I told Toby it was time for walkies but he was already waiting by the front door.
Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It’s not your garden, it’s not a park — it’s a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer’s plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness. It was also, in the case of Skygarden, strangely hard to access.
Me and Toby first went down to the lower ground floor, where we’d unpacked the van the day before, and did a full circuit of the base of the tower before we realised that there was no access from there. The whole circumference was lined with garages topped with a fence with not even a ladder to get you up to the greenery. Half the garages were sealed with more of the County Gard’s shiny steel doors — Southwark Council’s reluctance to reallocate locked garages to residents had been a major grievance at the TRA meeting.
I remembered the drive in through the culvert and figured you’d have to walk practically the entire distance back to the Walworth Road before you reached ground level. Rather than slog all the way there, me and Toby jogged up the first flight of stairs to the ground floor and checked the elevated walkways. A third of the way along the one leading to Heygate Road there was a ramp spiralling down into the green. I almost missed it because it was overshadowed by one of the big plane trees. You practically had to duck under a branch to walk down it.
Toby cautiously stayed close to my heel as we descended. There was a gravel path winding away through the hummocks and random slopes that landscape designers like to litter their designs with. The path was poorly maintained, the gravel scattered and wearing thin. A couple of times I had to step over places where giant roots had rumpled the path out of existence. The sun was well over the top of the housing blocks now, the light tinged with green and falling on secondary growths of tall skinny trees with silver bark and bushy things that I’m sure Nightingale could have identified for me — at length — had he been there.
But even I can recognise cherry blossom trees when they are white and pink as candyfloss.
Unless they were peach blossom, of course.
The, probably, cherry trees lined one side of what had obviously been a children’s play area before the council had removed all the play equipment — presumably to stop children playing on it.
Toby growled and I stopped to see what he was looking at.
A white girl was watching us from across the defunct playground. She was wearing an old-fashioned Mary Quant dress in green and yellow and her blonde hair was cut into a pixie bob under a battered straw sunhat. Her face and limbs were long and thin and seemed oddly out of proportion with her torso. She was standing in the shade of one of the smaller plane trees, so still that I wasn’t sure she hadn’t been standing all the time I’d been walking up and I just hadn’t seen her.
I heard a child giggling from behind a nearby tree and the girl gave me a smile that was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Then she pivoted and skipped away so fast that I could barely follow the movement. A moment later a small brown imp of a girl broke cover from behind her tree and dashed after the older girl. This one I recognised — it was Nicky, who I’d last seen wearing Imperial Yellow at the Spring Court. Her river, the Neckinger, practically ran right under the estate.
Toby gave chase, yapping continuously, his stubby tail wagging as he vanished into the shade. I followed at my own pace, letting the sound of Toby’s barking lead me in the right general direction. I’d gone ten metres or so when Nicky jumped out from behind a tree and yelled, ‘Boo.’
I pretended to jump, which went down well — I’ve got a play centre’s worth of younger cousins, so I know how that game is played.
‘Behind you,’ shouted Nicky.
I turned theatrically to find nothing behind me.
‘There’s nothing behind me,’ I said, which caused more laughter.
I turned back to Nicky and this time I did jump — well, more accurately, I flinched.
The girl in the green dress was standing right in front of me, her face centimetres from mine, her eyes were large and hazel with golden flecks around the iris. This close she smelt of rough bark and crushed leaves. I could also see that she was a grown woman, physically in her twenties, and that I’d been fooled by her body language into thinking her younger.
‘Boo,’ she shouted and laughed when I started back.
‘Old man,’ shouted Nicky.
I turned to look, and when I turned back the woman in a green dress was gone — and so was Nicky.
Toby came scampering towards me, stuck his nose into the grass in front of my feet and snuffled around. Obviously finding nothing, he looked up at me and gave me a frustrated yap.
I told him to be quiet — I could see someone else approaching. Jake Phillips, activist at large.
‘I see you’ve discovered the true secret of Skygarden,’ he said and for a moment I thought he might be yet another supernatural something or other, but he went on to say that the trees were some of the finest examples of their kind of London.
‘They’re the real reason the council couldn’t get the tower delisted,’ he said.
Behind him I saw two impish faces peering around a tree trunk and sniggering.
‘But there’s no one here,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t be like this if people were still living in the blocks.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I know it,’ I said. ‘This would be dog shit central during the day and pusher park at night.’
He squinted at me. ‘Are you working for the council?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ I said.
‘Or the media, or County Gard?’ he asked.
‘Who’s County Gard?’ I asked, because the easiest way to deflect suspicion is to side track your questioner onto a subject that they love to talk about. Sure enough, Jake Phillips started in on a lengthy diatribe which I cut short because I couldn’t keep track without taking notes — and that would have been suspicious.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to finish walking the dog but I am interested in hearing more.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ he said.
‘No, seriously,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe in backing away from a fight. Besides, I’ve only just got here and I can’t be arsed to move again.’
I may have come across as a little bit too keen, but characters like Jake Phillips have been fighting the long defeat too long to pass up any help they can get.
‘I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you and your partner come around to my place for tea?’ he said and gave me his flat number.
I said I would, and we parted company — Toby was nowhere to be seen.
I found Toby further along the vanishing path in a glade full of sunlight and shining dust motes. A wool blanket of scarlet and green had been spread upon the grass and upon it sprawled, in the approved French impressionist manner, Oberon, Effra and Beverley Brook. Disappointingly, however, Beverley was wearing all her clothes.
Toby was sitting up at the edge of the blanket and doing his best small dog on the edge of starvation impression while Effra teased him with an M amp;S partysized sausage roll. When she saw me she smiled and flicked the roll at Toby, who caught it in midair.
Oberon gestured grandly at a space on the blanket and I joined them.
Effra offered me a glass of white wine. Her nails added at least two centimetres to the length of her fingers and were painted with intricate designs in black, gold and red. I accepted the wine, it was a bit early in the day for me but that’s not why I hesitated before drinking.
‘Take this as a gift freely given,’ said Effra. ‘Drink with no obligations.’
I drank. But if it was a fine vintage, it was totally wasted on me.
‘So what brings you south of the river?’ asked Beverley. She was wearing a bright blue jumper with a loose enough neck to show the bare brown curve of her shoulder. ‘Business or pleasure?’