by Nigel Packer
Sitting at a café table and scanning the lake through my binoculars, I caught the sound of your voice behind me, ordering a cup of coffee. I was drawn by your accent, the distinctive burr of the Netherlands, and also by its timbre, deep and assured. When I turned in curiosity to see the owner of this striking voice, the face that turned to meet mine was also striking. Some similar feeling must have sparked inside you, for within minutes you had engaged me in conversation.
No, I shall never tire of the sound of your voice; the way it can curl around a phrase. It was there at the start, when you asked if you might share the view – the way you asked to borrow my binoculars! Yet if your voice explains my initial attraction, what deeper forces held us together? We are similar characters, first and foremost, companions cut from the same emotional cloth. Yes, a rather starched one, I have to admit. The same formal manners, the same awkwardness when discussing matters of the heart. Temperamentally, we could almost be twins. And I believe it is that emotional reticence, the one mirrored closely in the other, that drew us together but also now holds us apart.
Our mutual shyness has become a kind of barrier, preventing us from sharing our concerns. Take your pained expression as we stood before the Departures building. I wonder just how deep those feelings run in you. I hate the thought of my baggage weighing you down – and no, I’m not referring now to my suitcase. I hope I still make you happy, Anika. I hope you don’t feel trapped by a sense of obligation. I know you take lovers, I don’t judge you for doing so, and I realise the needs they satisfy aren’t just physical. If I felt it would be of any assistance, I would free you from me completely, but I know that such a suggestion would be misinterpreted.
I wish that I could tell you all this, reach out to you beyond the silent page. But I know from experience it would be hopeless to even attempt it. It is not, to put it simply, how you and I conduct ourselves. It isn’t who we are together, nowadays. And so, when we speak, I must express my feelings for you in other ways. In questions about your topspin, or the advice I offer on the azaleas, in the tone with which I describe the autumn forest.
I would like you to know that my passion for you remains, though its expression, these days, is somewhat muted. Beneath the surface frost of age I sense the pulse of former springs, and I hope I have conveyed some sense of that now.
Until next week, my dear … Take care of yourself and the chickens.
Otto
Thirteen
‘Good morning, Otto,’ said Chloe, as he answered the door of his apartment. ‘How are you feeling today?’
It was the kind of harmless-sounding question he had come to dread with the passing years. Where on earth did he begin? With the constant pain in his abdomen, eased only by bending forward? Or the constant pain in his spine, eased only by leaning back? Or with the more general pain, the one that ran like a malignant current through his nerves first thing each morning – and seemed beyond all reasonable hope of remedy? Better, perhaps, not to mention any of them. The question, after all, was largely rhetorical.
‘I’m fine, thank you, Chloe. How are you?’
‘Terrific. Ready for a busy day’s filming?’
‘I am.’
Stepping back, Otto ushered her inside the apartment, closely followed by the film crew. Chloe had warned him the previous evening that they would call round early to see him. He had readily agreed, forgetting that nowadays he emerged from sleep in stages, rather than all at once. His daily rebooting was not yet quite complete.
‘Can I get you some tea?’ he asked, as they made their way through to the kitchen.
‘Do you mind waiting until we’ve set everything up? We’d like to film a few shots of you preparing breakfast.’
‘Breakfast? Do people really want to see that sort of thing?’
‘It won’t be anything too complicated. Buttering the toast, putting on the kettle. Do you think you can manage it?’
She flinched at her own words.
‘I’m sorry. That sounded patronising, didn’t it?’
Otto smiled.
‘Life, at my age, is all about diminishing expectations: one’s own, and those of others. But fear not. Even if I no longer design large buildings, I’m reasonably confident I can still boil a kettle.’
* * *
It was, as Chloe had warned, a busy day. After filming Otto at breakfast – he poured out the tea, twinkle in his eye, with a rather exaggerated flourish – they went on to shoot at a number of locations around the building.
First stop was one of the four main lifts. To his dismay, Otto saw that it was in a shocking state of repair; worse, even, than the others he had used so far. His face looked deathly pale, lit from above, as they descended creakily through many floors, the camera placed just inches from his nose.
‘How would you feel about using this lift each day?’ Chloe asked him.
Was there an edge to her question, he wondered, beneath the natural warmth of her voice?
‘It’s an unpleasant experience,’ he confirmed. ‘I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone. And that strange vibration? The one that’s making the camera shake so badly? It definitely wasn’t there in the 1960s.’
He would like to have explained things further, but the smell from a mysterious pool of liquid in the corner was making him feel slightly nauseous. He wanted to tell Chloe that it wasn’t supposed to be like this; that it hadn’t always been so, in fact. Age could play strange tricks on a building, just as it could upon people. In the 1960s, the lifts at Marlowe House had been a source of excitement to many of its residents. People used to ride in them for fun. The lifts were intended to ease life’s burdens, yet somehow they only seemed to add to them. Even now, during the daytime, surrounded by the film crew, the atmosphere inside this confined and oppressive space made Otto feel uneasy. Alone, late at night, it must have been most unnerving.
Next they took some film of him wandering alone through the dimly lit corridors. His footsteps echoed in the silence, while the tapping of his cane provided a rhythmical counterpoint. He passed almost no one on his travels, but he sensed, in the graffiti-covered walls, the ghostly presence of several generations of residents. The tangled mass of words and images surrounded him as he walked.
Now and then, he halted to inspect some of the more colourful examples he came across. He squinted up and down the walls, mouthing to himself some of the phrases. There were insults, threats, cries of despair, accusations and boasts. And then, occasionally, something surreal or whimsical, a burst of bleak humour amid the gloom. To Otto, it seemed as though an entire community had been placed on a psychiatrist’s couch, their answers then broadcast to the world.
Sigmund Freud would have loved this stuff, he thought. Clearly he was born in the wrong century. If he were alive today he would be analysing walls instead of people.
The graffiti formed a kind of visual hubbub: the messages conveyed were quite confusing.
It’s like some dysfunctional dinner party, he continued, where everyone is speaking at once and not listening to each other.
Chloe spoke up.
‘I guess the graffiti weren’t here, the last time you visited Marlowe House.’
‘That’s right. The walls of the corridors were painted a rather delicate lemon colour, if my memory serves me correctly. We felt it would give the common areas a bright and friendly feel.’
He looked around.
‘We were hoping that these corridors would become attractive places for the residents to wander. We pictured them stopping to chat to friends and neighbours as they passed each other during their evening walk.’
He set off once more along the corridor, as though in demonstration of his words.
‘Our aim was to encourage an indoor version of the passeggiata, the communal evening stroll seen in the towns and villages of Italy. We saw the corridors as a means of bringing people together.’
He smiled sadly at Chloe, who was walking now alongside him.
‘Sounds absurd, doesn
’t it, all these years later? Pretentious … a conceit.’
She shrugged her shoulders, unsure of what to say to him.
‘It was a nice idea,’ she said, finally.
‘Yes,’ said Otto, stopping to look at an obscenity daubed upon a wall. ‘It was a nice idea.’
‘Is it a shock for you to see it like this?’
‘Not really. Graffiti have become ubiquitous now, on residential estates such as this one. At the time of Marlowe House’s construction they were less common, certainly on this kind of scale. It was more a case of the occasional slogan.’
‘What’s behind it, do you think? Why do people feel the need to do it?’
‘Who knows? I find the phenomenon curious, I must admit, but I can’t explain its cause.’
Otto could never decide where he stood on the question of graffiti. Was it wanton vandalism or the most democratic of art forms? A cry for attention or simple showing off? He had read all the theories and not been convinced by any of them. To him, graffiti felt more like a glimpse into the city’s unconscious – into the fragmentary sensations, perceptions and impulses that were a part of the modern urban condition.
‘And are you upset by what you can see here? Disappointed, maybe?’
Otto halted.
‘Upset is the wrong word. Disappointed, too. It puzzles me, I suppose, like so much else in life, these days. It puzzles me.’
He turned on his heel again, his eyes scanning the walls with a single sweep.
‘I think I preferred the pale lemon.’
* * *
Later that afternoon, they did some filming on the roof of Marlowe House. The light and space were a welcome change from the subterranean murk of the lifts and corridors. Chloe wanted to recreate a scene from the original documentary, one in which a confident young Otto had stood near the edge of the parapet – one hand shielding his eyes – and surveyed the wide panorama of London below.
Many years later, the older version shuffled slowly towards the drop, stopping some ten metres short of the edge. It was as far as he dared go this time.
‘Just a little further, if you don’t mind,’ Chloe prompted him. ‘It’s going to look spectacular.’
It certainly will, if I topple over the edge. I’m an architect, not a bloody stuntman.
Not wanting to disappoint her, however, Otto inched forward with painful slowness. Finally he halted, three metres or so from the drop. His head swam madly: his dry throat burned. He didn’t dare look up or down.
‘That’s perfect, thank you,’ he heard her call out to him, from what seemed an unconscionable distance.
‘No problem at all,’ he managed to call back, in a sing-song sort of voice, as he sought to control the shaking in his knees.
With the cameras rolling behind him, Otto swallowed uncomfortably, shutting his eyes to the giddying immensity of view.
Yet another negative development of recent years – I now appear to suffer from vertigo. And we live in Switzerland, of all places.
His hands began to tremble; he was losing all feeling in his legs.
Much more of this and I won’t be able to move at all.
And if this were to happen, he wondered, what exactly would they do? Perhaps they would just leave him there, frozen to the spot, perched on the rooftop like a petrified gargoyle … right until the moment that the wrecking ball struck.
Otto opened his eyes and saw London swimming below him. The tower blocks contracted and stretched; the rows of streets swayed like corn. He began to sway, too, caught up in the city’s strange motion.
Looking down, he saw the sculpture garden directly below. If he fell, he wondered, which of those sculptures might he land upon? Or would it be the burned-out mattress, lying near by? Less messy, perhaps, but surely insufficient to break his fall.
This is becoming rather ghoulish, Otto thought.
To steady himself, he tried to focus on the horizon, which lurched less madly than the rest of his surroundings. He noticed the northern heights of Hampstead, coloured like a bruise against the sky.
I suppose, if I survive this circus, I ought to go back for a look at the old place.
‘Okay, we’re done,’ a voice called from behind him.
With some relief, Otto raised a hand in acknowledgement and edged his way back from the abyss.
Fourteen
Sitting shortly afterwards on a more sheltered part of the roof, Chloe plied Otto with words of gratitude.
‘I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your cooperation,’ she said. ‘We have some terrific footage.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ he replied, attempting a nonchalant smile. ‘I found the experience most invigorating.’
But as he removed the homburg from his head, running his fingers through the thick white hair, Chloe noticed the trembling of his fragile hands and realised she was responsible for his distress. Her shoulders slumped and the easy chatter that came naturally to her disappeared. Only the sound of the breeze remained, to accompany the thoughts of both.
With the wind tugging his hair into gravity-defying shapes, and his hands playing restlessly with the brim of his hat, Otto gazed out once more at the view. It remained enormous, but was held at a safer distance than before.
‘It’s still a magnificent city,’ he said. ‘Even after all these years.’
Chloe looked up, glad to be distracted from the image of his shaking hands.
‘Do you have any favourite buildings here in London?’ she asked him.
‘Of course. I have several. I could talk about the architecture in this city all day long, as poor Anika would no doubt attest.’
He tried pointing out some examples as he spoke, while Chloe sought without success to follow the wavering line of his forefinger.
‘Some of them are obvious, the grand set-pieces. St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey. Then certain streetscapes, from various periods. Fournier Street in Spitalfields is a particular favourite. A terrific ensemble of eighteenth-century townhouses. So many others: the Nash terraces of Regent’s Park; the former warehouses on the Thames; the typical streets of Victorian housing in weathered brick. I also love some of the twentieth-century tower blocks, works by Denys Lasdun and Ernö Goldfinger. That’s one of his, by the way, the Trellick Tower, over there.’
He pointed to an elongated smudge on the horizon, far off to the north-west. Chloe had no idea what she was meant to be looking at, but nodded to him politely.
‘And yet, oddly enough, my favourite structure here in London is a relatively tiny one. It’s not really a “building” at all. It wasn’t even designed to be used by people.’
‘Whatever is it?’ she asked him.
‘The penguin pool at London Zoo. Built in the 1930s. Do you know it?’
She thought a second.
‘I’ve seen the new penguin beach – I went there earlier this year. But I don’t remember an old pool.’
‘It’s no longer in use – hasn’t been for some years.’
‘They haven’t knocked it down, surely?’
‘They couldn’t, even if they wanted to. It’s Grade 1 listed, you see. A mere slip of a structure, but important in its way. As far as I’m aware it’s now a water feature. It was designed by Berthold Lubetkin’s Tecton practice, and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of modern architecture. It has a wonderful pair of concrete ramps, interlocking and spiralling down into the water. A most graceful composition.’
‘You’ve whetted my appetite. I must go back and search it out some day.’
‘I don’t think you’d regret it; although, as with so many twentieth-century constructions, it did attract its fair share of controversy over the years.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Some people claimed it didn’t work – as a practical structure, I mean. They said it was fine as a work of art, as an eye-catching piece of sculpture, but apparently the penguins didn’t much care for it.’
Chloe smiled.
‘No wonder it wa
s closed,’ she said.
‘Yes … well … it’s quite understandable. I’m sure they’ll be much happier with their beach.’
‘When did you last go there?’
‘Many years ago, now. My first wife and I took our son, Daniel, when he was just a young boy.’
Otto paused a moment in reflection.
‘I’m afraid it wasn’t a terribly successful outing.’
* * *
On a balmy spring Sunday in 1972, they had taken him to the zoo to see the lions. At five years old, Daniel liked all sorts of animals, but lions were his particular favourite. He had spoken to his parents about little else for weeks.
Within minutes of arriving at the ticket desk, he was running ahead of them on the pathway, eager to reach the scene he could already picture in his head. He anticipated with excitement the deep growling sound in the lions’ throats, the way they prowled the perimeter fence of their compound. But as he neared the bend in the pathway that would take him to this magical place, he heard the sound of his mother’s voice, calling him back.
‘Daniel. Just a moment. Daddy wants to look at the penguins.’
It was some time since Otto had seen the penguin pool, and the sight of the ramps down which they were waddling had stopped him dead in his tracks. He was staring in fascination at the scene, unable to tear himself away.
A reluctant Daniel turned and ran back towards them.
‘He won’t be long, I promise,’ Cynthia whispered with a smile. ‘He’s having one of his architectural moments.’
Daniel, however, was not amused.
