The Restoration of Otto Laird (10 page)

Otto had never been an arrogant boy – confident, yes, but always measured in his self-belief – and the discovery of the expectations people had of him would later cause him considerable worry. Back in the darkness of his bedsit, for instance, with only the ticking of the paraffin heater for company, he would lie awake and question the extent of his abilities. This evening, however, with the discovery of these expanding horizons, he remained in a state of quiet elation. He hardly even noticed the slow lifting of the smog as he bounded down the steps outside and hurried to catch the bus back to Charing Cross.

Otto had returned to the scene of that debut triumph on countless occasions since. He could measure out the passage of his life in the changing reflection that greeted him in its smoked glass doors. One incident in particular struck him now. Some eight years on from the night of the shrunken tuxedo, he had been keynote speaker at a conference held on the RIBA premises. There he gave the first of what would come to be known as his Concrete Eulogies. It was not the speech itself that he recalled, however, but a small and seemingly insignificant incident that took place during the drinks party afterwards.

‘The young fellow can certainly
talk
a good building, but can he actually
erect
one?' asked one smirking veteran of his colleagues, as they stood and sipped their glasses of wine. The timing of the question was unfortunate. Otto passed them at that very moment, in hot pursuit of a pile of canapés. He felt stung by the criticism, especially as it touched a raw nerve within him. Despite its growing reputation, Unit 5 had failed so far to secure any major commissions. They had produced plenty of tower blocks on paper; none, as yet, in the air. Far from allowing the overheard comment to crush him, however, he used it as a spur to strengthen his resolve. Working quietly from their small rented office in Fitzrovia, he and the others awaited the chance to finally put their theories into practice. The following year, with the launch of a high-profile competition to design Britain's Home of the Future, their moment to shine had finally arrived.

The thought of the resulting tower block – which was, after all, the reason for his presence in London – restored Otto to the present. He noticed a traffic warden approaching. From her expression, it was clear that his silent vigil had attracted concern.

‘Are you lost, sir?' the young woman asked, just as the circle of memories surrounding Otto dispersed into the afternoon air. ‘I noticed you've been standing there a while, and I was wondering if all was well.'

‘I'm fine, thank you,' Otto replied. ‘It's kind of you to ask. I lost my bearings for a moment or two, but it's all coming back to me now.'

And with a tilt of his homburg and a flourish of his cane, he set off in search of some food.

Nine

Dear Laszlo,

I hope that this letter finds you well. Or, more realistically, perhaps, given that we are of a similar age, that it finds you not suffering too badly.

I am writing to you late at night from my hotel room in Marylebone. The view from the window is unexceptional (the nocturnal glow of offices; the traffic's constant passing) so I need some conversation to distract me from my thoughts. To tell you the truth, I'm feeling rather nervous, and finding it impossible to sleep. What twists and turns the mind takes at this hour.

Tomorrow morning, I move into Marlowe House, a tower block we designed many years ago, in order to take part in a television feature about its proposed demolition. The aim, I believe, is to capture my innermost feelings on observing the blight that has occurred there. I would prefer the programme to focus on the facts, and the arguments for retaining or demolishing the building, but apparently that is not what is required. It is not enough, apparently. Too dry, too obvious. Something to engage the viewers' emotions is needed, hence my tragi-nostalgic return to Marlowe House, where I must hobble around and haunt the ramparts like the ghost of Hamlet's father.

It is the way of the modern world, I suppose. Interests have changed, priorities altered. Emotion now trumps intellect every time. So be it. I cannot change that. What I can do, however, is withhold any emotions I do feel from the probing of the cameras.

The makers of the programme, I suspect, would not understand such a sentiment, kind and thoughtful though they undoubtedly are. There is a generational issue at play here. What they fail to understand is that for many people of my age, the public display of any private emotion is simply an abomination; to do so in front of millions, exponentially worse. The war, maybe, played a part in all that, establishing sensibilities in childhood that remain. For our generation, the sheer magnitude of the events that engulfed us, and the need to maintain great clarity of thought in order to survive the carnage all around us, meant that we had no time for emotional navel-gazing – we could not afford the luxury of self-indulgence. It might have cost us our lives.

If you are wondering why I am telling you all this, it's because there is no one else alive in whom I can confide such thoughts. Anika is off-limits. She doesn't really approve of my being here in London and has made it quite clear that she has no wish to discuss it further. Besides which, as someone who is ‘post-war' in every respect, she is probably too young to comprehend my viewpoint. Of all my living friends, you are closest to me in age, and the one most likely to understand my perspective.

Since our little talk is going so well – no sign, yet, of any dissent on your part – I'd like to ask you a rather delicate question. It regards a matter that has puzzled me for years. You were an architect, when I first knew you, and a damned good one at that. Your work on any number of projects in the 1950s was simply outstanding. So given the success you had already enjoyed, your undeniable intelligence and talent, why on earth did you give it all up shortly afterwards in order to become a composer? It's an especially pertinent question, I feel, since your gifts in this field have always been – how shall I put this? – less apparent. I understand the similarities between these two great disciplines: the establishment of rhythm, of pattern, of balance and logical form; the sense of an unfolding (in architecture, of space – in music, of time). But despite all this, I don't understand why you abandoned completely the discipline that better suited your gifts and devoted yourself to one for which you have no obvious talent. Was the architectural endeavour too quiet for you? Did buildings not make enough noise? I sometimes suspect as much, judging by the infantile shrieks and clangs of some of your more challenging musical compositions. Or was it simply that you lost your mind, perhaps in a delayed reaction to the nightmare of war the previous decade? I have sometimes thought that, too, I must admit; for example, while watching you conduct your own five-hour opera, ten years ago during the festival in Darmstadt.

You looked extraordinary down there in the orchestra pit: the tics and the mutterings, the tossing of the head, the fluid expressions of fury and beatitude, lust and piety, playing in endless succession across your face. Then there were your huge, waving arms, your enormous shock of white hair, backlit and glowing like some mad explosion. Did you know the effect your hair had on the audience up in the gallery, distracting them constantly from the events on stage? Of course you did. Maybe you even arranged the lighting accordingly, to make yourself the radiant centre of attention. As a vain man myself, I cannot help but recognise the quality in others.

What you did
not
appear to recognise, however, was the effect your music had on the audience that evening. Did you really not notice? All the yawning and coughing? The checking of watches? The endless shifting about in our seats? Anika and I were clearly guilty on that last count. Three hours into the performance, she leaned across and told me that her buttocks felt like a boxer's face – and by that point we hadn't reached the interval. Even the orchestra and singers seemed a little confused, but then one can hardly blame them. There was the bizarre and stuttering overture, the meandering arias, the explosive, discordant choruses that went off like grenades, making us jump from our seats (at least they gave poor Anika's buttocks a momentary respite from their torture). Forty skilled musicians in search of a tune – that was how your opera felt to me. And I'm afraid they didn't find one, all evening long.

As for the plot, to this day I have no idea what I was watching. Wolves, bears, some people in togas – and then an astronaut appearing on stage? The relief at the end was palpable. You could see it in the fixed grins of the few members of the audience who remained.

But the only person who seemed oblivious to the sheer awfulness of it all was you, my dearest Laszlo. Beaming in delusional triumph, you bowed extravagantly and waved to the gallery, despite the sparse and embarrassed ovation you received. And then you returned for a curtain call with the auditorium nearly empty.

I know my criticism of your music seems harsh, but please don't think of me as uncultured. I'm no musical reactionary, I assure you – not stuck entirely in the classicism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I enjoyed the musical experiments of the post-war avant-garde – of Stockhausen, Ligeti and Boulez. They were, after all, our cultural bedfellows. What they, and you, produced in sound, I suppose I produced in concrete. The intellectual currents in which we swam were much the same. I only wish that your own work hadn't left me quite so cold. When not cold, I must confess, then rather terrified.

Your music is unlistenable, incomprehensible. Yet still you persist with it after all this time. Part of me admires that persistence; another part believes you require treatment for it. You are eighty-four years old now, Laszlo –
when are you going to give up?
Apologies for not mentioning this to you sooner, but honesty on the epic scale is never easy. To put it bluntly, how does one tell an old friend that the past fifty years of his life have been an utter waste of time?

Yet, if it's of any comfort to you, and I sincerely hope that it shall be, I find myself in exactly the same position. Just look at my sad repertoire of dysfunctional buildings: leaking, creaking, longing to pull themselves down, standing evocations of alienation and violence – and those are just the ones I'd like to save. No, I'm hardly in a position to discuss legacies.

Am I too, then, guilty of a monumental waste of time? Is there really any difference between the two of us?

As I mentioned before, the prospect of returning to Marlowe House makes me uncomfortable. How to explain the period of experimentation from which this building sprang – the vision of the future we all held back then? And how to square that vision with the conditions in which its residents must live? It won't be easy. I'm not relishing the prospect – I've no idea what sort of reception I'll receive. I only wish I had a fraction of your self-belief when it comes to facing my public. But then again, your folly at Darmstadt was inflicted on us for one evening only. My folly at Marlowe House has been inflicted on its residents for decades.

Yet we both did our best, I think – misguided and foolish though posterity might judge our efforts to have been. And, in our flawed and rather egocentric ways, I also hope that we managed to be courageous. Are we not kindred spirits, then, we two old crazies? Products of the twentieth century's collective nervous breakdown? That century has passed now, and the work we produced (even
we
, ourselves) are its museum pieces … its living exhibits.

We're an endangered species, you and I: the last of the old-fashioned Modernists. We need to stick together while we can. So if it's okay with you, I'd like to continue our correspondence. Then, like living bookends, separated by the quiet and calming distance of the page, we can ruminate on all our glorious failures.

Otto

He didn't bother reading the letter through again. Folding and sealing it into an envelope, he scrawled Laszlo's name across the front and then promptly threw it into the waste bin. Otto never posted any of his letters, nowadays. They seemed to serve a purely interior purpose.

‘Anyway, Laszlo would never forgive me if I sent it,' Otto said to himself. ‘He's as touchy about his opera as Pierre is about fucking Foucault.'

The sound of these last two words pleased him, so he repeated them aloud several times to himself as he washed. The acoustics of the bathroom gave the alliteration an extra resonance. Soon the phrase had developed into a little tune. It was only when he heard a faint knocking sound on the other side of the wall, accompanied by a muffled reprimand, that he realised it was probably time to cease his singing. Glancing at the clock, he saw with horror that it was approaching one-thirty. Sheepishly, he turned off the lights and made his way silently to bed.

Ten

Otto stood on the windswept forecourt, looking up at the imposing mass of Marlowe House, and leaned a little more heavily on his cane.

‘My goodness,' he said, the words almost carried away by the sharp gust that ruffled his overcoat and hat.

He paused awhile, aware in his peripheral vision of the camera slowly circling him. Yet his focus now was all upon the building. He stepped back a pace, then another, craning his neck in order to scan the upper storeys. It was a grey day, bitter. Chip wrappers and other detritus swirled about the public space. Otto held on to the top of his homburg and squinted upwards.

‘My goodness…'

The clean lines he had once studied from his seat at the Oval cricket ground remained unmistakable. But the concrete now was streaked and badly weathered. Seen on a summer's afternoon, perhaps, with the sunlight falling at a rakish angle, emphasising the form of the building while darkening out the details, Marlowe House could almost have been the same structure he had known in the mid-1960s. But in the flat and even light of this cold autumn morning, overcast and devoid of all covering shadow, the extent of its decline was clear to see.