Utopia Avenue is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by David Mitchell Text
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Published in the United Kingdom by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, London.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Mitchell, David (David Stephen), author.
Title: Utopia Avenue: a novel / David Mitchell.
Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002646 (print) | LCCN 2020002647 (ebook) | ISBN 9780812997439 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780812997446 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PR6063.I785 U86 2020 (print) | LCC PR6063.I785 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2020002646
LC ebook record available at lccn.loc.gov/2020002647
Ebook ISBN 9780812997446
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Simon M. Sullivan, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Christopher Brand
Cover image: yotrak/Getty Images (clouds)
ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Paradise Is the Road to Paradise: Side One
Abandon Hope
A Raft and a River
Darkroom
Smithereens
Mona Lisa Sings the Blues
Paradise Is the Road to Paradise: Side Two
Wedding Presence
Purple Flames
Unexpectedly
The Prize
Stuff of Life: Side One
The Hook
Last Supper
Builders
Prove It
Stuff of Life: Side Two
Nightwatchman
Roll Away the Stone
Even the Bluebells
Sound Mind
Look Who It Isn’t
The Third Planet: Side One
Chelsea Hotel #939
Who Shall I Say Is Calling?
What’s Inside What’s Inside
Timepiece
The Third Planet: Side Two
I’m a Stranger Here Myself
Eight of Cups
The Narrow Road to the Far West
Last Words
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By David Mitchell
About the Author
ABANDON HOPE
Dean hurries past the Phoenix Theatre, dodges a blind man in dark glasses, steps onto Charing Cross Road to overtake a slow-moving woman and pram, leaps a grimy puddle, and swerves into Denmark Street where he skids on a sheet of black ice. His feet fly up. He’s in the air long enough to see the gutter and sky swap places and to think, This’ll bloody hurt, before the pavement slams his ribs, kneecap, and ankle. It bloody hurts. Nobody stops to help him up. Bloody London. A bewhiskered stockbroker type in a bowler hat smirks at the long-haired lout’s misfortune and is gone. Dean gets to his feet, gingerly, ignoring the throbs of pain, praying that nothing’s broken. Mr. Craxi doesn’t do sick pay. His wrists and hands are working, at least. The money. He checks that his bankbook with its precious cargo of ten five-pound notes is safe in his coat pocket. All’s well. He hobbles along. He recognizes Rick “One Take” Wakeman in the window of the Gioconda café across the street. Dean wishes he could join Rick for a cuppa, a smoke, and a chat about session work, but Friday morning is rent-paying morning, and Mrs. Nevitt is waiting in her parlor like a giant spider. Dean’s cutting it fine this week, even by his standards. Ray’s bank order only arrived yesterday, and the queue to cash it just now took forty minutes, so he pushes on, past Lynch & Lupton’s Music Publishers, where Mr. Lynch told Dean all his songs were shit, except the few that were drivel. Past Alf Cummings Music Management, where Alf Cummings put his podgy hand on Dean’s inner thigh and murmured, “We both know what I can do for you, you beautiful bastard; the question is, What will you do for me?,” and past Fungus Hut Studios, where Dean was due to record a demo with Battleship Potemkin before the band booted him out.
“HELP, please, I’m—” A red-faced man grabs Dean’s collar and grunts, “I’m—” He doubles over in agony. “It’s killing me…”
“All right mate, sit down on the step here. Where’s it hurt?”
Spit dribbles from the man’s twisted mouth. “Chest…”
“ ’S okay, we’ll, uh…get yer help.” He looks around, but people rush by with collars up, caps down, and eyes averted.
The man whimpers and leans into Dean. “Aaa-aaaggh.”
“Mate, I think yer need an ambulance, so—”
“What seems to be the problem?” The new arrival is Dean’s age, has short hair and a sensible duffel coat. He loosens the collapsed man’s tie and peers into his eyes. “I say, my name’s Hopkins. I’m a doctor. Nod if you understand me, sir.”
The man grimaces, gasps, and manages to nod, once.
“Good.” Hopkins turns to Dean. “Is the gentleman your father?”
“Nah, I never seen him till now. His chest hurts, he said.”
“Chest, is it?” Hopkins removes a glove and presses his hand against a vein in the man’s neck. “Highly arrhythmic. Sir? I believe you’re having a heart attack.”
The man’s eyes widen; fresh pain scrunches them up.
“The café’s got a phone,” says Dean. “I’ll call nine-nine-nine.”
“It’ll never arrive in time,” says Hopkins. “The traffic’s blue bloody murder on Charing Cross Road, do you happen to know Frith Street?”
“Yeah, I do—and there’s a clinic, up by Soho Square.”
“Exactly. Run there as fast as you can, tell them a chap’s having a heart attack outside the tobacconist on Denmark Street and that Dr. Hopkins needs a stretcher team, pronto. Got all that?”
Hopkins, Denmark Street, stretcher. “Got it.”
“Good man. I’ll stay here to administer first aid. Now run like the bloody clappers. This poor devil’s depending on you.”
* * *
—
DEAN JOGS ACROSS Charing Cross Road, into Manette Street, past Foyles bookshop, and through the short alley under the Pillars of Hercules pub. His body has forgotten the pain of his fall just now. He passes dustmen tipping bins into a rubbish van on Greek Street, pounds up the middle of the road to Soho Square, where he scares a pool of pigeons into flight, nearly loses his footing a second time as he turns the corner onto Frith Street, and bounds up the steps of the clinic and into a reception area where a porter is reading the Daily Mirror. DONALD CAMPBELL DEAD, declares the front page. Dean gasps out his message: “Dr. Hopkins sent me…a heart attack on Denmark Street…needs a stretcher team, on the double…”
The porter lowers the newspaper. Flakes of pastry cling to his mustache. He looks unconcerned.
“A man’s dying,” states Dean. “Didn’t yer hear me?”
“ ’Course I did. You’re shouting in my face.”
“Then send help! Yer a bloody hospital, aren’t yer?”
The porter snorts inwards, deep and hard. “Withdraw a hefty sum of money from a bank prior to your encounter with this ‘Dr. Hopkins,’ did you?”
“Yeah. Fifty quid. So?”
The porter flicks crumbs off his lapel. “Still in possession of that money, are you, son?”
“It’s here.” Dean reaches into his coat for his bankbook. It’s not there. It must be. He tries his other pockets. A trolley squeaks by. A kid’s bawling his eyes out. “Shit—I must’ve dropped it on the way over…”
“Sorry, son. You’ve been hustled.”
Dean remembers the man falling against his chest…“No. No. It was a real heart attack. He could hardly stand up.” He checks his pockets again. The money’s still missing.
“It’s cold comfort,” says the porter, “but you’re our fifth since November. Word’s got round. Every hospital and clinic in central London has stopped sending stretchers for anyone called Hopkins. It’s a wild goose chase. There’s never anyone there.”
“But they…” Dean feels nauseous. “But they…”
“Are you about to say, ‘They didn’t look like pickpockets’?”
Dean was. “How could he’ve known I had money on me?”
“What’d you do if you were going fishing for a nice fat wallet?”
Dean thinks. The bank. “They watched me make the withdrawal. Then they followed me.”
The porter takes a bite of sausage roll. “Hole in one, Sherlock.”
“But…most o’ that money was to pay for my bass, and—” Dean remembers Mrs. Nevitt. “Oh shit. The rest was my rent. How do I pay my rent?”
“You could file a report at the cop shop, but don’t hold your breath. For the Old Bill, Soho’s surrounded by signs saying, ‘Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.’ ”
“My landlady’s a bloody Nazi. She’ll turf me out.”
The porter slurps his tea. “Tell her you lost it trying to be a Good Samaritan. Maybe she’ll take pity on you. Who knows?”
* * *
—
MRS. NEVITT SITS by the tall window. The parlor smells of damp and bacon fat. The fireplace looks boarded up. The landlady’s ledger is open on her writing bureau. Her knitting needles click and tap. A chandelier, forever unlit, hangs from the ceiling. The wallpaper’s once-floral pattern has sunk into a jungle gloom. Photographs of Mrs. Nevitt’s three dead husbands glower from their gilt frames. “Morning, Mrs. Nevitt.”
“Barely, Mr. Moss.”
“Yeah, well, uh…” Dean’s throat is dry. “I’ve been robbed.”
The knitting needles stop. “How very unfortunate.”
“Not half. I got out my rent money, but two pickpockets did me over on Denmark Street. They must’ve seen me cash my bank order and followed me. Daylight robbery. Literally.”
“My my my. What a turn-up.”
She thinks I’m spinning her a yarn, thinks Dean.
“More’s the pity,” Mrs. Nevitt continues, “you didn’t persevere at Bretton’s, the Royal Printers. That was a proper position. In a respectable part of town. No ‘muggings’ in Mayfair.”
Bretton’s was indentured cocksuckery, thinks Dean. “Like I told yer, Mrs. Nevitt, Bretton’s didn’t work out.”
“No concern of mine, I’m sure. My concern is rent. Am I to take it you want more time to pay?”
Dean relaxes, a little. “Honest, I’d be ever so grateful.”
Her lips pinch tight and her nostrils flare. “Then this time, this time only, I’ll extend the deadline for your rent payment—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Nevitt. I can’t tell yer how—”
“—until two o’clock. Never let it be said I’m unreasonable.”
Is the old cow putting me on? “Two o’clock…today?”
“Ample time for you to get to your bank and back, surely. Only this time don’t flash the money as you leave.”
Dean feels hot, cold, and sick. “My account’s actually empty right now, but I get paid on Monday. I’ll pay yer the lot then.”
The landlady pulls a cord hanging from the ceiling. She takes a card from her writing bureau: BEDSIT TO LET—BLACKS & IRISH NEED NOT APPLY—ENQUIRE WITHIN.
“No, Mrs. Nevitt, don’t do that. There’s no need.”
The landlady places the card in the window.
“Where am I s’posed to sleep tonight?”
“Anywhere you wish. But it won’t be here.”
First no money, now no room. “I’ll be needing my deposit.”
“Tenants who default on their rent forfeit their deposit. The rules are pinned up on every door. I don’t owe you a farthing.”
“That’s my money, Mrs. Nevitt.”
“Not according to the contract you signed.”
“Yer’ll get a new tenant by Tuesday or Wednesday. At the latest. Yer can’t take my deposit. That’s theft.”
She resumes her knitting. “You know, I detected a whiff of the Cockney barrow-boy about you from the first. But I told myself, No, give him a chance. Her Majesty’s Printers see potential in the young man, after all. So I gave you that chance. And what happened next? You abandoned Bretton’s for a ‘pop band.’ You grew your hair like a girl’s. You spent your money on guitars and Heaven knows what so you have nothing left for a rainy day. And now you accuse me of theft. Well, that’ll teach me to second-guess myself. What’s born in the gutter stays in the gutter. Ah, Mr. Harris…” Mrs. Nevitt’s live-in ex-army goon appears at the parlor door. “This”—she glances at Dean—“person is leaving us. Immediately.”
“Keys,” Mr. Harris tells Dean. “Both of ’em.”
“What about my gear? Stealing that too, are yer?”
“Take your ‘gear’ with you,” says Mrs. Nevitt, “and good riddance. Anything still in your room at two o’clock will be in the Salvation Army store at three. Now go.”
“God al-bloody-mighty,” mutters Dean. “I hope yer die soon.”
Mrs. Nevitt ignores him. Her needles click-clack. Mr. Harris grips the back of Dean’s collar and hauls him up.
Dean can hardly breathe. “Yer choking me, yer scumbag!”
The onetime sergeant shoves Dean into the hall. “Up to your room, pack, and get out. Or I’ll do more than choke you, you nancy-boy faggot layabout…”
* * *
—
AT LEAST I’VE still got my job. Dean tamps the coffee into the metal pod, clips it into the brew socket, and pulls down the handle. The Gaggia blasts steam. Dean’s eight-hour shift has dragged. His body’s bruised from the tumble he took in Denmark Street. It’s a freezing night out, but the Etna coffee shop on the corner of D’Arblay and Brewer streets is warm, bright, and raucous. Students and teenagers from the suburbs are talking, flirting, arguing. Mods meet up here before hitting the music venues to take drugs and dance. Well-groomed older men eye up smooth-skinned youths in need of a sugar daddy. Less well-groomed older men stop in for a coffee before a visit to a dirty flick or a knocking shop. Must be over a hundred people crammed in here, thinks Dean, and every man Jack of ’em has a bed to sleep in tonight. Since he began his shift, Dean has been hoping that someone he knows who owes him a favor might drop by so he can cadge a sofa. His hope has grown feebler as the hours have passed, and now it’s faded away. The Rolling Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown” blasts out of the jukebox. Dean once worked out the song’s chords with Kenny Yearwood, back in the simpler days of the Gravediggers. The Gaggia’s nozzle dribbles coffee, filling the cup two-thirds full. Dean unclips the pod and empties the grounds into a tub. Mr. Craxi passes by with a tray of dirty plates. Ask him to pay yer early, Dean tells himself for the fiftieth time. Yer’ve got no choice. “Mr. Craxi, could I—”
Mr
. Craxi turns around, oblivious to Dean: “Pru, wipe the farkin’ counters at the front, they’s disgrazzful!” He barges by again, revealing a customer sitting at the counter, between the cold-milk dispenser and the coffee machine. Thirtyish, balding, bookish-looking, dressed in a houndstooth jacket and hip blue-glass rectangular glasses. Could be a queer, but yer never know in Soho.
The customer looks up from his magazine—Record Weekly—and meets Dean’s gaze, unembarrassed. He frowns as if trying to place him. If they were in a pub, Dean would ask, What d’yer think yer looking at? Here, Dean looks away and rinses the pod under the cold tap, feeling the customer’s eyes still on him. Maybe he thinks I fancy him.
Sharon arrives with a new order slip. “Two espressos and two Cokes for table nine.”
“Two ’spressos, two Cokes, table nine, got it.” Dean turns to the Gaggia and flips the switch, and milky foam settles on the cappuccino.
Sharon comes round to his side of the counter to refill a sugar pot. “I’m sorry you can’t kip on my floor, honest I am.”
“ ’S all right.” Dean sprinkles cocoa onto the cappuccino and puts it on the counter for Pru. “Bit of a nerve to ask yer, really.”
“My landlady’s half KGB, half Mother Superior. If I tried to smuggle you in, she’d ambush us and it’d be ‘This is a respectable house not a bordello!’ and she’d turf me out.”
He fills the coffee pod for an espresso. “I get it. It’s okay.”
“You won’t be sleeping under the arches, will you?”
“Nah, ’course not. I’ve mates I’ll ring.”
Utopia Avenue Page 1