Perfect Architect

by Jayne Joso

  Gaia and Charles had married when she was twenty-five and he, thirty-six. He had openly declared from the outset that he did not want to have children. He had not declared however, that he had already taken action to make this de-cision, by means of in-cision, a fait accompli! Gaia was exhausted; emotions, so many, so varied, and so fast. Her chest felt constricted. She put out the cigarette in her hand. She drank some water. Lots of water. Whiskey, ultimately, wasn’t going to help, certainly not make clear her thoughts. She slept for thirteen hours, drank more water, and slept thirteen more. Charles couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping more than seven hours at a stretch, he’d thought it, unsurprisingly, a hideous waste of time.

  Chapter Six

  Critters

  Whilst Carlos Santillana works out his sensual aspirations in Spain, English architect, Edwin Ray, wanders about his spacious London office. He’s been drinking. Red wine. He looks across the room and eyes his black Scottish terrier.

  Proudly named, The Scotsman, the dog is appropriately independent, self-assured, and perhaps most importantly, an astute judge of character. Edwin wonders what The Scotsman will make of their impending visitor. A journalist. A very young journalist from a large Sunday paper according to his assistant’s most recent note. – Gathered over a number of years, the assistant’s notes now run to a colossal number, and piled up high, form a series of elegant spiral towers on Edwin’s desk. A fragile, high-rise, city of paper.

  As he waits for the journalist to arrive, Edwin begins to wonder, somewhat anxiously, what he might be asked. He genuinely doesn’t care for interviews, certainly not outside the academic arena – perhaps he should have asked to see the questions in advance… and will the youngster notice things, things that really matter? Things that speak?

  He glances at the dog, then along his long, elegant desk, designed, like everything else in the office, by himself. He smiles and takes another sip of wine.

  Twenty years earlier, someone rather special had noticed. Someone very special indeed, he corrects the thought. Lizzie. And she, not an architect herself, not at all, though he speculated that under different circumstances she might have been. Lizzie was a singer; played the violin too. Edwin glanced back towards the door, a momentary warmth of feeling, but she wasn’t there. More’s the pity.

  Twenty years earlier, Lizzie had been his girlfriend. She had visited Edwin in his very first apartment, the first he had owned, and very quickly she began to notice things, and in detail too. Lizzie looked at things and saw them in a way that most people did not – it amazed Edwin just how few people observed their surroundings at all well. “So many people look, but precious few see.” – And this he thought of as chief among reasons for bad design. Designers and architects who do not see, design badly – and any population encountering this simply has to live with it! Like it or lump it. Shameful. – But Lizzie, oh she clearly had an eye.

  He indulged his thoughts a moment longer, shooting back to Lizzie’s observations of his very first home. Of course, the paper chairs were easy, clearly home-made affairs. Cardboard packaging, layer upon layer, strength enough to take the weight of a full-grown man. She had been amazed. He had glowed. Yes, amazed was she, and quite soon dazzled. Was it right for a man to be quite so tremendously adored? – He wanted Lizzie to be free to wander about the place by herself, to make her own discoveries and so, for the time being, he’d limited himself to the kitchen space. He would cook them dinner. In those days he did that, seemed to enjoy it too. – Distantly he heard Lizzie move about the place, a door open, a cupboard door slide to one side. He listened keenly, and guessed to himself what it might be that she was looking at.

  She called out about the bed, had he made that? Yes. He’d felt himself blush. – He might make a sauce, if he could remember the recipe well enough. Mustn’t let it boil, he knew that much. It was all in the fine tuning, so to speak. Use a wooden spoon, no no, the spatula. Stir, but only gently. Certain things take time.

  He could hear her gentle tread, she was back in the living room. She tapped her fingers along the glass and steel dining table. Did she like it? Might it be too industrial looking for her taste? Did singers like such metals and glass in close proximity? Might they prefer a world of wood? Something more earthy perhaps, seemingly natural?

  Some of the furniture was from his student days, very finely finished though. And even some of the early pieces had known exhibition space. The oil drum chair had caused great amusement. Quite an act in balancing to secure the buttocks on such a precarious thing, but nonetheless, once sat, most accepted it was a rather marvellous thing.

  But would Lizzie understand the need to experiment, would she be capable of seeing it as something more than some mad eclecticism, a recycling frenzy of materials? For what better way to understand materials than to have the greatest fun with them? He stirred the pot with vigour, his shyness, his need to impress making him ridiculous now. The sauce would get the better of him today. No matter. And perhaps it wasn’t always good to introduce sauce into a relationship too soon. He wasn’t sure.

  “All of it?” She was standing in the doorframe.

  Edwin jumped. “Pardon me?” though there was nothing whatever the matter with his hearing.

  She ran her fingers along the kitchen cupboards, tapping, blue, red, yellow.

  “You made it, didn’t you? Everything. Every last stick of furniture here. You made it all.” She stood, shoulders wide and proud.

  “That’s right,” he responded. Part of their dinner now starting to catch on the bottom of a pan. Can’t be good at everything, thought Edwin. He moved the pan from the flame and smiled. No, no need for sauce.

  Would he tell this tale to the journalist? Perhaps not. Too private. Besides, the romance had not ended well and most probably a reporter would not settle until he’d heard it all, and dredged up the more painful aspects of the relationship. He should have treasured Lizzie, he knew that now. The Lizzies of the world don’t pass your way that often. He was too young back then, too ambitious. And Lizzie eventually had fled; had a child with someone else; and now made albums, a worldwide success.

  It had been a case, he decided, of bad timing. Broken hearts. His at least. No, this wasn’t for general consumption, despite the delightful opening.

  But then, what would he be prepared to discuss? What indeed? For he knew how tricky interviews could be, easily too personal; and journalists… how they attempt to lead you astray… but more than anything he did not want to be drawn on things which did not interest him. He resolved that he would not be.

  He put his hand to his chin and wondered now if he should have trimmed his beard. No matter. It was only the press.

  He topped up his wine.

  Germany! Why didn’t he think of it before? This must most certainly be included.

  Before opening his office in London, Edwin had spent a good many years in Germany, and he often thoroughly regretted his return to England. Ah, Germany! Inwardly he would sigh. A mix of nostalgia, admiration and deep lament. Germany, where architecture was still a truly intellectually rigorous discipline, where project managers were treated with appropriate disdain, if indeed they were appointed at all; a place where at least his thoughts could run free, though the number of realised projects, he had to admit, was rather less than he might have hoped for. No matter. – But in Germany, architecture was still held as a very serious intellectual pursuit, and that he deeply mourned, “Only in Germany, only in Germany… well… and the United States,” he would concede, though he cared rather less for the latter. Yes, he would endeavour to communicate something of these feelings in the interview.

  An assistant emerged from an adjacent room. The journalist had arrived. Should he show him through? The architect nodded. The Scotsman wagged his tail.

  The young journalist had naturally expected and accepted that a member of Edwin’s staff would set the meeti
ng up, he knew that direct access was out of the question, especially given Edwin’s status – but later, when he learned that Edwin Ray had never used email in his life and that he refused even to touch a phone, he had all but squealed in disbelief – delight almost, at what he would later write up as firm evidence of the architect’s eccentricity. Of course, cell and mobile had their meanings, but in Edwin Ray’s mind these were not closely related to conversation. And if the young journalist was interested to note down further trivial detail, neither did the architect drive, he had never learned. “Busy, you see. But I can draw, and some say I can build!” He chuckled warmly.

  The journalist remained in half shadow. In awe. The Scotsman padded about the office space in keen anticipation.

  Edwin couldn’t make sense of the young man. Hovering there in the shadows… come into the room properly, it’s not a Hitchcock movie!

  But Ernest Wrightsin, double-first-from-Oxford aside, socialised by the bold and the brash, was quite simply, nervous as hell. The Scotsman sniffed around the cuffs of the man’s trouser legs. Unlike his owner, The Scotsman rather enjoyed company, but he remained dutifully aware of Edwin’s rather more misanthropic nature. What to do?

  “Well? Are you coming in or is that simply your very favourite spot?” The architect now terrorised the acoustics with a baleful belly-gripped whoop. The journalist, struck at the ears, now shook his head in an attempt to release the pressure and moved forward gingerly.

  The Scotsman grew concerned. This encounter might require a particularly watchful eye. For the time being he returned to his blanket and box, strategically positioned halfway up the staircase, his observation tower.

  “I’m most grateful to you, Mr Ray…”

  “Haven’t told me your name?”

  “My name?”

  “Yes,” answered Edwin curtly, “I know my own.”

  “Oh… it’s Wrightsin, Ernest. That is, Ernest Wrightsin. Wrightsin Ernest.”

  Edwin chuckled, Ernest blushed.

  “Anyway,” the architect continued, summoning the man deeper into the space, and directing him to take a seat upon his award winning, Leipzig Lounger, “you come on in now, right in. That’s right. Now sit.”

  The journalist, immediately emasculated, obediently sat; he could feel the blood draining from his cheeks and finger tips. He’d seen the Leipzig Lounger in magazines, he’d seen them in exhibitions, and now… now he was sitting upon one, the architect-designer himself standing before him. It was all he could do to breathe. Should he say as much? Too gauche?

  He noticed the spiral paper towers on the desk, he hoped he would remember to ask about them. He wanted, more than anything, to ask intelligent questions. He wished he’d written them down.

  Sensing that the atmosphere between the two men was still quite uncomfortable, The Scotsman tootled back over and wagged his tail some. Humans, he had noted, were apt to misjudge things, and a little more sensitivity was sometimes required. He glanced up at Edwin in an attempt to convey as much.

  For a few awkward moments the architect now paced a perfect concrete floor. The light gently altering the lines, shadows marking out the space. A silence emerged and it lasted a little too long.

  “Sexy, isn’t it?” said Edwin suddenly.

  “What?”

  “The floor, damn you.”

  “Sexy?… Er, that’s not the first adjective that springs to mind.…”

  Edwin looked the young man over, maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked, and sexy had merely been a test. – As one of the world’s greatest architectural intellects, and as a stout and proudly heavy-set man, Edwin knew how intimidating the press could find him, specially the young skinny ones. The boys who’d never been made to build even a damn wall in their lives; never had a thought they could call their own. Ninnies, he would say.

  “And so, what adjective would you offer my floor then?”

  “I wouldn’t give it any… not at first. Look… I… I’m rather more interested in discussing space, new topographies… and, well something I’m particularly interested to know, is… is how come… how come you’ve resisted the new freedoms opening up to architects?” Ernest gasped for breath.

  Edwin raised an eyebrow. Now this… just might prove to be interesting. It might also call for more wine. “Go on,” said Edwin.

  Sensing the architect’s favourable change in tone, The Scotsman retreated to his cardboard bed and blanket. Things might just settle down. Besides, there was a treat hidden in that blanket.

  The journalist braced himself, and now, pushing up through his guts full pelt he declared, and rather bravely, “Well… well it just seems to me, that despite pushing architecture intellectually, both in your published works, and in your theoretical works, you seem determined almost… resistant almost, to putting it into practice, you know… in actual… realised… building projects.”

  “I do?” Edwin’s ears now pricked up, The Scotsman’s also. “Perhaps so,” mused Edwin, now fully engaged. “But you must be wary of several things here,” he paced a little more, “that architects are not simply designers who sup on red wine, though partial to it…” Edwin had amused himself with these last words and his eyes sparkled. His mouth watered and he looked back across the desk to the distant bottle, tantalising. But no, in a moment, for now he had this young-thing in his midst, and so he continued, “…that you do not place realised architectural projects over and above the theoretical – But real architecture is more important! Buildings are built to last! Buildings are monuments! – I see it in your eyes. But right now, and by way of example, the Spanish architect, Santillana, specialises in the ‘transient’ possibilities of architecture,” he mournfully drained the last in his glass and went on, “what that might imply for refugee populations, the homeless, the explosion of people who inhabit inner cities and also those suddenly converging on previously low populated rural areas, and more than that, in disaster areas; I don’t want to digress too far, but you see my point. And let’s face it, whilst Hitler had that Albert Speer fellow build him architecture to last a thousand years, ultimately it matters not how tough or how tall you build, nature or man can fall-it-down just as sure as you ever put-it-up. Think about it boy! Earthquakes! Terrorists! War! That said, an awful lot of Hitler’s buildings remain intact. Heavens… um,” he would have to refill that glass, and soon, “apart from that, a man of integrity,” here he gritted his teeth, doubting any journalist’s ability to appreciate this aspect, “a man of integrity cannot simply give in to the moods and sways of current fashions if they are not already part of his artistic inclination, nor part of his developing philosophy. Besides there is only so much ground for the rather flash type of project you’re referring to, I think you have the Italian in mind, Cannizzaro?” The journalist was slightly cowed, coloured by his own predictability. He could not speak. No space for it. Edwin carried on, “Alessandro Cannizzaro, ah! And Italy!” He glanced again at the bottle, “I’ve always been of the same opinion as Charles Ore when it comes to Italy – terrible loss, that man – no, they have no real sense of urgency, of getting the project finished. I mean, in the UK one can find oneself somewhat stifled by dratted project management, and intellectually starved at times, but we do at least get the job done. The Italians however, well I suppose it’s the heat. – The point is… that these new freedoms of which you speak, must not simply lead to novelty architecture, oh no, that’s something that really must be guarded against.”

  “Right.”

  “Right? Do you mean by that… that you comprehend, you agree… or that you are merely embarrassed at your gaucheness?”

  The Scotsman shot Ernest Wrightsin a look by way of instruction. Ernest appeared to comprehend. “All of the above!” he answered quickly.

  Edwin laughed and several inches of midriff danced merrily in satisfaction. “I think you know I care little for you journo-
critic types, critters I call you when you’re out of earshot! Wine? Red wine?” He didn’t wait for a reply but administered the drink as to one who was dying and would surely be glad of anything that might possibly save them.

  “Critter you.” He patted the young man on the back, almost shattering his fragile bones, the journalist felt himself quake. “Yes, never liked critics, press… whatever else you call yourselves. – The critic is a particularly negative position to take up. Just as the organs of the body divide into those with positive aspects such as the brain and heart, and those with negative concerns such as the liver or kidneys, which largely deal with breaking things down and with waste… you boy, are the liver!” he laughed on heartily, and then added, “Perhaps the critic will get a better deal in the next life, eh? And… perhaps not. And Lord knows I’m no ruddy Buddhist!” The ist of Buddhist whistled through wine-teeth. The journalist flinched, he was still pretty new to the game, but something told him – namely the tape running in his pocket – that he’d just got himself a plum interview, and what would he call it?

  That Critter – The Architect, Edwin Ray, in Dialogue

  Edwin wasn’t at all keen on the title, why couldn’t it read: In Conversation rather than: In Dialogue ? But then he would laugh at himself, it had hardly been a conversation, more of a lecture, truth be told, and the photograph of himself taken the following sunny day, had turned out to be really rather handsome, he’d held it up again to the light.

  Edwin Ray would also be invited to submit a design for the home of Charles Ore’s widow, as would the Italian, Alessandro Cannizzaro. Gaia had always been fond of Italy and when Charles won a competition to build a museum there, she had very much hoped he’d suggest their moving in order to oversee the project, but alas no. Italy, was not for Charles.