1
Michael Young, having smoothed his hair and straightened his tie, pushed the door open and was appalled.
He was in the act of letting the door swing back, hoping no-one had noticed him, when a voice bellowed out.
‘Looks like new boy found the right room.’
Sixty faces turned towards the door and Michael felt his cheeks crimson.
The public were sitting in seven or eight rows facing the edge of the table from which the voice had come that had betrayed him. Swallowing hard, Michael stepped into Committee Room 4.
Around the large hardwood table sat the nine other members of the Planning Committee, of which he was now a part, and four or five other people he had never previously met. Back from the table, flanking the walls, sat another group, around a dozen in all, carrying books, binders, files, briefcases and portable computers. Why hadn’t anyone told him how many people there would be?
‘Come on, Lad, we don’t bite.’
Other councillors joined in the merriment, laughing at Michael’s obvious discomfort.
‘There’s even a plaque with yer name on it to make sure you don’t get lost.’
It was true. On the table in front of the remaining empty space, and facing the public, was a plaque that read ‘Cllr Michael Young’. Michael pulled his chair out and sat down, tucking his bag down at his feet.
The room was buzzing with several dozen whispered conversations. Squinting in the sunlight that beamed through a tall window straight into his eyes, Michael looked around him.
The faces of the public were awash with anticipation, a crowd awaiting an execution, people of all ages waiting to learn whether this or that planning application would be granted. Groups as well as individuals; some plainly as nervous as he was himself, while others were reading newspapers or staring into space, their faces as vacant as car windscreens.
Deciding he needed to know which members of his own group were on the committee with him, Michael did a quick check of the names on the plaques. To his left, the thin angular frame and profile of Terrence Fountain and, beyond him, the tired and bored face of Kenneth Knight. Michael turned to his right. He couldn’t read the plaque, as it was facing away from him, but an envelope on the table revealed the woman to be Jessica Bedfellow. A strong perfume hung in the air like a tropical evening on a desert island.
Across the table were the opposition: John Scratcher, Sharon Tallboy, Clive Dormer, all Labour, and Philip Bentham, the only Tory left on the city council. Michael was the youngest councillor by a good twenty years.
Clive Dormer, retired ambulance driver and pigeon fancier, was busy arranging a collection of small plastic water bottles as if planning either to use them as a barricade or preparing for a weekend in the Sahara. To his right Philip Bentham, shooting jacket and a penchant for brightly coloured waistcoats, was prising open the lid of a Tupperware box and peering at the contents within.
‘Scones again, Philip?’ Clive asked.
‘Of course, dear thing. Scones, clotted cream and some absolutely delicious strawberry jam.’
‘Right. Its three o’clock and I propose we get the meeting underway.’
Michael turned to his left. At the top end of the table, facing the public, was one of his fellow Lib Dem councillors. They had spoken briefly on election night some three weeks previously.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Chris Sloth and I am chair of the planning committee. Also before you are the members of the committee and various planning officers, highways officers and other staff at the council. First of all I would ask anyone with a mobile phone if they could ….’
Michael suddenly remembered the Cornetto sitting at the bottom of his bag. Shit. Should he bend down and scoff it quickly or let it slowly melt and ooze out over the pile of papers he had been given earlier in the day?
Papers he hadn’t even looked at. ‘So, any declarations of interest?’ ‘Only my usual, Chair,’ piped up Clive Dormer. ‘I’m interested in anything that gets me home before nine o’clock this evening.’
Around the table eyeballs rolled.
‘And I’m interested in any device that might persuade Clive that he isn’t as droll as he thinks he is,’ said a weary voice to Michael’s left. Michael looked down at the papers in front of him. Uppermost was a large crimson bound book the thickness of a telephone directory. ‘Turning to the minutes then …’ ‘Vote for approval, Chair.’ ‘Seconded.’
‘A show of hands then.’
Michael struggled to keep up as hands around the table shot into the air.
‘Abstentions?’
‘Oh look, new boy’s already showing he has a mind of his own.’ Michael dropped his hand in some confusion. ‘Can I request the abstention be formally minuted, Chair?’ ‘
’Really, Clive,’ Philip Bentham intervened. ‘I do think we should give the bright young thing a chance to settle in.’
‘Don’t pay any mind to them, Michael,’ Jessica whispered in his ear. ‘They’re only playing up because they can’t bear the fact that they lost the election.’
‘Before we start,’ Sloth announced, ‘I should announce that Item twelve, Churling House, the proposed redevelopment of the site and item thirteen, the associated demolition of Churling House itself, have been postponed till next month to allow officers further time to prepare. So if any members of the public …’
‘Shame, shame, shame,’ shouted a bespectacled middle aged woman with short grey hair, wagging her finger at the committee as she stood up and pushed her way towards the door. ‘You’ll not get away with this.’
‘See you next month, Eileen,’ one of the councillors called out.
‘Item one, on page sixty five, then. A two storey side extension at 15 the Parings in Coltsby village,’ Chris Sloth directed the committee to the first of twenty eight planning applications that were to be considered that afternoon. Any update from the officers?’
‘As written in the report, Chair,’ replied a man seated to Sloth’s right as he struggled with a mountain of loose sheets of paper.’
‘Fine. We have two speakers registered to speak: the applicant Mr Martin Richards and in objection Mr Proudfoot of the Coltsby Parish Council. Mr Richards you have three minutes.’
A thin nervous looking man in thick glasses, bouffant hair and a cheap suit he looked uncomfortable in, stood up and cleared his throat.
‘I sorry I don’t really know how to really …’ ‘Just say what you have to say, Mr Richards,’ Sloth said genially. Mr Richards nodded quickly. ‘My wife and I have two children and our house is too small. So we want an extra bedroom. And that’s it really. Thank you.’ Mr Richards sat down quickly. Around the table the councillors were leafing through their copies of the planning application. Michael again remembered the ice cream in his bag. Why hadn’t he eaten it straight away? And what on earth were SPGs and PPG32?
‘Thank you and now I call on Mr Proudfoot. You have three minutes.’ ‘Thank you, Chair.’ A large fat faced man in a tweed suit climbed to his feet. He flicked at
an unruly mesh of white wavy hair that had strayed over the thicket of his eyebrows, unfolded a sheet of paper, adjusted his glasses and started to read.
‘What we have proposed here is a disgrace. A total disgrace. To be frank …’
‘Is he ever anything else?’ a voice muttered around the table. Proudfoot glared up from the piece of paper. ‘Order, children, order,’ Sloth chided the committee. ‘To be frank, it beggars belief that planning officers could be so crass as to even contemplate allowing a monstrosity, and I use the word advisedly, a monstrosity such as this to be built in one of Yorkshire’s most beautiful villages. What next I wonder? A motorcycle skid park on our village green? A superstore in the churchyard? And what about the children who will have to walk past this aberration on their way to school? What about the flooding that will occur in half the homes in the village if this patio …’, he spat the word out as if trying to nail it to a wall, ‘that I notice has been proposed for approval without the slightest comment by planning officers, is allowed to go ahead. If this is an indication of the way this new administration is proposing to carry on I would be surprised if there will be anything left of our villages come the next election. Let’s look at the specifics. This so-called window at the …’
And so he went on, for the full three minutes with barely a breath, foaming and fuming while councillors stared at their papers or out of the window, while the secretaries scribbled notes, while a planning officer whispered into a highways officer’s ear and provoked a wry smile, while the public fiddled with their noses or studied their shoes.
‘ … as for the terracing effect such an eyesore would create, the Parish Council are unanimated the belief that …’
‘Fifteen seconds, Mr Proudfoot,’ Chris Sloth interjected.
‘If you don’t mind I should like to finish my speech.’ Proudfoot glowered at Sloth.
‘Quite so, quite so, but you have fifteen seconds.’
Michael thought back to the site visit he had attended the day before, the non-descript 1990’s housing estate with its wide streets of small but tidy semi-detached houses. The husband and wife nervously showing the planning committee through their house and into the back garden while the parish council stood en masse by the roadside muttering and spluttering like a vintage car rally revving their engines.
‘… This desecration has to stop.’
Proudfoot, red in the face, temples throbbing in righteous indignation, folded his piece of paper noisily and sank onto his chair.
‘Can I voice concern that Proudfoot should stop before he damages his health? If he’s not careful, the only public role for him in future will be guest appearances in the Angina Monologues,’ Kenneth Knight quipped.
‘Any questions for the officers?’ Chris Sloth asked.
‘Yes, I have one,’ Knight said. ‘From Proudfoot’s contribution it is clear this application is of major significance. Could I ask when exactly it is anticipated that the Parings estate in Coltsby is going to be declared a World Heritage site?’
Smiles all round but the officers said nothing. ‘We’ll move on to debate then?’ Sloth suggested. John Scratcher’s hand went up. Sloth nodded in his direction. ‘Yes, Chair, I recommend approval. It’s very clear what’s going on here. This attack by the Parish Council is no more or less than an attack on the working class itself. A blatant attempt to suggest that ordinary working people should not aspire to better themselves. It is clear that Proudfoot and the Coltsby Parish Council Mafia believe that en suite bathrooms are the preserve of the privileged few rather than a perfectly reasonable aspiration of the many. If he had his way the rest of us would still be living in hovels on the edges of his estate, doffing our caps and …’
To Michael’s left Kenneth Knight made an exaggerated display of yawning. Across the table, Philip Bentham’s hand rose elegantly into the air. Scratcher’s rant came to a conclusion and Bentham spoke.
‘I really must say watching Proudfoot and Scratcher sparring there was bit like watching two dogs scrapping over a carcass on hunt day, don’t you think? All terribly jolly but a little unfortunate for dear old Mr Richards here who in reality is only asking for a very modest increase to the size of his small family dwelling. I must say I cannot see any objection in this instance.’
‘I’ll second it, Chair,’ Kenneth Knight interjected. ‘Councillor Tallboy,’ Sloth said. ‘Well, I am afraid I will have to differ with my colleague on this one,’
Sharon Tallboy started, glancing at John Scratcher. ‘I do understand Mr Richard’s need to extend his home but this is undoubtedly a night …’
‘… nightmare waiting to happen,’ chanted Knight, Bentham and Jessica Bedfellow in happy unison, betraying that it wasn’t the first time they had heard Tallboy utter that particular phrase.
‘Ha ha,’ Sharon Tallboy responded sourly.
And so the show went on, everyone getting their two pennies’ worth, posturing this way and that for fifteen minutes while a hapless Mr Richards waited to see if he would be allowed an extra bedroom, a garage and a strip of patio. Finally the vote was called and the application went through and as Proudfoot muttered insults under his breath and barged his way out of the room, a relieved Mr Richards stood up and smiled his thanks briefly before exiting through a different door.
While papers were shuffled and fresh plans were produced and pinned up on the wall for inspection, Michael dived under the table to retrieve his ice cream. Chocolate and vanilla had leaked out over his papers and collected at the bottom of his bag. He pulled out what remained of the sodden Cornetto, out of sight, and began to wolf it down.
A sudden and very bright flash of light beneath the table.
Instinctively Michael pulled his head back, a shade too quickly, banging it hard on the underside of the table, smearing ice cream across his face in the process. He came back up from under the table to amused comments from the opposition.
‘Jessica, what have you got him doing under there?’ ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ Jessica Bedfellow arched her eyebrows suggestively then turned to
Michael. ‘Don’t pay any attention to them, Love. What they know about sex you could scribble on the back of a Viagra tablet.’
She reached up and wiped his nose for him with her handkerchief.
‘Item two is the conversion of an ornamental fishpond into a granny annex,’ Chris Sloth called out from the other end of the room.
‘There. We have made a mess, haven’t we?’ ‘It’s ice cream,’ Michael tried to explain. ‘I’d left it in my bag and …’ ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘I was a little nervous the first time.’ Michael evidently looked alarmed because Jessica felt obliged to add with a wink, ‘my first planning meeting.’ ‘Has everyone found page 132?’ Chris Sloth was impatient. Michael turned the pages frantically.
‘You’d be surprised.’ ‘I’m sure not all reality TV is like that,’ Laura replied, taking a sip of her coffee. ‘That show last year, the one you said you liked. Kat and Mouse. Some of the guys were really nice. Besides Michael has never called my bum fat. Curvy, he says I’m curvy.’
‘Whatever.’ Gaia Makepeace fiddled with her braid. ‘Didn’t stop most of them pawing anything in a skirt that came close enough.’
The Casa Latté coffee shop was alive with half-whispered conversations, hissing capuccino machines and teaspoons jingling in cups. The impressive building had previously been a bank and it wouldn’t have surprised Laura in the least to discover that she was sitting at the exact spot from which the manager had directed operations. She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the tall mirrors by the counter. Elegant was the word that sprung to mind. A hand-painted silk top from Milan, emeralds, reds, and turquoises. Her hair blonde and full like that newscaster whose name she kept forgetting, her neck graceful. Not too much makeup.
‘I would have thought you would be pleased to know someone who knows someone on the council,’ Laura said self-importantly, turning back towards Gaia. ‘A councillor. Now you’ve got a chance to have say on what happens and …’
‘Just because your boyf can now sucker up to all those bastards in the town hall doesn’t mean shit. He’ll do as he’s told, they all do. Does your biscuit taste of lard?’
‘The biscuits are vegetarian. I checked, didn’t I?’ Laura seemed to spend half her life reassuring Gaia that the world wasn’t engaged in a hidden agenda to con vegetarians into defiling themselves by eating animal fat.
‘Are you coming to the meeting?’ Gaia found her Bolivian raffia bag and rummaged within it.
‘I promised Michael that …’ ‘Oh, it’s OK. Don’t worry. I can see submitting to Michael’s sexual urges is more important than saving the planet.’ Gaia could be very frustrating. Deep down Laura thought there was probably some truth to Michael’s suggestion that what Gaia needed wasn’t another evening of planet saving six rhythms sacred feminine workshops but a down to earth shag. Of course, she couldn’t say so to Gaia. Or to Michael.
‘Stream said he’s invited someone to give us advice on channelling energy. She’s coming all the way from the Wirral.’
‘Oh, like those wind mills and sun panels?’
Gaia had found what she was looking for. She slapped a small sheet of paper down on the table in front of Laura.
How to protest and win – the holistic way. Find the hidden power of chakras and lovestones.
Laura sighed, she was juggling so many responsibilities.
Twenty seven applications later the planning meeting was over. It was ten to nine. As they filed out into the warm evening air, Chris Sloth and Kenneth Knight ambushed Michael.
‘How about a drink, lad?’ ‘Felcity will say you’re corrupting him.’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Lad’s had a tough day. What do you say, Michael?
A quick pint?’ Michael looked at the two older men. Kenneth Knight’s slept-in look with the jowls and the corrugated lower eyelids. Chris Sloth’s thick neck, round face and huge ear lobes. Eager faces. Thirsty faces.
Michael nodded. ‘Fantastic,’ Knight said. ‘Frog and Fox or the Three Cranes?’ ‘The Under Arms,’ Sloth replied. ‘You’re in for a treat, lad,’ he said, taking Michael’s arm. ‘Do you like cricket?’
By the time they pushed him out of the taxi, well after midnight, Michael had had more than a skinful.
‘Remember, underarm on the pitch, underhand in the planning committee,’ Kenneth Knight shouted through the window as the taxi pulled away.
Michael crossed the pavement gingerly and made his way down Hillsgate, regretting the way it seemed to lurch about like the deck of a North Sea ferry. Having finally reached number 12, and with the front door for support, he fumbled in his trouser pockets for his key.
Traffic raced up and down the street.
The chippies were still open and he watched as a group of women, all in hip huggers and muffin tops, bare bellies wobbling precariously over their waist bands, staggered out into the night air clutching their fish and chips. The drunken cackling of an alcopop-induced haze hung around them like a cloud of midges as they made their way down the street towards him. He hated the large groups. The women were even worse than the men, roaming in packs, foul mouthed and predatory.
‘Oh, look. What’s he up to?’ one of the women called out, spotting Michael fishing about in his pockets.
‘Bloody wanker,’ cried another. ‘Too small to find, is it?’
At last Michael found his key. He fished it quickly out of his trousers and stabbed it at the lock. Just in time he opened the door and staggered inside, slamming the door behind him. Insults showered against the door as the high-heeled pack tottered past. A few chips were shoved through the letter box and fell at his feet.
‘ … as limp as his little willy,’ a voice said to raucous laughter from outside.
Head spinning, Michael clung to the bannisters as he worked his way up the stairs to the front door of his bedsit where he curled up on the carpet and drifted effortlessly to sleep. When he awoke, still on the landing, still in his suit, he would find his face pitted by the bristles of the doormat, and his head throbbing like a ship’s engine room.
In the back bar of the Under Arms the night was still young.
Two men faced each other across a table upon which were stacked pint glasses and whisky tumblers.
‘I’d quite forgotten to congratulate you,’ said Bernard, the larger of the two men.
Bernard Allcomers was dressed for business, as ever, a double breasted suit, with razor creases in the trousers, a shirt so white it might be imagined it was lit up from within, and a navy blue tie bearing a large monogrammed B.A. He was a huge fat man, with a pale oily face that resembled a buttered crumpet, though at times it was difficult to see where his neck ended and his face began. A full head of lank yellow hair turned grey was plastered back with brilliantine, his rheumy eyes had the pale sheen of cartilage on the ball of a leg of ham.
‘To the new administration and the future.’ Bernard leaned forward and chinked whisky tumblers with his drinking partner. ‘Your tardiness is noted,’ answered Raymond, his voice slurred with booze, ‘but forgiven. In the circumstances.’ The two men laughed. Raymond Manson was small and dapper, and the new leader of Escrington City Council. To celebrate his success he had been shopping. His feet nestled in bespoke brogues from a shoemaker off London’s Piccadilly. The three-piece suit was from Savile Row itself and his cravat was not yellow, as less cultured souls might have it, but antique gold, as was the handkerchief poking out of his jacket pocket. He had long harboured the ambition to be the best dressed man in town and would happily spend ten minutes every morning attending to his immaculately trimmed goatee beard. His hair, currently midnight auburn, had seen more colour trooped through it than the Queen’s birthday parade.
‘So, how quickly do you think we will have this all sewn up?’ Bernard asked.
‘It’s a shame it couldn’t come before today’s planning meeting,’ Raymond answered. ‘The sooner the better, frankly, while the new wood is still quite green.’
‘Marvellous. One would hate to see those forecasts about falling property prices impact on our little arrangement.’
‘Quite so, quite so. I’ve had a word with the director of planning who has assured me that everything should be ready for next month. I wonder what Lady Churling would say if she knew the bulldozers had her family pile in their sights,’ Raymond mused.
‘Cordelia’s been dead over a year and the rest of the family make the Inland Revenue look like a benevolent society. After I’d shaken her son’s hand last week I felt obliged to count my fingers. Take my word, they’ll take the money and run.’ Bernard said scathingly. ‘As will we all,’ he added with a twinkle in his eye.
Raymond didn’t answer, his mind was engaged in considering how he would be spending the fifty thousand pounds he would be trousering when the planning application to build a cluster of executive homes and a luxury shopping arcade were approved. The possibilities were endless.
‘Well, mustn’t keep you,’ Bernard said, draining his glass. ‘Plots to develop, plans to hatch.’
2
‘It would have been rude not to,’ Michael said in a tone intended to bring the conversation to a close.
He was exhausted and wondered whether agreeing to spend the evening with Laura had been a good idea.
A valiant and, it turned out, foolish determination to go into work had lasted all of an hour after which time, having twice stamped the date on the desk and once on his hand, Michael found himself face to face with Miss Preen. The mountainous rolls of Miss Preen. The vast powdered jowls of Miss Preen. The heavy bejewelled neck of Miss Preen, thick as a telegraph post. The pugnacious piggy green eyes of Miss Preen, from whom no secrets were hid.
‘Michael, in my office. Now.’
Michael followed his boss’s crimplene wrapped gently swaying haunches through History and Psychology – Self Help, and on to her office at the far end of Animals – Invertebrates.
‘Sit.’
Michael sat, hangover still throbbing the back of his neck, eyes struggling with Miss Preen’s silhouette against the morning sunshine pouring through the window behind her. Miss Preen settled herself against the front of her desk. The desk sighed and creaked.
‘We need to have a little chat,’ she started ominously. ‘Don’t you think?’
A small grunt surfaced in the area of Michael’s voicebox. ‘What was that?’
‘Yes, I said yes.’
‘Oh? And why would you say yes?’ She leant forward, obscuring the sun and simultaneously bringing Michael’s face within a few inches of her vast cashmere wrapped bosom. Her heavy pearl necklace scythed what air remained between them like a pendulum of death. A cloying earthy perfume hung in the air like smog.
‘The council?’ Michael volunteered.
‘Commendable brevity, young man.’ Miss Preen leant back, her pearls nestling softly into cashmere hills. ‘The council. Indeed.’ She stood and made her way to the back of her office where she stared out of the window for a few moments. ‘Do you know who employs me, Michael? The council. You see my problem?’ She turned away from the window. ‘Tricky, isn’t it? For you and for me. On the one hand you’re a trainee librarian, still learning how to stamp the date on things.’ She glanced meaningfully at his ink stained hand. ‘And on the other hand you’re my employer. Councillor Michael Young,’ she uttered these last three words as if intoning various synonyms for the word diarrhoea.
As she walked towards him Michael could hear her thighs rubbing against each other, fighting beneath her skirts like two sea lions in a sack.
‘So I am proposing an arrangement, Michael. You keep your pert little nose well away from library services and I will overlook the fact that you have joined the bastards in the town hall.’
Michael felt his cheeks flush. ‘You can’t do this. Elected councillors have every …’
‘You listen to me,’ Miss Preen cut him off. The desk sagged a little as she again rested against it. ‘I’ve been here fifteen years. I know your fellow gravy-trainers, and those council directors. I’m not casting aspersions on your mother, she was a good woman and an excellent councillor. But the rest of them … I know what they are capable of, their little schemes, their dirty habits. I intend to continue protecting this library at all costs. Have I made myself clear?’
Michael nodded, he had had enough and needed fresh air. He stood up and walked towards the door.
‘And Michael?’
He turned.
‘It’s when they get you drunk that you most need your wits about you,’ Miss Preen looked concerned, almost motherly. ‘When they make you offers you can’t refuse. Sloth, Knight, Scratcher, Bentham, Jessica Bedfellow, they’re all as bad as each other.’ She smiled kindly. ‘Remember that. Now go home and clear your head.’
And so Michael found himself in the flat, having grabbed a few hours sleep, facing a suspicious girlfriend and an uncertain evening ahead. How long would he be able to cope with two jobs?
‘Oh, I see. So you’ll be going out every night now to get drunk with the chair of the planning committee?’ Laura was in petulant mode.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Michael retorted. ‘The planning committee only meets once a month.
Laura glowered. She climbed off the sofa and opened a window to let the air circulate. A bee drifted by. Three weeks to the start of Wimbledon.
‘And I don’t suppose they go to the pub after every meeting,’ Michael added.
When Laura turned back her face was full of smiles. ‘So councillor, shall we go for a pizza?’
‘It’s only six o’clock.’
‘My treat.’ Laura brushed imaginary dust off Michael’s shirt. ‘Pretty please?’
Michael wondered how it was that women could flip their emotions so effortlessly, one minute giving you a right ear-bashing and the next all over you like a hot bath. ‘Go on then,’ he said, yielding to the inevitable.
‘Do you think the Lord Mayor would marry us, if you asked?’ Laura said in a voice intended to convey insouciance that did precisely the opposite. She pecked his cheek and flounced off to choose his shirt and tie.
‘No. Firstly, it would be bigamy if the Lord Mayor married both of us. Trigamy, if you count the fact that she already has a husband. And secondly, I don’t know about you but I don’t actually fancy sixty year old women with hairstyles like permed crashed helmets and noses like Pinnochio’s.’
‘Silly,’ Laura giggled, selecting a green tie that went perfectly with her top.
‘I’ve invited a few people round. You don’t mind, do you?’
Michael had just noticed that his tie went perfectly with Laura’s blouse. It made him feel like a fashion accessory.
There were only two other couples in the restaurant. At the last moment Laura had changed her mind and insisted on the posh French restaurant near the castle. Michael had been on his guard ever since; when Laura insisted she was treating him there was, more often than not, an agenda.
‘Why should I mind?,’ he said cautiously.
‘I knew you’d be OK about it. Gaia is always getting the wrong end of the stick.’
‘What stick?’ Michael was smelling a large rat.
With a fanfare of smiles and a flourish of movement the waiter arrived and presented the bombe surprise.
‘When we get back. I told her it would be all right for her and Stream to come round with a couple of friends.’
‘Would monsieur like to …’ the waiter started.
‘You invited a bunch of hippies round to my flat?’ Michael’s jaw dropped. The last thing he needed was a dose of Gaia Makepeace’s homespun wisdom. Apart from anything else he could not remember a single occasion when an evening that had included Gaia had not concluded with him and Laura arguing over whether the heterosexual act was a mutually pleasureable activity or simply another example of men imposing themselves on women.
‘Alternative lifestylers,’ Laura corrected him. ‘Look, the wedding’s only six weeks away,’ she cooed. ‘We’ll have all the time in the world. They needed somewhere to meet, to discuss the Save Churling House campaign.’
Michael turned towards the still hovering waiter and snapped, ‘Just leave it there and sod off.
The waiter nodded vigorously and withdrew to prepare the bill while there was still time.
‘Gordon Bennet, Laura. Quite apart from the fact that your muesli munching posse hate the sight of me, have you considered the possibility that, as a member of the council’s planning committee, I might end up in deep doodoo if it leaks out that I am hosting the enemy’s terror campaign meetings?’
‘That’s unfair. I thought you might want to help. They’re only trying to save the planet,’ Laura protested.
‘Save the planet? They couldn’t save their own bacon, or broccoli, or whatever it is that vegetarians save.’
The waiter arrived, glanced unhappily at the untouched dessert, and placed the bill on the table.
‘A bunch of tofu waving anarchists trying to shaft the bloody council,’ Michael muttered as the waiter hurried back towards the kitchens.
Parked in front of 12 Hillsgate, and straddling half the pavement, was a four wheel drive Chelsea tractor. Laura, suddenly all smiles, wiggled her fingers in a ‘Cooee’ gesture at the four figures within. Michael, having spotted Gaia among the occupants, opened the front door and trudged upstairs, heart plumetting.
‘Of course it’s a political statement. If the council says no to waterless urinals they’re basically leaving the city high and dry.’ The lanky man with a whispy golden beard and a T shirt bearing the legend Are you sustainable? spoke with the passion of a zealot.
It was curiously appropriate for a conversation about waterless urinals to be initiated by a hippy called Stream, Michael reflected. ‘I don’t think the city would stay dry for long,’ he commented from by the sink where he was preparing roobosh teas, dandelion coffees and other drinks with unpronounceable names from materials brought by the wholefooders who were sitting round the dining table. ‘If they’re not for passing water then what the bloody hell are ‘waterless’ urinals for?’ He raised a mug of dandelion coffee to his nose and winced.
‘Michael, if you can’t be bothered to listen …’
‘It’s OK, Laura. Michael is a perfect example of exactly what we’re up against,’ Gaia interjected. ‘An unreconstructed heterosexual fascist slob.’ ‘Does anyone know if these biscuits are appropriate?’ asked Veronica.
Veronica who, to Michael’s eyes, looked like she had just finished working as an extra on Lord of the Rings, had attended one of Laura’s parties earlier in the year.
‘Garibaldis and bourbons, ’ Michael said happily, placing the tray of drinks on the table. ‘Only suitable for fascist scum, I’m afraid.’
Veronica sighed dramatically.
Gaia, patted her hand to console her. ‘You can imagine what it’s like for Laura.’
‘Really bad karma,’ Veronica muttered pityingly.
‘Does your friend know how to get here?’ Laura asked brightly, changing the subject. ‘Is she coming by train?’
‘She usually hitches.’ ‘From where?’
‘Somewhere near Liverpool.’ Laura did her best not to look disappointed. ‘She’ll be here soon?’ ‘If she gets here it will be because it was meant to happen,’ Veronica explained patiently. She glanced witheringly at Michael who had squeezed his chair in between Laura and Stream and was flicking through the pages of a car magazine he had bought the previous week.
‘Do you realise, if everyone had their own wind turbine we’d have enough energy to power the country?’ Stream volunteered. ‘That’s what we’re talking about here. Potentially.’
‘Really? How much are they?’ Laura asked, putting a brave face on her mug of dandelion coffee.
‘If you are so interested in saving energy why do you drive a tank that does four miles to the gallon?’ Michael said, brandishing his magazine open at the page that showed a photograph and statistics for the car parked outside his front door.
‘He had a bad day at the library,’ Laura explained to the others.
‘For your information,’ Stream explained slowly as if addressing a stone age tribe who had only recently decided to come out of the jungle and join the 21st century, ‘I was given the vehicle. It’s a perfect example of recycling and reducing landfill.’
‘Unsustainable,’ growled Gordon, rolling himself a fag.
Gordon wore a small skull cap over his curly dark locks. The skull cap, along with all his other clothes, was a dowdy blue red colour that smelt vaguely of cabbage. His features had the pinched expression seen on the faces of those who discover custard in their wellingtons, and he attracted admiration and disgust in equal measure for his determination to save the world’s dwindling water resources by never having a bath on the principle that the rest of the animal world had managed to keep clean for millennia by simply licking themselves from end to end.
‘Unsustainable’, Gordon repeated, having lit his fag. It was plain that the issue of transportation was a festering disagreement among the ecowarriors.
‘Unwhat?’ Michael said.
‘Why don’t you go for a walk?’ Laura suggested sweetly, stroking Michael’s arm. ‘We’ll be finished in an hour.’
Heads around the table nodded.
‘Oh right. Great. Fucking great.’ Michael left, slamming the door behind him.
‘I don’t know how you put up with it,’ Veronica said, as they heard Michael’s footsteps storming down the stairs.
‘Totally unreconstructed,’ Gaia agreed. ‘Does it still eat meat?’
Laura nodded uncertainly. While she was keen to fit in with Gaia’s friends she didn’t want to be drawn into yet another tirade about Michael’s alleged failings.
‘Well there you go,’ Gaia said triumphantly. ‘A carnivore. They always are. Mammals, birds, fish, I bet he even eats snails.’
‘He prefers fast food actually,’ Laura defended her man.
‘Jokes won’t turn a butcher into a signed up member of the human race, Laura.’
‘Can we talk about the campaign?’ Stream asked. The bickering subsided. ‘Gordon said he had some good news.’ ‘It’s about the newts,’ Gordon started, scratching vigorously at one of his armpits. ‘Steve Dunning called today and steered me towards a very interesting website.’
Laura listened in a state of some confusion as, for the next forty minutes, the others discussed how they would sabotage the demolition of Churling House and thereby block the Castlegate Development.
She interjected just once, to enquire why the proposed shops, housing and cinema were necessarily a bad thing. Having been told to shut up, listen and learn, Laura stayed out of the conversation thereafter. For someone who spoke so eloquently about the blinkered fascist mindset of men, Gaia seemed to tolerate Stream. Maybe it was the effortless ease with which he always managed to say ‘she or he’ instead of ‘he or she’, or the passionate way in which he referred to Mother Earth. Or maybe it was the 4×4 parked outside and his well developed pecs, Laura thought mischievously. Veronica volunteered to organise posters and Gaia to sort out camping kit and refreshments. Gordon muttered something about bringing flares.
‘Before all that we’ll need a good turnout to picket the next planning meeting,’ Stream said. ‘So everyone brings at least four friends. Laura?’
Laura, who was still puzzling over how it was that Gordon turning up in Seventies trousering would influence the outcome of the Save Churling House campaign, looked nonplussed.
‘You will be bringing four friends along, won’t you?’ Stream repeated. ‘To the planning meeting.’
‘Michael’s on the planning committee,’ Laura said simply. ‘What!’ ‘And he’s voting against, I hope.’ ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘We haven’t discussed it.’ ‘She’s going to blab and blow us out of the water,’ Gordon shouted.
‘Oh, bloody hell. We’ve had the fascists in here all along.’ ‘He’s probably recording us,’ Veronica jumped to her feet and started pulling books off shelves, searching for a hidden microphone. ‘Oh thanks, Gaia.’ ‘I didn’t know the bastard was in planning,’ Gaia protested. ‘All right, all right. Calm down,’ Stream took command. ‘Let’s sit down again and work out a plan of attack. Laura, are you with us or against us?’
Laura felt like a Dalek at a Star Trek convention.
Copyright © 2007 Christian Vassie
