“In Brixton?”
“Yes: Madlyn Mansions, Brixton. It’s behind a kind of sports track. Near a railway bridge.”
“I’ll find it on the map and call you back. Where are you now?”
“I’m on my way home,” I told him. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I walked back to my flat. There was a message on my answering machine already, but when I played it, thinking it would be from Naz, it turned out to be from Greg. I lay down on the folded-away sofa bed and waited. Eventually Naz phoned.
“The building is privately owned,” he said, “and leased out to tenants. The owner is one Aydin Huseyin. He manages this and two other properties in London.”
“Right,” I said.
“Shall I enquire whether or not he’s interested in taking offers on this property?” Naz asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Buy it.”
We got it for three and a half million. A snip, apparently.
7
WE HIRED AN ARCHITECT. We hired an interior designer. We hired a landscape gardener for the courtyard. We hired contractors, who hired builders, electricians and plumbers. There were site managers and sub-site managers, delivery coordinators and coordination supervisors. We took on performers, props and wardrobe people, hair and make-up artists. We hired security guards. We fired the interior designer and hired another one. We hired people to liaise between Naz and the builders and managers and supervisors, and people to run errands for the liaisers so that they could liaise better.
Looking at it now, with the advantage-as they say-of hindsight, it strikes me that Naz could probably have devised a more efficient way of doing it. He could have chosen one place, one specific point to start from, and worked out from there in logical procession: chronologically, in a straight line, piece by piece by piece. The approach he took instead was piecemeal-everything springing up at once but leaving huge gaps in between and creating new problems of alignment and compatibility that in their turn required more supervising, more coordination.
“There’s a problem with the windows on the third floor,” Naz told me one day, several weeks into the works.
“I thought all the windows had been finished,” I said.
“Yes,” said Naz, “but now the windows in the main third-floor flat have to come out again so we can lift the piano in.”
Another time we realized we’d got the courtyard ready too soon: trucks would have to drive across it as they removed detritus from the building, ruining the landscaper’s creation.
“Why didn’t we think of that?” I asked Naz.
Naz smiled back. I started suspecting then that his decision to opt for the piecemeal approach was deliberate. As we were driven from one meeting to another-from the site itself, say, to our office in Covent Garden, or to our architect’s office in Vauxhall, or to the workshop of the metallurgist who was making our banisters, or from a Sotheby’s auction of Sixties’ Americana at which we’d been looking at fridges back to the site via Lambeth Town Hall (palms were greased-I’ll say no more)-each time we left the building or came near again we’d see trucks piled high with rubble, earth or ripped-out central-heating units pulling out from its compound and other trucks arriving with scaffolding or new earth or long strips of pine. There’d be small vans full of wiring, caterers’ vans, vans belonging to experts in fields I didn’t know existed: stone-relief consultants, acoustic technicians, non-ferrous-metal welders- London ’s premier in the art since 1932, this third outfit’s van announced proudly on its side.
“So what’s your position in the ferrous-metal league?” I asked them.
“We don’t do ferrous-metal welding,” they replied.
“And where did you rank before ’32?”
“I don’t know that. You’ll have to ask the boss.”
Then there’d be behemoths: giant cranes on wheels, crane lifts with crane-grab limbs, all skeletal and menacing and huge. We’d carry plaster on our clothes into a Mayfair piano salesroom, then carry the contrasting chimes and tinkles of four types of baby grand still humming in our ears on to a used furniture warehouse. We’d receive faxes on the machine we had in our car and stuff them into the back-seat glove compartment as the driver raced us to another meeting, then forget that we’d received them and have them re-faxed or go back to the same office or the same warehouse again-so the humming in our ears was constant, a cacophony of modems and drilling and arpeggios and perpetually ringing phones. The hum, the meetings, the arrivals and departures turned into a state of mind-one that enveloped us within the project, drove us forwards, onwards, back again. I’ve never felt so motivated in my life. Naz understood this, I think now, and cultivated a degree of chaos to keep everybody involved on their toes, fired up, motivated. A genius, if ever there was one.
Not that motivation was otherwise lacking: the people we’d hired were being paid vast amounts of money. What was lacking, if anything, was comprehension: making them understand exactly what it was that was required of them. And making them understand at the same time how little they needed to understand. I didn’t need to make them share my vision, and I didn’t want them to. Why should they? It was my vision, and I was the one with the money. They just had to know what to do. This wasn’t easy, though-making them understand what to do. They were all London ’s premiers: the best plumbers, plasterers, pine outfitters and so on. They wanted to do a really good job and found it hard to get their heads round the proposition that the normal criteria for that didn’t apply in this case.
The thickest groups by far were actors and interior designers. Morons, both. To audition the actors we hired the Soho Studio Theatre for a couple of days after placing an ad in the trade press. It read:
Performers required to be constantly on call in London building over indefinite period. Duties will include repeated re-enactment of certain daily events. Excellent remuneration. Contact Nazrul Ram Vyas on etc. etc.
Naz and I arrived on the first day to find a big crowd in the lobby. We’d got our driver to drop us off round the corner from the theatre rather than right outside, so as not to make an ostentatious entrance: that way, we figured, we’d be able to walk round the lobby incognito for a while, sizing people up.
“That one looks worth auditioning for the motorbike enthusiast,” I mumbled to Naz.
“The one in the jacket?” he mumbled back.
“No, but he looks worth auditioning too, now you mention it. And that frumpy woman over there: a possible concierge, I think.”
“What about the others?” Naz asked, still mumbling.
“We’ll need extras too: all the anonymous, vague neighbours. Those two black guys look vaguely familiar.”
“Which ones?”
“Those two,” I told him, pointing-and right then they all started clicking, wising up. A heavy silence fell across the lobby; everybody glanced at us, then turned away and started pretending to talk again, but in reality they were still glancing at us. One guy came right up to us, held his hand out and said:
“Hello there! My name’s James. I’m really looking forward to this enterprise. You see, I need to fund my studies at RADA, where I’ve been given a place. Now I’ve prepared…”
“What’s RADA?” I said.
“It’s the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I auditioned, and the tutor told my local authority that I was gifted-his words, not mine.” At this point in his spiel James held his hand up to his chin in an exaggerated manner, and I could tell he’d practised the gesture in the same way as the gay clubbers I’d watched several weeks ago had practised theirs. “But,” he went on, “they wouldn’t give me a grant. So I welcome this whole enterprise. I think it will help me expand. Learn things. My name’s James.”
He still had his hand out. I turned to Naz.
“Can you get rid of half these people?” I asked him. “And give audition slots to the ones I pointed out-and to any others you think might be right. I’m going to get a coffee.”