FICTION: The Architects

‘I think I’d like to see Mountvale again,’ said Julian German from the tangle of his duvet.

Esther German, on her way to the airing cupboard with unnecessary haste, paused in the doorway of his room and peered at him. She smoothed a towel over her arm.

‘Did you say something, Jules?’

‘I said, woman, that I would like to see Mountvale one last time.’

Esther removed her glasses and let them hang around her neck on their beaded strap. She blinked and twitched.

‘Mountvale?’

‘Christ give me strength… Mountvale school. Bloody Mountvale. Again, meaning another time; once more.’

Esther came into the room with its smell of antiseptic cream and sweat. She lowered herself into the dusty steel-framed chair against the wall. Its feet scraped on the dull parquet. Julian winced.

‘The weather’s awful. Wouldn’t you rather spend the day in? I can find a film for you to watch.’

Julian put his hands behind his head.

‘No, I bloody wouldn’t. I want to see that school. One last time.’

‘I don’t see why. It’s a very ordinary building and–’

‘Russell Cavendish brought it up the other day. Said somebody from Historic England was talking about getting it listed. Unique example of post-war construction.’

‘But Russell–’

‘The first use of curtain walling in the whole county,’ Julian went on.

Esther looked towards the large window, speckled with rain and streaked with green moss at its corners.

Julian shook his head and growled.

‘Are you going to drive me or shall I drive myself?’

Julian had always been too tall to sit comfortably in cars. Even now, with a hump in his back and a couple of inches lost to the erosion of his spinal cartilage, he looked uncomfortable in the passenger seat of the Citroen.

Esther leaned forward against the steering wheel, thin wrists at ten to two. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth as she squinted past the windscreen wipers.

A passing van threw a fine mist from the road.

‘Left,’ snapped Julian, pointing with bunched arthritic fingers.

Esther ignored him.

He grabbed at the steering wheel.

‘Bloody left, woman! Left.’

She slapped his hand away and he winced.

‘Don’t panic, darling. I’m driving, not you, and I know the way.’

He stroked the translucent skin where she’d made contact, inspecting for a bruise, and pouted.

‘Do you? Know the way, I mean? I didn’t see you look at a map before we left.’

‘I don’t need a map.’

‘Typical woman. Why bloody plan anything?’

At a roundabout, she took the right exit. Julian leaned towards the window, scanning the road signs. He looked over his shoulder.

‘Where the bloody hell are we going now?’

‘It’s funny,’ said Esther, her voice unsteady. ‘The listing thing. Nothing we worked on was built to last, was it?’

‘Speak for your bloody self,’ said Julian, forgetting for a moment his anxiety over the route. ‘I always saw my work in context as part of the broader sweep of history.’

‘Our work,’ said Esther.

‘Oh, for God’s sake…  Yes, yes, technically, yes.’

‘And do try not to lecture. I’m not one of your students.’

He shrugged and folded his arms.

‘You were never a preservationist, anyway,’ she went on. ‘Knock it all down, you used to say.’

Julian didn’t reply.

Esther took her eyes off the road for a moment and saw that he’d fallen asleep, quite suddenly, as he often did in the car.

‘This isn’t the way to Mountvale,’ Julian bellowed.

‘I do wish you’d wear your hearing aid, darling. Then you’d know how loud you’re being.’

‘I don’t need it. My hearing is fine. And this is completely the wrong direction.’

They were on a country lane, now, passing through a village with a Norman church.

‘I thought we might go somewhere else instead of Mountvale,’ said Esther.

‘Where the hell are we?’

He saw and recognised the pub and so knew the village.

‘There’s a layby up ahead. You can turn there.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to stop for lunch? You could have a pint of beer.’

‘Don’t mother, me woman. For one thing, you’ve had no bloody practice. Just turn the car around and take me to Mountvale.’

Esther did as she was told, struggling with the gear stick as she conducted a five-point turn in ever-heavier rain.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Julian after a few moments, once he’d got his way. ‘About the mothering business. I forget sometimes.’

‘It’s alright, darling,’ said Esther. She sounded weary.

‘I’d have been a dreadful father, anyway.’

‘You certainly aren’t a terribly good husband.’

Julian laughed.

‘That’s my girl,’ he said, reaching across to pat her thigh. ‘As good as you get, eh?’

She brushed him away.

‘I’m driving.’

As they got nearer to Mountvale, in the early winter twilight, Julian became agitated again.

‘This is the estate, isn’t it? It’s changed a lot.’

‘Well, a lot of lives have been lived here,’ said Esther. ‘These buildings were always meant to be used.’

‘Plastic windows. Pebbledash. Pastel paint. Dreadful. Why did they cover the concrete?’ He raised his chin in lecturing mode. ‘It had such purity.’

‘But we didn’t have to look at it every day, did we? Or live in it, or work in it.’

‘Not that old argument!’ said Julian raising his voice and twisting in his seat.

She took advantage of his distraction to make a deliberate wrong turn.

‘Goldfinger lived in his tower, didn’t he?’

‘For a short while. But Le Corbusier lived in a fishing cottage. And Lubetkin lived in a Georgian townhouse.’

‘I’d have gladly lived on any of the estates where we worked. Our house, the house I designed for us–’

‘That we designed.’

‘Yes, yes, our house is true to the principles, isn’t it?’

Esther didn’t reply to that, not even to mention the draughts that blew through the open plan living area, or the water that gathered on the fatally flat roof all year round.

They were on a crescent, now, with a rippling concrete road and prefabricated homes. The house lights and streetlights had begun to come on.

‘This isn’t the way,’ said Julian. ‘I’m sure I remember…’ His mouth opened and closed as he tried to grip onto something. Spit gathered in the corners of his lips. He slammed a hand onto the dashboard.

‘Central square, community centre, health centre, shopping parade, schools complex opposite – primary, junior, secondary. These crescents are at the other end of the estate.’

‘You’re quite right, so they are,’ said Esther quietly.

‘What?’

She didn’t repeat herself, just flipped on the indicator and entered the final phase of the journey.

It couldn’t be avoided, now.

She parked the car half on the kerb and turned off the engine. The lights died with it.

They sat together in silence as rain sounded on the roof and windscreen.

Julian sighed.

‘Where’s my umbrella?’

Esther reached into the back seat and found it for him.

He undid his seatbelt and got out. After a struggle he got the umbrella up and lifted it. In his swollen hand, over his big head, it looked absurd, like something from Jacques Tati.

As he shuffled to the black cast-iron gate, Esther remembered when his stride was long and confident. She pulled the hood of her well-worn anorak over her head and joined him.

She looped her arm through his and they shivered together.

The gate and fence were still there but beyond was wasteland: concrete, wild grass, scattered bricks and litter.

‘The school’s gone,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes.’

 A large sheet of clear plastic trapped in brambles snapped and boomed.

‘But Russell said…’

‘Russell’s been gone a long time, too, darling.’

‘Gone?’

‘Three years.’

‘A highly significant building, he said, and now…’

‘Not significant enough. And with too much asbestos.’

Julian snatched his arm away.

‘A sound material, in its day. Hindsight is a bloody fine thing.’

‘Come on, Jules, let’s go home. Aren’t you hungry?’

Julian didn’t move except to raise a hand to the railings. He wrapped his fingers around the rusting metal and the wind filled his eyes with water.

The next morning, the sun made golden stripes on the far wall of the bedroom as it passed through the blinds.

‘Esther! Where the hell are you? 

Esther’s footsteps sounded along the parquet in the hall. She appeared in the doorway, small and exhausted.

‘I’ve had a thought.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’d like to see Mountvale one last time.’

Esther blinked and sighed.

‘Mountvale?’