by Rosie Thomas
‘They belong to a Miss Bowlly,’ Harriet told him. ‘I’ve met her, and I like her.’
Charlie suppressed his flicker of admiration. ‘That won’t matter much, in the end. He can put his road somewhere else, at a price, and make your Miss Bowlly’s life as uncomfortable as he’s no doubt already threatened.’
‘What’s the second thing?’
‘He doesn’t own the old house either, or the garden, which is another couple of acres more centrally placed in relation to the site as a whole.’
Patiently Harriet asked, ‘So who does own it?’
Charlie looked at each of them again. And then he announced, with the air of a conjuror brandishing the rabbit, ‘Everden Parish Council.’
Harriet stared at him for an instant, and then she started to laugh. ‘I should have gone to see the vicar, like they told me in the Wheatsheaf. I should have asked the right questions, and I could have found that out for myself in five minutes. But do you know what? It’s the best piece of news I’ve had for months.’
She pushed her chair back and went around the table to Charlie. She put her arms around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.
‘Charlie, thank you. Listen, drink a toast with me, Jane, Jenny. To the Birdwood Project.’
They lifted their glasses, looking at each other with resignation, and repeated, ‘The Birdwood Project!’
Harriet was already reckoning. If Bottrill had not been able to acquire the house and grounds from the parish council, then some or all of the councillors must oppose his plans. And if there was opposition to one scheme then, through the forces of reaction, she might be able to muster support for another. If it was the right scheme, the village’s own. If she could make hers theirs.
‘Don’t you want to hear how the Parish Council comes to own two acres of prime development land and a Victorian mansion?’
‘Tell me.’
Harriet could have worked it out for herself. The last owner, an old lady of eccentric habits, had sold off the parkland belonging to the estate in small slices to various buyers over a number of years. They were the same buyers, or their heirs, on whom Keith Bottrill was assiduously working in the process of his site assembly. The house and its diminished garden had remained in her possession and then, on her death, had been willed to ‘The village of Everden, for the use of the community in perpetuity, under the care and administration of the members of the Parish Council.’
‘It’s probably an embarrassment,’ Charlie said cheerfully. ‘Falling into decay, and so not much mentioned by anyone. Bottrill must be waiting for embarrassment to reach the point of overcoming apathy, so the vicar and the rest of them are driven to selling out to him. They’ll have no hope of doing anything useful with it for the benefit of the village, because there won’t be any money.’
‘There is money,’ Harriet said.
The small silence that acknowledged the mysterious power of her wealth followed the words. ‘I thought you wanted to live in the house,’ Jane said at length. ‘You invited me and Imogen to share it with you.’
‘I wish you would. You said you wanted to make your own plans. I do want to restore it, it’s a beautiful house.’
‘And what about the village?’
‘What are the alternatives? To have someone restore it to live in is better than standing back and seeing it knocked flat for development, isn’t it? If I buy the house from Everden, in return the village will get a development on its doorstep that caters for local needs. Including a hall, or council chambers or a Scout hut, whatever it is they happen to need. To benefit Everden in perpetuity.’
Jane was laughing. ‘Will there be a crèche and a pensioners’ drop-in centre? It sounds clever on your part, and at the same time much more my sort of thing than yours. I don’t believe it will work, but I can’t disapprove of the plan on paper, can I?’
‘Don’t disapprove of it. It’s a fair scheme; it offers something for everyone.’
‘Including the entrepreneur, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Harriet said.
Charlie reached out for the bottle. ʻShall we finish this?’ he asked mildly.
They sat up late, the four of them. And then, after Charlie and Jenny had gone, hospitable Jane was pleased by Harriet’s agreeing to stay the night in the spare bedroom she had occupied before, and Harriet was happy to be there instead of feeling the necessity to go back to her pale, silent flat. She went to bed more ready to wake up again than she had been for weeks.
It was the beginning of May.
Harriet parked her car in the shelter of a tall wooden hoarding and picked her way through the site entrance. A fork-lift truck passed in front of her loaded with yellow-grey London stock bricks, old bricks that were already faded and weathered. At the far end of the row of emergent terraced houses the roof joists were still exposed, but nearer to Harriet there were sash windows already in place and carpenters were working inside the raw brick rooms. There was a buzz of machinery underscored by the rhythmic churning of concrete mixers.
Ahead of Harriet the ground was a yellowish quagmire bridged by planks. Harriet glanced down at her leather pumps. A boy came towards her pushing a barrow, the wheel centred on the plank pathway. In the first sun of the summer he was already stripped to the waist. He stopped wheeling and whistling for long enough to give Harriet a thorough stare.
‘I’m looking for David Howkins.’
The boy pointed towards a Portakabin at the opposite end of the site and trundled his barrow onwards. Harriet set off along the planks, past the carpenters and the concrete mixers. A chorus of whistles pursued her. At Winwood they hadn’t whistled, she remembered, but then at Winwood she had been the boss. She thought of Winwood inconsequentially now, without the twitch of a severed limb.
When she looked up she saw David, walking in the mud in reinforced boots. His pugilist’s face seemed less surprising in this setting.
‘Didn’t you know that building sites are dirty places?’
‘The first on-site lesson,’ Harriet answered composedly. ‘I’ll wear overalls next time.’ They shook hands. They had spoken on the telephone to arrange this meeting, but it was the first time they had met since Jane’s Christmas party.
‘Come into the office.’
The little cabin was stuffy after the sunshine outside. It was furnished with metal desks covered with site plans and architectural drawings, typists’ chairs and builders’ merchant’s calendars. It took Harriet back to the days of grim bargaining with Mr Jepson in his cubbyhole at Midland Plastics. Only she hoped that she wasn’t going to have to bargain with David Howkins.
At the thought Harriet was overcome by a sense of overpowering urgency. There was far too little time, and everything that needed to be accomplished must still be done slowly, tactfully. She perched on the corner of one of the metal desks, ready to jump up again. A girl clicking at an electric typewriter stopped work and looked at her.
‘Would you like tea, or coffee, Harriet?’ David asked.
I want to get down to business, she might have answered. But she said economically, ‘Coffee, please, milk but no sugar.’
David dispatched the typist to make it.
‘I was sorry to read about Peacocks,’ he told her. Harriet was aware that he was looking closely at her. It made her want to shift her position on the corner of the desk, but she held herself still.
‘It’s given me the opportunity to develop other ideas.’ She did move then, to reach down for her briefcase that stood at her feet.
‘And what happened to your face?’
Harriet put her hand up to her jaw. She had forgotten about it. ‘It was just an accident.’
She was reflecting that her relationship with David Howkins had moved in the opposite direction from the norm. He had begun by trying to kiss her and she had resisted a strong urge to follow him home, to wherever that was. They had progressed to conversation tinged with abrasiveness at a Christmas party, and now they were formally an
d politely embarked on a business meeting at his site office. The corners of Harriet’s mouth lifted involuntarily. David went on looking at her.
The coffee came, still revolving in the mugs. Brown eyes of powder circled like planets. Harriet drank a mouthful before snapping open her briefcase.
‘Tell me what your plan is,’ David said, settling in his chair to listen.
Harriet described Birdwood, drawing the expanse of it in the stuffy air and cupping her hands for the hollow that held the house. She had had more time since she had sketched the first ideas for Jane, and she had done her research. She brought out prospectuses of other new-village schemes, plans, photographs, newspaper articles. She described the starter houses for local couples, the houses for rent and the sheltered community with covered walkways and communal centre, the bigger homes for families and the landscaping that would set the whole development in place without blighting the surrounding countryside.
David cut her short. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s familiar territory.’
‘There could be some workshops, too. Providing employment for local people …’
‘Craftsmen making hand-carved rocking horses and glass terrariums?’
‘Why not?’ Harriet answered.
‘Nothing too dirty or industrial, then.’
‘That would be inappropriate in a village setting, wouldn’t it?’
‘If you say so. I only hope you can find enough young couples looking for affordable houses in a village Utopia who are also able to carve a decent rocking horse or cut a clever terrarium.’
Through the window that looked out over the building site Harriet had been watching a bricklayer working on a garden boundary wall. He moved rhythmically, larding each brick with mortar and then laying it on the course beneath, setting it with a sharp tap of his trowel and slicing away the surplus with a flourish. He came to the end of the new course now, and stood back to examine what he had done.
To do what she was trying to do, Harriet reflected, was equivalent to seizing bricks and mortar out of the air and compressing them with one movement into a solid brick wall. She turned away from the window.
‘Does that mean you’re not interested in the scheme?’
David smiled. ‘Not at all. You’ve described a good-natured entrepreneurial vision, to touch the heart of any planning committee. The reality may turn out to be different. Property development isn’t the sweetest-smelling business.’
‘I know that,’ Harriet said.
After a moment David answered, ‘I’m sure you do. Where’s the money coming from?’
‘From me, to begin with. For outline plans, initial acquisition of land, lobbying and the rest. After that, from investors. I can raise it.’
‘Yes. And with the site assembly, how far have you got?’
Outside, the bricklayer laid the first brick of another course.
‘Nowhere,’ Harriet said.
‘So what do you want with a building contractor?’
‘Not a contractor. You. And your partners.’ David had explained to Harriet that he worked only in conjunction with a group of architects who designed as he wanted to build. But at Jane’s suggestion, Harriet had already visited some of their successes. She had been impressed by what she saw.
David was waiting. Harriet made a wide gesture in the air, the nearest she could come to drawing down the bricks and mortar in their concrete form.
‘It’s all a balancing act, or a juggling feat. It’s making everything look right and sound good just for long enough, long enough to block the competition and win out ourselves. I can do one vital thing, but I need you for the rest. I want you and your partner to come and look at the site, do some drawings, perhaps make some models. I want you to come with me to the parish council meetings, I want you to be on the platform with me at Everden village hall when I describe our scheme. We’ll get the support of the village, and with local opinion behind us we can go to the planning stage. With local opposition properly directed we can overturn Bottrill’s proposals, and if I can secure the piece of land I want I can use it as a lever against him.
‘If we can blow a bright enough bubble in a short enough time, we’ll attract all the attention and the applause. Reaction against Bottrill will be action for us.’
‘You’re talking like a propaganda poster.’
Harriet’s eyes were brilliant and her face was warm. ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if our bubble doesn’t last once we’ve seen Bottrill off. You’ll have time after that to work on the plans properly, even if you don’t believe in my Utopia.’
David was going to interrupt her, but she held up her hand to stop him. ‘It’s a marketing exercise, don’t you see? I can market the Birdwood Project. I can market a new village to an existing village. I can market myself, and I can market you.’
‘A bubble,’ David repeated.
After a moment he stood up and went to the window, to look at the work going on outside. ‘Come and have a look at the job,’ he said, after a moment.
Harriet contained her impatience. ‘I’d like that,’ she told him.
He took a pair of Wellington boots from behind his desk, and gave them to her. Harriet put them on and waded after him into the sunshine.
Two new, short terraces of little houses were emerging within a pattern of similar streets. Weathered old bricks were being used for the frontages, so the unfinished houses seemed already to belong to their Victorian setting. Each house had a small garden front and back, more private than those of an ordinary terrace because the line of houses was stepped. Harriet saw that although the scale was small, the architect’s achievement had been to create a sense of intimacy rather than any impression of overcrowding.
‘The density is fourteen per acre,’ David remarked. ‘Quite high, even by urban standards.’ As he spoke, something in his expression told Harriet that he found it incongruous, and amusing, to be walking across the site talking to her about housing density. She dismissed her own urge to say something irrelevant in response.
‘We’re working in association with a community housing trust,’ he went on smoothly. ‘We have a certain amount of leeway in what we can do, but there are corresponding restrictions.’
‘It all looks very attractive,’ Harriet said, in her most businesslike voice.
They had turned in at an open doorway. The door-frame was in position, but there was no front door as yet. The staircase, in pale new wood littered with the flat coils of woodshavings, led upwards directly in front of them. David motioned to his right and they stepped into the living room. The walls were freshly plastered, and sash windows were ready for the glazier. Harriet had caught a glimpse of him working in the house next door. She breathed in the smells of raw plaster, sawdust and putty and brickdust. It was satisfying to have a sense of the solid little houses rising out of the loaded pallets and dumps of raw material.
As she turned round in the light room, putting her fingers out absently to touch the cold plasterwork, she realised that the house reminded her of Jane’s. This one was separated from the other by a hundred years, but they were constructed with the same plain, unvarnished logic. And it was in Jane’s living room that she had danced with David, years ago, at the beginning of Meizu. Harriet thought of the coloured balls, rolling and clicking, and remembered what she had lost.
She had been afraid, then, of what it might mean if she let David Howkins kiss her to a background of The Police and teachers talking.
And now she was here in pursuit of different things. David was standing with his hands in the pockets of paint-encrusted jeans. It came to her that he was ridiculously attractive. She felt her face changing colour, and her susceptibility made her angry.
‘When will the houses be ready for occupation?’
‘These first ones, in two months’ time. The others in various phases thereafter.’
‘I’ll have a quick look upstairs, shall I?’ The bare boards were hollow under her feet. There were two light, square bed
rooms and a bathroom with the fittings in place, but still swathed in the manufacturers’ tape. There was a litter of cardboard packaging in the bath. It was in Jane’s bathroom, Harriet remembered, that she had taken refuge.
She descended the stairs once more, in full possession of herself.
‘Thank you for showing me around,’ she said crisply.
‘I’ll walk you to your car. Keep the boots on, until you’re out of the mud.’
They crossed the site once more, past the barrows and the piles of sand and the concrete mixers, and the builders who didn’t whistle at Harriet in David’s hearing. She looked back across the yellowish quagmire at the skeletons of the nearest houses, and it struck her that the Portakabin office was a long way from the svelte premises of Landwith Associates that had once impressed her so much.
David must have been thinking in parallel, because he asked her, ‘How is your friend, the financier?’
‘Venture capitalist. Well, as far as I know. We parted company.’
‘At the same time as you parted company with your company?’
‘More or less.’
‘I’m sorry.’
They had reached Harriet’s car. She put her hand on the bonnet, feeling the sun-hot gloss of it. Harriet smiled suddenly, with perfect openness.
‘Don’t be,’ she said.
David took the keys of the car from her hand and unlocked the door for her. Harriet tossed her briefcase on to the passenger seat and then turned to him.
‘Well?’ she asked. She felt a fierce determination that he should not turn down her project.
David said, ‘I’ll talk to Anthony about it.’ Anthony was his architect partner. ‘And we’ll come down and look at your site.’
‘Don’t talk too much or take too long. There’s not much time.’
‘Bubbles never last long, do they?’
Harriet was already in the driver’s seat. ‘Do you think I’m crooked? Or crazy, or both?’
‘Neither. I think you’re deeply impressive.’
The car began to slide forward. Harriet was still wearing the wellingtons. ‘Keep the boots,’ he called. ‘You’ll be needing them.’