‘Hello, Ghita.’
‘Kathy, Leon has told us that you and he have, er, had a difference.’
‘Yes.’
‘Not irreconcilable, I hope?’
‘I rather think it may be, Ghita.’ And Kathy thought, she doesn’t know, he hasn’t told her.
‘Oh…I’m sorry about that. We both would be, Morarji and I.’
Kathy was surprised. It was the first indication of approval Ghita had ever given her.
‘Are you quite sure? There’s nothing that we could do? Perhaps if you were to tell me what the problem was?’
‘I really think you should ask Leon.’
‘Only he seems so very unhappy. He hardly says a word, just stares into space. It’s so unlike him.’
Kathy couldn’t think of a word to say.
‘Oh well. I just thought I would ask. If there is anything, you will tell me, won’t you?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
Then, in a quite deliberate tone, Ghita said, ‘We always hoped, you see, that you two would make a go of it,’ and Kathy realised suddenly that Ghita did know, even though he hadn’t told her, and that she had known for some time.
24
A watery sun was lifting the mist from the fens in pale curtains, revealing a country of unnerving flatness. From time to time Brock would ask Kathy to stop the car while he scanned the landscape with a pair of binoculars, and the silence, the eerie light and the limitless horizontality spread out around them like an alien sea.
Brock was preoccupied. He had told her to keep her eyes open during the visit, but hadn’t said for what. At one of their stops they found themselves next to an abandoned World War Two airfield. He examined it carefully through the glasses, then raised them to the hazy sky, as if he half expected to see a silver glider overhead. He was the navigator, guiding them according to some scheme of his own on a circuitous journey along the grid of minor roads that criss-crossed the marshlands.
Then, at last, when Kathy was beginning to wonder if they were completely lost, they saw it. It seemed like a mirage-so abrupt, so totally unnatural, that she gave a little gasp and pulled the car into the verge. The image that came into her mind was of a gigantic Rubik’s cube, sunk into the fen so that only its top layer glistened improbably over the sea of wild grasses.
Still Brock detoured, getting Kathy to circle the strange object while stopping periodically to peer at it and the surrounding countryside. During the course of this she realised that the building seemed to be made up of four large cubic elements, each in a vibrant primary colour, blue, green, yellow and red.
They came finally to the approach road, a ribbon of new concrete laid along the top of a dyke, aiming dead straight at the cleft between red and blue cubes. Brock recognised the view from the cover of Gail Lewis’s architectural magazine, and, as if in acknowledgement of this, the sun finally broke through, bathing the coloured walls in a brilliant light, and the sky above crystallised into a limpid cobalt blue.
There was a minimum of disturbance to the natural landscape around the building, no fences and only the most discreet of signs and lighting bollards. Ribbons of the surrounding water and grasses ran across the car park and forecourt, right up to the building’s base. The car park was already almost full, a small group of chauffeurs standing together in conversation beside a Rolls Royce. Kathy found a space and they walked across gravel towards the glass entrance between the cubes. Two men stood outside, watching the arrivals, and Brock went over to talk to them. Looking at the way they stood, hands clasped in front of them, Kathy guessed they might be armed, and when Brock returned she asked, ‘We’re not expecting trouble, are we?’
‘No, no,’ Brock replied, and led the way through the entrance.
Inside, men and women in black suits checked them in, gave them name tags and pointed the way to a broad ramp rising into the heart of the building between blue wall and red. They came to a hall in which a couple of hundred people stood about in conversation. Sunlight rippled over them from skylights in a coffered vault high overhead, and Kathy was reminded of a stripped-down version of the dungeon etching hanging in Charles Verge’s office.
Brock headed for a table where cups of coffee were being dispensed. Kathy followed, registering the low roar of networking notables, in their expensive suits and high-ranking uniforms. She had a sickening feeling that the audience for her working-party speech would be very much like this.
After ten minutes Brock touched Kathy’s arm and indicated a group emerging at the top of the ramp. Madelaine Verge was at the front, her wheelchair guided by a man Kathy barely recognised at first, being now clean-shaven and dressed in a smart suit. Behind them walked Charlotte and Luz Diaz, arm in arm.
‘Who’s the man?’ Brock murmured.
‘His name’s George. He does the garden and odd jobs for Charlotte. For Luz, too, I think. I don’t know his other name. He’s an ex-con that Charles Verge came across when he was doing the research for this place, and took under his wing, apparently.’
Several people detached themselves from the crowd and hurried forward to greet the Verge family effusively, and when the royal party arrived shortly afterwards, Madelaine and Charlotte Verge were among the first to be introduced to the Prince, who talked to them animatedly for several minutes.
Chairs had been set out in the hall, facing a lectern and screen, and when everyone had settled a senior bureaucrat from the Home Office gave a welcoming speech and invited the guest of honour to perform the official opening. The Prince spoke of the urgent need for fresh thinking in the field of criminal rehabilitation, of his profound belief in the power of architecture to shape our lives, and of his hope that the brave experiment of Marchdale would stand as a beacon in a bleak social landscape. This was met with warm applause, and he continued with praise for the process of consultation and research which had gone into the whole project, and in particular the willingness of the architect to undergo a period in detention himself in order to experience prison life at first hand. It was only when he came to speak of the building itself that his enthusiasm seemed to falter. He referred to its ambitious scale and rigorous planning, but in guarded terms that suggested that, perhaps, the scale was just a little too overwhelming, the interpretation too ruthless, and that his briefing had failed to prepare him for the shock of all this unbridled modernism. Recovering, he proceeded to unveil a plaque and declare the building open.
The next speaker was a psychiatrist, the leader of the team of criminologists and Home Office experts which had compiled the initial brief, and had developed the concept with the design team. She described the theory and organisation of the complex so that those who wished to go on one of the conducted tours would appreciate what they were witnessing.
Using a plan projected onto a large screen, she pointed out the features with a cursor. Around the central administration core in which they were now located, prisoner facilities were arranged in four zones, each forming a square around its own central landscaped exercise area. The zones were easily identifiable, she explained, each being denoted by a thematic colour of the spectrum, from blue through green and yellow to red. This sequence marked the stages of the inmates’ residency, from induction into blue to final rehabilitation and release from red. The progress through these four domains was to be governed by a system of education, therapy and incentive. The building’s design formed an intrinsic part of this system, with every aspect contrived to reinforce the underlying program. She illustrated this with views of amenities, finishes, colour schemes, environmental controls, right down to the design of furniture and crockery, clothes and diet, in each of the four zones. The cumulative effect, she said, was of a progress from alienation to integration, from institutionalisation to independence. The building was a machine for the reconstruction of human consciousness.