The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Planning

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.