Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  I bloody well hope so, thinks Dean.

  “Your turn, Jasper,” says Elf.

  Everyone looks at Jasper. “To do what?”

  “Say how you fookin’ feel, you nonce,” says Griff.

  Jasper considers. “I feel…we’re getting better?”

  * * *

  —

  THEIR CIRCLE OF five is entered and dispersed by the world. “Yer’ll be paying me back that fiver any day soon,” says Kenny Yearwood.

  Dean says, “Believe me, I cannot wait.”

  “If Mum could’ve seen yer,” says Ray, “she’d be so proud.”

  “She did see it, love,” says Aunt Marge, pinching Dean’s cheek.

  More encounters with old classmates, teachers, and people from Dean’s old life continue until, after a couple of pints, a girl comes up. “You won’t remember me,” she begins, “but—”

  “Jude. Brighton Poly. Yer lent Elf a guitar. How are yer?”

  She’s pleased. “You need a record deal. Right now.”

  “I’ve written to Santa,” says Dean. “Fingers crossed.”

  “It’s only July. But have you been naughty or nice?”

  Flirty flirty. “How’s Gaz? Was that his name?”

  “I do not know and I do not care to know.”

  Praise be the Lord. “I’m dead sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, I bet you are.”

  Dean inhales her perfume. “What’re yer doing here?”

  “My brother likes his music, and he said a band called Utopia Avenue was playing. My ears pricked up, and hey presto.”

  “I’m amazed yer bothered after the last time.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  Shanks pops up behind her, signaling that they need to go.

  Dean signals for two more minutes. “Me and Jasper are staying over at a friend’s here in town. D’yer want to…?”

  My my, say Jude’s lifted eyebrows. “One step at a time, Speedy Gonzales. My brother’s driving me back to Brighton. I’ve got a job at a cosmetics wholesalers. But…” she waves a folded-up square of paper, “…if you’re free—as in not seeing anyone else—here’s my work number. You’ll have to pretend to be a customer or my boss’ll get suspicious. Plus, that’s written on Mission: Impossible paper that’ll turn to dust in forty-eight hours.” She reaches inside Dean’s jacket and slips the paper in. She gives him a peck on the cheek. “Call me. Or repent at your leisure. Seriously—the band’s great. You’re going to be famous.”

  * * *

  —

  SHANKS PUTS THE nozzle to his mouth and smoke curls down the hookah’s neck—bubble, bubble, toil and trouble—and into his well-tanned lungs…and out, in clouds of cauliflower.

  “Are these things legal?” Kenny asks.

  Shanks mimes the scales of justice. “The apparatus, yes. The herbal cocktail in the vase might excite the fuzz. I pay insurance.” A long and living hush unfurls. Jim Morrison sings about The End. “Oy, Deano—are we doing okay?”

  “Very,” says Dean. He takes the nozzle’s nipple, squeezes it between his lips, thinks of Jude, and…Suck it up, bubbly-bubble, here it comes, now hold it in…And lets it out again. “It’s…like…” Words are failing me tonight. “Breastfeeding plus levitation.”

  Brother Ray rocks with laughter. Not a sound comes out.

  “You ’n’ Jasper,” Kenny says, “are like a married couple.”

  Jasper’s face reminds Dean of Stan Laurel’s as he thinks this through. “Let’s not go there.” He sucks upon the nozzle. The hookah’s nothing new to him. Jasper lived in Amsterdam.

  Dean asks, “Would they dig us over in Amsterdam?”

  Jasper’s words reverberate a bit ahead of time. “First we need a record deal. Otherwise, it’s amateur hour.”

  Our end-o’-the-rainbow record deal. Dean feels lost in space and needs to take his bearings. Shanks’s flat above his shop, the fabled Magic Bus. The wee small hours. Who’s who? Yours truly; Shanks the Shanks; his lady friend called Piper; brother Ray; Kenny Yearwood; Jasper and a girl who just appeared, post-gig, with clear designs on Herr de Zoet. She says her name is Ivy. The six of them are motionless. A Rembrandt. See? I know art. Painted by the candle’s brush upon the living dark…

  * * *

  —

  …TILL SHANKS DISPELS the Rembrandt spell with a flutter-by of words. “You four were something else tonight. Out of this freaking world! One o’ these days soon, I’ll be shooting off my mouth, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, me ’n’ Dean Moss go back—we saw Little Richard—I taught him his first chords…’ Those songs! ‘Darkroom,’ ‘Smithereens,’ ‘Mona Lisa’…each one could be a hit. Don’t you reckon, Piper?”

  “FM radio in Seattle would eat you with a spoon.”

  “I hope it happens soon. I ain’t got a pot to piss in.”

  Jasper isn’t listening. His ear is being whispered in by Ivy, Ivy, Ivy. He looks at Shanks, who reads his mind. “Spare room’s down the landing, kids. It’s only got a single bed. Daresay that’ll do you.” Ivy leaves, the way cats do, dissolving into shadow. Dean makes sure Jude’s number’s safe. It’s still here in my jacket.

  Brother Ray warns Jasper, “Mate, I’m impressed. My cock’s as stoned as I am.” Jasper shrugs.

  “A word o’ warning,” pipes up Kenny, “a scientific fact. Gravesend girls are eggs on legs—all you do is sneeze on one and suddenly they’re three months late, the family’s banging down yer door, all calling you the daddy. Ray here knows of what I speak.”

  Ray mimes the hangman’s noose. Ray takes the holy nozzle…and expels a genie, limb by smoking limb. “Make sure yer wear a thingie. Yer came prepared, I hope?”

  Jasper does a Scout’s salute and follows after Ivy.

  “What ’bout you?” Ray’s asking him. “Getting any oats?”

  Piper floats away. “Think I’ll retire discreetly, boys, to spare my virgin blushes—see you in the morning.”

  Stoned Dean takes another toke—Suck it in, bubbly-bubbly, hold it and release—and hopes the topic’s gone away.

  “What ’bout you?” Ray’s asking him. “Getting any oats?”

  Anything for a quiet life. “Not much. There was a girl from St. John’s Wood at Elf’s sister’s wedding. We had a weekend at her place. That’s all for June.”

  “Yer jammy git,” says Kenny. “All Tracy ever says is, ‘No engagement ring, no sex—what bit don’t yer understand?’ I should just drop her now, but her dad’s my boss. Utter bloody nightmare.”

  It’s Ray’s turn: “Some days are good. I like being a dad. Mostly when Wayne’s unconscious. But Shirl’s a moody cow, as often as not. I had more crumpet when I was single. Every day she’s turning more into her mother. Marriage is a prison, funded by the prisoners. What d’yer reckon, Shanks? Yer’ve been through the grinder twice.”

  Shanks puts the Doors back into their sleeve and puts on the Velvet Underground. “Marriage is an anchor, lads. Stops you drifting onto rocks, but stops you voyaging as well.”

  The first track on side one, “Sunday Morning,” pulls Dean up inside it. Nico’s half a note off-key but sounds the better for it.

  Ray sits up and asks, “Who’s Elf seeing, then?” Dean’s too relaxed to answer. Ray gently kicks Dean’s foot. “Who’s Elf seeing?”

  Dean lifts his head. “Some projectionist, in Leicester Square.”

  Kenny asks, “Have you or Griff or Jasper ever had a nibble?”

  “Elf? Jesus, Kenny, no. It’d be like shagging yer sister.”

  Now Kenny sits up. “Yer what? You’ve been shagging Jackie?”

  * * *

  —

  THE HOOKAH’S SPELL is fading. Dean lies where he lies on Shanks’s Turkish carpet. He remembers his father telling him, “Yer’ve stayed at yer nan’s for long enou
gh. High time yer came back home.” He told Nan Moss, “Thanks for all yer’ve done, but Dean belongs with me. Vi’d agree, God bless her soul.” Who could object to that? He moved back in on New Year’s Day. His mum had died in September. As winter turned to spring, his list of jobs grew longer. Cooking, shopping, cleaning, laundry, ironing, polishing the shoes. Everything his mum once did. “The world don’t owe yer a living,” his father said, “any more’n I do.” Harry Moffat had always liked his drink, but Dean was shocked to see him drink a bottle of Morning Star a day—a cheap and nasty vodka. He functioned fine. No one guessed. Not the neighbors, no one at work. His dad was still a charming rogue once he left the house. At Peacock Road, “bad” slid into “worse.” He made rules. Impossible rules. Rules that always shifted. If Dean stayed out, he was dossing around. If Dean stayed in, he was sat on his arse. If Dean didn’t speak, he was a stroppy shit. If Dean spoke, he was lippy. “Hit me, then, if yer fancy a pop. Go on. Let’s see what happens.” Dean never dared. Father press-ganged son into his noble-widower act. Dean had to stow the empty bottles in a different bin each day. Answering the phone was Dean’s job too. If his dad was blotto, he’d say, “He’s just popped out.” Dean did what was necessary, exactly like his mother. He lied to Ray. “Yeah, can’t complain, how’s Dagenham?” What was Ray supposed to do? Give up his apprenticeship? Try to reason with the man? If reason worked on alcoholics, there’d be no alcoholics. But when Dean started art school, something had to give…

  * * *

  —

  BONFIRE NIGHT. DEAN was sixteen. He came back from a firework party at Ebbsfleet and found his father frowning over the Mirror on the kitchen table. The day’s bottle of Morning Star was empty.

  Dean just said, “Evening.”

  “Give the boy a prize.”

  Dean drew the kitchen curtains, noticing a small bonfire in the garden incinerator where they burned rubbish, leaves, and weeds, usually on a Saturday. That day was a Friday. “Had a bonfire, I see.”

  “Some old shite needed burning.”

  “I’ll say g’night, then.”

  Dean’s father turned the page.

  Dean went upstairs to his room—and noticed the sickening absences, one by one, like punches to his gut. His Futurama guitar. His Dansette. His Teach Yourself Guitar books. His signed photo of Little Richard. Dean heard the bonfire crackle.

  He rushed downstairs, past the man who’d done this, and out into the frosty air to see what could be salvaged…

  The bonfire was burning nicely. Only the Futurama’s fretboard remained, its varnish bubbling. Purple flames licked its neck. The Dansette was a spindle and blackened Bakelite. The books were sheets of ash. The signed photograph of Little Richard was gone. Dean’s dad had added lumps of coal and a few firelighters. The purple flames toasted Dean’s face. The smoke was oily and toxic.

  Dean went back inside. “Why?” His voice shook.

  “Why what?” Dean’s father still didn’t look up.

  “What was the point o’ that?”

  “Till now yer’ve been a work-shy long-haired pansy with a guitar. Now yer just a work-shy long-haired pansy. That’s”—Dean’s dad looked up—“a step in the right direction.”

  Dean got his rucksack and packed his nine albums, twenty singles, a packet of guitar strings, his birthday cards from Mum, his best clothes, mock crocs, photo album, and his notebook of songs. He said goodbye to his old room for the last time and went downstairs. Before he could undo the chain, a force hurled him down the hall. Dean’s ear smacked into a doorframe. Footsteps approached on the lino. Dean slid himself vertical. “What? Yer going to keep me locked up here?”

  “No son of mine’s a guitar-twanging fairy faggot.”

  Dean looked into the hard eyes and hated them. Was his dad in there? Was the vodka talking? “Yer dead right, Harry Moffat.”

  “Yer what?”

  “I’m not yer son. Yer not my father. I’m off. Now.”

  “Piss and wind. It’s high time yer stopped fannying about with art ’n’ music ’n’ this shit and got yerself a real job. Like Ray. I warned yer, but now I’ve—I’ve—I’ve taken action. Yer’ll thank me for it.”

  “I’m thanking yer now. Yer’ve opened my eyes, Harry Moffat.”

  “Say that again—once again—and by fuck you’ll regret it.”

  “Which bit, Harry Moffat? The I’m-not-yer-son bit, or—”

  Dean’s jaw cracked, his skull smacked the wall; his body thudded; and he came to on the lino. He tasted blood. Pain in his skull and jaw tapped in time with his pulse. He looked up.

  Harry Moffat looked down. “See what yer made me do?”

  Dean got up. He checked his mouth in the mirror. A cut lip, blood, a mashed gum. “Is that what yer used to tell Mum? When yer hit her? ‘See what yer made me do’?”

  Harry Moffat’s sneer was gone.

  “No secrets in Gravesend. The whole town knows. ‘There goes Harry Moffat, beat his wife like a carpet, she got cancer and she died.’ Never to yer face. But they know.”

  Dean undid the chain and stepped into the November night.

  “I’m done with yer!” shouted Harry Moffat. “Yer hear me?”

  Dean kept walking. Curtains were twitching.

  Peacock Street smelt of frost and fireworks.

  * * *

  —

  SEVEN YEARS AND a quarter of a mile away, Dean wakes to the sound of rain and Kenny snoring on the sofa. Someone has put a cushion under Dean’s head. Ray’s in the armchair, asleep. The hookah is surrounded by glasses, bottles, ashtrays, peanut shells, cards. Dean pads into the kitchen for a mug of water. Gravesend water tastes less soapy than London water. He sits at the table and munches a Jacob’s cracker. From its high shelf, a spider-plant has unfurled tendrils over a tapestry of a god with an elephant’s head and a photo of Shanks and Piper somewhere foreign and sunny. The furthest Dean’s ever been from Gravesend was a Battleship Potemkin gig in Wolverhampton. His share of the cut was less than a pound. He would have earned more busking at Hyde Park Corner. Is Utopia Avenue a cul-de-sac? We were good last night, but that was a home match…What if nobody wants us? Roofs step down from Queen Street to the river. Tugs pull a freighter out of Tilbury Docks. As the freighter’s middle section clears the hospital, its name is revealed to Dean a letter at a time—STAR OF RIGA. Shanks’s Gibson acoustic sits on the chair opposite. Dean tunes it and, accompanied only by the hiss of rain and his own thoughts, he lets his fingers strum and pick…

  “One o’ yours?” Ray stands in the doorway of Shanks’s kitchen.

  Dean looks up. “Hmm?”

  “That tune.”

  “Just something I’m messing about with.”

  Ray drinks a mug of water. “Aunt Marge was right, Mum’d be that proud. It’d be ‘ ’Course, Dean always was the artistic one.’ ”

  “It’s you she’d be proud of. ‘ ’Course, Ray always was the one who applied himself.’ She’d spoil Wayne rotten, too.”

  Ray sits down. “Are you ’n’ Dad going to bury the hatchet?”

  Dean plays a discordant twang. “He’s the original hatcheter.” A droplet of rain runs down the window. “Bill’s been more of a dad to me. You, too. And Shanks.”

  “I’m not trying to excuse him, but he’s lost everything.”

  “We’ve been here before, Ray. ‘It’s the vodka’s fault,’ ‘His dad slapped his mum ’n’ him about too,’ ‘He went through hell watching Mum die,’ ‘Refusing to call him “Dad” is a childish grudge that’s eating me up.’ Miss anything?”

  “No. But if he could unburn yer guitar, he would.”

  “Told yer that himself, did he?”

  Ray makes a face. “He’s not a man to discuss his feelings.”

  “Stop. This isn’t a grudge. It’s consequences. If yer want him in yer life, great. Bully for y
ou. That’s yer choice. I don’t want him in mine. That’s my choice. End o’ story. Just…stop.”

  “Men his age can and do drop dead. ’Specially if their liver’s fucked. The dead can’t sign peace treaties. And he’s still yer dad.”

  The dead can’t sign peace treaties, thinks Dean. Good line. “Genetically, legally, yeah, he’s my father. In every other sense, he’s not. I’ve a brother, a nephew, Nan, Bill, two aunts, but not a dad.”

  Ray heaves out a long sigh. Drains gurgle.

  Shanks’s phone in the hallway starts ringing.

  Dean doesn’t answer: Shanks is a man with fingers in many pies and any pie might be calling. Their host’s bedroom door opens, and his footsteps thud up the hallway. “Yeah?” A long pause. “Yeah, he is…Yeah…Who shall I say is calling?” Shanks appears in the doorway. “Dean, son. It’s yer manager.”

  * * *

  —

  “LEVON? HOW DID you know I was here?”

  “The Dark Arts. Is Jasper there?”

  “Sort of. He’s with a girl.”

  “I need both of you at Denmark Street.”

  “But it’s Sunday morning.”

  “I know. Griff and Elf are on their way.”

  This sounds like urgent bad news. “What’s happened?”

  “Victor French happened.”

  “Who’s Victor French?”

  “The A&R scout for Ilex Records. He was at the Captain Marlow last night. He wants to sign Utopia Avenue.”

  He wants to sign Utopia Avenue. Six little words.

  I have a future after all. Shanks’s hallway is listening.

  “Hello?” Levon sounds worried. “Still there?”

  “I am,” says Dean. “I heard. That’s…Bloody hell.”

  “Don’t buy your Triumph Spitfire yet. Victor’s putting in an offer for three singles, then an album, if—if—interest builds. Ilex isn’t one of the Big Four, but it’s a solid offer. Being a middle-sized fish in a small pond could work better for the band than being a tadpole in a lake. Victor wanted to sign you last night, but I pushed for more money and told him EMI were sniffing. He called his boss in Hamburg this morning for approval—and it’s a yes.”