Iain Sinclair - Downriver

‘And where would this monument be sited, sir — exactly?’ enquired the Architect, with lapping khaki tongue.

‘Here! Where else?’ The Minister allowed his impatience to show by tapping his black brochure on the tabletop. Someone had not done his homework.

‘I’m sure,’ he continued, uncreasing a disfiguring scowl, ‘our friend from the cinematograph can help us to stress the value of a professional presentation. Wall-to-wall sound systems, the right choice of themes… Chariots of Fire, Dam Busters, Kwai , Elgar, Paul McCartney. Nothing too sophisticated, nothing rabble-rousing. No German melancholy.’

The Producer nervously groomed his beard, searching for his mouth, which had dried and contracted to a useless ring of gristle. ‘Yankee names above the titles, home-grown technical facilities, plus Jap finance (with maybe a Colombian top-up). Am I close? Logos from brand-leaders tactfully showcased in positions of maximum visibility — right?’

‘ Right ? You’re in Disneyland, baby. We’re not pitching for a Cola franchise, or a sweetener from Virgin Atlantic. Think Armada, Festival of Britain, Churchill’s funeral. We’re talking heavy ritual here. Leo Von Klenze, the Egyptians, the Mayans. What does Crosby call it? “A place of pilgrimage… a viable commercial investment… with side-effects which are unpredictable.”’ He rapped imperiously at the window, causing three of his goons to flash for their shoulder holsters. ‘The monument will be sunk in that dock. Work to commence immediately, contracts tendered and awarded.’

A modest smile crossed the Chairman’s face: as a director of both the firms involved he could not lose. He had ruthlessly undercut himself, juggling the tax concessions and the Enterprise Zone allowances.

The Minister was inspired: a vision appeared to him on the face of the waters. He saw things as they ought to be, he believed . ‘Visitors will enter through a maze of submarine pens, based on Sandle’s preliminary drawings. They will be “mood-graded” by a discreet soundtrack, quoting from those wonderful films of our boyhood, Above Us the Waves, Sink the Bismarck … Johnny Mills, Jack Hawkins, John Gregson, Ordinary Seaman Bryan Forbes… all that bleep-bleep, glug-glug, Up Periscope stuff. On through glass-walled tunnels, from which the humbled punters glimpse phantom U-boats, white sharks, limpet mines — maybe a hologram Belgrano. Gotcha !’

He whacked his hands together. The lady screamed. And the chief goon shot himself in the foot. And was carried, bleeding, to the chopper.

‘Then it’s into the pyramid itself, a Cave of Remembrance. Sober. Solemn music. On the walls could be carved elevating sentiments from the great philosophers and leaders. We considered using that Scotsman who is, apparently, something of a whiz with a chisel (to show we don’t harbour grudges and also to do our bit for unemployment north of the border). But now we’re informed the chappy is an over-sensitive, litigious blighter. The frogs are quite convinced he’s a card-carrying Nazi.’

‘That’s a cross we all have to bear,’ murmured the Chairman.

The Minister was not to be diverted. ‘A continuous frieze of speeches by Winston and Margaret will remind us of our duties as citizens, prepare us for the tapes of ack-ack guns over Dagenham, cones of concentrated fire, tracer shells. White parachute discs over the Isle of Grain. A distant thunder from the Thames Estuary. Stamping jackboots. Criss-crossing searchlights wind-milling above the dome of St Paul’s. Vast processions. Boy scouts, landgirls, aviators. Cheering. Travelling camera. Flashing bulbs. Cheering and clapping to the rhythm of a beating heart; clapping and stamping; cheering building to a soul-purging climax. Yes! All the razzamatazz of Nuremberg, without any of the chthonic excesses. The showbiz side, if you like. They certainly knew how to throw a party!’

‘Right!’ enthused the Producer, his eyes moist with the possibilities. ‘Those production values! Technically speaking, Triumph of the Will stands up; it’s a hell of a movie. Give me extras from the old school who’ll really go for it, give me a monster-monster budget — and anything is possible.’

‘We ascend,’ the Minister dropped his voice to a cathedral whisper, ‘in an open-fronted elevator (“a vertical ghost-train”, it has been called); climbing silently through all the strata of wartime desolation: fire-raids, rubble, water jets, Mass Observers, nigger bands in smoky cellars. We re-experience the primal energies of conflict — so cruelly denied to many of us in this comfortable world, where all our enemies have been defeated. Then, at the summit, in the hush of the final chamber, we come upon a still-life tableau of striking simplicity. A sunken pit ringed with plain wooden stools, and a table on which the waxen corpse of the Consort has been laid out, among all his ribbons and honours; his favourite golf clubs bound like a bundle of rods ( fasces ): the symbol of a lictor’s authority. We back away in awe. From the portholes, we kneel to look down over the battleground of the city, the sun-capturing towers of Canary Wharf, the silver helmets of the crusaders of the Thames Barrier.’

‘I see it, I see it!’ the Architect cried out, with all the agony of a convert. ‘You’re reviving Speer. I’ve thought for some time — though one has been reluctant to admit it — he’s quite a respectable figure, once you remove him from the sleazy milieu in which he operated. In fact, he seems to have more genuine “bottom” than many of his fellow Neo-Classicists working not a mile from here in the deregulated sector. Acting as muse to a carpet-chewing dictator may, in the long view, prove a worthier calling than fudging some pastiched Byzantine cladding for a cartel of grinning orientals. Isn’t Speer’s the very stuff that HRH has been advocating all along? (More havoc from the socialist planners than the Luftwaffe?) Speer had that unifying vision, the epic sense of scale, without which there is no polis . In time he may very well be recognized as a minor master, and given a retrospective at the Hayward.’

‘The overriding object,’ the Minister had clamped his case, and was preparing to depart, ‘is to shift the river axis. The City of the Future must be a phoenix rising out of the ruin of docklands. Abort the flattering urbanities of Canaletto, the pastoral fancies of Turner: we must assert the primacy of William Blake and his “Hiding of Moses” (page twenty-four in the brochure). Twin pyramids honouring the swamp, a curve of water guarded by a lioness; the precise hieratic steps of material progress. I leave it with you.’

And he bounced from his perch. His perfectly pink head, level with the tabletop, passed among the peaches and pineapples like a runaway sweetmeat, an exotic blancmange. Professor Catling, spoon in hand, stared longingly after his rapidly diminishing form; a trickle of drool starting from the corner of his mouth.

III

The move into the Bow Quarter hit Sonny Jaques like a jolt of mainline adrenaline. Here he was — in the heartland — aligned with the feral energies of the heroic and legendary East End. Scrap the ear-stud (lose that Kit Marlowe boy-prince image), shave the skull, climb into Chagall’s bleached blue jacket, and an aircrew cap. Look at me, Ma: worker/artist, Constructivist poet articulating the inchoate scream of the masses.

The Quarter also promised a kidney-shaped pool, an indoor jogging facility, and a panelled library, stacked to its girder-enforced fake ceiling with all the latest blood ’n’ boobs videos. Sonny pumped iron. It kept Kathy Acker looking good — and he was ten years younger! There she was in Time Out . But he was going to make the cover. (He hadn’t decided yet if a tattoo would be construed as bourgeois narcissism, proletarian solidarity, or a brand of brotherhood with the primitives of the Third World. Would it help to pull the chicks?)