Escort

by Harper Fox

  “That you’re George. Where were you heading?”

  “Nowhere in particular. I was having a look round for somewhere to live, but I can barely afford to peer in the windows on this street. I’d better just head back to work.”

  “Race you.”

  “What?”

  “Well, not a race. But I’ll run with you, if you like.”

  “You nutcase. Really? You’re hardly dressed for it.”

  “Just a couple of blocks. Come on.”

  Silver set off. George would never be pushed into anything, would he? He might consent to be led, though, and with this in mind Silver paused, jogging lightly on the spot, deliberately unleashing a wide, seductive smile. George laughed: rolled his eyes to let Silver know he was transparent, then stepped out at his side.

  For Silver, the problem was not to come across as suspiciously fit. He eased back on the loping stride that would have carried him ahead of his companion, feigned a little breathlessness when they’d reached the end of Blandford Mews and turned onto Ravensmore. He wanted to run like the wind, leap the railings of the park over the road and climb a tree, or better still lay George down under it. There were days when his life made no sense to him, and he wanted to run and run...

  “Silver?”

  He jolted back into his skin. George had fallen behind and was gasping, paling to grey. “Whoa,” Silver said, turning and grabbing his arm, drawing him to a halt. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Just... You’d better have your jog on your own, if you want one. I’m too slow.”

  No. I’m too bloody fast. Quicksilver, flowing and running away from everything honest and good. “I told you, jogging’s bad for you. Let’s just walk, okay?”

  “I’m gonna have to.” George leaned over, resting his hands on his knees. “All the gear and no idea, eh?”

  “Don’t be daft.” Holding his arm to steady him, Silver looked around. They’d left behind the smartest of the Mayfair streets and emerged into a neighbourhood he didn’t recognise, lines of plain redbrick terraces redeemed by their gardens. “Wow. Where are we?”

  “It’s called Oak Vale.”

  “How have I never seen it before?”

  “People seem to... Oh, God, I’m out of shape. People miss it for some reason.”

  “If I was going to start a daily walking regime, I’d do it here. I’ve never seen so many trees on a London street.”

  “That was the planner’s idea, back in the 1950s when they were built. They’re not Arts and Crafts houses—if they had been, they might’ve been saved—but the architects still thought people needed a bit of outside space, and...” He paused, catching his breath. “And they planted a tree in every front garden, so...”

  “Sixty years later, we’ve got these beautiful avenues.”

  “Yeah. I mean, it was a bad idea in some ways. Oaks aren’t good town trees. You can see where the roots are making the tarmac heave, and in time they’ll play havoc with the foundations. Still, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Because they won’t be saved. What’s gonna happen to them, George?”

  Colour was returning to his face, but an unhappiness deeper than the kindly shade of the inconvenient urban oaks was clouding him. “A company called DigiRev just got the lease on the land. Somehow or other they swung change-of-use past the council, and all these streets will be demolished to make way for a high-tech digital retailer’s. The deal just went through.”

  “Computers? They’d be better off in a business park on the outskirts, wouldn’t they? The rents here must be stratospheric.”

  “No kidding. But the guy who runs it thinks he’s Elon Musk. He wants everything on one site, from factory to clean room to flash Knightsbridge store-front.”

  “OK. Job creation, I guess, but not for the people who live here now.”

  “That’s right. And DigiRev is trying to back out of the payments they agreed to help resettle them. They’re mostly tenants, so they don’t have a leg to stand on.”

  “You know a lot about it. Do you live around here?”

  “No, I’m staying with my brother in Mitcham.” George pushed his hands into the pockets of his track-suit jacket and looked at the ground. “I’m on the wrong side of all of this, Sil. Andrew’s architecture firm is designing the building for DigiRev.”

  “What—nice Andrew, the guy I talked to?”

  “The guy who bought me the amazing birthday present, yeah. He is nice. He’s miserable about this, but he built the firm up from nothing, and DigiRev is the biggest client he’s ever had. He’s got kids to feed.”

  “Difficult,” Silver agreed. George was still avoiding his gaze, as if expecting condemnation—or hoping for absolution, but Silver wasn’t in the game of either, not while he was off-duty. He’d acted as jury and priest to so many men. “Where’s good around here for lunch?”

  ***

  The Polish Café Tulip wasn’t as trendy as the Edgware Spice, but Silver liked it just as much. He liked anywhere that set out to do a thing and went about it sincerely. Here it was white lawn tablecloths, shabby chintz china from several different sets, and staff of about his own age who moved with efficiency rather than dash.

  By the time George returned from the bathroom, hair tidied and face washed clear of sweat, Silver had befriended all three of them: chatted to the manager in Polish and learned that she lived locally, and hated the idea of moving away with bewildered and angry passion.

  If she recognised George, she didn’t let it alter her civility. Two bowls of goulash soon appeared, accompanied by hunks of black bread. Carefully Silver sampled the steaming liquid. Surprising jolts of flavour went through him—comfort, family, a loving welcome on a cold night. Nearly as good as you, George Fenchurch, he thought, but kept it to himself. He was glad to be accepted in daylight on home turf, but didn’t want to push his luck. Up until now he’d successfully kept clients and friends in a separate box. “Bloody hell. That’s delicious.”

  “I know, right?” George agreed, enthusiastic as a teenager on Twitter, then blushed and grinned. “I come here a lot. Probably too much, for someone who’s trying to get fit.”

  “You can still do it. Just add in plenty of brisk walks, then you don’t have to subtract the goulash.” Silver dipped some bread and ate it, shivering with pleasure. “For God’s sake don’t subtract the goulash.”

  “I don’t want to. I... I guess I’ll have to find somewhere else in a few months’ time.”

  There it was again—the unspoken question, the trace of yearning. For reasons of his own, George wanted to know what Silver thought of him. Sure, yes, it’s fine to demolish a few streets of redbricks, even if there are oak trees half a century old, and quiet little restaurants that turn out the best goulash in the world. Or: no, you capitalist pig. You can’t uproot peoples’ lives like this, can’t eradicate a neighbourhood for the sake of money and greed... Silver sighed, leaned on one elbow and looked out of the window. “What’s wrong with this place, anyway?”

  “Not much, I’d thought. What do you mean?”

  “Look out there. There’s kids playing in the street, riding their bikes around.”

  “They’re from the little school up the road. They let them out at lunchtime to rampage around on their bikes—it’s all pedestrianised, so it’s safe for them. Don’t you like kids?”

  “Sure I do. Just couldn’t eat a whole one.”

  George snorted as if somehow he’d never heard that dreadful gag before. He topped up Silver’s glass and his own with the half carafe of Palac Riesling he’d chosen to go with the goulash. “Stupid.”

  “Seriously. Why aren’t they locked up indoors with their iPads like normal London children?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a special place. When it’s all gone, it’s gone. Andrew is a good man, Silver. When he saw Melchior out with Sabrina the other day, he threw him into the Serpentine.”

  Silver grabbed a napkin and held it to his mouth. “What?”

  “
He promised me he’d do it, back when Melchior had just ditched me and I was in bits. He doesn’t go around destroying people’s lives, that’s all.”

  Silver let a time of silence pass, the cries of the children and the rattle of an ancient Gaggia weaving a pattern in the air, a soundscape as unique as the inner-city tree shade, the school and the bikes and the row of little shops across the way. When it’s all gone, it’s gone. “Okay, handsome,” he said at length. “If you had your way with Oak Vale, what would you do to make it viable?”

  “Me? I’ve got no idea. I’m not even viable myself at the moment. Drew’s propping me up with some kind of make-work job in his office.”

  “Nonsense. You’re bristling with ideas. Come on.”

  George blew his cheeks out thoughtfully. “Well, I... I’d pollard the oaks, for a start. I know there’d be an outcry, and it would look dreadful for a couple of years, but they’d come back. In the meantime, they’re not shading the houses, so the damp would subside, and I’d be sure to put a good modern damp course in every property. Now, the trouble with oaks is, they’re high water-demand, and in dry summers on these clay city soils, they can suck out so much moisture from the earth that houses built near them subside.”

  “Is there a solution for that?”

  “Yes, and it’s not cutting down the damn trees. Insurance companies have got a lot to answer for—they make homeowners so paranoid that they fell indiscriminately, and believe it or not, that can cause the opposite problem. The clay soils swell and heave without the trees to take the water out, so the houses fall down that way.” Clearly forgetting himself and his personal non-viability, George leaned forward. “Pollarding, crown reduction—that’s the way forward. If you cut back the canopy by just the right amount, the transpiration from the leaves will reduce to the point where soil shrinkage and expansion levels out. It’s non-invasive. We get to keep our urban forest. Of course it costs money, and it doesn’t always work. There’s a couple of properties here I’d like to see underpinned. I’d like all of them overhauled, rewired, re-roofed, better plumbing.”

  “You wouldn’t touch the original features, though.”

  “Course not. Kitsch as hell now, all those 1950s fire surrounds and kitchens. And I’d offer long-term tenants right-to-buy, on extremely favourable terms. If you love a place enough to pour rent money into it year after year, you’re gonna cherish it all the more as an owner. You’ll stay, put down roots like the oaks, and have something to show for it. I’d incentivise local business, as well. Rent rebates on shop properties, and if we have to have a supermarket, let’s make it a small-branch Co-op like the ones that used to service places like this when they were first built. In fact let’s have two, one at each end of the village—because it is a village, in a way—and then no-one has to rush off to the mega-mall because it’s more convenient.”

  “I’m shopping there already. Can I still get my speciality bread and exotics?”

  “Of course you can, you townie. All kinds of foreign-cuisine specialists are moving into my rent-rebated commercial premises. The area’s hopping. Monsters like DigiRev wouldn’t stand a chance.” As if hearing himself say the name had quenched him, he sat back, lights fading from his eyes. “It’s all too late for that now.”

  “Do you talk to your brother about ideas like this?”

  “Of course not. He feels bad enough already. The architect’s not obliged to come up with stuff like that, especially in opposition to a client’s plans—and besides, he’s paying me.”

  “To do make-work, you said.”

  “Yeah. Once his secretary comes back, he won’t need me anymore. I’ve got to move on.”

  Silver handed a piece of the delicious black bread across the table to George, who had just eaten the last of his in what looked like sheer anxiety. “Maybe it should be an architect’s job to think about the way his buildings affect a community, though. Think how different London might have been if your kind of vision had been the norm in the seventies, when the Brutalist blocks were going up.”

  “Ah, don’t knock Brutalism. Some of those developments have been a huge success. I know people in the Hallfield Estate who wouldn’t move if you offered them a mansion.”

  “I’ve got a client in Hallfield. She says people stay because they’re engaged with the place. The architects managed to make the bridge between bold designs and what human beings need, and so it became a home, not just an experiment.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you’ve got to offset disasters like Robin Hood Gardens and Ronan Point.”

  Some of the lights came back. “God, yes. That’s the story Drew tells clients who want him to build high and cheap. The Ronan architects were his supervillains, when he was setting up. And the Goldfingers were heroes, for moving into Balfron Tower themselves after they’d designed it, to test out the advantages and flaws.” He paused, turning his wine glass around in his hands. “You’re really interested in all of this, aren’t you?”

  I’m interested in you, and this comes with the package. “Fascinated. More ideas, please. I can tell they’re in there. What else would you do in Oak Vale?”

  “Okay, you asked for it. This is the big one. Londoners hang by a thread in terms of power supply. If we lose infrastructure, even a couple of power stations, millions of homes would be dead in the water. I’d like to see the decentralisation of energy taken way beyond the Lord Mayor’s solar-panel scheme. I’d like every neighbourhood to have its own power-generation facility—green as far as possible, but backed up with heavy-duty generators, every few blocks. Independent, compartmentalised, protected against any system-wide failure.”

  “Bombproof.”

  “Figuratively. My superpowered atomic shield is still in the planning stage.”

  Silver broke into laughter. “Bloody hell, you know your stuff, don’t you? You should take all this to whoever granted planning permission to DigiRev.” He paused, suddenly thoughtful. “You don’t happen to know, do you?”

  “London Central Council, of course.”

  “No, I mean which councillor in particular had the... Never mind. You should talk to them.”

  “Hardly. I’m not about to undercut Drew’s deal, even if they would listen to me.”

  “Then your brother should take you on as a consultant or a partner, not the tea boy.”

  “He’s offered to. But he can’t afford it, and I don’t have the qualifications. I’ve never been anything but a civil servant.”

  “Well, some of those guys are firecrackers. I’ve slept with enough of ’em to know. Why, though?”

  George shrugged. “I started so Melchior and I would have one steady income while he was composing and building up his career. No-one made me keep going when things took off for him. I could’ve quit any time, looked for something more interesting. But the years went by, and I just...”

  “You were lost in his shadow.”

  The wrong thing to say. Either that or the right one: an unintentional bull’s-eye on a lifelong bruise. George turned to stare out of the window. “You know,” he said unsteadily after a moment, voice catching in pain, “all this is so fucking stupid. I’m sitting here with someone I really, really like, talking about a place where I’d really like to live, now I come to think about it. And the place is about to be demolished, and you’re...”

  “George.” Silver shot out a hand and caught him by the wrist. “Listen to me. I really like being with you too. So whatever you were about to say... for God’s sake don’t.”

  He was quick to catch on. Too quick by half—Silver was sorry that he’d had to learn to adapt so fast to a partner’s demands. Gently he disengaged his wrist from Silver’s hold. Shared out the last of the Riesling and sat back, eyes downcast, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  Silver’s phone buzzed, breaking the moment. “Sorry,” he said. “Do you mind if I check this?”

  “Of course not.”

  When he looked up from the screen, things had changed.
A kind of doggedness had set the lines of his companion’s face, a determination to forge ahead even if it did piss off the other half. Silver set the phone down. “Talk to me.”

  “What about?”

  “Whatever’s biting your arse. I know something is.”

  “Nothing to do with me, or what we were just talking about. I know it’s none of my business, but... was that call from someone called Jamie?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “It wasn’t a call. It was a text.” Silver sighed at himself in impatience. “Sorry. That was cheap. Yes, it was from someone called Jamie, and you need to listen to me for a second, George.”

  “No, I don’t.” George put his plate aside. “I don’t, because I know what you’re going to say. If Andrew’s got kids to feed, then so have you—or if not kids, I bet you’ve got someone.”

  “Nephews,” Silver said, startling himself. One box for clients, another for friends. A third, under particular seal, for his family. “They just left university. I didn’t want them saddled with debt, so I’ve paid off their student loans, put down deposits on flats for them.”

  “Right. I wish I’d had an Uncle Silver. One client telling you not to see another scares the crap out of you, doesn’t it? Even if the first client has a good reason. Will you let me tell you what it is?”

  “You know I can’t. You’re a lovely guy—too bloody nice for your own good, and mine too—but you haven’t got a clue about my world.”

  ***

  Silver caught him up on the café steps. He’d left his card at the till in vain: George had forestalled him with cash, and lunch was paid for, including tips. “Wait a minute. Please!”

  George turned, zipping up his jacket. “I’m not running out on you.”

  “It looks a bit that way. I don’t blame you, but... Look, the reasons why I said those things...” Silver folded his arms. Sexual transactions, no matter how complicated, were always so much easier to negotiate than thorny everyday life. “I’m not thinking of you as a client anymore, which is stupid, given that we’ve had one interrupted breakfast, this lunch and a very short jog together. But there it is. I was wondering if...”