The Lubetkin Legacy (12 page)

Next day, Violet telephones Laura for a post-mortem of her faux-fab date.

Laura laughs. ‘Ha ha! I warned you! Let me guess – French restaurant, French accent, father an art dealer in Paris …'

‘How did you know?'

‘He's already tried that on with half the women at GRM. Actually, he's just a jumped-up real-estate salesman from Quebec. Don't beat yourself up over it, Violet. Once you get to know him, he's good to work for. He's fun, he knows his stuff, and it's a growing field – wealth preservation.'

‘I can't ever go back there.'

‘Don't be an idiot, Violet. Don't give up your job just because of a grope. It's a rite of passage that all the women at GRM go through.'

‘You …?'

‘Mm-hm. I was already married, so I didn't go on the restaurant date. But sure, there was a quick fumble in the lift. He doesn't mind the occasional slap, you know.' Laura chuckles. ‘In fact he'll respect you for it.'

They agree to meet for lunch in town next week at a baby-friendly venue, and buoyed by Laura's encouragement, she gets ready to go into work. The lilac outfit, to show courage. The high heels to make her feel tall inside. Now, sitting on the top deck of the bus, she suddenly gets cold feet. Though she knows now that Marc is just a jerk, and she was naive to fall for his patter, strangely that doesn't seem to cancel out the effect of the chin dimple and twinkling smile. Laura is right to
laugh. She was an idiot. How will she ever be able to face him again?

By the time the bus has passed through two stops, she's decided to leave, to find something different. But how will she explain to her parents and friends, who were so supportive of her brilliant City career, that her dream job is no longer a dream?

‘Next stop Town Hall.'

The recorded announcement on the bus startles her out of her reverie. She looks out of the window. They have stopped beside an imposing grey building with stone steps at the front. On impulse she jumps up and races down the stairs.

It appears that the Planning Department offices are not in this Town Hall at all, which is now an arts centre, but in another building miles away. She catches another bus back and pings the bell at reception.

A young planning officer ambles out in his shirtsleeves. He looks her up and down and says very politely, ‘I can show you the plans, miss. Come this way.'

He leads her to a long echoing room with a huge square table where plans are spread out under a blinking fluorescent light. There is a smell of polish and dust.

‘It's this parcel of land here, in front of the council estate,' he points. The lines, hatches and numbers seem incomprehensible at first, but the young man is doing his best to be helpful.

‘In front of Madeley Court?'

‘That's it, miss.'

‘Isn't it a bit close?'

‘It's within planning guidelines.'

He seems incredibly young for the job he's doing, more like a sixth-former than a real planner, with rosy cheeks, a fluff of downy hair on his upper lip that is struggling to be a
moustache, and a pair of heavy black-rimmed spectacles, as though he wants to make himself look older. It is a known fact that people who wear spectacles are usually brainy, but this does not seem to apply in his case.

‘But there are lovely cherry trees growing there.'

He glances down at her high heels and his tone becomes more respectful.

‘Public open space is expensive to maintain, miss. We've had to make cuts in our environmental budget. But we're demanding additional planting as part of the scheme, which the developer will be responsible for maintaining.'

‘So you've already agreed it?'

‘Hm.' He looks shifty. ‘There have been preliminary discussions with the parties involved. It's still got to go before the Council.'

‘But what do
you
think about it, Mr …' She peers forward to read his name badge, ‘… Mr Rowland.'

‘It's not up to me, miss. I just follow the guidelines.' He looks surreptitiously at her shoes again.

‘But you must have your own opinion. Isn't that what you've been trained for? Does it seem reasonable, to build a new block of flats on the garden of an existing one? Or are they pushing their luck a teensy bit, do you think?'

‘Well, there is a severe shortage of building land in the borough,' he ventures, trying to keep the words tucked in under his little moustache. ‘We're facing a housing crisis. The Council urgently needs the money, and we need to build more one-bedroom flats for tenants displaced by the removal of the spare-bedroom subsidy.'

Despite his schoolboy looks he's already learning to put on that weary middle-aged air of officialdom. Maybe it goes with the job, she thinks, and wonders whether the Nairobi town planners are like that too.

‘You mean there's a subsidy for spare bedrooms?' This is good news, as she has two. Maybe there will be an extra subsidy for the six unslept-in beds.

He soon puts her right. ‘It's really just clawing back of housing benefit if people are living in a property deemed to be too big for their needs. We don't at present have enough one-bedroom flats and studios to rehouse them into, so if they can't afford the extra rent, they may end up homeless.'

‘Homeless?' That doesn't sound good. ‘But these new flats they're planning to build are two-bedroom flats. And they're not aimed at people on housing benefit, are they? With en suites and wrap-around balconies and all that?'

‘The rents are classed as affordable. That means up to eighty per cent of the market rent.' The flickering light bounces off his spectacles, so she can't read the expression in his eyes. ‘It's not me that makes the policies, miss.'

He must be just out of school, she guesses. If any official is profiting from this development, as might be the case in the Nairobi shopping mall project, it probably isn't Mr Rowland.

Suddenly he blurts out, ‘And the cherry grove is just the start of it. They've got their eyes on the whole estate. They'll let it go downhill until it can't be repaired any more, then sell it off for redevelopment. A shame, really, because it's one of the Lubetkin originals.'

‘Lubetkin – what's that?'

‘He was the people's architect. One of the great architects of the post-war consensus. We learned about him in college. Those guys weren't just into building flats, they were building a whole new society. You've heard of Le Corbusier?'

‘Isn't that a kind of French liqueur?'

‘M-m.' He shook his head. ‘He was a French architect who believed in simple functional design. He inspired a whole generation of architects, including Lubetkin.'

‘I don't know much about modern architecture. But I've been to the Lloyd's Building.'

‘Quite special, isn't it? If you ask me, it's totally insane what they're doing here. But don't quote me on that.'

‘Thank you. That's very helpful,' she says.

‘In fact the whole housing scene's insane,' he rattles on, as if buoyed by his small act of rebellion. ‘Everything is high-end, high-spec Buy to Let for overseas investors. I can't buy a flat in the borough on my salary. I've been engaged for eighteen months but I can't afford to get married, let alone start a family. I'm still living in Walthamstow with my parents.'

‘That's awful!' She sighs, though in her opinion he looks far too young for marriage.

‘You need to get your letter of objection to us by the end of the month. Quote the number of the planning application. And if more people write in, it'll carry more weight.'

He speaks very quickly and quietly, looking around to make sure no one is listening in. Then he points out the planning number and she writes it down on the back of her bus ticket.

It is 10.15 a.m. now, too late for work. She catches the bus home and phones in sick to GRM, claiming a painful wisdom-tooth treatment which she hopes will make Marc feel guilty.

Knowing something is wrong is easy, but knowing what to do about it – that's the hard bit. She'd never thought the flats were anything special, but now she tries to picture the tall narrow building whose plans she's just seen filling the front garden. Fourteen storeys would completely block out the view and the sun, even from the top floor of Madeley Court. And unfortunately the cherry trees would have to go. No spare-tree subsidies are on offer.

She phones Jessie, who is a bit of a green freak.

‘You can't let them get away with it, Vi.'

‘I know. But what can I do?'

‘Listen to the voice of the trees and you'll think of something.'

That's so typical of Jessie. She listens, but apart from a bit of rustling, the trees aren't saying anything at all.

The only thing she can think of is to start knocking on the doors of the flats. But the response of the residents is discouraging. No one has read the planning notices; some people reassure her that the notices are not about building flats at all, they are about a lost cat, a notorious pisser called Wonder Boy, hopefully run away or run over. Some people agree to sign a petition if one is drawn up, but nobody feels inspired to write a letter of protest.

Madeley Court seems to be home to many newcomers like herself, in transit from somewhere to somewhere else. ‘Thank you, but we're not staying long,' they say. ‘It doesn't affect us.'
There are several groups of young people – students, maybe – who open the door and tell her politely, ‘This flat is private. It's nothing to do with the Council.'

She is amazed by the variety of people who live here. Behind each door, it seems there's someone from a different continent. Two Chinese girls stand at the door and giggle uncontrollably as she talks. An old man with an Eastern European accent and broken spectacles held together with parcel tape invites her to come inside and see his tractor gearbox. A small wiry woman, evidently an artist, comes to the door covered in paint, a dab of mauve on her nose. There are people from Europe, Latin America, India, Pakistan, China, and some she has no idea where they come from. She's pleased to find several households from Africa; a young musician from Malawi, a couple of sad-eyed refugees from Eritrea, a large jolly Zambian family who invite her in for cassava pancakes, though there is no one, as far as she can tell, from Kenya.

There's a range of ages too. The grumbly older people are mostly white; the young families teeming with toddlers are from a mix of ethnicities. Some old people come to the door timorously, open it on the safety chain, look at her fearfully and back away as if they think she's going to mug them. How pathetic. Some have problems of their own they want to grouse about – repairs that need doing, complaints about their neighbours.

What do all these people have in common to bind them together? Yes, it's a bit different to Bakewell around here. In fact it reminds her more of Nairobi – dynamic and precarious, as if it could all fall apart at any minute. A gloomy mood settles over her as she realises that nobody seems to care much about a patch of grass and a few cherry trees.

How to sum up a person's full life in a ten-minute speech – especially somebody as complicated and contradictory as Mother? I had still not finished writing my funeral oration on the morning of the funeral. A gloomy mood settled over me as I tried to take up where I had left off two days ago. The Immortal Bard, usually good for a quotation or two, had abandoned me. I put my pen down and turned my melancholy gaze out of the window at the cherry grove. A quick movement down below caught my eye. It was the next-door goddess flitting between the trees like a lovely bright-plumed bird. Alas, our amorous encounter would just have to wait until after the funeral. However, a closer glimpse would surely be inspiring. I gathered up my notes and scuttled off to Luigi's.

I was out of luck. By the time I got downstairs, it was spotting with rain and she had vanished. The coffee seemed worse than usual too, and Luigi had swapped the
Guardian
for the
Daily Mail
. I'd have to talk with him about that, but not today. I sipped the sub-standard latte and concentrated on fitting my random notes into a fine uplifting narrative of Mother's life, using omission and invention as necessary. The Lily that emerged on the page was a finer and more laudable person than Mother, but she also seemed bland, slightly dead. That's what death does for you, I guess.

When I got back to the flat an hour later, buzzing with caffeine, Inna was hoovering noisily, and Flossie was having another outbreak of atheism, so I hardly heard the sound of
the doorbell above the racket. Then it rang again.
Ding dong!
Who could it be?

My first thought was that it must be Mrs Penny, dropping in for a snap inspection. It was no good pretending we were out because the sound of the Hoover was clearly audible. Would Inna remember to play her part? Would she remember not to let slip that we were this very afternoon due to go to Finsbury Park to celebrate the funeral of the woman whom she was impersonating?
Ding dong!
It rang again. I braced myself and answered the door.

‘I'm sorry to bother you …'

There she stood; not Mrs Penny but the next-door goddess. Though close up she looked much younger than I had imagined, too young for a goddess, more like an angel, a trainee angel maybe: radiant, beautiful, her hair pulled back in a frisky ponytail, her teeth gleaming and her cheeks dimpling as she smiled – at me!

‘I know. I know. You're having a dinner party. You've run out of coffee!' I blurted.

She looked at me strangely and recited her introduction. ‘I'm sorry to bother you. My name's Violet. I live next door. I'm just …'

Violet. A shy wayside flower with a heavenly perfume.

‘Violet. Ah! Do come in. I have a jar waiting for you. All things are ready, if our minds be so.'

I disappeared into the kitchen and rummaged in the cupboards. Where had I put it? It should be on the shelf with the tea. Then I spotted it on the counter beside the kettle. It was almost empty. Bloody Inna must have been helping herself. Damn her! There was hardly any left. I returned to the hallway with the near-empty jar. Inna was there – she'd turned off the Hoover and was introducing herself.

‘Hello, Blackie. I am Inna Alfandari. I am mother, or mebbe I am sister of mother. Berthold? I am mother or sister?'

‘Inna, have you been drinking the coffee?' I cut her short.

‘Of course I drink him. You buy him for drinking, no?'

‘Yes. No. I mean, there's hardly any left.' I smiled apologetically at my lovely neighbour. ‘But you're very welcome …'

She furrowed her delectable brow. ‘I'm just trying to inform the residents about the planning application.'

‘… to what little I have. Planning?'

‘Yes. The notices are on the lamp posts. Or they were, until the kids ripped them off.'

‘Notices? Yes, they're for Wonder Boy, the lost cat. Don't grieve. I'm sure he has found another home.' I had to stop myself from saying, ‘Don't grieve, my lovely.'

‘No, not those. These were for a planning application to build a block of flats on the garden. Where the cherry trees are.'

I gazed at her lovely features, the earnest pleading in her eyes. Maybe she was a touch crazed. Like Ophelia. It would add poignancy to my passion. ‘O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There's a Violet. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.'

Withered. Died. That last line brought me to my senses with a shock. My mother. I glanced at the clock. Less than an hour to go until the woodland burial, and I still had no idea where it would take place.
Green Glade
. Jimmy had sent a map, with artistically hand-drawn clumps of trees, a wild-flower meadow and meandering footpaths, but no actual street names.

‘I'm sorry. I'm afraid we're in a bit of a hurry just now. Got to get to a funeral. Maybe we could continue our discussion another time. Planning. Yes, very interesting. A lot of it around.'

I thrust the near-empty jar of coffee into her hands, ‘Your guests I hope will like it,' and ushered her towards the door, my hand resting lightly on her shoulder.