volume 2. I discussed our plans for four volumes, contrary to his preference for three which I mentioned in my last letter. He is now quite converted and proclaims the highest expectations for the final volume, which will, he says, assure our immortality and make all our fortunes! I would be quite content with a more modest reward, at least enough to put off those ‘gentlemen’ who ‘urgently’ await my return to London. If only they would take my carbuncles instead, and leave me
in peace to work. I have no more paper to write. Best compliments to Mrs Burns!

Yours,
M
OHR

While Brock and Kathy read the fax, Bob Jones was on his knees in front of a cupboard in a corner of the room.

‘Er . . . there’s a bottle of Scotch in here,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long day. Do you fancy a snifter with your coffee?’

Brock stirred. ‘Sergeant Kolla here is on duty, so she’d better not. But I’m more or less an observer, so I’ll join you, Bob.’

‘Good,’ Jones said, ‘fine,’ and glanced at Kathy who kept her head down over the letter, but raised her eyebrows just a fraction. He brought over the glasses.

‘I was sitting here, that evening, reading the fax again. I thought it was a hoot, but it meant nothing to me. Then I thought of Judith. She was the only historian I knew. We had been students together at university, and I hadn’t seen her for fifteen years, but I seemed to remember that her thing was nineteenth-century economic history. I had no idea where she was, but I had the home phone numbers of a couple of other people who were in our group at university, and eventually I managed to track her down to Princeton and get her phone number.

‘That had also been a long day, I remember, and by then it was well on into the evening. I’d had nothing to eat, and one or two of these’—he lifted his glass—‘and I suddenly thought how nice it would be to talk to her again after all this time. So I rang the number. It was her departmental office, and they said she’d gone home for the day. They wouldn’t give me her home phone number, but I did get her office fax number, so before I left that night I sent her the translation, with a covering note asking if she could throw
any light on it, and some other stuff which is probably best forgotten, to be perfectly frank.’

Jones noticed Kathy’s smile and he shrugged ruefully.

‘After a couple of days, when I didn’t get a reply from her, I reckoned she wasn’t interested, and I forgot all about it. I had plenty of other things to think about, to tell the truth, Jerusalem Lane among them.

‘The second design review meeting for the project was held a few days later. I’d pinned up the more developed versions of the drawings of Options One, Two and Three on those walls there, and on this wall here I had some other stuff pinned up, but covered with blank sheets so they couldn’t see what they were. After Herbert had made a few remarks about the vital issues, like his fee and whether Slade would have lunch with him, I talked about the three schemes on the wall. Then I suggested that these were perhaps reasonable enough, but I’d come to believe that maybe there was another alternative which might present greater opportunities. Slade pricked up his ears and asked what I meant, and I came over to this wall and ripped off the blank sheets, revealing Option Four.

‘It certainly had an impact. Both Slade and Gilroy looked stunned. They recognized the plan form of Jerusalem Lane immediately of course. I started to explain that this option set out to take advantage of the asset already presented by the existing Jerusalem Lane. Slade cut in immediately, his voice very quiet. “What do you know about Jerusalem Lane, Bob?” he said. It was hard to see exactly how his expression had changed. His mouth, his eyebrows, they had shifted position by no more than a millimetre, but somehow it was the biggest millimetre you’d ever seen. Herbert saw it, though I don’t think he really followed what was happening.

‘I told Slade that I’d spotted the synagogue one day, realized it was close to a tube station, and put two and two together, but I don’t think he believed me for a minute. I
assured him I hadn’t mentioned the location to anyone else, and tried to steer their attention back to the design. My idea was to keep a fair amount of the existing buildings as a sort of human-scale crust around the new stuff which would fill the rear courtyards with modern atrium-type office space. I suggested that the present diversity of building forms and uses and rental levels in the crust could be seen as an asset, enriching the overall development. I was trying to present the thing in positive development terms, you see, rather than negative conservation ones. I spoke about the historical origins of the Lane, and how these could become a selling-point, and I got quite lyrical about the benefits of having the present occupants and the new tenants coexist within a new, revitalized Jerusalem Lane.’

Kathy had put down her notebook, captured again by Jones’s enthusiasm as he talked about his ideas.

‘When I’d finished, Slade turned to the quantity surveyor who had come to the meeting, and asked him right off what he thought of Option Four. He was in an awkward spot, I suppose. He’d got the commission through us, but it was Slade who was paying his fees. He made a few general noises about imaginative lateral thinking, then pointed out that he’d had the drawings for less than twenty-four hours and hadn’t had time to do much more than measure the floor areas for the various parts of the scheme. He passed copies of a list of typed figures round the table, and Slade said immediately, “Less than half a million square feet?” I could see Herbert go pale. I explained that, yes, it was a less intensive development form, but then construction costs would be lower proportionately, and there would be more rent-yielding uses of other types. And I was sure that the planners would be much more sympathetic to that type of approach.

‘Slade then turned to Quentin Gilroy for his opinion. He didn’t need to be so tactful. The construction cost might come down, he said, but the land cost would stay the same,
so the rents would have to be higher for what he considered less attractive office space, with irregular shapes and awkward to let. And if my “crust” was going to wipe its face, there was no way the existing residents or businesses could afford the rents. “My God, have you seen some of those people, Derek?” he said. “Did you know there’s an old chap up on the top floor of number 4 who’s a signwriter for those lunatics who walk around with sandwich-boards saying the end of the world is nigh? That’s all he does. His place is full of these sandwich-boards announcing the end of the world! It’s unbelievable! I think our square foot rates might be a bit beyond his means.” And Slade chuckled tolerantly. “Haven’t seen that, Quentin,” he said. “Must have a look next time I’m down.”

‘I felt the way I can remember feeling as a little boy. You know, you’re happily going around pretending to be a rabbit or something, and suddenly some adult slams some great chunk of reality down on you, and you realize how little control you have on any of it. Do you know what I mean?’

Kathy nodded.

‘Slade thanked me for the “interesting diversion”, and we got back to Option Three. Later, after they had all gone, Herbert called me back into the conference room and closed the door. I could see he was absolutely furious. On the way out, he told me, speaking between clenched teeth, Slade had said that he hoped he wasn’t paying us to spend time working on designs that didn’t even meet half the brief. He said it jokingly, but he wasn’t joking. Then he said that a Canadian developer was coming in on the project, and they felt that North American consultants should be involved, in partnership with us. Slade hadn’t been sure at first, but now he was coming round to the view that it would be a healthy liaison. So now, Herbert fumed, they were going to bring in bloody Yank architects to do our job, because I’d been messing around, wasting time on tomfoolery—that was his word, a very Herbert word, actually.

‘My performance had been humiliating, apparently, and downright unprofessional. But it wasn’t just this project. He was beginning to feel that I was out of sympathy with the whole basic philosophy that they’d been building up at Basingstoke. He had to tell me that he was beginning to wonder if my presence in the partnership was doing either of us any good. He suggested that I give this some thought over the next few days, while someone else got to work on Option Three.