by Tom McCarthy
It just remained for me to walk up to my floor. I did this and stood outside my own flat. I listened at the door: no sound. The occupants were probably out at work. I tried to X-ray through the door—not to see what was actually inside but to project what would be: the open-plan kitchen with its Sixties fridge and hanging plants, the wooden floors; off to the right the bathroom with its crack, the pink-grey plaster round it, grooved and wrinkled, the blue and yellow daubs of paint. Then the bit of wall without a mirror where David Simpson’s mirror had been, the bathtub with its larger, older taps, the window that the scent of frying liver wafted in through.
I stood there, projecting all this in. The tingling became very intense. I stood completely still: I didn’t want to move, and I’m not sure I could have even if I had wanted to. The tingling crept from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck. I stood there for a very long time, feeling intense and serene, tingling. It felt very good.
What snapped me out of it eventually was a door closing with a bang on a lower floor. I could hear someone coming out and walking down the staircase. I moved on to the end of my landing; there was a floor above it, with two normal doors and then a smaller, padlocked one. Cat access huts as well, perhaps, I reasoned. Seven or so feet to my door’s right there was a window: I leant against it and, forehead on pane, looked out across the courtyard. From here I could see that the facing roof was flat, not staggered. It wasn’t red either. There were three cat access sheds on it in all, ten or so feet apart. I pictured the cats lounging: two or three of them at any given time, spread out across the roofs I’d have made staggered—lounging, languorous and black against their red.
I’d seen all I needed to see. I spun off from the window and walked straight down to the lobby without pausing. I walked straight across this, too, and out into the street. I found a phone and called Naz.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“I’ve found it, yes,” I told him.
“Excellent,” he answered. “Where?”
“In Brixton.”
“In Brixton?”
“Yes: Madlyn Mansions, Brixton. It’s behind a kind of sports track. Near a railway bridge.”
“I’ll find it on the map and call you back. Where are you now?”
“I’m on my way home,” I told him. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I walked back to my flat. There was a message on my answering machine already, but when I played it, thinking it would be from Naz, it turned out to be from Greg. I lay down on the folded-away sofa bed and waited. Eventually Naz phoned.
“The building is privately owned,” he said, “and leased out to tenants. The owner is one Aydin Huseyin. He manages this and two other properties in London.”
“Right,” I said.
“Shall I enquire whether or not he’s interested in taking offers on this property?” Naz asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Buy it.”
We got it for three and a half million. A snip, apparently.
7
WE HIRED AN ARCHITECT. We hired an interior designer. We hired a landscape gardener for the courtyard. We hired contractors, who hired builders, electricians and plumbers. There were site managers and sub-site managers, delivery coordinators and coordination supervisors. We took on performers, props and wardrobe people, hair and make-up artists. We hired security guards. We fired the interior designer and hired another one. We hired people to liaise between Naz and the builders and managers and supervisors, and people to run errands for the liaisers so that they could liaise better.
Looking at it now, with the advantage—as they say—of hindsight, it strikes me that Naz could probably have devised a more efficient way of doing it. He could have chosen one place, one specific point to start from, and worked out from there in logical procession: chronologically, in a straight line, piece by piece by piece. The approach he took instead was piecemeal—everything springing up at once but leaving huge gaps in between and creating new problems of alignment and compatibility that in their turn required more supervising, more coordination.
“There’s a problem with the windows on the third floor,” Naz told me one day, several weeks into the works.
“I thought all the windows had been finished,” I said.
“Yes,” said Naz, “but now the windows in the main third-floor flat have to come out again so we can lift the piano in.”
Another time we realized we’d got the courtyard ready too soon: trucks would have to drive across it as they removed detritus from the building, ruining the landscaper’s creation.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” I asked Naz.
Naz smiled back. I started suspecting then that his decision to opt for the piecemeal approach was deliberate. As we were driven from one meeting to another—from the site itself, say, to our office in Covent Garden, or to our architect’s office in Vauxhall, or to the workshop of the metallurgist who was making our banisters, or from a Sotheby’s auction of Sixties’ Americana at which we’d been looking at fridges back to the site via Lambeth Town Hall (palms were greased—I’ll say no more)—each time we left the building or came near again we’d see trucks piled high with rubble, earth or ripped-out central-heating units pulling out from its compound and other trucks arriving with scaffolding or new earth or long strips of pine. There’d be small vans full of wiring, caterers’ vans, vans belonging to experts in fields I didn’t know existed: stone-relief consultants, acoustic technicians, non-ferrous-metal welders—London’s premier in the art since 1932, this third outfit’s van announced proudly on its side.
“So what’s your position in the ferrous-metal league?” I asked them.
“We don’t do ferrous-metal welding,” they replied.
“And where did you rank before ’32?”
“I don’t know that. You’ll have to ask the boss.”
Then there’d be behemoths: giant cranes on wheels, crane lifts with crane-grab limbs, all skeletal and menacing and huge. We’d carry plaster on our clothes into a Mayfair piano salesroom, then carry the contrasting chimes and tinkles of four types of baby grand still humming in our ears on to a used furniture warehouse. We’d receive faxes on the machine we had in our car and stuff them into the back-seat glove compartment as the driver raced us to another meeting, then forget that we’d received them and have them re-faxed or go back to the same office or the same warehouse again—so the humming in our ears was constant, a cacophony of modems and drilling and arpeggios and perpetually ringing phones. The hum, the meetings, the arrivals and departures turned into a state of mind—one that enveloped us within the project, drove us forwards, onwards, back again. I’ve never felt so motivated in my life. Naz understood this, I think now, and cultivated a degree of chaos to keep everybody involved on their toes, fired up, motivated. A genius, if ever there was one.
Not that motivation was otherwise lacking: the people we’d hired were being paid vast amounts of money. What was lacking, if anything, was comprehension: making them understand exactly what it was that was required of them. And making them understand at the same time how little they needed to understand. I didn’t need to make them share my vision, and I didn’t want them to. Why should they? It was my vision, and I was the one with the money. They just had to know what to do. This wasn’t easy, though—making them understand what to do. They were all London’s premiers: the best plumbers, plasterers, pine outfitters and so on. They wanted to do a really good job and found it hard to get their heads round the proposition that the normal criteria for that didn’t apply in this case.
The thickest groups by far were actors and interior designers. Morons, both. To audition the actors we hired the Soho Studio Theatre for a couple of days after placing an ad in the trade press. It read:
Performers required to be constantly on call in London building over indefinite period. Duties will include repeated re-enactment of certain daily events. Excellent remuneration. Contact Nazrul Ram Vyas on etc. etc.
Naz
and I arrived on the first day to find a big crowd in the lobby. We’d got our driver to drop us off round the corner from the theatre rather than right outside, so as not to make an ostentatious entrance: that way, we figured, we’d be able to walk round the lobby incognito for a while, sizing people up.
“That one looks worth auditioning for the motorbike enthusiast,” I mumbled to Naz.
“The one in the jacket?” he mumbled back.
“No, but he looks worth auditioning too, now you mention it. And that frumpy woman over there: a possible concierge, I think.”
“What about the others?” Naz asked, still mumbling.
“We’ll need extras too: all the anonymous, vague neighbours. Those two black guys look vaguely familiar.”
“Which ones?”
“Those two,” I told him, pointing—and right then they all started clicking, wising up. A heavy silence fell across the lobby; everybody glanced at us, then turned away and started pretending to talk again, but in reality they were still glancing at us. One guy came right up to us, held his hand out and said:
“Hello there! My name’s James. I’m really looking forward to this enterprise. You see, I need to fund my studies at RADA, where I’ve been given a place. Now I’ve prepared…”
“What’s RADA?” I said.
“It’s the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I auditioned, and the tutor told my local authority that I was gifted—his words, not mine.” At this point in his spiel James held his hand up to his chin in an exaggerated manner, and I could tell he’d practised the gesture in the same way as the gay clubbers I’d watched several weeks ago had practised theirs. “But,” he went on, “they wouldn’t give me a grant. So I welcome this whole enterprise. I think it will help me expand. Learn things. My name’s James.”
He still had his hand out. I turned to Naz.
“Can you get rid of half these people?” I asked him. “And give audition slots to the ones I pointed out—and to any others you think might be right. I’m going to get a coffee.”
I went to the very place I’d sat in when I’d watched the clubbers, media types, tourists and homeless people, the Seattle-theme coffee shop just like the one at Heathrow: it was just round the corner from the theatre. I asked for a cappuccino.
“Heyy!” the girl said. It was still a girl, but it was a different girl this time. “Short cap coming up! You have a…”
“Ah yes!” I said, sliding it out. “Absolutely I do! And it’s edging home.”
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“Eight cups stamped,” I told her. “Look.”
She looked. “You’re right,” she said, impressed. She stamped the ninth cup as she handed me my coffee. “One more and you get a free drink of your choice.”
“Plus a new card!” I said.
“Of course. We’ll give you a new card as well.”
I took my cappuccino over to the same window seat I’d had the last time and sat there looking out onto the intersection of Frith Street and Old Compton Street. There was a homeless person there, but it wasn’t my one. The new one didn’t have a dog—but he did have friends who sallied over to him from their base up the street just like my homeless person’s friends had; but then these didn’t seem like the same people either. The sleeping bag that the new guy had wrapped around him seemed identical to my one’s sleeping bag, though. So did his sweat top.
I’d forgotten about the loyalty-card business. Now I’d been reminded I was really excited by it. I was so close! I gulped my cappuccino down, then strode back to the counter with the card.
“Another cappuccino,” I told the girl.
“Heyy!” she answered. “Short cap coming up. You have a…”
“Of course!” I said. “I was just here!”
“Oh yes!” she said. “Sorry! I’m a zombie! Here, let me…”
She stamped the tenth cup on my card, then said:
“So: you can choose a free drink.”
“Cool,” I said. “I’ll have another cappuccino.”
“On top of your cap, I mean.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll have another one as well.”
She shrugged, turned round and made me a new one. She pulled out a new card, stamped the first cup on it and handed it to me with my two coffees.
“Back to the beginning,” I said. “Through the zero.”
“Sorry?” she asked.
“New card: good,” I told her.
“Yes,” she said. She looked kind of depressed.
I took my two new coffees back to my seat by the window. I set them side by side and took alternate sips from each, like Catherine had with her drinks in the Dogstar, oscillating between pre-clock and post-clock cups. This was a good day, I decided. I finished my coffees and went back up to the Soho Studio Theatre.
The first person Naz and I saw was the second man I’d picked out as a possible for the motorbike enthusiast. He looked about right: early to mid twenties, brown hair, fairly handsome. He’d prepared a passage to perform for us: some piece of modern theatre by Samuel Beckett.
“We don’t want to hear that,” I said. “We just want to chat for a while, fill you in on what you’ll need to do.”
“Okay,” he said. “Shall I sit here, or stand, or?…”
“Whatever,” I said. “What we’re looking for is this: you’d need to be a motorbike enthusiast. You’d have to be available on a full-time basis—a live-in full-time basis—to occupy a flat on the first floor of an apartment building. You’d need to spend a lot of time out in the building’s courtyard tinkering with a motorbike.”
“Tinkering?” he asked me.
“Fixing it,” I said.
“What do I do once it’s fixed?”
“You take it apart again. Then fix it back.”
He was quiet for a while, thinking about this.
“So you don’t need me to act at all?” he asked eventually.
“No,” I told him. “Not act: just do. Enact. Re-enact.”
He didn’t get the part, as it turned out. The next-but-one motorbike enthusiast possible did. He wasn’t one of the ones who’d been in the lobby. He had less acting experience than the other two—almost none. His movements and his speech seemed less false, less acquired. On top of that he had a bike and knew a bit about them. By the end of the first day I’d found him, plus the husband in the boring couple, plus two or three vague, anonymous neighbours. That was it, though: no one else had been right. Back in the car I said to Naz:
“I’m not so sure the theatre world is the right place to look for re-enactors.”
“You think so?” said Naz.
We discussed it as we were driven to Aldgate—we were meeting a wholesaler of rare and outmoded light fittings. By the time we’d got there I’d become convinced it wasn’t.
“Where else, though?” I wondered aloud as we left Aldgate for Brixton.
“Community centres?” Naz ventured as he stuffed the receipts for the order we’d just made into the glove compartment. “Swimming pools? Supermarket notice boards?”
“Yes,” I said. “Those sound like the right kind of places.”
We cancelled the next day’s audition, and Naz had notices distributed in the new venues. These ones brought us a much broader sweep of people. The old woman who became the liver lady saw it at her bridge evening, the boring couple’s wife at a yoga class. The pianist we hooked in a musicians’ journal—he was doing a Ph.D. in musicology. He was just right for the part: quiet, gloomy, even bald on top. He nodded glumly as I explained to him how he’d have to make mistakes:
“You make mistakes,” I told him, “then you go over the passage you got wrong again, slowing right down into the bit where you messed up. You play it again and again and again—and then, when you’ve got down how to do it without messing up, play it some more times, coming back to normal speed. And then you carry on—at least until you hit your next mistake. You with me?”
“I make the mistakes deliberately?”
he asked, looking at the floor. His voice was vacant and monotonous, completely without intonation.
“Exactly,” I said. “In the afternoons you teach young students. School children. Pretty basic stuff. In the evenings you compose. There’s more, but that’s the gist of it.”
“I’ll do it,” he said, still looking away. “Can I huf an obvos?”
“What did you say?” I asked him. He’d mumbled his last phrase into his collar.
He looked up for an instant. He really looked miserable. Then his eyes dropped again and he said, only slightly more clearly:
“Can I have an advance? Against the first two weeks.”
I thought about that for a moment, then I answered:
“Yes, you can. Naz will see to that. Oh—but you’ll have to grow your hair out at the sides. Is that acceptable?”
His eyes moved slowly from one corner of their sockets to another, trying half-heartedly to catch a glimpse of the hair on either side of his pale head. They gave up pretty quickly; he looked down at the floor and nodded glumly again. He was perfect. He signed his contract, Naz gave him some money and he left.
Interior designers were the other nightmare group. We interviewed several. I’d explain to them exactly what I wanted, down to the last detail—and they’d take this as a cue to start creating décor themselves!
“What I’m getting from you is a downbeat, retro look,” one of them told me. “And that’s exciting. Full of possibilities. I think we should have faux-flock wallpaper throughout—Chantal de Witt does a fantastic line in this—and lino carpeting along the hallways. That’s what I’m seeing.”
“I don’t care what you’re seeing,” I told him. “I don’t want you to create a look. I want you to execute the exact look I’ll dictate to you.”
This one stormed out in a huff. Two others agreed in principle to execute the look I wanted but balked when it came to the blank stretches. I’d left blank stretches in my diagrams, as I mentioned earlier—stretches of floor or corridor that hadn’t crystallized inside my memory. Some of these had since come back, but others hadn’t, any more than the concierge’s face, and I’d decided that these parts should be blank in reality, with doorways papered and cemented over, strips of wall left bare and so on. Neutral space. Our architect loved this, but the designers found it quite repulsive. One of them agreed to do it, so we hired him; but when it came to actually realizing it he snapped.