which was more like Manhattan than London. The idea of trying to fit that amount of building in without any idea of what lay around it was just ludicrous, and I didn’t really take it seriously. I went through the motions, though, and Slade seemed pleased enough when we met the second time. He brought his agent, Quentin Gilroy, with him, which is always a sign he’s getting serious. They agreed I should develop the ideas a bit further and we’d meet again in another couple of weeks. But he still wouldn’t tell me any more about the location.
‘Well, I was finding this a bit hard to take. And when I thought about it, I realized it really wouldn’t be too hard to find a central London synagogue that was on the list of buildings of historic or architectural interest, and that was also in the same city block as an Underground station. It took me a couple of hours to trace it, and on the way home that evening I paid my first visit to Jerusalem Lane.
‘My first reaction was one of relief. There really wasn’t any strong architectural character to the surrounding streets, and the buildings within the block were a mixed bag of structures that seemed to range from scruffy to downright dangerous. I didn’t think the synagogue would be any great loss, and on the whole I was inclined to think that wholesale redevelopment would be the best option, although the Lane itself intrigued me-it was such an odd thing.
‘A couple of days later I went back at lunchtime for another look. I sat in the Balaton Cafe, looking out into the Lane. There were two old men in the cafe having an argument about whether it was Chopin or Liszt who was kissed by Beethoven-apparently it was Liszt. Then that rather formidable woman who runs the flower shop on the other side of that little square in the centre of the Lane came over and they had a discussion with her about whether she could find them a black rose for some anniversary that was coming up. Other people called in, taking up conversations with each other they must have started the day before, or maybe twenty years before in some cases. And gradually I began to get an idea of what an extraordinary crowd they were. There was a doctor, I remember, an odd-looking bloke-at least, I assume he was a doctor, because he practically set up surgery in the corner table. People would wander over and show him something and he’d shove his soup to one side and pull out his pad and give them a prescription!’
Jones laughed. ‘Do you know them? Do you know what I mean?’ And Kathy smiled, recognizing them immediately from his description.
‘After lunch I had a closer look at the buildings along the Lane. They were every bit as eccentric as the people who lived in them really, but it was interesting how, in their arrangement, how they all fitted together to form this compact little place right in the middle of the city-part of the city, but also private and protected. And what went on inside the buildings was so varied too, little businesses that had probably been running on a shoestring for years all mixed up with flats and offices and a couple of small workshops.’
Kathy nodded, responding to the enthusiasm which lit up his face. Then abruptly it passed and he frowned.
‘When I got back to the office and saw again the drawings I’d made, I began to feel very uneasy. The existing buildings might be inconvenient, impossible to modernize, an underdevelopment of a prime site. But to replace them with acres of dead standard office floors seemed somehow obscene. Talk about monoculture! After a couple of hours in the real Jerusalem Lane, the idea of trying to breathe life into those dead drawings seemed just hopeless.’
Out of the corner of his eye Jones saw Brock glance at his watch.
‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I called in at the Lane a couple of times over the next week or so, trying to figure out what to do, and one of those times I found myself outside the second-hand bookshop up at the top end of the Lane. It would have been the seventeenth of July, because I remember it was the first anniversary of my divorce. It’s funny, isn’t it, that I can remember that date when I could never remember our wedding anniversary. Anyway, I thought I might find an architectural book as an anniversary present to myself. I didn’t have much success. The place was a jumble, and even the bloke who owned it-Kowalski was his name, a Pole-didn’t seem to have much idea of what he had, or where it was. I worked my way back through the rooms of the shop, all piled with books in shelves and boxes, the way you do in old bookshops-you know, imagining you’re going to turn up an old Wendingen edition of Wright or something-until I came to the back room. There was a whole stack of old music scores in there, I remember, and books were heaped anyhow on the floor, and above them there were a few framed prints. One of them caught my eye. It was the frame I noticed first, quite an ornate thing. It contained what at first I thought must be an abstract drawing, a bit like a Paul Klee perhaps, made up of a grid of lines scribbled in black ink on dirty white paper.
‘Mr Kowalski took it down from its nail on the wall and brought it through to the window at the front of the shop, to let me see it more clearly in the light. He used his handkerchief to wipe the glass on the front, I remember, and I saw that the scribbled lines were in fact lines of writing, done in a hurry with an old-fashioned steel pen, with spots and splashes of ink in places. Kowalski pointed to a date in the top corner, which we were able to decipher as “30 April 1867”. The word beside it might have been “Hanover”, but the script was so untidy and illegible that it was impossible to make anything else out. Kowalski explained that it was a letter, written in a way that was sometimes done in those days, to economize on paper. Its author had written first in one direction in the normal way, and then turned the page through ninety degrees to cover the sheet with a second layer of writing, which, if the script itself had been more intelligible, would have been quite readable against the first.
‘I was rather taken with it. I liked the strong abstract grid pattern and also the puzzle of a text that might be decoded. I bought it from Mr Kowalski for a tenner, which I thought was probably a lot less than the frame would have been worth on its own.
‘That evening I sat down with a magnifying glass and tried to decipher the letter. Some phrases were legible and it seemed that the writer was suffering from “carbuncles”.’ Jones grinned. ‘I rather liked that. A couple of names were clear as well. There was a “Dear Fred” at the beginning, and a “Gumpert”, who seemed to be advising the writer to take arsenic for the carbuncles. There didn’t seem to be a signature, so I guessed the letter continued on the other side. I opened the back of the frame, and found I was right. I suppose I’d been hoping it might have come from someone famous, and I was a bit disappointed to find it signed by someone called “Mohr”. I still couldn’t make much sense of what the letter said, anyway, because at least half of it was in German.
‘I gave up, but the next day I phoned a friend who works for Lufthansa and speaks German. I faxed the two sides of the letter through to her, and she worked on it over her lunch hour. In the afternoon she faxed back her reply.’ He looked round. ‘We should have a copy here, actually. Since we started to do so much work through the fax machine, Sophie automatically keeps a copy of all incoming and outgoing faxes in a central file. I’m terrified about site instructions and sketch details and so on flying around unrecorded and going astray. I should be able to lay my hands on the translation if you can just hang on.’
‘Mr Jones,’ Brock broke in, sounding somewhat weary, ‘is this all absolutely relevant, this letter? I think you lost me somewhere back there.’
‘I’m sorry’-Jones took a deep breath-‘but yes, to be perfectly honest, it is relevant. Shall I fetch us some more coffee while I’m up?’
When he left the room, Brock muttered, ‘I always worry about people who keep saying “to be perfectly honest” and “to tell the truth”. It sounds like the verbal equivalent of crossing your fingers when you tell a lie.’
‘Do you think he’s lying?’ Kathy asked. But Brock only grunted and got to his feet, stretching his back stiffly.
13
Hanover, 30 April 1867
DEAR FRED,
Your letter arrived this morning and greatly cheered me after another wretched night suffering from a sudden outburst of carbuncles in places that make it intolerable to sit for more than a few minutes at a time. How I shall survive the journey back to London in a week or two with those swine eating into my behind I cannot conceive. I am quite resolved to take Gumpert’s advice and resume taking arsenic, although it makes me stupid. At least the book is off my hands at last and I need not keep a clear head for that any longer. How great a weight lifted from my shoulders! Tonight I shall take your advice and get mercilessly drunk.
Meissner proves to be a quite excellent fellow, despite his dreadful Saxon accent. Printing has already
