‘Old? He’s only …’
‘Don’t you think he’s a bit overrated?’
‘Actually, Stacey …’ I took a sip of wine and paused to savour my moment of triumph, ‘I think, in fact, George Clooney’s quite a good actor.’
As the house lights rose and the real world came into focus around us, we stayed in our seats and drained the last few drops of lukewarm Sauvignon Blanc into our glasses. Suddenly Stacey started weeping again as though a floodgate of emotion had been opened.
‘It reminds me of how I felt when Monty died. I kept hoping he wasn’t really dead.’
Was there a note of accusation in her voice?
‘It wasn’t my fault, you know, Stacey. I tried to grab his lead, but he just dashed across the road. The van appeared out of nowhere.’ I put my arm around her. ‘White van of destiny meets cute little dog.’
‘You took his body to the pub and got drunk.’
‘We had to give him a proper send-off.’
‘I’m not blaming you, Bertie. I’m just telling you how I feel.’ Something in her voice told me she was blaming me. ‘He was the cutest dog in the world.’ She dabbed her eyes. ‘Do you think there’s an alternative universe somewhere, where he’s alive?’
‘I’m sure there is.’ I held her hand.
I didn’t tell her that thirteen years ago the same thing had happened to a cute little girl I was looking after. Was it my fault? I had tormented myself with this question ever since. Sometimes, even now, I would catch a glimpse of a girl or a young woman that took me off guard and spun me over into an alternative life, the life that might have been mine if Meredith had still been alive, if Stephanie and I had still been together.
Stephanie had never forgiven me, and I had never forgiven myself. Our relationship eventually collapsed under the weight of her accusations: ‘You were supposed to be responsible, Bertie. How could you have let go of her hand? You’re a typical mummy’s boy, irresponsible, careless, self-obsessed!’
Was I? Or was I, in fact, as Stacey suggested kindly through a sniffle, just terminally unlucky?
However, this particular cloud had a silver lining. Monty’s demise opened up the way for Stacey to move into my flat. I even let her bring the teddies, which she arranged on Mother’s dressing table beside the bottle of L’Heure Bleue left by Mother and finished off by Inna. It felt strange and sinful at first to make love in Mother’s bed, so full of ghosts, but after a while even that became wonderfully ordinary.
Stacey took over the chair of the Tenants Association vacated by Mrs Cracey, and helped to mount a lively campaign against the proposed fourteen-storey building in the garden, insisting, as Lubetkin would have done, that it should fit harmoniously with its environment and should provide affordable homes for low-income families. When Len’s ground-floor flat became available, she helped me arrange for Margaret and Jenny to get the tenancy, aided by the fact that Margaret was now in a wheelchair. So as one chapter closed, a new chapter opened in the life of Lubetkin’s Mad Yurt.
From time to time the old mood would come over me, and I would launch into a morose soliloquy on canine and human mortality, the wanton destruction of urban trees, the housing crisis, the unravelling of the post-war consensus, George Clooney’s love life and other evils and inequities of our time.
Stacey would watch me with a small smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Bertie,’ she would say.
Acknowledgements
This book came from hours spent walking around London, discovering among the acres of new building sites bristling with cranes the remnants of a different, older London, different not just in architecture but also in the human values embedded in those buildings. These included some by Berthold Lubetkin, which exemplified not just bold experimentation with new materials, notably concrete, but an exceptional eye for grace and beauty, as well as a commitment to building a London fit for the needs of its ordinary residents.
I had many guides and interpreters on these walks, whose insights have found their way into these pages, so first of all a big thank you to those who helped me with the basic history and geography. Thanks especially to Donald Sassoon with his comments on the text, and to Joseph Rykwert, who knows a thing or two about modernist architecture. I have learned so much from their generously imparted knowledge, and any mistakes are purely my own. Thanks to Susannah Hamilton for telling me more than I thought I would ever want to know about International Insurance, to Baiju Shah from Sheffield University for checking the Kenya sections, to Glenda Pattenden for her detailed maps of Ally Pally, to Sarah White for first taking me there and for helping me through a personal challenge which almost derailed the book, and to my daughter Sonia for telling me which bits were boring, as only one’s children can.
I would also like to thank my agent, Bill Hamilton, and the great team at A. M. Heath, for keeping me on course, and Juliet Annan, my editor at Fig Tree, without whom this book would have been a third longer and much duller. Thank you to Jon Gray for another inspired book jacket. And thank you to Shân Morley Jones for meticulous attention to the proofs, and for claiming, even after the seventh reading, that the book still made her laugh.