Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  Bruce shrugged and jutted out his lips. “Cancel ’em, do ’em solo—do what you want.” He put on his coat. “My scarf.”

  Elf’s hand passed it to him. “If I need to contact—”

  Bruce clunked the door shut behind him.

  The flat was silent. Record label: gone. The duo: gone. Bruce: gone. Elf fled to her bed—hers, no longer ours—curled up under her blanket, and in that stuffy womb sobbed her heart out. All over again.

  * * *

  —

  ON DAY NINE, February rain batters the Holloway family’s mock-Tudor windows, erasing the muddy garden and Chislehurst Road. Lawrence, the besuited boyfriend of Elf’s older sister, Imogen, is acting oddly. “So, um…” He half stands, sits down again, then leans forward. “So, um…” His fingers check his tie. “So, um, a…an…a, surprise announcement.” Imogen gives him an encouraging smile, as if Lawrence is a nervous student in a Nativity play.

  My God, thinks Elf. They’re getting engaged.

  One glance tells her that both her parents are in the know.

  “Not that Mr. Holloway’ll be surprised,” says Lawrence.

  “I’d say we’re on ‘Clive’ terms now,” says Elf’s dad. “Eh?”

  “Don’t steal the lad’s thunder, Clive,” instructs Elf’s mum.

  “I’m not stealing anyone’s thunder, Miranda.”

  “My God!” Bea, Elf’s younger sister, acts concerned. “Lawrence is turning purple.”

  Lawrence is indeed blushing impressively. “I’m fine, I—”

  “Shall I call nine-nine-nine?” Bea puts down her champagne glass. “Are you having an attack?”

  “Bea,” Elf’s mum uses her warning voice, “enough.”

  “What if Lawrence combusts, Mummy? It’ll take more than bicarb of soda to get Lawrence-stains out of the carpet.”

  Normally Elf would laugh at this, but since Bruce left, nothing’s funny. Elf’s dad takes charge. “Carry on, Lawrence, before you get cold feet about joining this madhouse.”

  “Lawrence is not getting cold feet,” insists Elf’s mum.

  “Ah—uh—um…not at all, Mrs. Holloway.”

  “If Daddy’s ‘Clive,’ ” asks Bea, “shouldn’t Lawrence call you ‘Miranda,’ Mummy? I’m only asking.”

  “Bea,” groans their mum, “if you’re bored, buzz off.”

  “And miss Lawrence’s mystery news? It’s not every day your sister gets engaged.” Bea puts her hand to her mouth. “Oops. Sorry. Was that the mystery news? It’s just a wild, wild guess.”

  A car backfires on Chislehurst Road. Lawrence puffs out his cheeks, relieved. “Yes. I asked Immy to marry me. Immy said…”

  “ ‘Oh, go on then, if you insist,’ ” reports Imogen.

  “Clive and I couldn’t be more thrilled,” says their mum.

  “Unless England wins the Ashes,” says Elf’s dad, coaxing his pipe back to life. He gives Lawrence his corny wink.

  “Congratulations,” says Elf. “Both of you.”

  “Let’s look at the ring, then, Sis,” says Bea.

  Imogen takes a box from her handbag. Everyone draws close. “Gadzooks,” says Bea. “That didn’t come from a cracker.”

  “It cost someone a fair whack,” says Elf’s dad. “My my.”

  “Actually, Mr. Hollo— Clive, my gran left it for me, for…” Lawrence watches Imogen slip it on, “…for my fiancée.”

  “Isn’t that moving?” says Elf’s mother. “Clive?”

  “Yes, dear.” Elf’s dad gives Lawrence an arch look. “Two magic words you’ll be saying often, from here on in.”

  Mum and Dad are a double act, Elf thinks, like Bruce and me were. Grief for “Bruce and Elf” squeezes her ribcage. It hurts.

  “So,” says Elf’s mum. “Let’s toast the happy couple, shall we?”

  They all raise their glasses and chorus: “The happy couple!”

  “Welcome to the Holloways,” says Bea, in a Hammer horror voice. “You’re one of us now…‘Lawrence Holloway.’ ”

  “Thanks, Bea, but”—Lawrence gives his future sister-in-law an indulgent look—“it doesn’t quite work like that.”

  “That’s what the last two said,” says Bea. “They’re under the patio. Every year our patio is extended by one yard and Elf’s murder ballad, ‘The Lovers of Imogen Holloway,’ gets a new verse. Odd.”

  Even their mum smiles at this, but Elf can’t find it in herself to join in. “Let’s lay the table.”

  Bea studies her not-quite-herself sister. “O-kay.”

  * * *

  —

  ELF HAS RECORDED a solo EP, Oak, Ash and Thorn, and a duo EP, Shepherd’s Crook, with Bruce; her song “Any Way the Wind Blows” was recorded by American folk singer Wanda Virtue, who put it on a million-selling LP and released it as a Top Twenty single. With her royalty checks, Elf bought a flat in Soho, an investment that even her father begrudgingly approved. Elf can play a ninety-minute set of folk songs in front of three hundred strangers. She can handle drunken hecklers. She can vote, drive, drink, smoke, have sex, and has done all five. Yet bring her back to her family dining table, let her see Uncle Derek’s watercolor of HMS Trafalgar, which she used to try to magic herself into like the children in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or the liveried stockade of Encyclopedia Britannica on the sideboard, and Elf’s adult persona peels away, revealing the spotty, sulky, insecure teenager within. “That’s plenty of beef for me, Dad.”

  “It’s only two slices. You’ll fade away to nothing.”

  “You do look pale, darling,” observes Elf’s mum. “I hope you’re not going down with Bruce’s mysterious…lurgy.”

  Elf extends her lie. “Laryngitis, the doctor said.”

  “Such a pity he missed Immy and Lawrence’s big news.” Elf is dubious. She suspects her mother of keeping a charge sheet of Bruce’s crimes. These include living in sin with Elf, fueling Elf’s delusions that music is a career, being a male with long hair, and being Australian. She’ll be happier about our bust-up than she is about Immy and Lawrence’s engagement.

  Outside, rain bombards the crocuses to silky mush.

  “Elf?” Imogen, and everyone else, is watching her.

  “Crikey, sorry, I, uh…” Elf reaches for the mustard pot she doesn’t want, “…Miles away. You were saying, Immy?”

  “Lawrence and I are hoping that you and Bruce will play a few songs for us. At the wedding reception.”

  Tell them you’ve split up, thinks Elf. “We’d love to.”

  “Jolly good.” Elf’s mum surveys the plates around the table. “If everyone has Yorkshire pud, dig in.”

  Knives clink and the men make appreciative noises.

  “The beef’s out of this world, Mrs. Holloway,” says Lawrence. “And the gravy’s amazing.”

  “Miranda loves cooking with wine.” Elf’s dad cracks open the old gag. “She’s even been known to put some in the food.”

  Lawrence smiles as if it’s the first time he’s heard it.

  “Will you still teach,” Bea asks Imogen, “after the wedding?”

  “Not at Malvern. We’re house-hunting in Edgbaston.”

  “Won’t you miss it?” asks Elf.

  “Life has chapters,” says Imogen. “One ends, another begins.”

  Elf’s mum dabs her mouth with her napkin. “It’s for the best, darling. One can only juggle so much.”

  “Very sensible,” agrees Elf’s dad. “Being a housewife and mother is a full-time job. At the bank, we don’t employ married women.”

  “I think”—Bea grinds the pepper mill—“that a policy designed to punish women for marrying should shrivel up and die.”

  Elf’s dad rises to the bait. “Nobody’s punishing anyone. It’s simply a recognition of altered priorities.”

  Bea rises
to the bait. “It still means women end up at the kitchen sink and the ironing board, as far as I can see.”

  Elf’s dad rises to the bait. “You can’t change biology.”

  “It’s not about biology.” Elf rises to the bait.

  “Gosh.” Her dad acts surprised. “What’s it about, then?”

  “Attitudes. Not so long ago, women couldn’t vote or divorce or own property or go to university. Now we can. What changed? Not biology—attitudes changed. And attitudes changed the law.”

  “Ah, to be young”—their dad spears a carrot—“and be right about the ways of the world, by default.”

  * * *

  —

  “I UNDERSTAND YOU and Bruce are starting work on the new album next week, Elf?” says Lawrence, as Elf’s mum serves up a ladle’s worth of trifle from the Waterford crystal bowl.

  “That was the plan, but there’s been a—a mix-up at the studio. Unfortunately.”

  “So it’s being postponed?” Bea’s confused.

  “Only for a week or two.” Elf hates lying.

  “What sort of ‘mix-up at the studio’?” Elf’s dad frowns.

  “There was a double-booking,” says Elf. “Apparently.”

  “Sounds jolly slapdash to me.” Elf’s mum passes the bowl of trifle to Elf’s dad. “Can’t you take your business elsewhere?”

  Not only do I hate lying, thinks Elf, I’m crap at it. “I suppose so, but we like the engineer at Regent, we know the equipment.”

  “Olympic did do a lovely job with Shepherd’s Crook,” says Imogen.

  “A cracking job,” echoes Lawrence, as if he knows the first thing about recording. Elf imagines the freshly engaged couple turning into Clive and Miranda Holloway in thirty years. One part of her recoils; another envies Imogen the clarity of her future life.

  “If everyone has trifle,” Elf’s mum surveys the table, “dig in.”

  “How did you and Bruce meet, Elf?” asks Lawrence.

  I’d rather scoop out my kidneys than answer this, thinks Elf, but if I don’t, they’ll guess something’s wrong, Mum’ll winkle the whole sordid tale out of me. “Backstage at a folk club in Islington. The Christmas before last. Australian folk music was a new thing, so everyone was curious to go and hear him. After the show I asked Bruce about his chord tuning and he asked about an Irish ballad I’d sung…” and then we went back to his borrowed room by Camden Lock and by the New Year I loved him as hopelessly, as helplessly, as a girl in a folk song, and he loved me back as much. So I thought. But maybe he saw me as a way to leave sleeping on mates’ sofas and pulling pints in Earl’s Court behind. I’ll never know. Nine days ago he discarded me like a crusty tissue…Elf forces a smile. “Your and Immy’s story at the Christian camp is much more romantic.”

  “But you’re recording artists.” Lawrence turns to Elf’s mum. “What’s it like to have a famous daughter, Miranda?”

  Elf’s mum finishes her wine. “I do worry where it’ll all lead. Pop singers are here today, gone tomorrow. Especially the women.”

  “Cilla Black’s doing all right,” says Bea. “Dusty Springfield.”

  “Joan Baez in the States,” adds Imogen. “Judy Collins.”

  “Let’s not forget Wanda Virtue,” says Bea.

  “But what happens to them when all their starry-eyed fans move on to the next fad?” asks Elf’s mum.

  “Presumably they mend their ways,” says Elf, “marry whoever’s willing to overlook their shady past, and settle down to a life of ironing shirts and raising children.”

  Bea licks her spoon clean. “Bang, crash, wallop.”

  “Sensational trifle, Miranda,” says Elf’s dad, drolly.

  Elf’s mother sighs and looks out at the garden.

  The rain whisks the water in the fishpond.

  The gnome’s nose drips, drips, drips, drips…

  “I wish I could see a career in singing,” says Elf’s mum, “but I can’t. All I see is Elf missing the bus on other careers.”

  I’m angry, thinks Elf, because she articulates my fears.

  The clock out in the hall strikes two.

  “Maybe Elf’ll be a pioneer,” suggests Imogen.

  * * *

  —

  ELF PLAYS HER grandmother’s piano while her family plus Lawrence sit and listen. She’s wriggled out of singing by claiming to need to save her voice for later, but she can’t wriggle out of playing without Imogen, Bea, and their mother suspecting something’s wrong. The piano is an upright Broadwood with warm lower and bright upper tones. Elf mastered, first, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at its keyboard, then scales, arpeggios, and a ladder of exercise books. The acoustic guitar may be the portable tool of the folk singer’s trade, but Elf’s first love—before I liked boys, before I liked girls—is the piano. Her grandmother died when Elf was only six, but she has a clear memory of the old woman telling her, “A piano is a raft and a river.” Years later, on a February afternoon, on Day Nine of a broken, bloodied, and bruised heart, Elf finds herself improvising a melody around her grandmother’s words: A raft and a river, raft and a river, raft and a river. It’s the first musical idea she’s had since Bruce left. She’s grateful, too, for the minutes she spent without thinking about him…Until now. The song winds down, and Elf’s family and brother-in-law-to-be give her a round of applause. The early daffodils in the vase on the mantelpiece have opened.

  “That’s lovely, dear,” says Elf’s mum.

  “Ah, just mucking around, really.”

  “What’s it called?” asks Imogen.

  “It hasn’t got a name.”

  Lawrence looks uncertain. “You just made that up?”

  “There are tricks,” says Elf. “To do with chords.”

  “That was brilliant. Could you play it in June?”

  “If it turns into a song that’s good for a wedding, then yes.”

  “Midsummer weddings are special,” Elf’s mum is telling Imogen. “Your father and I had a June wedding, didn’t we, Clive?”

  Elf’s dad puffs his pipe. “And the sun’s never stopped shining.”

  “June works for me, too,” remarks Bea. “I’ll be an ex-schoolgirl by then. Scary thought.”

  “Imogen said you’re auditioning for RADA,” says Lawrence.

  “My first one’s next month. If I pass that, I’ll have the joy of a recall in May. Slap-bang during my exams.”

  “What are your chances?” asks Lawrence.

  “A thousand applicants for fourteen places, give or take. Then again, what were Elf’s chances of getting a record contract?”

  Steam tumbles upward from the spout of a coffee pot.

  “Just goes to show,” says Imogen. “Aim for the sky.”

  The clock in the hallway gongs three times.

  Elf finishes her coffee. “I’d better hit the road.”

  “Won’t you cancel your Cousins spot tonight?” Bea asks. “With Bruce being too ill to sing, presumably?”

  Elf has been clinging to the hope that by not canceling the gig Bruce might reappear and the last nine days be erased. Now the bill for her self-delusion is due. “I’ll play a solo set.”

  “Surely Bruce won’t let you go traipsing round Soho alone in the middle of the night?” asks her father.

  “I’ve lived there a year without any trouble, Dad.”

  “Why don’t I go along?” asks Bea. “As Elf’s bodyguard.”

  “Not funny,” says their mother, to Elf’s relief. “Tomorrow’s school. Having one daughter cavorting in Soho is bad enough.”

  “Why don’t we go, darling?” Lawrence asks Imogen. “I’ve heard so much about the Cousins folk club.”

  “You have a long drive to Malvern tomorrow,” says Elf. “Besides, a Cousins gig is like a home game. My friends’ll be there.”

&n
bsp; * * *

  —

  THREE MONTHS AGO, Elf and Bruce dashed along the platform at Richmond station, her heart pumping, legs aching, breath rasping, beneath platform lamps haloed by mist. JESUS SAVES, promised a poster. The scent of chestnuts from an oil-drum roaster infused the twilight. A Salvation Army band was playing “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night.” Bruce’s stride was longer so he reached the last carriage well ahead of Elf and jumped aboard. “Stand clear of the doors,” shouted the station master. “Stand clear—of—the doors!” Elf was sure she was doomed to miss the train, but Bruce grappled her aboard at the last possible moment and they tumbled onto a seat, joyful and gasping. “I thought,” said Elf, “you’d left me behind.”

  “You’re kidding.” Bruce planted a kiss on her forehead. “Career suicide.” Elf nestled her head under his chin, so her ear was over his heart. She breathed in the scent of his suede jacket and the ghost of his aftershave. He stroked her collarbone with his calloused fingertips. “Hello, girlfriend,” he murmured, and Elf’s nerves went zzzzzzt. Take a photo of this, a line came to Elf, take a photo of this with your Polaroid eyes…and she thought that even if she lived to be a hundred, she would never feel quite as glad to be alive as she was right then. Not quite.

  * * *

  —

  THREE MONTHS LATER, Elf stands on the same platform at Richmond station that she and Bruce dashed along. There is no hurry tonight. There are delays on the District Line due to an “incident on the track” at Hammersmith: London Underground’s favored euphemism for a suicide. Sunday evening pools in London’s gardens, seeps through cracks and darkens streets. Nowhere is dry in West London tonight, and nothing is warm. The poster promising JESUS SAVES is peeling and scabby. She’ll have less time than she planned to run through her old solo set list. The Cousins crowd will see an underrehearsed Elf Holloway play a duff set and conclude that when Bruce Fletcher left he took the magic with him. They’re bound to know by now—I’m the jilted Miss Havisham of the folk scene. Elf looks into the dark window of a closed tearoom. Her reflection scowls back. She has never been the good-looking Holloway sister. Imogen’s pretty in a wholesome, Christian way. Bea’s status as the family beauty has gone unchallenged since infancy. Elf, relatives agree, takes after her father. Meaning I bring to mind a pudgy middle-aged bank manager. Not long ago in a club toilet Elf overheard a woman say, “ ‘Elf Holloway’? ‘Goblin Holloway,’ more like.”