Part 8 (1/2)
His booming was drowned out by drilling coming through an open window on the second floor. Matthew Younger handed me the chart and then a wad of papers, then I showed him out.
”Could you have the word 'speculation' looked up?” I asked Naz as we were driven to a glazier's that afternoon.
”Of course.” He took his mobile out and tapped in a text message.
The reply came ten minutes later: ”The faculty of seeing,” Naz read; ”observation of the heavens, stars, etc.; contemplation or profound study of a subject; a conjectural consideration; the practice of buying and selling goods. From the Latin speculari: speculari: spy out, watch, and spy out, watch, and specula: specula: watch tower. First citation...” watch tower. First citation...”
”Watch tower,” I said; ”heavens: I like that. You could see the heavens better from a watch tower. But you'd be exposed.”
”Yes, I suppose you would,” Naz answered.
On the way back to my building from the glazier's we detoured via my flat. I was still sleeping there while waiting for my building to be ready, but I was hardly ever there: I'd leave early each morning and return late at night, sleep for a few hours and then take off again. That morning I'd left a tiling catalogue behind; I told the driver to pa.s.s by there so that I could pick it up.
When we arrived there, Greg was ringing at my front door. I'd already got out of the car when I saw him-otherwise I might have made the driver drive me round the block and loop back a few minutes later. Greg turned round and saw me: I was trapped.
”My G.o.d!” Greg shouted. ”Nice car dude!”
I didn't say anything. It was a nice car, I suppose. It was quite long and had these doors that opened in the middle of the back. It wasn't ostentatious, though-and anyway I only had it because my Fiesta wouldn't have taken a desk and fax machine. As soon as everything was up and running I'd get rid of this car and go back to the Fiesta.
Greg stood on my steps, a few feet from me.
”So,” he said. ”What's new? You haven't called me in six weeks.”
”I've been...” I told him, ”you know...busy.”
”Doing what?” asked Greg.
”Getting ready to move into a new place.”
”Where?” he asked.
”The other side of Brixton,” I said.
”Other...side...of Brixton,” he repeated.
”Yes,” I said.
We stood there facing one another. After a while I said: ”I've got to pick up this tile catalogue, and then go off to a meeting.”
Greg looked past me into the car where Naz was sitting.
”Sure,” he said. ”Well...”
”I'll give you a call,” I told him as I walked past him into my flat. ”Later this week. Or early next.”
I didn't call him-not that week, nor the next, nor the next one either. My project was a programme, not a hobby or a sideline: a programme to which I'd given myself over body and soul. The relations.h.i.+ps within this programme would be between me and my staff. Exclusively. Staff: not friends.
Soon after that day we moved our central office from Covent Garden to Brixton. Our activities were pretty localized there by this point. We rented the top floor of a modern blue-and-white office building a few streets away, just off the main drag. It looked modern and official in a dated kind of way-like some Eastern European secret-police headquarters. There were metal blinds drawn crookedly across most of its windows when we took it over, and metal tubes emerging from its sides-air ducts, laundry chutes, who knows what. On the roof were aerials, antennae. Naz set up his headquarters and coordinated things from there while I spent more and more time in my building itself, working on the smaller details with the staff members to whom specific areas of the project had been delegated.
Annie came to play more and more of an important role the further the project progressed, as I mentioned earlier. She and I would run around together finding the right brooms and mops, say, for the concierge's cupboard. Or we'd get in ashtrays for the hall and work out where to place them, then find that their position clashed with the way doors opened, so have them moved again. Working out compatibility became our main activity. With the piano, for example: this had been delivered and installed, but we still had to find the right degree of absorbency for its flat's walls. Too much and I wouldn't hear it at all; too little and it wouldn't be m.u.f.fled enough-it had been slightly m.u.f.fled when I'd first remembered it. To fine-tune things like this we needed everyone to be in sync: the drillers to stop drilling, hammers hammering, sanders sanding and so on, while the pianist started playing.
”How's that?” Annie asked me as we stood in my flat listening to the music.
”It's fine,” I said. ”But is his window open or closed right now?”
”Is his window opened or closed?” Annie repeated into a two-way radio.
”Closed,” the reply came.
”Closed,” she repeated to me.
”Tell them to open it now,” I said.
”Open it up now,” she repeated.
And so on. We went through several episodes like that. Two-way radios came into play a lot. Mobiles had been good for one-on-one communication, but by now we often needed one-to-several-several-to-several too. So I'd telephone Naz over in his headquarters, and Naz would radio three of our people while he talked to me; then one of them would radio Annie and she'd radio Naz on another channel, and he'd call me back; or I'd call Annie and she'd radio her back-up, or-well, you get the picture. By the final stages, Annie had four support staff directly under her: their radios were tuned to her frequency exclusively.
You could see Naz's office from the top floors of my building-and, of course, vice versa. We had a telescope installed beside Naz's main window-a powerful one. Naz had wanted to use CCTV, but I'd told him no: I didn't want cameras anywhere. I'd made them take away the one mounted at the side gate by the sports track that I'd stood by on the day I'd first discovered the building. The only camera I allowed on site was Annie's Polaroid. She used it to capture positions and arrangements: what was where in relation to what else. It was quicker than sketches or diagrams. More accurate too. If we'd got something just right but then had to move it while we carried something else through its s.p.a.ce, Annie would take a Polaroid snap; then, when we wanted to reinstate whatever it was, we'd just stand in the position she'd taken the snap from holding up the photo while directing people to place such and such an object right, left, a bit further back and so on till it matched the photo. Smart, precise. She was a nice girl.
One afternoon I stood in Naz's office gazing through the telescope. I gazed for a long time, watching people move around behind my building's windows. Then I lowered it and gazed at trucks and vans coming and going. They were mostly going, taking stuff away. It amazed me how much had needed to be got rid of throughout the whole project: earth, rubble, banisters, radiators, cookers-you name it. For every cargo that arrived, large or small, another cargo had to be taken away. At least one. If it were possible to gather together and weigh everything brought in over the weeks of set-up and then do the same to everything that had been carried out, I'm pretty sure the second lot would weigh more. This would be true from the beginning, when we were dealing with skipfuls of clutter, right through to the end, when we went round picking up bits of paper with our fingers, making absolutely sure that everything apart from what was meant to be there was removed.
”Surplus matter,” I said, still gazing through the telescope.
”What's that?” asked Naz.
”All this extra stuff that needs to be carted away,” I said. ”It's like an artichoke-the way there's always more of it on your plate after you've finished than there was before you started.”
”I like artichokes,” said Naz.
”Me too,” I said. ”Right now I do, at least. Let's eat some for supper this evening.”
”Yes, let's,” Naz concurred. He got onto his phone and told someone to go and buy us artichokes.
It really took shape in the final two weeks. The hallways had been laid, the courtyard landscaped and re-landscaped, the flats fitted or blanked out as my diagrams had stipulated. Now we had to concentrate on the minutiae. We had to get the crack right, for example: the crack in my bathroom wall. I still had the original piece of paper that I'd copied it onto back at that party-plus the diagrams that I'd transcribed it onto over the next twenty-four hours, of course. Frank and I and a plasterer called Kevin spent a long time getting the colour of the plaster all around it right.
”That's not quite it,” I'd tell Kevin as he mixed it. ”It should be more fleshy.”
”Fleshy?” he asked.
”Fleshy: grey-brown pinky. Sort of like flesh.”
He got there in the end, after a day-or-so's experimenting.
”Not like any flesh I've seen,” he grunted as he smeared it on.
That wasn't the end of it, though: when it dried it darkened, ending up a kind of silver brown. We had to backtrack and remix it so that it would turn out dry the colour that the last mix had when wet. Nor was that the end of it: we hadn't realized how difficult it would be to get plaster to crack the way we wanted it to.
”I mix plaster so it won't crack,” Kevin sniffed.