His ovation went on just a fraction longer than it had the previous two evenings. If Mr Wright was pleased by this, he didn’t let it show. He waited at the lectern, blinking slowly at the crowd, as if to say, I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough, until the hall was poised and hushed. Latecomers jostled in the doorway for an inch of standing room. Four hundred sets of eyes were pointed at him. Still, he took a beat to organize his cuffs, arrange his necktie, clear his throat. He looked much older underneath the slanting lights: white hair, turkey neck, a cane, a suppleness about his features. When he finally spoke, his voice was deep in tenor but genteel, and Arthur felt as though it was addressing only him.
‘Good evening, everyone. In light of our discussion last time, we shall start proceedings with a short film of our work at Taliesin. My apprentice Jimmy Thompson is the man to thank for putting this together. What you’re going to see is just the first of many reels of footage he’s compiled …’ With a sudden gesture to the wings, the hall went dark and up came the long beam of a projector. The film was grainy but in glorious full colour, and the images washed over one side of Wright’s head and shoulders, causing him to squint.
Rocky desert land, blue sky, no clouds. A caravan of loaded trucks and motorcars winds down a sun-baked highway, spuming dust. The jointed wooden frame of a large building stands in silhouette. A shirtless man atop a ladder drives nails into a joist. He looks down at the camera, gestures with his mallet, grins.
Arthur had a view between the heads of strangers packed into the aisles. He was among the rest of the associates and students who could barely stand still or keep quiet, while the more esteemed guests took the padded seats. At first, he found it hard to focus on the speech. Not only was he bothered and uncomfortable, the amplifiers echoed in the hall. But once his ears adjusted to the interference, he could hear the great man’s words for what they were: a campaign for a better way of life.
Lank-haired children in worn overalls play hopscotch at the base of a long gangway. High above their heads, a team of shirtless men push wheelbarrows.
Here, says Wright, the Taliesin Fellows are at work, erecting buildings for their camp in Arizona. They live and practise there, five months a year, to spare them the harsh winters in Wisconsin, where it gets as low as thirty below zero. Taliesin West, they call it. Home from home.
Other men in shorts and boots are chipping at stone beams with rockhammers. A lanky redhead in dark glasses leans against a doorjamb, laughing. Wright himself, wearing a beret and white cape, draws in cramped, unfinished quarters. He’s erasing pencil lines and sweeping rubber leavings with quick backhand strokes.
Here, says Wright, they’ve made the walls from desert stones with concrete reinforcements. Redwood frames and canvas roofs, as soft as bedding. He keeps a modest study of his own, of course he does. But there are thirty cubicles for his apprentices. They like to work in close proximity.
An angular brick building on the brow of a vast hill planted with apple trees and elderberry bushes. A field of shaking grass. Three men are lifting bales of hay on to a wagon.
And here, says Wright, are pictures of their real home: Taliesin in Wisconsin. The original and best. In summer, there is nowhere else he’d rather be.
Tables, lamps and draughting boards inside a large, still room. A kitchen table stacked with provender. A line of Mason jars with spices and preserves. A horse-drawn plough. A tractor scaling a vast mudheap. Women washing turnips in a long ceramic basin.
Here, says Wright, their principles of fairness and cooperation are in evidence. The boys and girls together. They’ve got many hundred acres to maintain, so nobody is ever shy of duties. On a Monday, boys might get involved with all the cooking and the cleaning while the girls are at the market; on a Tuesday, they’ll be mixing mortar, laying bricks or bringing in the crops together, and so on and so forth throughout the week. A spirit of collaboration is important. When it comes to the division of the labour, girls and boys aren’t treated any differently – as much as such a thing is possible. Knowing the land is knowing life, he likes to say. The most important thing to learn in architecture is appreciation for materials: the weight of stone, the roughness of a brick, how wood can be pared down and shaped. The hand will discipline the mind this way.
A smiling lady in a gingham shirt carries a pail of apples through a field. Wright lugs a watermelon on his shoulder through the festooned gateposts of a county fair. Next, he’s drawing at a table under lamplight, flanked by two apprentices. Across the room, a woman in a trailing headscarf and white trousers draws a crisp arc with a set of compasses.
Here, says Wright, is the most vital organ of their operation: the draughting room. The boys and girls spend hours drawing, drawing and more drawing. Everybody learns by doing, but it’s not a school they’re running. There is no tuition. Taliesin is their home, their practice, and they value their apprentices as colleagues. Comrades.
A gathering, as if for a class picture, at the entrance of the Taliesin building. Wright, in a tremendous wide-brimmed hat, stares up at something he has spied off-camera.
Here, says Wright, is what’s surprised and pleased him most. With only some direction on his part, these bright young men and women have developed skills to last a lifetime. His aim is to encourage their resourcefulness, instil a good work ethic, so later he might watch them thrive and practise an organic architecture of their own. It is, he says, a model for a better nation. For the place he calls Usonia.
Wright ambles through the tall grass with his cane, towards a single, wind-stirred tree.
The film went on, so bright and strange and fluid, and the great man continued his narration, swaying at the lectern. It had stirred Arthur’s blood already, sent a tremble through his legs, up to his neck. Those young apprentices on-screen, attending to their work with such a unity of purpose – he knew exactly how they felt. He saw their jokey solidarity and happiness. He recognized their inhibitions, too – the woodenness to their expressions, smiling under scrutiny. They weren’t quite being themselves. They were acting for the camera. On their best behaviour. Maybe that was all the feeling was – affinity with strangers – but he had the strongest sense that he was one of them.
*
Later that night, he lingered on the entrance steps at Portland Place and smoked a Woodbine in the rain. The day had been so pleasant only a rank pessimist would’ve thought to carry an umbrella, and the RIBA building had no portico, no awning – but, for Arthur, getting drenched was a small price to pay for privacy. He’d come upstairs after the lecture to discover half the audience still pressed inside the foyer, waiting for the shower to pass. He’d shunted through the crowd to reach the doors and rushed out with his hat sloped down. There was a hum inside his body that nothing but tobacco and fresh air could pacify. It was making his toes twitch inside his shoes. He didn’t know if it was possible to be in love with a philosophy, but that was how it seemed. And it was only as he struck a match to light up that he realized he’d abandoned both his colleagues in the lecture hall.
He’d been trying not to think about them: Miles Ibbot and Fred Cort. The three of them had walked to Portland Place together after work, chatting about office matters. ‘As far as I’m concerned, unless a bomb can bounce right off it, I don’t see the point in building with it now,’ Ibbot had been bleating on the way, ‘but Mr Stack is still insisting on that riven slate. It’s so short-sighted.’ When Cort had answered, ‘I should think a bouncing bomb would do a lot more damage,’ it had only prompted Ibbot to begin a rant about it being men their age, not Mr Stack’s, who’d have to shoulder the responsibility for fixing Europe’s mess, just wait and see. It hadn’t taken Arthur long to understand that when his colleagues got into a rhythm it was best to nod along and keep his mouth shut. Once they’d shown their tickets to get into Jarvis Hall, he’d gone to use the lavatory and made sure they’d remained apart all evening.
‘So this is where you’re hiding, Mayhood, you sly devil.’ Now the big bronze doors were opening and Fred Cort stood upon the entrance steps, shielding his head with a newspaper. ‘Ibbot had a bet with me that you’d gone straight back to the office. Easy money, it turns out.’
Arthur stared across the street, into the spray of traffic. ‘How’d you know I hadn’t?’
‘Because you’ve got a lovely girl to spend your nights with, haven’t you? Unlike our dear Ibbot, who’s afraid to speak to one in daylight.’ Cort shut the doors, came closer. ‘I’ll tell you this much: if he’s serious about the navy when it all gets started, then I’m trying for the air force.’
‘I’ve known plenty worse than him, believe me.’
‘You don’t have to share a table with him every day. The man’s a perfect bloody misery.’ The rain was battering the Telegraph above Cort’s head – it was saturated, limp. ‘Is there a reason you can’t smoke inside?’
‘Quieter out here,’ he said. ‘A bit of rain won’t hurt me.’
‘Well, I’m getting drenched.’
He eyed the ground. ‘I didn’t ask you to come out, Fred.’
His colleague seemed to take offence at this. He stood there with his mouth ajar, his tongue working the ridges of his teeth. ‘I was hoping you’d stayed on, that’s all. I wanted your opinion on the talk, but it can wait till Monday.’
‘My opinion?’
‘Yes. Is that so strange? I can’t decide if he’s a genius or a raving loony. Possibly a bit of both. You see? I’m terribly conflicted, and I hate to be conflicted. But you always seem so sure of everything, I thought you’d have a view on it.’
‘Sorry, Fred. I’ve come out here for peace and quiet. I’m not really in the mood for a debriefing.’ In truth, he’d tuned out several times during the lecture. His mind had kept on skipping backwards to Wright’s colour film instead. He couldn’t stop his thoughts returning to it. He was thinking of it now.
‘Perhaps on Monday, then.’ Cort ditched the newspaper and let the rain attack his scalp. Again, he seemed a little stung. ‘Look, Mayhood, I’m not sure we’ve really got to know each other since you joined the firm. I’d hate to think you see me as a rival.’
‘Why should I think that?’
‘No reason. I’m just trying to say, we’re not in competition.’
‘Something tells me Ibbot doesn’t feel the same.’
‘God, no. He’d trample on your grave to fetch a paperclip for Mr Furnish.’
‘Oh, I’d bet he would.’ At least Cort had a sense of humour – that was one mark in his favour. Water was now beading at the fella’s earlobes, too, but there he was, still trying to engage him in a conversation. Either it was hardiness or plain stupidity. ‘You ought to go back in before you catch pneumonia.’
Cort just sniffed. ‘So are you waiting for your girl out here – is that why you’re so keen to brush me off?’
He threw his Woodbine to the kerb. The fact was, he and Florence had their normal weekend planned but, for the past few days, he’d been auditioning his reasons not to travel out to Ockham at the final hour – variants of sickness, tiredness, poverty, emergency, all of which were hollow and pathetic. There was an eight fifteen from Waterloo tomorrow morning she expected him to board, and then he’d have to walk two miles from the station to her family’s farm in what the wireless forecast said would be a gale. And he knew, deep down, that he would do it, just to see that smile blooming on her face when she pulled back the door. She’d draw him forward, as she always did, by the loose knot of his tie and kiss him softly on the mouth, and say, ‘Dear Lord, I’ve missed you, Arthur.’ But, as soon as they were past the threshold, everything would start to feel uncomfortable again. She’d be agitated by his company, her mind still on her father in the room upstairs.
Every time he was in Ockham now, he loathed himself, because their circumstances caused him to behave contemptibly. He’d started to resent the diligence with which she cared for Mr Greaves. She bathed the man, spoon-fed him every meal, escorted him to the commode and back, wheeled him up and down the road, exercised his idle limbs, put him to bed; it was an infinite routine, and there was something marvellous about it all in the beginning. But lately Arthur had been huffing when she got up from the sofa to attend to duties on her list. Clumsily, he’d once attempted – after three too many brandies, bored – to persuade her into bed, half-grasping at her hips, when she was clearly too depleted to stand upright in the doorway and still had to prepare her father’s supper. ‘Leave it, eh?’ he’d said. ‘Who’s going to notice if it’s late?’ As these words had slipped out of his mouth, he’d felt revolted with himself, and so had she. ‘Go and sleep it off, Arthur – this isn’t like you,’ was how she’d put it, ‘and I’m hiding that decanter from now on.’ But she’d barely spoken to him the next morning and he could tell that he’d sunk fathoms in her estimation.
If things carried on this way, he feared that she would see his selfishness emerge so often that she’d stop forgiving him. What if this ugly side of him was really all there was? It seemed he was incapable of courtship from a distance – it made him shameless and irrational. But he simply didn’t know how he could spend so little time with Florence and remain content. He couldn’t manage London life without her – all the loneliness he had to bear just to maintain a stable distance from his colleagues – not unless he could reset himself with Florence at the end of every day. Seeing her in Ockham on the weekends wasn’t going to be enough. It was torment, having her beside him but not really there. ‘In actual fact,’ he told Cort now, ‘I’m seeing her tomorrow. Early train and all that, so –’ He made a drama out of looking at his watch. ‘I’d best be going.’
‘You’re a lucky man,’ Cort said. ‘I never seem to reach the going-steady part.’
‘Don’t worry, Fred, I’m bound to ruin it eventually.’ He rummaged in the sodden lining of his coat to check he had his keys.
‘Do you have a picture?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Of her – your girl. I’m sorry, I don’t know her name.’
‘It’s Florence,’ he said. ‘And yes, I’ve got one, thank you.’
As soon as it was obvious he wasn’t going to share the photograph, Cort laughed and shook his head. ‘My goodness, you’re not easy to make friends with, are you, Mayhood? I mean, a fellow really has to earn it.’
‘We’re colleagues,’ he replied. ‘We needn’t be blood brothers.’
‘That’s a shame.’ Cort smoothed the rain out of his hair. ‘I’ve always found it easier to work with people I get on with.’ There was a note of approbation in Cort’s voice and then a slight contraction of his eyes after he spoke. ‘You and I should get a drink. That’s what we ought to do.’
‘It’s nearly past my bedtime.’
‘Come on. Just a half? Have mercy on me.’
Thunder rumbled overhead. The rain was growing heavier. It seemed that Cort was only going to pester him until he ran out of excuses. ‘All right. Where?’
They went just round the corner to the Masons Arms. The snug was busy, full of drinking men’s unvarnished chatter, but compared to Portland Place it felt subdued. They hung their coats beside the fireplace and Cort dried off his hair with an enormous hankie; then he bought two halves of mild and carried them to a free table.
‘Cheers,’ Cort said, raising his beer as they sat down. ‘Here’s to Mr Wright and – what was it? Snowdonia?’
He had to laugh. ‘Usonia.’
‘Ah yes, that’s the one. Usonia!’
They clinked their glasses. He was lighting up again when Cort said, ‘I’ll never understand how you can smoke those gaspers. You might as well chew on a lump of coal.’
‘They’re cheap, that’s all.’
‘So’s tripe, but I don’t eat it.’
‘Good for you, Fred. Some folk have to eat whatever they can get.’
He didn’t mean to be so blunt. Most of his hours in the office at Stack Furnish were spent avoiding frank exchanges such as this: exposures of his background that could make him vulnerable to judgement. He’d been shaped by his mistakes, his hardships, and would not deny them. But somewhere down the line (in fact, he knew exactly when it was: the morning of his interview for the assistant’s job, when Mr Stack and Mr Furnish had asked him to describe his time in borstal, as though it were a stint in Gandey’s Circus) he’d realized it was better to deflect attention from his past. It was bad enough he had to speak with Bootle in his voice, buffed out and made presentable, but still apparent, still remarked on. He’d become the office curiosity, a lightning rod for condescension from the Harrow boys like Ibbot. Sly comments were already being passed in whispers – he was sure of it. He’d seen their faces simpering when he came back from lunch or went into the storeroom. Oh dear, there goes Mayhood in that cheap hat from the market.
‘You’re right,’ Cort said, surprising him, ‘I shouldn’t be so glib. I’m sorry.’
They sat there for a moment, saying nothing else. There was a crack of raucous laughter from the bar. He’d never known his colleague to be so contrite or tongue-tied. He wondered if the things that he’d disliked about Cort all this time – his bluster and immodesty – were symptoms of another type. Perhaps Fred Cort was no more certain of himself than he was. Perhaps he wasn’t like the rest of them at all. ‘I’ll tell you what, though, Fred,’ he offered as a consolation, ‘even if they’re cheap, I never share them.’ Then he put his nearly empty packet on the table. ‘Go on. Seeing as we’re not in competition. Have one.’
Cort scratched his chin, amused. ‘All right. Might as well.’
He watched him take a Woodbine, light it, have a puff. All the while, he weighed the prospect in his mind: that he could let somebody get to know him for a change. That he could sacrifice a measure of control to ease some of his loneliness. Why not take a reading of Cort’s goodness here and now, as it was just the two of them? Survey the ground a bit before he trusted it to build on. Why not try? He couldn’t keep on shrugging people off in case they disappointed him.
‘You know,’ he said, as plainly as he could, ‘I started smoking these in borstal. Actually, it would’ve been before we got there. We were held for a few days at Wandsworth nick, just in the sorting station, and a lad there offered one to me while we were lining up. I thought the same as you did now: Go on, might as well. I’d never smoked before, but I’ve been faithful to them ever since. Old habits and all that.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Cort said, exhaling. His eyes had gone quite rheumy with the smoke. ‘I never knew you were in borstal.’
‘Yes, two years at Feltham.’ He was going to have to hold the reins of conversation tightly now and stop them veering off into the gloom. ‘Please don’t spread it round the office, mind.’
‘Of course I won’t. What did you do?’
‘Held up a cargo train,’ he said.
‘Good heavens. Really?’
‘No. What do you take me for?’ He saw Cort’s face relax again. ‘They caught me with some stolen goods, that’s all – about ten crates of pipe tobacco.’
‘Why? What made you do it?’
‘Circumstances. I was hungry and I had to. There’s a story, but I’d rather keep it to myself.’
‘This happened up in Liverpool?’
‘Yes, but a long time ago. You’ll want to knock the ash off that. They burn up quicker than you think.’
‘Oh, blast.’ Cort rubbed a big grey streak into his trousers. He was not a seasoned smoker. ‘Well, it can’t have been that long ago. We must be the same age – at least, I thought we were. I’m twenty-four. How old are you?’
‘The same.’
‘And how old at the time?’
‘Fifteen.’ He found that Cort was looking back at him with something like esteem – his lower lip thrust out, his nostrils flared.
‘Nine years? Blimey, that’s a turnaround. It took me five to get through Ulysses.’ And then he leaned in, blinking. ‘You’re a bit of an enigma, Mayhood. Do the partners know about all this?’
‘Well, it was in my covering letter. I could hardly keep it secret.’
‘No, of course, I didn’t mean to –’
‘It’s all right. The truth is, half the firms in London wouldn’t even interview me. But Stack Furnish wrote straight back.’
‘Fair play to them. I wouldn’t have expected it of Mr Furnish.’
‘I suppose it helped that two of his old pals were my instructors and they recommended me.’
‘He trained at Liverpool as well?’
‘Yes, under Reilly.’
‘That explains a lot about his style. Am I the only fool who didn’t go there?’
‘You and Ibbot.’
‘Damn.’ Cort arched his back to vent the fumes over his shoulder, laughing. ‘I think I’m getting used to these. They’re not so awful.’
‘Everyone surrenders in the end. You’ll be on ten a day before you know it.’
His colleague drained the last few inches of his mild and put his glass down. ‘Well –’ He burped into his fist. ‘The partners didn’t bother showing up again, I noticed. That’s three lectures in a row they’ve missed.’
‘It’s odd, to say the least.’ There was a dampness still to Arthur’s clothes, but he was warmer now and more at ease. His spirits had been lifted, seeing the honesty of Cort’s reaction. There’d been some surprise when he’d first mentioned borstal, as expected, and a bit of idle curiosity. But not much pressure to explain himself. No pity. And then – done. As though what he’d revealed was no more consequential than the landlord’s prattle at the bar, the conversation had moved on to other matters.
‘I know for sure that Mr Furnish was invited,’ Cort went on. ‘I asked his secretary. But I can’t imagine they’re on board with Wright’s ideas. Organic this, organic that. A million miles from their approach now, isn’t it?’
‘I find them so frustrating,’ he replied. ‘They’re clearly in a rut, but it’s so comfortable for them they haven’t noticed.’
‘Absolutely, I agree. And it’s a great relief to hear you say it. I’ve been going slowly mad.’
In fact, a general dissatisfaction with the projects at Stack Furnish had been festering in Arthur for a while now. But he couldn’t tell if this was caused by apathy towards the low-risk style the partners were inured to, or if it was because he was still cleaving to his happy memories of architecture school – those dream-drunk days he used to share with Florence. It was just over a year ago that they were living a short tram-ride from each other, existing in a heedless syncopation, going from his lodgings to her halls of residence and back again, making plans out loud. Liverpool was much too small for their ambitions; London was the next place on the list. The world seemed braced for them to conquer. He missed those years with her so deeply he relived them every night inside his head on a despairing loop.
Not long after he’d arrived and taken up his rented room in Dulwich, reality had shouldered him into submission. Working at Stack Furnish was sobering and monotonous. He’d found that being an architect in practice required little vision or imagination; if he took the partners as his standard-bearers, architecture seemed to be about the mindless service of rich clients who couldn’t tell the difference between lateral and perpendicular, but who could still be invoiced for a spate of meetings to discuss the smallest of adjustments to designs – nothing ever got completed, just continued. The longer he was at Stack Furnish, the more he felt he was releasing the balloon strings of his principles, forgoing every instinct and good habit he’d acquired since his first draughtsman’s class at borstal. Now the world was definitely braced for something, but it wasn’t him and Florence or their big ideas.
‘I get the feeling you approve of Mr Wright and what he preaches,’ Cort went on. ‘Please tell me that you do, because I can’t keep up the act. I’m not at all conflicted. Not one bit. I think the man’s a visionary – and now it looks as though I’m only saying it because you are, but ever since those first few articles of his in Wendingen, I –’
‘Stop, Fred. I believe you. And you’re right, I think the same.’ For the first time, he could look at Cort and see through the veneer of him: those three-piece suits he wore on a rotation, the rule-straight parting in his hair, the news broadcaster’s accent. It was just another way of blending into the drab scenery at Stack Furnish, giving the partners what they wanted. ‘Let me get us the next round, eh? Unless you’d rather go back to the office.’
Two more halves of mild apiece and then they switched to brandy. After this, the wall lights started shimmering like campfires far away. The pub got so loud he was shouting things to Cort across the table that ought to have been whispered. ‘I’ve not given any thought to what I’ll do when it kicks off, have you? I’m sure we’ll get dragged into it before too long. Perhaps I’ll just present myself wherever I’m supposed to go and they can put me where I’ll be most useful.’
‘Sounds all right to me. I have an uncle who was in the Sappers, so I might as well look into that. As long as they don’t put me in a tank, I’ll do just fine.’
‘I wouldn’t mind. It’s ships that bother me – the water, anyway. Every time I go to Birkenhead, I chuck up on the ferry.’
‘Skip the navy, then.’
‘I don’t trust aeroplanes much neither.’
Cort made wide, reproachful eyes at him. ‘Sounds like something I heard Ibbot say once.’
‘Oh, God. Sorry. Change the subject.’
‘Fine by me.’ Cort snapped his fingers twice. ‘Let’s have another of those gaspers.’
‘We finished them already.’
‘Then let’s find a cigarette machine.’
‘It’s out of order.’
There was a blurry half an hour or so in which they scrambled on the pavements of Great Portland Street, looking for a corner shop, before they gave up altogether. The rain had long abated. Hotel canopies were dripping on the heads of passers-by, the gutter pipes were sluicing by their feet and all of London’s fairground dazzle seemed undignified. After this, a quietness began to settle, prompting him to think about tomorrow.
‘I should turn in for the night, I think.’
Cort came and shook his hand. ‘I’m really glad we did this, Mayhood.’
‘Take care, Fred.’
‘I’ll see you in Usonia. Or maybe just the office.’
‘Monday morning. Bright and early.’
‘Cheerio.’
He watched Cort shamble round the corner, clattering the railings with his fingers like a kid. His own legs felt unsteady as he wandered down to Oxford Street to catch the last bus home to Dulwich. When he got back to his lodgings, it was some time after midnight and his landlord’s reading lamp was still aglow in the front window, shutting off as soon as his key met the lock.
The starkness of his room was dismal. There’d hardly been a spare hour since his move from Liverpool to hang a picture, let alone bring in an aspidistra or replace the furniture. Florence had stayed over with him only twice, and there didn’t seem to be much sense in dressing up his digs for his own benefit. The brandy and the beer were churning in his stomach now. He made himself a plum jam sandwich and ate it in the partial darkness, feeling suddenly alone. No matter how much he denied it, there was goodness to be found in the companionship of other men. A different sort of happiness, less bewildering or engulfing. But he’d had to leave too many of these friendships at the gates of Feltham and, since then, he’d been afraid to lose another.
All this time, the judge’s voice was still clear in his memory: ‘Arthur Patrick Mayhood, you shall go to borstal for a period of training. Three years, with a minimum of one year to be served.’ Training, he’d thought, and imagined long days hiking up a mountainside in shorts and vest, performing shuttle runs on muddy football fields. Whatever training meant, it had to be a vast improvement on the cells at Walton Prison. He’d seen enough of them while he was on remand there, counting down the weeks until his court date, separated mostly from the con men, muggers and wife beaters, but thrown in with a pack of them for Sunday services, hearing things that chilled him, murder tales that wouldn’t leave his head. For a while, his name had been replaced by a cell number on a uniform: K-186. He’d had a six-foot room with a barred window and an iron frame to sleep on. Mornings were for exercising on the ring, the afternoons for sewing mailbags – no talking was allowed, just stitch, stitch, stitch for hours. By nine o’clock, his door was bolted shut and lights went out. His dreams had frightened him so much he’d rarely slept.
He’d found another kind of life at Feltham. In with boys his age from up and down the country, most of them the same as him – no family to speak of, and no money to their names, persuaded into thieving by necessity. An older lad he knew, John Parker, had been serving time for pilfering a case of baking powder, which he’d tried to flog back to the bakery he’d pinched it from in Colchester. John had been a mouthy sort, but harmless. There were rougher lads you had to steer a path around: the thugs who came to shove you down while you were minding your own business in the dining hall, who bloodied up your nose for pointing your eyes at them in the plunge bath. But trouble had been easier to avoid in borstal than it had been on the streets of Bootle.
He’d gone in like the rest of them: resentful, clueless, cursing his bad luck. Dispatched into a house with eighty others, then a group of twenty with a prefect leading them. In grade one, days were regimented and mundane (parade drills in the yard at six a.m., then cleaning duty), supervised by warders in civilian clothes. No speaking with the other boys at mealtimes and no games allowed or common recreation. For a few months, all he’d done was sweep the floors and scrub the lavatories. But at least he’d slept on a thick mattress, under blankets, in a cubicle with MAYHOOD on the door, and not a bolt-lock to be seen. In fact, the Feltham gates were always left unmanned, with only seven feet of concrete wall at the perimeter – anybody could’ve scaled it with a bit of application. (The two lads he’d seen try it had been apprehended in a nearby village that same evening, and they’d done six months on stoneyard duty, smashing rocks to powder. No one else had bothered after that.)
In time, he’d earned a stripe and was allowed to join a working party. Every lad from grade two onwards had to learn a trade before he got discharged. Some had chosen tailoring or bootmaking; others had gone down the engineering route, or blacksmithing, or carpentry; the rest had found they liked it better in the kitchen or the laundry. He’d considered signing up for farming party to begin with. Just outside the boundary wall, there was a tract of land for them to cultivate, with guidance from a local resident – it wasn’t quite the many hundred acres Frank Lloyd Wright had bragged of owning in Wisconsin, but it kept them occupied throughout the year. Half the veg they ate at Feltham were produced on that small farm, and this made their meals good and wholesome; not the pigswill they doled out at the men’s prison. He’d seen lads planting, mowing, raking in the fields with sunshine on their backs, and thought it looked appealing: honourable work that wouldn’t tie him down to one place on the map. But then his pal John Parker had decided on the building party, so he’d followed him and joined the navvy gang.
By then, he’d lost his sense of bitterness about his situation. There were certain privileges he’d won from his first stripe: more recreation time, no limits on his conversation in the dining hall, a later call to bed. And there’d been hobby-hour classes, taught by volunteers from the outside. He’d taken woodworking, then draughtsmanship: a simple ten-week course that had awoken him to architecture. While it wasn’t true to say that he was ever satisfied with being a prisoner, borstal had allowed him to discover things he hadn’t known existed, skills he’d never thought that he possessed.
The strangest part about tonight was seeing those Taliesin boys engaged in work no different from the navvy gang’s routine. Heaving wet cement around in barrows, laying bricks, affixing joists and roof beams. In the navvy gang, they’d had no famous architect to guide them, just Ken Siddle, a retired engineer who’d given up his weekdays to inspire their love of building, showing up each morning in the same blue overalls and a cloth cap. They’d put up a machine shed, starting with shovels to dig out foundation trenches, ending with door locks and hinges – it wasn’t much to look at, but it had a pitched slate roof and windows edged with stone, and it was still the only finished building he could put his name to.
Now that he was brooding on it in the glumness of his room, he couldn’t stop the film from flashing in his mind again, the tick-tick-tick of it. There was nobody he could explain it to who would’ve understood. But there was Florence, who would listen.
It was much too late to call her. Even so, he went out to the hall to use the telephone, adding his name quickly to the logbook – he’d accrued a small debt to his landlord in the past few months, entirely with calls to Ockham. She picked up after half a dozen rings. ‘Yes? Hello? Who is this? Do you realize the time?’
‘Sorry, Flo. It’s me.’
A long breath of forbearance. ‘Goodness, Arthur. What’s so urgent?’
‘Only just got home …’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Might’ve had a few after the lecture. With a colleague.’
‘Well, you ought to get some sleep if you still plan to catch the eight fifteen.’
‘I’m not so sure I can.’
‘Oh, please don’t cry off now. It’s been a dreadful week. I need you.’
‘I’m still coming. I just meant that I can’t sleep.’
‘Why not?’
A blade of light appeared beneath his neighbour’s door. He had to lower his voice. ‘I wish you could’ve seen this film I saw tonight, Flo.’
‘You were at the flicks without me?’
‘Sort of.’ None of it could wait until tomorrow. By the morning, all the surfacing ideas that buoyed him now would surely sink again, or he would have to drown them. But if Florence heard the wonder in his voice, she would remember and remind him.