Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  “Got the time, sir?” asked a girl. By Soho street-corner standards she was pretty. Dean paused. Her pimp emerged from the soot-encrusted shadows, mistaking Dean’s hesitancy. “Lotta’s fresh up from the country. Nice ’n’ clean. Plump ’n’ juicy.”

  Nauseous, Dean hurried into the seedy sunlight, past Foyles bookshop, wishing this was a film. Wishing he didn’t have to face Bethany at Moonwhale, who would look at him over her typewriter and say, “Good morning, Dean”—almost as if nothing was the matter at all.

  * * *

  —

  SIDE TWO OF Blonde on Blonde clicks off with a clunk. Tiffany’s thigh is glued to his. He thinks, If I had to get anyone pregnant, why couldn’t it have been you? You five years ago minus husband ’n’ kids, obviously, that is. She says, “A penny for your thoughts.”

  That phrase was starting to grate. “Uh…Bob Dylan.”

  “Close friend of yours, is he?”

  “Nah. Saw him at the Albert Hall a couple o’ years ago.”

  “Tony had tickets for that concert, but Martin had chicken pox, so he took Barbara Windsor instead. I heard the show was stormy.”

  “Half the audience was expecting ‘Blowing in the Wind.’ They got crash bang wallop! instead. And were not happy.”

  “I never quite grasp Dylan. When he’s singing how ‘you fake just like a woman,’ then—what was it?—loving like a woman, and aching like one, but then breaking like a little girl, is he criticizing his girl’s fragility in particular? Or is he saying that all women are fragile? Or what? Why isn’t he clearer?”

  “It’s open to interpretation, I s’pose. But I like that.”

  She traces a circle around his nipple. “I prefer your songs.”

  “Oh, I bet yer say that to all the boys.”

  “Your lyrics are stories. Or a journey. Elf’s too.”

  “Jasper’s?”

  “Jasper’s songs are a bit Dylan-esque, in a way…”

  “Now I’ll have to kill him out o’ sheer jealousy.”

  “Don’t. This flat’s perfect for these liaisons.”

  “I liked the Hyde Park Embassy.”

  “One should vary the scenes of one’s liaisons…” Sounds like she’s done this before, thinks Dean. “The staff are discreet—if you tip them—but it’s a gossipy town, and Tony’s not a nobody.”

  “When’s he due back from Los Angeles?”

  “The end of the month. It keeps changing.”

  The phone ring-rings in the hallway.

  It’s Ted Silver, thinks Dean, with Mandy Craddock news.

  The phone ring-rings in the hallway.

  “Aren’t you going to get it?” asks Tiffany.

  The phone ring-rings in the hallway.

  “Stuff it. I’m enjoying you too much.”

  The phone ring-rings in the hallway.

  “Tony would be sprinting down the hall,” says Tiffany. “He’s Pavlov’s dog when the phone goes.”

  The phone ring-rings in the hallway.

  Dean guesses Pavlov’s some arty Russian filmmaker. The phone stops ringing. Tiffany lets out an odd sigh. “It’s been a while since I was valued more than a telephone call.”

  They hear the key in the door of the flat. Tiffany tenses. “It’s only Jasper,” says Dean. “My DO NOT DISTURB sign’s up.”

  She’s still nervy. “You said he’d be out all day.”

  “I guess his plans’ve changed. He won’t come in.”

  “Nobody must know about us. I’m serious.”

  “Me too. I don’t want anyone to know either. I’ll go ’n’ tell Jasper I’ve got a coy visitor. When you leave, he’ll hide. He’s the opposite of nosy. It’s fine.”

  Dean pulls on his underpants and dressing gown…

  * * *

  —

  IN THE KITCHEN Jasper is drinking a glass of milk.

  “How was the exhibition?” asks Dean.

  “Impressive, but Luisa had an interview with Mary Quant so she and Elf went off to that, and I came back early.”

  “Elf’s seeing a lot of Luisa.”

  Jasper studies him. “You’ve had sex.”

  “Why’d yer ask?”

  “Love-bites, underpants and dressing gown, and…” Jasper sniffs strongly “…the smell of overripe Brie.”

  Ugh. “Look, the young lady’s shy, so if yer’d retreat to yer room when she leaves, I’d be obliged.”

  “Sure. Elf’s coming over at six so your friend ought to be gone before then. I won’t peep, but Elf will.”

  * * *

  —

  BETHANY AT MOONWHALE looked at Dean over her typewriter and said, “Good morning, Dean”—almost as if nothing was the matter at all.

  “Morning, Bethany. So, um…”

  “Ted’s in with Levon now.” Tappety-tap-tap-tap.

  Dean knocked and opened Levon’s sliding doors. His manager and the lawyer sat at the low tables, smoking.

  “Speak of the devil.” Ted looked amused.

  “Have a seat.” Levon looked a lot less amused.

  Dean propped his Fender against the filing cabinet and sat down. He lit his fifth Marlboro of the morning.

  “So,” said Ted, “to ask one of humanity’s oldest questions, are you the daddy-o?”

  “I dunno. I don’t remember an Amanda. I meet a lot o’ girls. But I don’t keep a desk diary o’ their names or nothing.”

  Levon reached for his desk diary and took out a snapshot of a young woman holding a baby. She had dark hair, dark eyes, and an ambiguous smile. The baby looked like any baby. Dean would file its mother under “Wouldn’t Say No.”

  “Well?” asks Levon. “Jog any memories loose?”

  “Nothing specific.”

  “Miss Craddock is specific,” says Levon. “July the twenty-ninth. The Alexandra Palace Love-in. You played a slot between Blossom Toes and Tomorrow. She says you met backstage during the Crazy World of Arthur Brown’s set, that you went back to her flat, above a launderette, and that nine months later,” Levon held up the photograph, “Arthur Dean Craddock was born.”

  Abruptly, Dean’s big vague cloud of doubt dwindled to a little white dot, like the TV at shutdown—and disappeared. Shit shit shit. The launderette. “Mandy” not “Amanda.” She’d asked, “So do I get to see you again?” Dean used his “Let’s not spoil a beautiful night” line. Her mother was folding clothes downstairs. She looked at Dean and said nothing. He escaped onto the quiet Sunday road. “We slept together.”

  “Which is neither legal nor hereditary proof,” said Ted Silver, “that young Arthur sprang from your loins. Unmarried mothers have been known to lie.”

  Dean looked at the baby with fresh hope and fresh guilt. Was there a Moss-ness—or Moffat-ness—about him? He wished he could show the photo to Nan Moss, and feared doing so. She’d be furious. “I heard there’s a blood test yer can do…”

  The lawyer waggled a hand. “The blood group test rules out paternity in thirty percent of cases. It’s no smoking gun.”

  “So what are my choices?”

  Ted Silver picked up a ginger biscuit. “You could claim that you never met Miss Craddock. Inadvisable. If it went to court, you’d have to perjure yourself.” Munch on the ginger biscuit. “You could agree that you and Miss Craddock were in concubitus on the night, but refuse to acknowledge paternity of the child.” Munch munch. “You could acknowledge the child as yours and talk turkey.”

  “What’s the price tag on this turkey?”

  “Figures are contingent upon negotiations, naturally.”

  “Naturally. But.”

  “But if I were representing the Craddocks, I’d demand a lump sum equal to what a tabloid newspaper would pay, plus index-linked monthly support payments until the child turns eighteen.”

 
“Bloody hell. What year’ll that be?”

  “Nineteen eighty-six.”

  The date belonged to an impossibly distant future. “All in, then, we’re talking…”

  “North of fifty thousand pounds. Index-linked.” The office tilted and whirled like a spinning teacup at a funfair. Dean shut his eyes to make it stop. “Fifty thousand quid for one shag? For a kid who may not even be mine? No way. She can fuck off.”

  “Provisionally, then,” says Ted, “we’re looking at option two. You admit that you and Miss Craddock shared physical intimacies, but you do not acknowledge paternity of the child.”

  Dean opened his eyes. The room was back to normal. “Yeah. Do that. And, why didn’t she come after me till she saw I’ve got a few bob to my name? Smacks o’ gold digging, does that.”

  Ted looked at Levon. “Thoughts? Concerns? Consequences?”

  Levon lit a cigarette. “If we’d marketed the band as the Stones, people would just say, ‘True to form.’ If we’d sold you as a sort of British Peter, Paul and Mary, it would kill you. But Utopia Avenue? It could go either way. There may be an element in the press saying, ‘We should have let him rot in an Italian jail after all.’ Elf’s female fans may wonder why she stays in a band with a love-cheat sperm-gun. On the other hand, Dean’s more red-blooded followers will think, Nice one, my son. Nor are these reactions mutually exclusive. It’ll add up to column inches, that’s for sure.”

  “Agreed. Right now, we play for time. I’ll tell the Craddocks’ solicitor that Dean’s in a state of shock. I’ll ask for, say, a fortnight’s grace for us to put together a proposal regarding the next step. I’ll make it clear that if the Craddocks speak to the press, any deal will be off the table. I also propose we do this blood test now. If Miss Craddock is a gold digger, she may be spooked into backing off. Either way, the blood test will cast Dean in a responsible light if we go to court later.”

  Court. Newspapers. Scandal. Ugh. “They’re piss-poor, right, the Craddocks? Do they have the money for legal action ’n’ that?”

  “Awash with money they certainly are not.”

  “So if suing me looks like it’ll cost an arm ’n’ a leg…”

  “They may cut their losses.” Ted Silver tapped his pipe. “Mind you, if thirty years of legal practice has taught me anything, it’s that a plaintiff is a fickle beast.”

  * * *

  —

  SIDE THREE OF Blonde on Blonde clicks off. “When Martin came along, Tony and I did a deal.” Tiffany taps her cigarette on the ashtray. “I’d take a hiatus from my career and be Tony’s ideal stay-at-home mother. In return, after five years, he’d make a film and cast me as the lead. Quid pro quo. I am an actress. Thistledown was one of the British movies of 1961. People know me from Carry On, from The Tempest at the National, from Battleship Hill. I’d missed being Honey Ryder in Dr. No by a whisker. So it was agreed. I did the nappies, bottles, nanny-organizing, sleepless nights, while Tony made Wigan Pier and Gethsemane. My agent had inquiries, but Tony said I should keep my powder dry for the big Tiffany Seabrook comeback. Last year he finally started writing Narrow Road. By ‘he’ I mean ‘we.’ I wrote more of it than Max, Tony’s co-writer. Piper—the rock star’s dead sister—is a peach of a role and it was mine. Until a fortnight ago. The day you bought your car.”

  “What’s my Spitfire got to do with it?”

  “Nothing. But when I got home, Tony was waiting with the news”—Tiffany’s jaw clenches—“that Warner Brothers love the script. They’ll put in half a million dollars if Jane Fonda plays Piper.”

  “Jane Fonda? On a spiritual odyssey to the Isle of Skye?”

  “They want to shoot in LA and call it The Narrow Road to the Far West. It’ll be all tits, mojitos, and bimbos.”

  Dean hears Jasper run a bath. “That’s bloody nuts.”

  “It’s a betrayal! So I told Tony to tell the Yanks where to shove their half-million dollars. Guess what his answer was.”

  I doubt you liked the answer, whatever it was. “What?”

  “That he hadn’t paid for his house, my jewelry, ‘my’ Midsummer Balls and nannies by turning down half a million dollars. End of conversation. A fait accompli.”

  Fay what? Fay Who? “That’s a knife in the back.”

  “He tried to fob me off with a new role Warner Brothers want to add—a demented lesbian psychopath. I told Tony to piss off. So he did. Off to LA. To put starlets through their paces.”

  So, thinks Dean, I’m a revenge shag. Do I mind?

  “I didn’t mean to tell you all this,” says Tiffany. “A secret lover who moans about her husband can’t be very—”

  Can’t say I do. Dean kisses her—and hears a key in the front door—and abruptly pulls back from the kiss, listening.

  “What’s up?” asks Tiffany.

  “Jasper’s in the bath. So who just came in?”

  Dean hears voices. His body redistributes blood, instantly. He slips on his trousers and a T-shirt and grabs a wine-bottle candlestick that might, at a push, function as a club. He slips out into the hallway. Jasper’s got the radio up loud in the bathroom, so he may not have heard. Up ahead Dean sees two intruders through the curtain of beads…

  * * *

  —

  DEAN YELLS AS he bursts through the beads. One of the burglars yelps, jumps back, terrified, hits the coat stand, knocks it over, and trips backward. The older one is calm. About fifty, in a conservative suit and tie, he stares at Dean as if he owns the place. Dean brandishes the bottle. “Who the fuck are yer and what’re yer doing in my flat?”

  “I own the place,” says the older man in a foreign accent. “I am Guus de Zoet. Jasper’s father.”

  “Yer what?”

  “Did you think he was made in a lab? This is my son Maarten.” Maarten, who looks about thirty, picks himself up, scowling. “So we ask you the same. Who are you? What are you doing in my flat? Put the bottle down. You are embarrassing yourself.”

  Dean sees the family resemblance. “I’m Dean. Jasper’s flatmate. Thought yer were burglars. Sorry ’bout that.”

  Jasper appears with a towel around his waist, dripping onto the floor. He exchanges a few Dutch phrases with his father and half-brother. The reunion looks joyless. Dean is referred to. Jasper tells them all, “Give me a minute, I’ll be right out,” and retreats to the bathroom.

  Maarten de Zoet picks up the coat stand. “You play bass in Jasper’s band, I think.”

  “Utopia Avenue isn’t ’xactly Jasper’s band. If yer’d just’ve rung the doorbell, I wouldn’t’ve, uh, jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  “I telephoned,” says Guus de Zoet. “An hour ago. Nobody replied, so we assumed nobody was at home.”

  Oh, thinks Dean, so that was you.

  “How long have you been my tenant, Dean?” asks Guus de Zoet.

  Tenant? Rent? Awkward. “I’ll let Jasper answer that.”

  “Surely you can remember when you moved in?”

  “Have a seat. I’ll make a pot o’ tea.”

  “Very English,” says Maarten.

  * * *

  —

  TIFFANY WAS EAVESDROPPING in case she had to scream into Chetwynd Mews for help. She’s worried about being trapped in the flat. The Hershey nanny is expecting her home by seven P.M., and it’s now gone five. Dean returns to the kitchen, where the two visitors are smoking Chesterfields, Jasper is smoking a Marlboro, and conversation is in Dutch. Dean turns to go, but the kettle is starting to boil and none of the de Zoets is making a move. Dean prepares the tea. During what feels like a lull in the Dutch dialogue, Dean asks, “What brings yer to London, Mr. de Zoet?”

  “We are here three or four times a year.”

  “And this is the first time yer drop in?”

  “I come to London for business, not pleasure.”

  Dean’s
about to ask, “What about family?” but remembers the unvisited Harry Moffat, pushes away the thought of Mandy Craddock’s son, and brings the teapot over.

  “We are expanding,” says Mr. de Zoet. “I may visit more.”

  “Great.” Dean pours the tea. “Uh…milk?”

  “Milk is acceptable,” states Jasper’s father.

  “How ’bout you…uh, do I call yer Maarten or Mr. de Zoet too?”

  “Our ages are close, so you may use my Christian name. Milk is acceptable for me also.”

  “Okey-dokey,” says Dean. “Beans on toast? Bowl o’ Shreddies?”

  Missing the irony, Guus checks his wafer-thin watch. “We are dining with the Dutch ambassador soon, so we will resist the temptation. It is best we address the matter in hand and leave.”

  “Soon” and “leave” sound good. “Address away,” says Dean.

  “You must vacate this flat by the end of July.”

  Yer what? “But me ’n’ Jasper live here.” Dean looks at Jasper, who is not surprised. They must have told him in Dutch.

  “Yes, and from the first day of August,” says Guus de Zoet, “Maarten and his bride will live here.”

  Jasper asks his half-brother something in Dutch.

  Maarten replies in English. “In April, in Ghent. Zoë’s people are in banking. She’s the daughter of a friend of Mother. My mother, I mean, of course.”

  This family is screwed up, thinks Dean, even by Moffat-Moss standards. Jasper says, “Congratulations.”

  Maarten answers with a few calm Dutch words.

  “Hang on a mo.” Dean is not calm. “Yer did say Jasper was yer son and not some random tenant? I didn’t dream that bit?”