Bea asks, ‘So what does Utopia Avenue sound like?’
Elf chews. ‘A mix of Dean’s R&B, Jasper’s strange virtuosity, my folk roots, Griff’s jazz … I only hope the world’s ready for us.’
‘How have the gigs gone?’
‘Our debut was abysmal. It ended with Griff getting hit by a bottle. He had to go to hospital. He’s got a Frankenstein scar.’
Bea covers her mouth. ‘Jesus Christ. You never said.’
‘We were this far’ – Elf indicates half an inch – ‘from packing it in. Levon bullied us into going to our second gig, at the Goldhawk club. That went better. Until some Archie Kinnock fans showed up to hurl abuse at Griff and Jasper for “stabbing Archie in the back”. We left round the back. Our third gig was at the White Horse in Tottenham, where ten people showed up. Ten. Then, joy of joys, some folkies arrived at the end to berate me for “taking the thirty pieces of silver”.’
‘That must have been horrible. What did you say?’
‘“What silver?” The landlord refused to pay. Levon preferred to stay on decent terms than get shirty, so my earnings for that night was half a shandy and a packet of nuts.’
‘I only wish you’d told me.’
‘You’ve got exams and auditions to worry about. I chose all this. Mum would call it making my bed and lying in it.’
Bea lights a cigarette. ‘What about the fourth show?’
Elf chews a crispy bacon rind. ‘The Marquee.’
‘What? You played The Marquee? The Marquee? And you didn’t invite me? The Marquee? On Wardour Street? In Soho?’
Elf nods. ‘Don’t hate me.’
‘Why didn’t you say? I’d have rounded up half of Richmond!’
‘I know. What if we were booed off?’
The crackle and sizzle of deep frying escapes the kitchen.
Bea looks uncertain. ‘Were you booed off?’
Elf drops a sugar lump into her coffee and stirs …
The Marquee on Wardour Street was an underground tank of a venue, sloshing with a crowd of six or seven hundred. If someone had died, they would have stayed propped upright until after midnight. Elf was close to puking out of sheer fear. Utopia Avenue were second on a five-band bill entitled ‘Anything Can Happen’, arranged in order of fame, set-length and fee. Below Utopia Avenue was a five-piece from Plymouth called Doomed to Obscurity. Above them were three major acts: Traffic, whose single ‘Paper Sun’ was camped in the Top Five; Pink Floyd, London’s underground band heading overground; and Cream, whose LP Fresh Cream was spinning on a million teenagers’ turntables. A rumour was squirrelling about that Jimi Hendrix was in the venue, or had been, or would be. Steve Winwood was in the office, just up those stairs, being interviewed by Amy Boxer for the NME. God knows what strings Levon had pulled to get Utopia Avenue on this bill, but ‘Anything Can Happen’ was their biggest showcase so far. If they fluffed it, the gig could be their last showcase, too.
Elf had watched Doomed to Obscurity from the side, hoping they’d fulfil the promise of their name. None of the Pink Floyd, Traffic or Cream fans called for an encore. ‘Shift over a mo, Elf.’ Levon and a Marquee dogsbody were staggering past with her Hammond. Elf fought an impulse to flee …
… and suddenly it was time. Elf ordered her body onstage. Griff was setting up his kit. Dean and Jasper found the amp-levels they’d marked at the sound-check earlier. Elf’s body didn’t move. Her left hand was trembling, like her gran’s who had died of Parkinson’s. They had a thirty-minute slot. What if she pooched her chords on the ‘Darkroom’ middle-eighth? What if the crowd hated the electric ‘Any Way The Wind Blows’? What if the words flew out of her head on ‘A Raft And A River’, like they had done at the White Horse?
‘You’ll be fine,’ said Sandy Denny.
‘You’re always here when I need you.’
‘Moroccan courage?’ The singer offered her a lit joint.
‘Yes.’ Elf inhaled, held down the peaty smoke, and let it all out again. The buzz was instant. ‘Thanks.’
‘A big crowd,’ said Sandy. ‘I’m mildly jealous.’
‘They’re not here for us.’ Elf’s fingertips buzzed.
‘Oh, don’t talk bollocks, nobody’s—’ Sandy flapped out a hand and splashed a passing roadie’s beer. ‘Oops, sorry, mate. I’ve heard you rehearse. You’ve got something, you four. Just let it out. And if, if, the crowd are too stupid to appreciate it –’ Sandy slapped the Marshall stack ‘– crank these monsters up. Atomise the bastards.’
Dean appeared. ‘Hi, Sandy. Elf. Ready to go?’
Elf noticed her hand was steady again. ‘Do or die.’
‘Later, we shall imbibe spirits,’ promised Sandy.
Elf walked out and took her place at the keyboards. A chubby heckler leaning on the stage yelled out, ‘Strip joint’s over the road, darlin’!’ and his goons laughed. Liberated by the dope from a fear of consequences, Elf made a pistol with her fingers, aimed at the heckler’s eyes, and – her face deadly serious – mimed shooting him, three times, complete with recoil at the elbow. The heckler’s stupid grin faded. Elf blew away imaginary gun smoke, twirled her make-believe pistol around her trigger finger, slipped it into a make-believe holster and leaned into her mic. The Marquee’s impresario was supposed to introduce the band, but Elf waved him away. ‘We are Utopia Avenue,’ she told the Marquee, Soho and all England, ‘and we intend to shoot you down.’ She glanced at Griff, who looked surprised, holding his sticks poised in his ‘Go’ position; at Dean, whose approving nod told her, Ready; at Jasper, who was waiting for Elf’s ‘A-one, a-two, and a—’
Elf drops a second sugar cube into her coffee. ‘It went pretty well. We started with “Any Way The Wind Blows”. Then one of Dean’s rockier numbers, “Abandon Hope”. Then a new song of Jasper’s, “Darkroom”. Then my new one, “A Raft And A River”.’
‘Lucky Marquee. It’s not fair. When can I hear it?’
‘Soon, sis. Soon.’
‘Did you meet Steve Winwood?’
‘Well … actually, after our encore he came up and said a few kind words about my Hammond playing.’
‘Oh, my God,’ says Bea. ‘What did you say?’
Elf inhales coffee steam. ‘I just squeaked, “Thanks”, blurted out some stream-of-consciousness claptrap, and watched him go.’
‘Nice bum?’
‘I honestly didn’t notice.’ Sandie Shaw’s ‘Puppet On A String’ comes on the café’s radio. ‘If I ever record anything this simpering, give me a stern talking-to about those thirty pieces of silver.’
‘She’s getting more than thirty pieces, I bet. This song’s everywhere.’ They listen to the chorus.
Suddenly Elf can’t stand it any more. ‘We’ve split up. Me and Bruce. The duo’s finished. He’s staying in Paris. He dumped me. In February. It’s over.’ Elf’s heart’s pounding as if it’s happening now. ‘Now you know.’ I’m not going to cry. It’s been three months. She steels herself for Bea’s shock and outrage.
Bea looks unfazed. ‘I guessed.’
‘How?’
‘Every time his name came up, you’d change the subject.’
‘What about Mum and Dad and Immy?’
Bea examines her lilac fingernails. ‘If I’ve worked it out, Mum has. Dad’s clueless. Immy? I’m prrretty sure she’s not relying on Holloway and Fletcher for musical interludes at the wedding. Has she mentioned Bruce or your wedding booking lately?’
Actually, no. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Tact.’ Bea drains her coffee cup. ‘Bruce was charming, but charm in a guy is a warning sign. Like black and yellow stripes in nature mean, “Watch out, there are stings near this honey”.’
Elf is trembling and isn’t sure why. Her eyes meet the Mona Lisa’s above Mrs Biggs’s till. The most famous half-smile tells Elf, Suffering is the promise that life always keeps.
‘I really have to be off.’ Bea stands up and puts on her coat. ‘You go and record a masterpiece. Shall I tell Immy?
’
‘Please.’ It’s the path of least resistance. ‘And Mum.’
‘I’ll drop by your flat after the audition. If you want.’
‘Sure.’ Elf looks at the clock: 8.58. ‘Bea, tell me something. I’ve been to university. I’ve dropped out of university. I’ve survived the music scene for three years. You’re still at school. How come you know so much while I know bugger-all? How does that work?’
‘Basically,’ Bea hugs her sister goodbye, ‘I don’t believe people.’ She lets her sister go. ‘Basically, you do.’
Wedding Presence
At the end of its eight-minute journey from the sun, light passes through the stained glass of St Matthias Church in Richmond, London, and enters the dual darkrooms of Jasper’s eyeballs. The rods and cones packing his retinas convert the light into electrical impulses that travel along optic nerves into his brain, which translates the varying wavelengths of light into ‘Virgin Mary blue’, ‘blood of Christ red’, ‘Gethsemane green’, and interprets the images as twelve disciples, each occupying a segment of the cartwheel window. Vision begins in the heart of the sun. Jasper notes that Jesus’s disciples were, essentially, hippies: long hair, gowns, stoner expressions, irregular employment, spiritual convictions, dubious sleeping arrangements and a guru. The cartwheel begins to spin, so Jasper shuts his eyes and fights the slippage by naming the twelve, rummaging through boyhood scripture classes and church services: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, a.k.a. the Fab Four; Thomas, Jasper’s favourite, the one who demanded proof; Peter, who enjoyed the best solo career; Jude and Matthias, session players; and Judas Iscariot. Our Heavenly Father’s most sadistically deployed patsy. Before Jasper can finish off the list, however, he hears a knock. Rhythmic, faint, a sonic room or two below the vicar’s voice. Unmistakable.
Knock-knock, knock-knock, knock-knock.
He opens his eyes. The window has stopped spinning.
The knocking stops, too. But I heard it. He’s awake.
Jasper was told this day would come. The agony of uncertainty is over, at least. I was only ever on remission. He glances at Griff, to his right, decked out in an improvised wedding suit. His hands are drumming, softly, on his thighs. To his left, Dean’s trying to make one index finger turn clockwise and the other anticlockwise. I like playing with these guys and I don’t want it to end.
Perhaps Queludrin could slow the onset.
Perhaps.
Jasper was fifteen. Cherry trees around the cricket field blossomed wedding-dress white. Jasper lacked the body mass for rugby and the stamina for rowing, but he had the coordination, speed and patience for the First XI cricket team. Jasper was fielding in the outfield as Bishop’s Ely took on Peterborough Grammar. The grass was fresh-cut and the sun was raw. Ely Cathedral sat above the River Ouse like Noah’s Ark. The captain, a boy named Whitehead, ran up to the wicket and delivered a yorker. The batsman smacked the ball in Jasper’s direction. Shouts rang out. Jasper was already running to intercept the ball and scooped it up in mid-stride only a few feet shy of the boundary rope, preventing a four. His throw to Whitehead was accurate and earned a few seconds’ worth of applause from the home supporters. Behind, or inside, or over the clapping, for the very first time Jasper heard the knock-knock, knock-knock, knock-knock that would change, redefine, and nearly end his life. It was like knuckles on a far-off door, down a corridor … Or a little hammer on the far side of a wall. Jasper looked around for its source. The spectators were all on the far side of the pitch. The nearest boy was a classmate, Bundy, about forty paces away. Jasper called out: ‘Bundy?’
Bundy’s voice was nasal with hay fever. ‘What?’
‘Do you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’
‘That knocking sound.’
They listened to a Cambridgeshire morning’s unscored music: a tractor in a nearby field; cars; crows. The cathedral bells began their count to twelve. Underneath, a Knock-knock … Knock-knock … Knock-knock …
‘What knocking sound?’ asked Bundy.
‘That knock-knock … knock-knock …’
Bundy listened again. ‘If you lose your marbles and the men in white coats come to take you away, can I have your cricket bat?’
A fighter jet unzipped the horizon. Over the boundary rope, a chalk blue butterfly grazed on the Queen Anne’s lace. Jasper felt what you feel after someone leaves the room.
Whitehead was beginning his long run-up. The knocking had stopped. Or gone. Or maybe Jasper’s hearing was especially acute and he had heard someone chopping wood. Or maybe he had only imagined it. Whitehead bowled. The wicket leaped from the ground. ‘Hoooowwww-zzzzzzaaaaaaaaattt!’
‘Gifts can be treasured for a lifetime or forgotten the next moment.’ The vicar of St Matthias Church sounds, to Jasper, a lot like Prime Minister Harold Wilson. His voice is flat and buzzing, like a bee trapped in a tin. ‘Gifts can be sincere, or manipulative. Gifts may be material. Gifts may be invisible – a favour, a kind word, the end of a sulk. A sparrow on your bird-table. A song on the radio. A second chance. Impartial advice. Acceptance. The gift of gratitude, which allows us to recognise gifts as gifts. Life is a continuum of giving and receiving. Air, sunlight, sleep, food, water, love. For Christians, the Bible is the gift of God’s word, and buried within that vast gift, we find these treasured lines about gifts, given by Paul to a struggling church in Corinth. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then we’ll see God face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”’
Jasper, his ear pressed against a stone pillar, hears a heart.
The vicar continues: ‘“The greatest of these is love.” When faith turns its back on you, the Apostle advises, just try to love. When hope is snuffed out, just try to love. I say to Lawrence and Imogen that on the days when marriage does not resemble a rose garden – and they, too, happen – just try to love. Just try. True love is the act of trying to love. Effortless love is as dubious as effortless gardening …’
Jasper looks at the flowers around the altar. So this is a wedding. He’s never been to one before. He thinks of his mother, and wonders if she ever dreamed of having a wedding like this. Or if, when she discovered she was pregnant, that dream withered away. If you believe stories, romantic comedies and magazines, a wedding day is the happiest day of a woman’s life. A Mount Everest of joy. Everyone at St Matthias Church looks quite serious. In a church, in West London, on a ball of rock, hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour …
‘Aha, the mysterious missing diner.’ The man in the banquet hall at Epsom Country Club is too big for his chair. ‘Don Glossop, Dunlop Tyres, an old pal of Lawrence’s father.’ His handshake is a hand-clamp.
‘Hello, Mr Glossop. I remember you.’
‘Oh?’ Don Glossop juts out his lower jaw. ‘From where?’
‘I saw you in the church.’
‘Glad we got that cleared up.’ Don Glossop releases Jasper’s hand. ‘This is Brenda, my better half. I’m told. By her.’
Brenda Glossop has sculpted hair, prominent jewellery and a sinister way of saying, ‘Enchanted’.
‘Tell me something,’ says Don Glossop, then sneezes like a donkey braying. ‘Why do so many young men nowadays choose to ponce around looking like girls? It’s got so bad, I’m no longer sure which is which.’
‘Maybe you should look more closely,’ suggests Jasper.
Don Glossop frowns as if Jasper’s answer didn’t match his sentence. ‘But the hair! Why in God’s name don’t you get a haircut?’
Griff and Dean were with Jasper on the coach from St Matthias Church. Jasper wishes he hadn’t lost them.
Don Glossop peers into Jasper’s face: ‘Cat got your tongue?’
Jasper rewinds. Why in God’s name don’t you get a haircut? ‘I like my hai
r long. It’s that simple, really.’
Don Glossop squints. ‘You look like a ruddy nancy-boy!’
‘Only to you, Mr Glossop, and—’
‘Every – single – person in this banquet room’ll take one look at you just now and think, Nancy-boy! I guarantee it.’
Jasper avoids the onlooking faces. He sips water.
‘I think you’ll find that’s my water,’ declares a voice.
Concentrate: ‘If every homosexual on Earth – if that’s what you mean by “nancy-boy” – had long hair, your statement might be logical. But long hair’s only been fashionable for a few years. Surely, the homosexuals you’ve met were short-haired.’ Don Glossop looks blank so Jasper tries to help with examples. ‘In jail, or the Royal Navy, or public school, perhaps. One master at Ely was famous for interfering with boys, and he wore a wig like yours. Your logic is flawed. I suggest. Respectfully.’
‘What?’ Don Glossop has turned pale maroon. ‘What?’
Perhaps he’s hard of hearing. ‘I said, “One master at Ely was famous for interfering with boys, and he wore a wig—”’
‘My husband means,’ Brenda Glossop says, ‘he has spent no time whatsoever consorting with “types” like that.’
‘Then how could he be an expert on “nancy-boys”?’
‘It’s common knowledge!’ Don Glossop leans forwards, dangling his tie in his food. ‘Nancy-boys have long hair!’
‘Those awful Rolling Stones have long hair,’ says a woman with a frizzy halo of mauve hair. ‘And they’re a disgrace.’
‘National Service would’ve sorted them out, but that’s gone too now, of course.’ The new speaker wears a regimental tie and a medal. ‘Another nail in the coffin.’
‘My point exactly, Brigadier,’ says Don Glossop. ‘We didn’t smack the Nazis for six just for a mob of guitar-twanging oiks to turn Great Britain into a land of yeah-yeahs and ooo-babys.’
‘That Keith Jagger’s father worked in a factory,’ says Brenda Glossop. ‘Now he swans about in a Tudor mansion.’
‘And thanks to the Evening News,’ says Frizzy Halo, ‘we now know exactly what goes on inside, don’t we?’
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 13