Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  Elf’s mum told her, “Make the most of your hair, darling—it’s your best asset.” It’s blond and long. Bruce used to like burying his face in it. He complimented her body parts individually, but never her whole self. Or he’d say, “You look nice today,” as if there were days when I looked like a dog. Elf always told herself that her talent as a folk singer would outweigh the fact that she doesn’t look like Joan Baez or Wanda Virtue. Talent, she hoped, would bring forth the swan from the ugly duckling. Bruce’s attentions made her believe that this was happening, but now he’s gone…I look at myself and I think, “How forgettable.” Her reflection asks, “What if you’re just not as good as you think are?”

  A one-clawed pigeon hops about on the track.

  A fat rat a foot away pays it no attention.

  There’s a phone box up by the ticket barriers. Elf could call Andy at Les Cousins and plead laryngitis. It won’t be hard to find a replacement for a Sunday-evening slot. Sandy Denny might be in, or Davy Graham, or Roy Harper. Several regulars have an album out—a whole LP, not just an EP. Elf could just go home to her flat, curl up under her blanket, and…

  What? Sob yourself to sleep? Again? Do nothing until the last of the Wanda Virtue money is gone, then crawl back to Mum and Dad, penniless and careerless, contractless? If I don’t show up at Les Cousins tonight, Bruce wins. The doubters will win. “Without Bruce propping her up, she’s just an amateur who got lucky with one song—like, once.” Mum will be proven right. “If you’d bothered to plan for your future like Immy, you’d have a Lawrence of your own by now, too.”

  Bugger that, thinks Elf.

  * * *

  —

  LES COUSINS IS named after a French film, but everyone Elf knows pronounces it “Lez Cuzzins” or just “Cousins.” Under its surreptitious sign, the narrow door is sandwiched between the Italian restaurant at 49 Greek Street and the wireless-repair shop next door. Elf descends the steep steps, glancing at the posters of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, apostles of the folk revival. The fug of chatter, nicotine, and hash gets thicker. Waiting at the bottom is Nobby, an ex-fusilier who collects the entrance fee and assists the occasional drunk back upstairs. He greets Elf with an “Evenin’, love. Parky out.”

  “Evening, Nobby.” Elf resists an urge to blurt out, “Is Bruce here?” As long as she doesn’t ask, it’s possible he’s shown up to apologize and resurrect the duo. Maybe he’s onstage, setting up…

  Andy sees her and waves from his corner bar where he serves Coke, tea, and coffee. No alcohol license means no closing time which means all-night shows. Every folk singer of note plays at Cousins, and Andy’s wall of fame boasts Lonnie Donegan from the club’s skiffle days, the Vipers, blues émigré Alexis Korner, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Donovan pointing to the THIS MACHINE KILLS inscription on his guitar, Joan Baez and the dead-too-young Richard Fariña, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan himself. Elf saw him four years ago play a new song called “Blowin’ in the Wind” on this very stage, under the cartwheel and fishing nets, where a golden Australian named Bruce Fletcher is not waiting for her…

  “Elf?” It’s Sandy Denny, another habitué. “Are you holding up okay? I heard about Bruce. I’m so, so, so, so sorry.”

  Elf tries to act as if she’s fine. “It’s…”

  “Old bollocks is what it is,” declares Sandy Denny. “I saw him and his new squeeze in the café at the Victoria and Albert.”

  Elf can’t breathe or speak. I must. “Oh, right.” So, it wasn’t girls in general he wanted a break from—it was me.

  Sandy covers her mouth. “Oh, God…you did know?”

  “Of course. Yeah. Yes. Of course.”

  “Thank Christ! I thought I’d put my foot in it. They were feeding each other cake and I thought it was you two, so over I went saying, ‘Look at you two lovebirds!’—and then I twigged. It’s not Elf. I just stood there like a lemon, not knowing what to say.”

  He took me to that café on our first date, Elf remembers.

  “Bruce was Mr. Cool, of course. ‘Hi, Sandy, this is Vanessa. She’s a model at the Something Something Agency’—as if I’d know or give a shit. So I said, ‘Hi,’ and the model said, ‘Enchanted,’ like she’d just slipped out of some Noël Coward play.”

  Vanessa. There was a Vanessa at the party at Wotsit’s house in Cromwell Road, in January. She was a model.

  “Men,” commiserates Sandy. “Sometimes I could just—” She flings her hand out and biffs a man walking by. “Oh, sorry, John.”

  John Martyn turns his wild-man’s head and sees who it is. “Nae bother, Sandy. Breck a leg, Elf.” He walks by.

  “Beg pardon.” Andy materializes. “Elf, I’ve heard the buzz. If you want to bow out, everyone will understand.”

  Elf looks over his shoulder at the exit, and sees further into her future if she leaves now. After staying with her parents for a few weeks, she’ll work the summer at a typing pool, enroll at teacher-training college, get a job as a music teacher at a girls’ school, marry a geography teacher, and look back at this moment, this one, when her future as a musician vanished. Like a sandcastle in a wave.

  “Elf? What’s the matter?” It’s Sandy, looking worried.

  “Are you going to vomit?” Andy’s looking more worried.

  * * *

  —

  ELF TIGHTENS THE D-string tuning peg. The faces are dark on darker with two dots of white where the eyes are. Cigarette tips glow moody umber. You don’t need to smoke at Cousins: just breathe. Elf’s nervous. It’s been a while since she played solo. Even a duo is a gang. “For those of you here to see”—say it—“Fletcher and Holloway, apologies. Bruce isn’t here…” her throat contracts, “…’cause he dumped me for a flashier model. Literally, a model.”

  There’s a collective gasp and several huhs and whats.

  Elf nearly giggles. “The”—say it aloud—“the duo is over.”

  The till goes chinggg! People look at their neighbors in consternation. Not many knew, she guesses. Well, they do now.

  Sandy Denny calls out: “It’s his loss, Elf, not ours.”

  Before Elf starts crying, she jumps straight into “Oak, Ash and Thorn,” her old show-opener and the first song she ever performed in front of strangers at the Kingston Folk Barge. Her voice is stiff and reedy and wavers on a couple of top Cs. Her slimmed-down, Bruce-less version isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great. Next, Elf strums the chords for “King of Trafalgar,” her best song off the Shepherd’s Crook EP…but she chickens out after the third bar of the intro. Without Bruce’s guitar, it’ll be anorexic. What do I play instead? The pause is growing. So she goes back to “King of Trafalgar,” and fluffs the G minor to E7 on the bridge. Only the better guitarists notice, but the song feels skimpy. The applause is polite. Next she plays “Dink’s Song” from the Lomax anthology. Bruce does a great banjo line over it, now missing; missing, too, are his upper octave “fare thee well”s. Better versions than Elf’s can be heard at a dozen folk clubs up and down the country, right now. It occurs to Elf that she’s still doing a Fletcher & Holloway set, but Fletcherlessly. Now what? The new songs? Of the four new songs intended for the Fletcher & Holloway LP, two are love songs for Bruce, the third is a blues-piano ode about Soho that doesn’t have a name yet, and the fourth is a jealousy ballad, entitled “Never Enough.” She doubts she’ll be able to get through the Bruce songs without dissolving into a sobbing mess, so she plays “Wild Mountain Thyme.” She forgets to change it to a female narrator, so she’s locked into “Will you go, lassie, go?” not “Will you go, laddie, go?” At the line “If you do not go with me, I’ll surely find another,” she thinks of Bruce and Vanessa undressing each other…while I’m here singing stale old songs…

  Only now does Elf notice she’s stopped playing.

  There are coughs and shuffling in the audience.

  They’re wondering if I’ve f
orgotten the lines.

  Others are wondering, Is she cracking up?

  To which Elf would reply, A good question.

  Elf realizes she’s dropped her plectrum.

  She’s sweating through her makeup.

  She thinks, This is how a career dies…

  * * *

  —

  ABORT THE GIG. Leave with your dignity intact. What’s left of it. As Elf lowers her guitar, a figure in the front row reaches forward. The spotlight’s outer edge reveals a guy of about her age with feminine good looks: oval face, black hair down to his jaw, plush lips, clever eyes. He’s holding Elf’s lucky plectrum. Elf’s fingers take it from his.

  Elf was sure she was quitting. Now she’s not.

  To the left of the plectrum retriever sits a taller guy in a purple jacket. He addresses her semi-audibly, like a stage prompter: “If you do not go with me, I’ll surely find another.”

  Elf addresses the audience. “I thought I’d revise this bit”—she starts to finger-pick—“to reflect the wreckage I call my love life…” She counts herself in and sings: “Even if you go with me, I’ll still sleep with another…” she switches to an Australian accent “…’cause my name is Brucie Fletcher, and I’ll even do your mother…”

  Shrieks of glee slosh around the club. Elf finishes the song with no further revisions, and the applause is buoyant.

  Oh, why not? She goes to the piano. “I’d like to road-test three new songs. They’re not strictly folk, but…”

  “Play ’em, Elf,” calls John Martyn.

  Elf grasps the hairiest nettle first and plays the intro to “Never Enough.” During the middle eight she veers into “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” She saw Nina Simone do this at Ronnie Scott’s—splice a passage of one song into the middle of another. The two songs resonate. Elf returns to “Never Enough” and ends on a clanging unresolved F-sharp. Applause swells up and buoys her. Al Stewart’s over to the side, clapping with delight. Elf returns to her guitar to play “Your Polaroid Eyes,” and “I Watch You Sleep.” Next, she sings a cappella a folk song she learned from Anne Briggs called “Willie o’ Winsbury,” cupping her hand to her ear à la Ewan MacColl. She sings the king’s lines imperiously, his pregnant daughter’s lines defiantly, and Willie’s lines coolly. She’s never sung it better. “Time for one more,” she says, resuming her seat.

  “Sing it, Elf,” says Bert Jansch, “or Andy won’t let you out.”

  If “Any Way the Wind Blows” is an albatross around Elf’s neck, it’s been a generous albatross. “So my last song is my big American hit.” That D-string’s loose again. “My big American hit for Wanda Virtue.” The line earns its reliable laugh. Elf was singing this song years before she met Bruce, before he monkeyed about with the ending to make it segue into his Ned Kelly ballad. She shuts her eyes. Strum down-up-down down-up. A deep breath…

  * * *

  —

  ONE ROUND OF applause, half a dozen hugs, many variations of “You’re better off without him,” and several reviews of the new songs later, Elf gets to the stockroom that doubles as Andy’s office. To her surprise, she finds four men squeezed into it, as well as Andy. Elf recognizes two: the good-looking plectrum retriever and his lankier neighbor who cued her “Wild Mountain Thyme” line. The third man has cloudy brown hair, a Regency mustache, lidded eyes that look like they’re smirking, and a caddish air. The fourth, leaning against the filing cabinet, is a few years older. A big, bony face with receding hair, glasses with light-blue lenses, a halo of confidence, and a Prussian-blue suit with sunset-red buttons.

  “The woman of the hour,” declares Andy. “The new songs are corkers. Someone will record them, if A&B are too stupid to.”

  “Glad you approve,” says Elf. “If you’re all having a meeting, I’ll come back.”

  “Less a meeting,” says Andy, “more a plotters’ huddle. Meet Levon Frankland. An old partner in crime.”

  The blue-glasses guy puts his hand on his heart. “Great show. Truly.” He’s American. “Those three new songs? Dynamite.”

  “Thanks.” Elf wonders if he’s gay. She turns to the darker shorter one. “And thank you for my plectrum.”

  “Any time. Dean Moss. Loved yer set. That pause, when yer made us think yer’d forgotten the words. Brilliant stagecraft.”

  Elf confesses: “It wasn’t stagecraft.”

  Dean Moss just nods as if, after all, that makes sense.

  Elf wonders if his face is familiar. “Have we met?”

  “A year ago. Auditions for a talent show at Thames TV. I was in a band called Battleship Potemkin. You sang a folk song.”

  “That’s it. We all lost to a child ventriloquist with a dodo thing,” Elf recalls. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

  “Pfff. It was one o’ them days yer want to forget. As well as that, I was working at the Etna coffee shop on D’Arblay Street till last month. Yer’d come in quite often, though I was stuck behind the machines, so yer prob’ly didn’t notice me.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t. Why didn’t you come out and tell me, ‘Oy, I’m that guy from the Thames TV thing’?”

  Dean looks at his hands. “Embarrassment, I s’pose.”

  Elf’s not sure what to say. “That’s very honest.”

  “I’m Griff,” says the tousled, mustached one. “I play drums. I liked ‘Polaroid Eyes’ best. A cracker.” He’s an obvious northerner. “And this bleeder,” Griff nods at the tall, skinny red-haired one, “is Jasper de Zoet. His real name, believe it or not.”

  Jasper shakes Elf’s hand as if following instructions. “I’ve never met anyone called ‘Elf’ before.” He sounds upper-class.

  “It’s the ‘El’ of ‘Elizabeth’ and the ‘F’ of ‘Frances.’ My sister Bea started it when she was little, and it’s stuck.”

  “It’s apt,” says Jasper. “Your voice is elvish. I’ve played ‘Oak, Ash and Thorn’ over a hundred times. Your recording of ‘King of Trafalgar’ has remarkable”—he does a finger-twirl—“psycho-acoustics. Is that a word?”

  “Possibly,” says Elf, adding unguardedly, “If it is a word, it rhymes with ‘Pooh sticks.’ ”

  Jasper looks diagonally. “Or ‘Why throw the Pooh sticks?’ ”

  Ooo, thinks Elf. Somebody else is a lyricist.

  Levon removes his glasses. “We have a proposal, Elf.”

  “Okay. Since you’re a friend of Andy’s, I’ll listen to it.”

  “I’ll make myself scarce.” Andy hands her an envelope. “Here’s your fee. It’s the duo rate. You earned it.” He exits.

  “First, a little context.” Levon Frankland shuts the door. “I’m a music manager. Raised in Toronto, but I went to New York to become a folk-singing colossus. My turtleneck sweaters were spot on, but everything else came up short, so I worked on Tin Pan Alley for a spell. First with a publisher, then with a booking agent who looked after British Invasion acts. I came to London four years ago to mind some American names on tour here and stayed on. I clocked up studio time gophering for Mickie Most, shifted into A&R for a year, and now it’s management. An all-rounder, you could call me. Various people call me various things. I never take it personally. Cigarette?”

  “Sure,” says Elf.

  Levon distributes his Rothmans. “Late last year, I had dinner with two gentlemen named Freddy Duke and Howie Stoker. Freddy’s a tour agent based in Denmark Street. Old school, but open to new ideas. Howie’s an American investor who recently acquired Van Dyke Talent, a middle-sized New York promotions agency. Freddy and Howie’s big plan was—is—to merge the companies into a single-bodied two-headed transatlantic agency to be a gateway for British acts wanting to tour in the States, and vice versa. Foreign tours are a minefield without local knowledge. The music unions’ regulations rob your will to live. So Freddy and Howie came to me with a fresh plan. How would I like to si
gn a small stable of talent, record demos, manage and get my acts signed and recorded, tour them via Duke-Stoker, and grow them into household names? I’d be operating from their offices in Denmark Street but with artistic autonomy. Duke-Stoker would pay seed money and my salary for a year, in return for a—relatively modest—cut of future profits. We’d shaken on it before the dessert trolley arrived. Lo, Moonwhale Music was born.”

  “New labels are springing up like mushrooms,” says Elf.

  “Most will last as long as mushrooms, too.” Levon drags on his cigarette. “They sign the first gang of Paisley-suited likely lads they come across in Carnaby Street, blow their capital on studio fees, fail to get any radio play, and die of debt within twelve months. I want to curate a group by hand. No auditions. And we’ll rehearse before we start gigging, so we’re flawless from the get-go. Most revolutionary of all, I’m going to pay my artists a fair slice of the pie, not steal the pie and deny it ever existed.”

  “A novel approach,” says Elf. “What kind of group?”

  “You’re looking at it,” says Griff. “Dean on bass, Jasper on lead, yours truly on drums. Them two sing and write.”

  “What we’re missing is a keyboard player,” says Jasper.

  So they’re offering me a job, thinks Elf.

  “A keyboard player who writes,” says Levon. “Most bands can’t crank out enough quality material to fill an album. But with Dean and Jasper and A. N. Other each bringing three or four songs along, we could put out an LP of original songs.”

  “So do yer know anyone who might fit the bill?” asks Dean.