7. Over the Rainbow

Over the Rainbow

Having had to study for a proper job, Jimmy’s old uni mate David had taken rather longer than Jimmy, Rupert or Lizzie (and Robbo) to join London’s nancial elite. In fact until around ’97 he had had even less money than Henry, which was astonishing because at the time Henry was a local Labour Party activist with a part-time job copy-editing other people’s novels while he worked on his own, a ‘literary’ spy novel cal ed Security Blanket.

David was the arty member of the gang. In the great Brit Pop battle of ’94

he had been the only rm Blur man. Jimmy, Rupert and Robbo had al been 100 per cent Oasis and Henry had sat on the fence.

‘Just like a fucking politician,’ Rupert had sneered.

Lizzie liked Enya and Clannad.

Right from the start David had walked the walk. He wore thick Jarvis Cocker glasses and desert boots, drank absinthe, brie y had an Italian girlfriend (an au pair) and had grabbed the attic room in the house that the ve boys shared, where he slept on a mattress with a book about Jackson Pol ock on the oor beside it. Nearby stood a number of big volumes ful of black and white photographs which he got from his parents for Christmas and a stack of Arena magazines. However, he owned (as far as Jimmy could ascertain when he searched the room) no pornography at al . Which Jimmy found truly astonishing, particularly for someone who claimed to be a lover of beauty.

‘What’s the point of surrounding yourself with books of photographs if they’re not of naked women?’ Jimmy enquired and it was general y agreed that there was something in what he said.

During his rst year, David had brie y had ambitions to be an artist and had even contributed an exhibit to a university art show, a used condom lying on a blow-up sex dol . e exhibit was picketed by both the Catholic Soc and the Fem Soc, the only occasion on which the two societies ever found common cause.

In the end, though, David switched his al egiance from Pol ock to Corbusier and soon after qualifying as an architect had been taken on by a trendy

practice. He had overtaken Henry in terms of annual income with his very rst commission.

A decade after that, when Jimmy met him for beer and curry in order to approach him about taking on his Webb Street development, David was a wealthy man (and although Henry had by this time become an MP he stil hadn’t nished his spy novel). In fact, so successful was David by 2005 that, university mate or not, the prospect of heading up a street’s worth of house conversions no longer tickled his fancy in the least.

‘I’l recommend the job to my board as a favour, Jim,’ David said patronizingly while stealing Jimmy’s last poppadom, ‘but there’s no way I’l be able to take any interest in it myself. ings are looking a bit too exciting these days for me to worry about how to squeeze eleven en suites into a ten-bedroom house.’

‘No problem, mate,’ Jimmy assured him as he reached over and shattered the stolen poppadom with the at of his hand. ‘I don’t need you bal sing things up with a load of pretentious asymmetrical cock wank anyway. Cal me mad but I’m not into houses that look like a pile of glass cubes stacked up by an educational y chal enged two-year-old. I need houses that look posh. Not hip.

Which is why I want your rm’s name, Dave. at I need, because that is posh.

at’s stylish, that adds zeros to the price. But as to your rm’s mega-crappy signature style, which makes everything look like it was designed by half a dozen blokes working independently of each other in sealed rooms, you can stuff it.’

David rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. Glasses with the same thick, black, plastic frames he had worn at university, except of course that being Dolce and Gabbana instead of National Health Service they had cost four hundred pounds (which did not include the price of the light-sensitive lenses).

‘You were a philistine arse at uni, Jim, and you’re stil a philistine arse,’

David said, managing to capture the remains of the lamb massala on his nan bread with a single superbly executed sweep that left the little metal dish looking as if it had just been washed. ‘And I’m afraid you always wil be a philistine arse.’

‘If preferring buildings where it’s possible to work out which is the roof and which is the oor is being an arse then I’m guilty as charged. Anyway, bol ocks to that, do you think your rm wil take on Webb Street or not?’

David smiled and ordered two more pints of King sher.

‘Jim lad, they’l do anything I ask them to. Because I’ve got my NFM, mate.

I is da MAN! You hear dat, bro? You is looking at da man innit, aiee!’

Jimmy inched. He could be as naff as they came but David’s recently adopted habit of fal ing into a sort of half-black ‘yoof’ accent that he’d clearly picked up off a comedy sketch show turned even Jimmy’s stomach. Apart from anything else, he was so bad at it.

‘Dave, please,’ Jimmy said, ‘you’re thirty-three and you went to Winchester.’

‘Das rye!’ David replied, icking his ngers to make them click but failing.

‘I is da youngest geezah wiv an NFM in da ’hood!’

David had long ago explained to Jimmy what an NFM was. It was the holy grail of every architecture rm on the planet.

e Norman Foster Moment.

e architectural commission that would garner real-world attention and catapult its designers into the upper echelons of superstar architects. ose architects whose rms emerging democracies commissioned to design their new parliament buildings, and multinationals used when they wanted to build an art gal ery to burn up a bucket of tax avoidance.

‘You’re not tel ing me they’ve actual y commissioned your Rainbow?’ Jim asked.

‘Jim lad, they ate it up,’ David purred.

‘Fucking hel , that’s incredible.’

‘What do you mean? You always said it was a bril iant idea,’ David protested.

‘Yeah, I said that,’ Jimmy replied, ‘because you’re a mate, but to be honest I thought it was just more Dave wank.’

Jimmy had heard the Rainbow pitch many times. David had rehearsed it at numerous gatherings and now, out of the blue, it seemed he had pitched it for real.‘Hooked ’em this afternoon as a matter of fact,’ said David with a huge grin.

‘Buildings in the shape of rainbows?’ Jimmy asked. ‘You seriously pitched it?’‘Of course!’ David waved his nan about as he relived the moment. ‘Vast arches with two sets of foundations! e skyscraper as a bridge! It’s bril iant! I mean, that concept alone would probably have been enough; everybody knows that to be real y successful a building needs a nickname and I had loads –

Rainbow, Bridge, Arch, Speed Bump. e board loved them al . ey would have commissioned me there and then but my pitch hadn’t even started, mate.’

‘ere’s more?’ Jimmy feigned excitement. ‘More than a bent building?’

‘You’re forgetting my coup de grâce. Any shitty old architect can offer up a building in a chal enging and original shape!’

‘Chal enging and original?’ Jimmy said. ‘at’s architect-speak for “stupid”, is it?’

‘No, it’s architect-speak for “idiots like you wouldn’t get it in a mil ion years”. But just being chal enging and original won’t get you the Shel headquarters in Nigeria, mate. And it won’t get you the upper legislature of some pastel-coloured parliament in the outer reaches of the ex-Soviet Union either. No! You’ve got to have more than just a chal enging and original shape.’

‘e coup de grâce?’

‘Exactly! e coup de grâce. I told them. e whole point about a rainbow is it has two ends. is is a building that can cross national borders!’

Jimmy took a swig of beer. Despite himself, he was impressed.

‘Wow. I don’t remember that bit of the idea.’

‘at’s because I only recently thought of it.’

‘It’s a big concept.’

‘Damn right it’s a big concept!’

‘But . . . uhm. Why?’

‘Why?’ David gasped. ‘ Why? ’

‘Yeah. Why cross borders?’

‘Because it’s conceptual y fabulous, that’s why! A building as a symbol of peace! A global handshake fashioned in glass and concrete! A multinational community in the sky! Quite literal y a bridge between nations!’

‘And your board loved it?’

‘Crazy for it.’

‘Wel , that’s bril iant, Dave. Seriously, congratu—’

‘I haven’t nished,’ David said impatiently. ‘I haven’t told you my coup de grâce.’

‘I thought that was the coup de grâce, building your Rainbow across national boundaries.’

‘at’s half of it.’

‘What’s the other half?’

‘We build them across borders between countries with unequal tax legislation.’

A slow smile spread across Jimmy’s face.

‘I like it,’ he said nal y.

‘What,’ David asked, ‘is not to like? You have one set of foundations in a major economy and the other across the border in a tax haven. France and Liechtenstein, for instance. at way your building not only symbolizes peace and international cooperation but also makes it possible to generate corporate pro ts and evade the tax on them without leaving the office.’

‘Now that,’ Jimmy conceded, ‘is good. at is clever.’

‘ey went crazy for it, Jim, just crazy. ey’re going to oat the concept at every major potential commission that comes up. I is on my way, geezer!’

David said, waving his empty glass at the waiter. ‘I is about explain big time. Ya nah wah ahm sayin’, blood.’

‘Yeah, wel , bol ocks to it anyway,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Are you going to recommend my housing-development project to your board or not?’

David agreed to do it for the price of the last onion bhaji and went on to describe his new concept for a building that worked like a Rubik’s Cube.

‘Never the same building two days in a row. e chal enge wil be nding your office in the morning,’ he said.

‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘If you have any sense of style it is,’ said David.

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