Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  … and Jasper’s body’s where it was, dancing in the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road, but Jasper’s mind is sling-shooting, first around irrigated Mars, then on and on and on and on to offspring-eating Saturn; then faster, Father, farther out, gaining on the speed of light where time and space solidify and here’s that scratchy voice again: ‘The glory of the Lord shone round about: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: buckle up, enjoy the trip.’ Bible black and starless, now. A comet’s tail, a silver thread, unravelling and unspooling. Knock Knock. Who’s there? No, don’t reply. Let’s think instead of saner things. Nick Mason’s playing drums. Drums were here before we are. The rhythms of our mothers’ hearts. Mecca leaves on Monday night. America will swallow her, like Jonah in the whale. We’re pulsing now to Roger’s bass, a Rickenbacker Fireglo. Roger Waters has a smile that is both cloak and dagger. Mecca’s face becomes concave. It elongates, encircling him. ‘My vegetable love should grow, vaster than empires and more slow.’ Her face reflects his and his hers, and what reflection ever guessed that it is a reflection? Jasper asks, ‘Do you think reality is just a mirror for something else?’

  Mecca’s answer lags behind her waxy boyish lips: ‘Ja, bestimmt. This is why a photograph of something is more true than the thing.’ He puts her hand against his heart. Her face returns to normal. ‘Congratulations, I feel him kick. What day are you due?’

  ‘Did I pass the interview?’

  ‘Let’s find a taxi.’

  A black cab is waiting outside the club. Mecca tells the driver, ‘Blacklands Terrace in Chelsea. Opposite John Sandoes Bookshop.’ Dark streets fly by. Amsterdam wraps itself around itself: London unfolds, unfolds, unfolds. She holds his hand, chastely. Only a few high windows are lit. Jasper still hears drumming. A little Pink Floyd goes a long, long way. The taxi stops. ‘Keep the change,’ says Mecca. A windy night, a pavement, a Yale lock, stairs, a kitchen, a low lamp. ‘I’ll take a shower,’ says Mecca. Jasper sits at the table. She reappears, wearing a lot less than before. ‘That was an invitation.’ They shower together. Later, they’re in a bed. Later, all is quiet. Later, a truck rumbles by, a street or two away. Chelsea High Street? Could be. Mecca’s asleep. She has a big protruding birthmark on her back. Jasper thinks of Ayers Rock. The past and future seep into one another. He’s on a lookout platform, with a view of a bay over roofs, gables and warehouses. Cannon-fire. This one must be a film. Staccato thunder bludgeons his senses. The sky swings sideways. All the dogs are barking and the crows are crazed. A stout man, dressed for the Napoleonic era, leans on the railing, looking out to sea through a telescope. Jasper asks him if this is a dream or if the pill he took at the UFO wasn’t just amphetamines.

  The telescope man clicks his fingers. Scrit-scrit. Jasper’s walking along a street. He comes to his aunt’s boarding house in Lyme Regis. His wheelchair-bound uncle tells him, ‘You left us for a better life, remember? Piss off!’

  Click. Scrit-scrit. Jasper passes Swaffham House at Bishop’s Ely school. The principal stands in the doorway like a bouncer. ‘Move on, move on, nothing for you here.’

  Click. Scrit-scrit. The Duke of Argyll on Great Windmill Street. Jasper peers in through the engraved glass. Elf, Dean, Griff, himself and Mecca are sitting at a table. ‘Half of my friends say “The Way Out” sounds like a suicide textbook,’ explains Elf. ‘The other half say, it’s like a hippie going, “Hey, way out, man!” If we were dreaming up a name now, from scratch, what would we choose?’ They all look at Jasper’s eye, including the other Jasper inside.

  Click. Scrit-scrit. Dream-lit snow, or swirling blossom, or filigree moths obscure Jasper’s vision. He’s lost in a Soho even more labyrinthine than the real one. He looks for a sign. It emerges slowly, as obscurity sharpens into clarity. A street-sign, in London street-sign font, reading ‘UTOPIA AVENUE’. Click. Scrit-scrit …

  Letters spell P-E-N-T-A-X, inches from his face. Click. The camera is wound on – scrit-scrit. Mecca’s wearing a cream Aran jumper that falls to her knees. She lines up another shot. Click. Scrit-scrit. Above her is a skylight of soiled sky. Crows tumble like socks in a drier. What else? A blanket. Crusty tissues. An electric fire. A rug. Jasper’s clothes. Black and white photographs, dozens of them, pinned to the wall. Clouds in puddles, certain slants of light, commuters, tramps, dogs, graffiti, snow blowing in through broken windows, lovers in doorways, semi-legible gravestones and whatever figments of London caught Mecca’s eye and made her think, I want to save you. Click. Scrit-scrit.

  She lowers her Pentax and sits cross-legged. ‘Morning.’

  ‘I see you start work early.’

  ‘Your eyes were …’ she fails to find the right word ‘… moving like crazy under your eyelids. Were you dreaming?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll arrange you as a series: “De Zoet, Asleep; De Zoet, Waking.” Or perhaps I call it “Paradise Lost”.’ She pulls on navy stockings. ‘Breakfast is downstairs.’ She goes.

  Jasper wonders if he and Mecca are still lovers, or if last night was their first and last time. He takes his time to dress, and spends a few minutes studying Mecca’s photography.

  She’s eating a bowl of Weetabix in a staff kitchen and leafing through a fashion magazine. An electric kettle groans and wheezes. Jasper peers through the blinds onto a Chelsea backstreet. Gusts of wind herd dead leaves, shake a willow tree and wrench a priest’s umbrella inside out. Across the kitchen is a waist-high balcony. Jasper walks over and looks down at a large studio with an array of drapes, sets, lights and tripods. A shot has been set up with hay bales and a couple of acoustic guitars as props. Jasper repeats what Dean said on entering the Chetwynd Mews flat: ‘Pretty cool digs.’

  Mecca asks, ‘What is “digs”?’

  ‘Accommodation. A flat, or a bedsit.’

  ‘Why “digs”? Like, with a spade? Why?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t design English.’

  Mecca makes a face that Jasper can’t read. ‘Monday to Saturday, my boss Mike is here, with models, staff and so on. I do donkey work – I help with shoots, much stuff. My “digs” is free and Mike gives me film and the darkroom.’

  ‘Your photographs are special.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m still learning.’

  ‘There’s a series of shots of a picket line.’

  ‘Dockworkers on strike in the East End.’

  ‘How did you persuade them to pose for you?’

  ‘I just explain, “Hi, I am a photographer from Germany, please can I shoot you?” A few say, “Piss off.” One say, “Take a picture of my willy, little Miss Hitler.” Most say, “Okay.” To have your photo taken is to be told, “You exist.”’

  ‘It’s as if they’re there,’ Jasper speaks aloud, ‘staring at the viewer, working out if you’re an enemy or not. Yet, really, they’re just chemical reactions on paper. Photography’s a strange illusion.’

  ‘On Thursday, at Heinz’s digs, you played a Spanish song.’

  The kettle’s rumbling now. ‘“Asturias” by Isaac Albéniz.’

  ‘That. It gave me Gänsehaut … goosebumps, you say?’

  ‘We do.’ The boiled kettle clicks off.

  ‘Music is vibrations in the air, only. Why do these vibrations create physical responses? It’s a mystery to me.’

  ‘How music works – the theory, the practice – is learnable.’ Jasper prises the lid off the coffee. ‘Why it works, God only knows. Maybe not even God.’

  ‘So, photography is same. Art is paradox. It is no sense but it is sense. That coffee tastes of mouse-shit. Tea is better.’

  Jasper makes a pot of tea and brings it to the table.

  ‘Where are you going after here?’ asks Mecca.

  ‘I’ve got band rehearsal at two. Back in Soho.’

  ‘Are you good, your band?’

  ‘I think we’re getting there.’ Jasper blows on his tea. ‘We only started playing together last month, so we’re still finding our sound. Levon wants us t
o perfect a ten-song set before we start gigging. He says he wants us springing fully formed from the brow of Zeus.’

  Mecca chews a spoonful of Weetabix.

  ‘It’s your last day in England, so maybe you have lots of goodbyes to make. But if you’re free, tag along.’

  Mecca’s half-smile must mean something. ‘Another date?’

  Jasper worries he’s got it wrong: ‘If it’s not too forward.’

  ‘“Forward”?’ Possibly Mecca is amused. ‘We just had sex. It’s a little late to be forward now.’

  ‘Sorry. I never know the rules. Especially with women.’

  ‘Is it only two days and three nights ago that we met?’

  ‘Why?’

  Mecca blows on her tea. ‘It feels much longer.’

  Two days and three nights ago, Heinz Formaggio opened the door of a flat in an opulent crescent off Regent’s Park. He wore a lounge suit, a tie embroidered with algebraic equations, and stern glasses. ‘De Zoet!’ He gave his old schoolfriend a hug that Jasper endured. ‘I knew it was you. Most callers do a long buzz – bzzzzzzzzz – but you did a buzz-biddley-buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz. My God, look at your hair! It’s longer than my sister’s.’

  ‘Your hairline’s rising,’ said Jasper. ‘You’re chubbier.’

  ‘Still a master of tact. You’re right about my waistline, alas. Oxbridge fellows, I’m discovering, eat like kings.’ Party chatter and John Coltrane’s ‘My Favourite Things’ spilled into the corridor. Formaggio put his door on the latch and slipped out. ‘Before we go in, how are you?’

  ‘I had a cold in November, a little psoriasis on my elbow.’

  ‘I’m asking about Knock Knock.’

  Jasper hesitated. He hadn’t dared voice his suspicion to anyone in the band. ‘I think he’s coming back.’

  Formaggio stared. ‘Why do you think so?’

  ‘I hear him. Or I think I do.’

  ‘The knocking? Like before?’

  ‘It’s still faint, so I can’t be sure. But … I think so.’

  ‘Have you been in touch with Dr Galavazi?’

  Jasper acted a headshake. ‘He’s retired now.’

  Laughter rippled out of Formaggio’s flat. ‘Do you have any of that medicine ready, in case you need it?’

  ‘No.’ Jasper’s gaze wandered down the curving corridor of the crescent building where Formaggio’s uncle had his London pied-à-terre. There was an unpleasant number of big mirrors. ‘I’d need a referral to a psychiatrist. I’m worried about where a consultation may lead. If I get locked up here, I’ve got nobody to get me out.’

  ‘Dr Galavazi could pull strings for you. Surely?’

  Jasper was unconvinced. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Do.’ His friend’s frown unwrinkled. ‘Now, come in. Everyone’s eager to meet a real live professional guitarist.’

  ‘I’m more semi-professional at present.’

  ‘Don’t say that. I’ve been boasting about you. There’s an itinerant German photographer here. She’s a She, rather a striking She, at that. I’m reliably told she’s a Wunderkind. I had the devil of a time working out who she reminds me of before it hit me – you, de Zoet. She’s a female you. And, she happens to be unattached …’

  Jasper wondered why Formaggio was telling him this.

  Heinz Formaggio’s dinner party was high-brow, academic and free of drugs: the opposite of the musicians’ gatherings that Jasper had been to since arriving in London last November. By midnight the caterers had gone and only five overnight guests remained. Jasper had intended to walk back to Chetwynd Mews, but the icy weather, the brandy, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, gravity and a sheepskin rug had changed his mind. He semi-snoozed as wine-oiled voices discussed the future. ‘I give late capitalism twenty more years,’ predicted the seismologist. ‘By the end of the century we’ll have a Communist world government.’

  The philosopher issued a corvid rattle of Scouse laughter. ‘Bollocks! The Soviet Empire’s morally bankrupt since we learned about the gulags. Socialism’s a twitching corpse.’

  ‘Damn right,’ agreed the Kenyan. ‘Pinko-grey humanity will never share power with the rest of us. You all think, What if they do to us what we’ve done to them?’

  ‘The Bomb lengthens the odds on any future,’ said the climatologist. ‘The future’s an irradiated wasteland. Once a weapon’s been invented, it gets used.’

  ‘The H-bomb may be different,’ answered Mecca the photographer. Jasper liked her brushes-on-cymbals voice. ‘If you use it, and if your enemy has it, your children die also.’

  ‘A right bundle of laughs, you lot,’ said the economist. ‘How about Martian colonies? TV-telephones? Jetpacks, silver clothes, robots who say, “Affirmative” instead of “Yes”?’

  The Kenyan snorted. ‘I’m betting on intelligent robots who see that Homo sapiens is breeding like rabbits and killing the planet, who do the sensible thing, and use our weapons to wipe us out.’

  ‘What does the musician say?’ asked the climatologist. ‘Whither the future?’

  ‘It’s unknowable.’ Jasper forced himself upright. ‘Fifty years ago, how many foresaw Hiroshima, Dresden, the Blitz, Stalingrad, Auschwitz? A big wall dividing Berlin in two? Television? Decolonisation? China and America fighting a proxy war in Vietnam? Elvis Presley? The Stones? Stockhausen? Jodrell Bank? Plastics? Cures for polio, measles, syphilis? The Space Race? The present is a curtain. Most of us can’t see behind it. Those who do see – via luck or prescience – change what is there by seeing. That’s why it’s unknowable. Fundamentally. Intrinsically. I like adverbs.’

  The song ‘Flamenco Sketches’ finished. The LP clicked off. Silence was lush and lapping.

  ‘A bit of a swizz, Jasper,’ said the philosopher. ‘We asked for a prediction and all you said was “No idea” in an impressive way.’

  Jasper didn’t have the mental wattage needed to refute philosophers. He picked up Formaggio’s guitar. ‘May I?’

  ‘You don’t have to ask, maestro,’ said Formaggio.

  Jasper played ‘Asturias’ by Isaac Albéniz. Formaggio’s guitar wasn’t the best, but the half-dozen fell under the moon-swaying, sun-cracking and blood-thumping spell, and when Jasper finished, nobody moved. ‘In fifty years,’ said Jasper, ‘or five hundred, or five thousand, music will still do to people what it does to us now. That’s my prediction. It’s late.’

  Jasper awoke on Formaggio’s uncle’s sofa. He went to the kitchen, poured himself a mug of milk, lit a cigarette, sat by the rain-smeared window and watched the dark naked trees lining the crescent. The lawns were dotted with crocuses. A milkman in a sou’-wester swapped the empties for full bottles, doorstep by doorstep, putting jam-jars over the foil-tops to stop the birds getting to the milk. ‘You rise early,’ said Mecca. The thin pale young woman had her black velvet jacket on and looked ready to leave.

  Jasper wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘You play the guitar beautifully.’

  ‘I try.’

  ‘Where did you learn?’

  ‘In a sequence of rooms over six or seven years.’

  Mecca’s face became illegible.

  ‘Was that a weird answer? Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. Heinz said you are very wörtlich? Literalish?’

  ‘Literal. I try not to be, but it’s a hard thing to try not to be. Your voice is soothing. Like steel brushes on cymbals.’

  Mecca’s face did what it had done a moment ago.

  ‘That was weird too, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Steel brushes on cymbals. That’s nice.’

  Ask her, thinks Jasper. ‘Do you know Pink Floyd?’

  ‘Some of Mike’s assistants talk about this band.’

  ‘They’re playing at the UFO tomorrow night. I know Joe Boyd, who runs the club. If you’d like to go, he’ll let us in.’

  Mecca’s eyebrows went up. Surprise. ‘An official date?’

  ‘Official, unofficial, date, no date. As you wish.’

&nbs
p; ‘A young lady in a foreign city must be careful.’

  ‘True. Why don’t you interview me over dinner, first? If I strike you as too weird, you can vanish while I’m in the Gents. There’ll be no hard feelings. I’m not sure if I can even do hard feelings.’

  Mecca hesitated. ‘Do you have a phone number?’

  Two days, two nights and a Sunday morning later, Ho Kwok’s is steamy and loud with rapid-fire Chinese. A white porcelain cat with a swinging paw beckons good fortune in from Lisle Street. Jasper and Mecca are lucky to get a window seat.

  ‘Chinatown’s like Soho,’ says Jasper. ‘It’s made by outsiders and the usual rules don’t apply.’

  ‘An Enklave. Is the same in English?’

  Jasper nods. A waitress brings jasmine tea and takes their order of wonton noodles, without comment. Outside, collars are up and hats are pulled down. Across the street, between a Chinese herbalist’s and a dry-cleaner, a man takes a battered guitar from a cardboard case into which he puts a few coins from his own pocket. He launches into a gravel-throated bash at the Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’. Before he reaches the second verse, three Chinese grandmothers appear. They wield brooms and tell him, ‘Go Way, Go Way!’ The busker protests – ‘It’s a free bloomin’ country!’ – but the grandmothers sweep at his ankles. A few people stop and stare at the fun, and a skinny girl darts off with the coins in the busker’s guitar case. The busker hares after the thief, trips over, lands in the gutter and snaps his guitar’s neck. He stares at his broken guitar in disbelief and looks around for somebody to complain to, or blame, or roar at. He finds himself alone. Gusts of March wind roll a can along the gutter, past his feet. The ex-busker hobbles back to his guitar case, loads up the broken instrument, and limps off towards Leicester Square.