‘Do you mean LSD, specifically?’
‘According to The Times, there’s an epidemic.’
‘That’s a lurid word. People choose to use recreational drugs. Some of your employees may even use them.’
‘I assure you they do not!’ His voice goes up.
‘How do you know?’ Jasper’s stays low.
‘Because none of them are “junkies”!’
‘You enjoy a glass of wine, but you’re not an alcoholic. The same is true with drugs. It’s the pattern of consumption that does the damage. Heroin’s an exception, however. Heroin’s awful.’
A toilet cistern goes drip, drip, drip. Mr Holloway clasps his head. Exasperation? ‘I’ve heard your song, “Darkroom”. The lyrics are … Well, are you admitting that the song is drawn from …’
Jasper knows not to guess the end of other people’s sentences.
‘… personal experiences of … drug-taking?’
‘“Darkroom” was inspired by a young German photographer I met. She had a darkroom. Psychotropic drugs and I wouldn’t mix well. I’ve a condition that LSD might well inflame. Amphetamines aren’t as dangerous, but I’d drop notes, fluff lyrics and so forth if I took them. I’m afraid I’m really rather straight.’
Mr Holloway narrows his eyes, glances around the Gents and looks back. ‘And, um … Elf?’ He’s sweating.
‘Elf’s the same.’
‘Ah.’ Mr Holloway nods. ‘You are a strange fish, young man. But I’m glad we had this talk.’
‘If I am a strange fish, I am an honest strange fish.’
The door bangs open and Griff wafts in, backwards. His hair is askew, his scar is livid and his tie is tied around his head. ‘King Griff’ll be back,’ he tells at least two laughing women, ‘once he’s sunk the Bismarck.’ The door swings shut. ‘Eh up, Zooto. Dean thought you’d flown off with Puff the Magic Dragon.’
Mr Holloway gapes at Griff. Dismay?
Mr Holloway looks back at Jasper. Anger?
Mr Holloway storms out. Who knows?
‘What’s up with him?’ asks Griff. ‘It’s a wedding, not a funeral.’
Utopia Avenue start their slot with ‘Any Way The Wind Blows’. Elf sings and plays her acoustic guitar; Griff limits himself to brush-work, except for the point in the song when he got hit with the bottle at Brighton Poly – when he thumps on his bass drum, spins a stick in the air and catches it like a bandleader. The second song is Elf’s new song-in-progress, ‘Mona Lisa Sings The Blues’. She plays it on the piano. Dean complements her bass keys while Jasper noodles a solo in the middle. The women listen closely to the lyrics, which are changing with every rehearsal. Griff takes up his sticks for a beefy ‘I Put A Spell On You’ with Dean on vocals and Elf vamping on piano. Some of the younger guests begin dancing so the band stretch it out. Jasper plays a saxophonic solo on his Stratocaster. Looking up, he sees the bride and groom dancing. If I was better at envy, I’d envy those two: they have their families and they have each other. Bea is dancing, too, with a tall dark handsome student, though she looks at Jasper, who hands the solo to Dean, who plays a slapping bass run. Clive and Miranda Holloway stay seated. Jasper wishes he could read Elf’s father’s expression. He’s placed his hand on his wife’s, so maybe he’s calm again. Music connects. The Glossops are sitting in their chairs with their arms folded, stiff and visibly disgusted even to Jasper. Music can’t connect everyone …
Yet Jasper notices Don Glossop’s foot tapping and, almost imperceptibly, his wife’s head nodding in time to the rhythm.
Or maybe it can.
The sound of knocking Jasper heard on the cricket field during the match against Peterborough Grammar didn’t reoccur that day, or the next, or the next. Jasper persuaded himself it hadn’t occurred at all. Late one afternoon, the master of Swaffham House sent Jasper to the cathedral with a satchel full of sheet music for the chorister. An east wind was rising. It tore the last of the blossom from the cherry trees and shoved Jasper along The Gallery, one of Ely’s medieval streets. Up ahead, he heard a door being slammed open and shut and open and shut and open, and as he passed an archway, a wooden gate, torn loose from its hinges, bowled past him with demonic force, missing his sixteen-year-old head by no more than twelve inches, and smashed into kindling against a wall across the road. It could have snapped Jasper’s neck, cracked his ribs or staved in his skull. Shaken by the near miss, Jasper nevertheless hurried onwards to the cathedral, through the great door and into the cavernous gloom. Candles flickered. The organist wove chords. A few tourists were shuffling around, but Jasper did not pause to observe the masterpiece of medieval architecture. It was a bad evening to be out on. He walked around the cloisters to the chapter house, where the chorister had his office. He approached the door and was about to knock, when—
Knock-knock …
Jasper hadn’t knocked, but he had heard the sound.
He looked around for an explanation.
There was no explanation. Cautiously, Jasper raised his knuckles to knock again—
Knock-knock …
He hadn’t touched the door.
Was someone knocking on the inside of the door?
Why? A prank? Was this funny?
How were they timing it? There was no spyhole.
A third time Jasper readied his fist to knock.
Knock-knock …
Someone must be in the chorister’s room.
Jasper tried the door. Stiffly, it opened.
The chorister was behind his desk, across the room, reading The Times. ‘Ah, de Zoet. You know, a chap of your manners really should know better than to enter a room without knocking …’
Purple Flames
Dean steers the Beast off the A2 at the Wrotham Road roundabout. It’s a miracle we got this far. They’d had a flat tyre at Blackheath. Dean and Griff changed it while Jasper sat by the roadside. How come the rich own the world when they’re so bloody useless? The Beast’s engine is snarling. If the carburettor’s buggered, that’s another fifteen quid gone, easy, on top of the fiver for a new tyre. Despite two or three gigs a week, Dean still owes Moonwhale and Selmer’s Guitars an impossible number of pounds. I had more spare cash when I worked for Mr Craxi … We need a record deal, we need a hit, we need to raise our gig fee. Past the twenty-four-hour Watling Street café, favoured by long-distance truckers on the London–Dover–Continent run; past the old army barracks, mothballed for a future war; past a maze of council houses that was all fields when Dean was a boy; and over the lip of Windmill Hill, where gravity takes over and pulls the Beast down into Gravesend’s spillage of roofs; its cheek-by-jowl streets, alleyways, bomb sites, building sites, cranes, the railway to Ramsgate and Margate, steeples, gasworks, the new hospital sticking up like a box, blocks of flats and the sewage-brown Thames where barges dock at Imperial Paper, at Smollet Engineering, at the Blue Circle Cement works and, over on the Essex side, the Tilbury power stations. Smoke from the factory chimneys hangs over this hot, still, late-July afternoon.
‘Welcome to Paradise,’ pronounces Dean.
‘If you think this looks grim,’ says Griff, ‘just try Hull in the middle o’ January.’
‘Paradise is the road to Paradise,’ says Jasper.
Whatever the bollocks that means, thinks Dean.
‘It all looks very … authentic,’ says Elf.
Is she taking the piss? ‘Meaning?’ asks Dean.
‘Nothing,’ says Elf. ‘It was a pleasantry.’
‘Sorry it’s not all lovely like Richmond.’
‘No, I’m sorry I’m such a clueless little rich girl, so out of touch with reality. I’ll watch Coronation Street to make amends.’
Dean presses the clutch and lets the Beast coast downhill. ‘I thought yer were taking the piss.’
‘Why would I?’
‘It’s hard to tell with yer …’
‘“Clueless little rich girls”?’
Dean says nothing for a bit. ‘I’m on edge. Sorry.’
&nb
sp; Elf huffs. ‘Yeah. Well. Playing for the home crowd’s a big deal.’ The slope steepens and the Beast gains momentum. Truth is, thinks Dean, I’m worried Jasper and Elf’ll take one look at Nan and Bill and Ray and think, ‘Who are these troglodytes?’ I’m worried Nan and Bill and Ray’ll take one look at Jasper and Elf and think, ‘Christ, who are these la-di-dahs?’ I’m worried we’ll get booed offstage at the Captain Marlow. I’m worried we’ll be a laughing stock. And most of all, the closer I get to Harry Moffat, the colder and sicker I feel …
‘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 organised 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 grey. 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 coloured 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.
Passers-by slowed down to rubber-neck.
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 parlour 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 favourite. 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, 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 clasped 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 practised in lieu of living. It’s not a method I recommend.’
‘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 yer 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.
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 15