Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  * * *

  —

  “WHAT THE BLUE bloody fuck are yer playing at?” Dean’s dad glared down at him. The Queen Street market was in full swing and Dean’s skiffle band, formed that very week, were playing “Not Fade Away.” Bill and Nan Moss had organized a whip-round and bought Dean a real live Czechoslovakian Futurama for his fourteenth birthday. It stayed in tune for a whole song. Dean had already collected a few coppers in the tobacco tin. Kenny Yearwood and Stewart Kidd were singing and playing a washboard but it was Dean’s band, Dean who had learned the chords, Dean who had claimed the pitch, Dean who had stopped Kenny and Stewart chickening out. Girls were watching. A few looked impressed. For the first time in months he felt more joyful than flat, sick, and gray. Until his dad arrived. “I said, what the blue bloody fuck are yer playing at?”

  “We’re only busking, Dad,” Dean managed to reply.

  “ ‘Busking’? You’re begging.”

  “No, Mr. Moffat,” Kenny Yearwood began, “it’s not like—”

  Dean’s dad pointed a single finger. “Fuck off. Both of yer.”

  Kenny and Stewart Kidd gave Dean a pitying glance, and went.

  “What would yer mother say? Eh?”

  Dean swallowed hard. “But Mum plays the piano. She—”

  “At home! In private! Not where the whole world can see! Pick that up.” Dean’s dad scowled at the tin of coins and led him across the street to the collection box for a guide-dog charity outside Mr. Dendy’s newsagents. It was colored and shaped like a black Labrador. “All of it. Every farthing.” Dean had no choice. Every coin went through the slot on the dog’s head. “Pull a stunt like this again, that guitar’s a goner. I don’t care who bought it yer. Am I clear?”

  Dean hated his dad, hated himself for not standing up to him, and hated his dad for making him hate himself.

  “AM I CLEAR?”

  Vodka fumes and tobacco. That Harry Moffat smell.

  Passersby slowed down to rubberneck.

  Dean wished he could kill his dad right then.

  Dean knew his Futurama was vulnerable.

  Dean addressed the hollow dog: “Yes.”

  * * *

  —

  ELF VAMPS A piano solo in “Moon River” on Nan Moss’s piano. Dean breathes in the smell of bacon fat, old carpet, old person, cat litter. Nan’s entire ground floor, Dean guesses, would fit into Jasper’s lounge at Chetwynd Mews. Jasper looks as relaxed as Jasper ever does, and the four generations of assembled Mosses and Moffats are more curious about than disapproving of Dean’s exotic bandmates. So far. Griff, who grew up in a two-up-two-down, would feel at home here, but he’s taken the Beast down to the Captain Marlow to set up and meet a friend from his Archie Kinnock days. White-haired and crinkled, Nan Moss hums, sways, and half sings along to “Moon River.” Bill, Nan’s common-law husband and no mean piano player himself, nods at Elf’s style. Loud Aunt Marge and quiet Aunt Dot look on benignly. Their sister, Dean’s mum, watches from her photo frame. Next along is Dean’s brother, Ray, Ray’s pregnant wife, Shirl, and their two-year-old, Wayne, enacting motorway crashes with his Dinky cars. Jasper sits in the corner of Nan’s parlor beneath a chevron of porcelain ducks. Dean studies his flatmate. They’ve shared boxes of cigarettes, boxes of Durex, boxes of eggs, tubes of toothpaste, books, pints of milk, guitar strings, bottles of shampoo, colds, and Chinese takeaways…Sometimes he’s childishly unguarded; other times, he’s like an alien passing himself off as an earthling. He mentioned a breakdown he had at school, and a spell in a clinic in Holland. Dean didn’t probe. It felt wrong. He isn’t even sure if Jasper’s detachment from the real world is a cause or a scar of those days.

  Elf ends “Moon River” with a spangly glissando.

  The small audience pays her in warm applause.

  Wayne smashes a car into a truck and says, “Kabooom!”

  “Oh,” says Nan Moss, “that was lovely, weren’t it, Bill?”

  “Bloomin’ lovely. How long’ve yer been playing, Elf?”

  “Since I was five. My grandmother taught me.”

  “Start ’em young,” says Nan Moss. “ ‘Moon River’ was our Vi’s favorite. Dean’s mum. She and Marge and Dot all played piano, but it was Vi who took to it.”

  “If you shut your eyes just now,” says Aunt Marge, “it might’ve been Vi playing. That fiddly bit in the middle, ’specially.”

  “In another life,” says Aunt Dot, “Vi could’ve been something, I reckon. Musically, I mean.”

  “Dean inherited her gift all right,” says Aunt Marge.

  “Mustn’t let this steak-and-kidney pud get cold, eh?” says Bill. Aunts Dot and Marge set about dishing up the food.

  “Can the audience hear a piano,” Ray asks Elf, “with thousands o’ girls screaming and throwing their knickers at God’s Gift there?” He nods at Dean.

  “The knicker-throwing hasn’t started yet,” says Elf. “Once he’s been on Top of the Pops, maybe. Acoustics depend on the venue, mics, amps. We have a Farfisa keyboard in the van. I have a Hammond as well, but it weighs a ton. They both pack quite a wallop.”

  “Don’t it take a lot o’ nerve”—Shirl’s putting on Wayne’s bib—“getting up onstage in front of a crowd of strangers?”

  “I suppose,” says Elf. “But either you get used to stage fright, or you stop. Nan, that’s oodles.”

  “An army marches on its stomach,” says the matriarch. “Right. If we’re all served…” Everyone clasps their hands. Nan says grace: “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.” Everyone joins in the “Amen” and eats. Dean thinks how food, like music, brings people together.

  “This pie is perfection,” states Jasper, as if assessing a solo.

  “Serves up a juicy compliment, this one,” says Aunt Marge.

  “Actually,” states Dean. “He doesn’t. He says it as he sees it.”

  “My nose is a mouth.” Wayne shoves a carrot up a nostril.

  “Wayne, that’s revolting,” says Shirl. “Take it out.”

  “But yer said I can’t pick my nose at the table.”

  “Ray, tell him.”

  “Do as yer mother says.” Ray manages not to laugh.

  Wayne sticks his little finger up his nostril. “It’s up further.” Now it’s less funny. “It’s stuck!” He sneezes the carrot out at high velocity onto Dean’s plate. Even Shirl sees the funny side.

  “So, who’ll dish the dirt on the teenage Dean?” asks Elf.

  “Oh, Lordy,” says Bill. “How many hours do we have?”

  “Yer’d need days,” says Ray, “just to scrape the surface.”

  “Lies, lies, lies,” says Dean. “More lies.”

  “Ah, but who’s the rock ’n’ roll rebel now, eh?” Ray forks a lump of kidney. “And who’s the responsible husband?”

  Only ’cause yer shot yer tapioca up Shirl’s muff when her eggs were ripe. Dean picks up Wayne’s spoon from the floor.

  “It wasn’t easy for Dean,” says Nan Moss, “after his mum passed away. Wasn’t easy for anyone. His father had a…”

  “A bit of a rough patch,” offers Bill, catching Dean’s eye.

  “Exactly.” Nan continues: “Ray left to do his apprenticeship at Dagenham, and Dean moved back in with his dad, at the old house on Peacock Street, but that didn’t work out. So Dean moved in with me and Bill here, for three years or so, while he was at Ebbsfleet College of Art. We were that proud.”

  “But instead o’ becoming the next Picasso,” says Ray, “he turned into the guitar genius we know ’n’ love.”

  “He’s the guitar genius.” Dean jerks his thumb at Jasper. “Yer were there at the Marquee, Ray.”

  “If I can play,” says Jasper, “it’s because I practiced in lieu of living. It’s not a method I recommend.”

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nbsp; “To achieve anything in this world,” says Bill, “yer’ve got to put the work in. Talent’s not enough. Yer need discipline too.”

  “Dean did some smashing art,” says Aunt Marge. “That’s his, above the radio.” Everyone looks at Dean’s print of the jetty at Whitstable. “His heart was always in the music, mind. He’d be up in his room, doing his tunes until he got them note-perfect.”

  “Like now.” Jasper spears a runner bean. “Lesser bassists go oompa-oompa, like a tuba player. Dean does these fluid runs”—he puts down his fork to mime it—“bam-bam-bi-dambi-dambi, bam-bam-bi-dambi-dam. He plays bass like a rhythm guitar. It’s great.” Jasper eats the bean.

  Dean’s a little embarrassed by this factual praise.

  “See that shield?” Nan points to a trophy and recites the inscription: “ ‘Best Band, Gravesend 1964—The Gravediggers.’ That was Dean’s group. We’ll dig out the photo albums later.”

  “Ooo, the photo albums.” Elf rubs her hands.

  A motorbike thunders by, rattling teacups on the dresser. “That’s that Jack Costello,” grumbles Aunt Marge. “Puts his boy Vinny in the sidecar, treats the town like his private racetrack.”

  “Yer won’t mind my asking, Jasper,” says Aunt Marge, “but are you posh? Yer dead well-spoken. Like a BBC announcer.”

  “I was raised by my aunt in Lyme Regis until I was six. She kept a boarding house and money was always tight. But then I went to a boarding school in Ely, which is very posh indeed. Unfortunately, a toff’s accent is no guarantee of a toff’s bank balance.”

  “How could yer aunt afford a posh school?” asks Bill.

  “My father’s family—the de Zoets—stepped in. They’re Dutch.”

  Aunt Marge adjusts her dentures. “And they’re wealthy, are they, Jasper, if yer don’t mind my asking?”

  “Can we spare the poor lad the third degree?” asks Dean.

  “Oh, he doesn’t mind, do yer, Jasper?” says Aunt Marge.

  Jasper appears not to. “I’d describe the de Zoets of Zeeland as rich, rather than wealthy.”

  “Aren’t rich and wealthy the same thing?” asks Shirl.

  “The rich know how much money they have. The wealthy have so much, they’re never wholly sure.”

  “Where was yer mother in all of this?” asks Aunt Marge.

  “My mother died when I was born.”

  The women tut sympathetically. “Poor love,” says Aunt Marge. “At least Ray and Dean knew their mum. Having no memories of her at all, that must be tough. Yer should’ve warned us, Dean.”

  “I warned yer not to give him the third degree.”

  Nan’s cuckoo clock cuckoos seven times.

  “It can’t be seven o’clock already,” says Elf.

  “Funny stuff, is time,” observes Aunt Dot.

  * * *

  —

  DEAN WAS FIFTEEN. Cancer and morphine had half erased his mother. He dreaded the visits to her ward and he knew that dreading them made him the worst son in England. Death turned every other topic into a futile evasion, yet how can people who aren’t dying discuss death with people who are? It was a Sunday morning. Ray was in Dagenham. Dean’s dad was doing overtime at the cement depot. Nan Moss and the aunts were at church. Dean never saw the point of church. “God works in mysterious ways” seemed no different from “Heads I win, tails you lose.” If prayer worked, Dean’s mum wouldn’t be dying. Dean had come to the hospital with his Futurama. His mother was asleep when he arrived, so Dean practiced quietly. He worked through a tricky picked arrangement of “The Tennessee Waltz.” When he got to the end, a fragile voice said, “That’s nice, love.”

  Dean looked up. “I’ve been practicing.”

  A ghost of a smile. “Good lad.”

  “Sorry if I woke yer.”

  “There’s no nicer way to be woken.”

  “Do yer want to hear another one?”

  “ ‘Play it again, Sam.’ ”

  So Dean stuck with “The Tennessee Waltz.” The son focused on the fretboard, and missed the exact moment his mother slipped away…

  * * *

  —

  JASPER PLAYS A pyrotechnic solo at the end of “Smithereens.” Elf lays down glowing slabs of Hammond chords. Griff is drumming thunder and lightning. Dean’s fingers, not Dean, are playing his bass runs, letting Dean look out over two hundred heads in the annex of the Captain Marlow. He glimpses friends who want to see him succeed; one-time rivals who hope he crashes and burns; older men who see in the band something they once had, or once could have had; young men out on the piss and the pull; girls with Camparis and Babychams and cigarettes; and Dean thinks, Gravesend, yer punched my face, yer kicked my balls, yer told me I was useless, a joke, a tosser, a fairy, but LISTEN to Utopia bloody Avenue. We’re getting bloody good and behind that scowl, that sneer, yer know it. There’ll be a few of Harry Moffat’s cronies out there. You tell him we set this place on fire. Jasper reaches the end of round one. Dean looks over and, as he expected, Jasper keeps his eyes on his Strat’s fretboard to signal that he wants another round. Most people have never heard a wah-wah pedal played live, and Jasper’s mastery of the gadget is stupendous. I’ll take credit for the song, mind, thank yer very much. A couple of practices ago, Elf suggested changing the lyrics from “All dreams end as smithereens” to “Smithereens are seeds of dreams.” Dean tried it, and the song’s gone from being a downer to an upper. Jasper suggested Elf sing harmony on that one “seeds of dreams” line: and everyone in the room, Pavel Z included, groaned with pleasure. Toward the end of his time in Battleship Potemkin, Dean gave up sharing his songs; that band always made the songs worse. Utopia Avenue is the opposite. The band is a song-refining machine.

  Jasper’s coming down from his solo; Dean looks at Griff who nods; four bars to go…three bars to go…two…one…and an Okay look from Elf…and Jasper pauses—they all count off a shared clock—one, two, three, four—and smash the ending into drummed, pounded, plucked, twanged molecules…

  * * *

  —

  APPLAUSE IS THE purest drug, thinks Dean. He wipes his face on a cloth beer mat and slurps his pint of Smithwick’s. “Cheers, everyone.” The applause goes on and on. There’s less velveteen on view than you get at a London gig, more plain shirts, denim, and flat caps. The Captain Marlow is a both-fish-and-fowl pub. It’s just a few doors down from the Gravesend Working Men’s Club and the first good pub the men from Blue Circle Cement reach with their pay packets. A hipper crowd—by Gravesend standards—is lured in with pinball, a jukebox, and a live act twice a month. Off to one side, Levon is standing with a man Dean doesn’t know. If he’s a boyfriend, they’d better be bloody careful. The applause is subsiding, and Dean leans into the mic. “Thanks for coming out, and thanks to Dave and Sylv for having us.” He peers at the bar at the back where Dave Sykes, the teddy-bear-faced landlord, waves back. “I’m Dean Moss, I’m Gravesend born ’n’ bred, so if I still owe anyone a fiver from when I skipped town, I’ll pay yer back after the show”—Dean tightens his G-peg—“if yer lend me a tenner first.”

  Griff fires off a comedy Psssh…ta-boom!

  “So here’s the band: on keyboards, Miss Elf Holloway!”

  Elf plays the intro to Beethoven’s Fifth on the Hammond. A genius calls out, “Yer can play with my organ anytime, darlin’!”

  “Sorry”—Elf uses her stock reply—“but I don’t play on toy instruments.” Griff does another Psssh…ta-boom!

  “On drums,” says Dean, “from the People’s Republic of Yorkshire: Peter ‘Griff’ Griffin—or, for short, Griff!”

  Applause. Griff performs a drum explosion; stands and bows.

  “On guitar,” says Dean, “Mr.—Jasper—de Zoet!” Jasper wah-wahs the final line of “God Save the Queen.” Applause.

  Someone calls out, “Jasper the fuckin’ Fairy, more like!”
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  Jasper steps forward, shields his eyes, and scans the crowd for the heckler. “Who’s talking to me?”

  “Over ’ere!” The heckler waves. “Get a fackin’ haircut!”

  Shit, thinks Dean, here comes Brighton Poly part two.

  Jasper peers closer. “What? And look like you?” He said the first thing that came into his head, but even the heckler’s laughing. Dean hurries things along while the going’s still good. “This next one’s by Jasper. It’s called ‘Wedding Presence,’ and a-one and a-two and a-one two three—”

  * * *

  —

  NEXT UP IS Dean’s old song “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” a gutsy, rootsy “Mona Lisa Sings the Blues,” Booker T.’s “Green Onions,” “Darkroom,” a ten-minute “Abandon Hope”—by the end the whole room is yelling out, “I’ll rip-rip-rip your heart out, just like you ripped mine” as if they’ve known it for years—“A Raft and a River,” an Animals-esque “House of the Rising Sun,” a beefed-up “Any Way the Wind Blows,” and the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” sung by Elf with all the “she’s” turned into “he’s.” For a second encore they play the Gravediggers’ best song, “Six Feet Under,” penned by Dean when he was seventeen. Dean’s two fears—that the trippiness of Jasper’s songs would be lost on the brown ale crowd, or that Gravesend wouldn’t let Elf play without bombarding her with smutty heckles—don’t come to pass, and when Dave Sykes switches on the house-lights Dean is sweaty, his voice is croaky, and his fingertips are raw, but he’s high on the gig. Dean, Jasper, Elf, Levon, and Griff make an impromptu rugby scrum by the drum kit.

  “Lads, we fookin’ stormed it!” states Griff.

  “You can say that again,” says Elf.

  “Lads, we fookin’ stormed it,” repeats Griff.

  “That is such a corny gag,” says Elf.

  “Sensational,” says Levon. “Something’ll happen soon. You can’t play that well and word not get out.”