Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  Levon held up his palms in resignation. ‘Fine. But don’t let Ilex know. Or anyone in the press. It’s … eccentric. Who throws first?’

  ‘I do,’ said Jasper. ‘Clockwise from the dice-owner.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dean, ‘as if there’s a rule-book.’

  ‘There is,’ replied Jasper. ‘Rule one: if there’s a draw, only the draw-ers throw again. Rule two: if the dice leaves the table, the thrower re-throws. Rule three: you shake the dice in your cupped hands for five seconds then you throw the dice – you can’t “place” it. Rule four: the result is final. No whingeing. No best-ofs.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Dean. ‘All right. You go first. Dice-owner.’

  Jasper shook the dice vigorously in his cupped hands; then dropped the dice. It landed on 3.

  ‘Could be worse.’ Dean scooped up the dice. ‘Could be better.’ He kissed his cupped hands, shook the dice and let it fall. It clattered, skidded, and landed on 2. ‘Shit.’

  Without fuss or ritual, Elf shook the dice and threw it. It dropped onto the glass and landed on 6 …

  … but skidded off the edge and onto the floor.

  ‘Throw again!’ said Dean. ‘Second rule. Throw again.’

  ‘I’m not deaf, Dean.’ Elf re-threw. She got a 1.

  ‘We rolled a dice,’ admits Elf in the Seven Dials restaurant.

  ‘A dice?’ checks their mother. ‘A dice?’

  ‘It seemed better than a shouting match.’

  Bea munches celery. ‘Does the record company know?’

  ‘They don’t need to. As it happens, Victor the A&R man wanted “Darkroom”. He may be regretting it now. It’s done nothing.’

  ‘Nobody can accuse you of slacking, darling.’ Her mum sounds indignant. ‘You’re all working like Trojans.’

  ‘We are.’ Elf finishes her champagne. It’s now fizz-less. ‘And we have nothing to show for it.’

  ‘Not true.’ Imogen reopens this week’s Melody Maker and reads out the review: ‘Take a prime cut of Pink Floyd, add a dash of Cream, a pinch of Dusty Springfield, marinade overnight and whaddaya get? “Darkroom”, a smashing debut served up by newcomers Utopia Avenue. Could be destined for great things.’

  ‘A nice thirty-word write-up is better than a nasty one.’ Elf squishes her thumb onto breadcrumbs. ‘But without airplay we’re just four keen beans paying to be in a band.’

  ‘Don’t get cold feet now,’ says Bea.

  ‘I like recording, when the guys aren’t being –’ dicks ‘– idiots. I love playing live. We’re upping each other’s games as songwriters. But the sharks, creeps, setbacks, the miles and miles in the van, the feeling that nobody’s listening … it wears you down. I can’t say you didn’t warn me, Mum.’

  ‘Big of you to say so, darling.’

  ‘I’ll say this too. Having two worried parents is a gift Dean and Jasper don’t have. Gosh, I’m blethering. It’s the champagne.’

  ‘If you can blame the champagne,’ says Elf’s mum, ‘so can I. When you told us you wanted to swap university for folk-singing, your father and I had our doubts.’

  ‘Uuuuuunderstatement,’ sing-songs Bea.

  ‘We were afraid you’d be taken advantage of. That you’d—’

  ‘End up penniless and up the duff,’ stage-whispers Bea.

  ‘Thank you, Bea. But look what you’ve done, Elf. A song on an American LP that went gold. Two EPs. Six hundred people paying to see you at Basingstoke town hall. You’re doing what you want to. Despite all the obstacles. That’s why I – we – and Dad too, even if he doesn’t say so, are jolly proud of you.’

  ‘It won’t get any better than this.’ Bea holds up her glass. The four of them clink over the table. ‘To “Darkroom”.’

  They drink. Elf records the memory.

  Imogen clears her throat. ‘Speaking of being up the duff …’

  Elf, Bea and their mother turn to look at her.

  Their mouths are already starting to droop.

  ‘I meant to wait until the coffee,’ says Imogen, ‘but the champagne’s gone to my head as well …’

  I’m going to be an aunt. Denmark Street is hot as engines and smells of tar. Pigeons row, not flap, through the humid air. Still half aglow from the champagne and buzzing from the coffee, Elf crosses Charing Cross Road. The doors of Foyles bookshop are open to ventilate the shady interior, and Elf feels the pull of its shelved labyrinth … But I need more unread books piling up like I need a bout of thrush. She walks through the ten-yard tunnel at the end of Manette Street under the Pillars of Hercules pub. A midday rent-boy says, ‘Love the hat, sweetheart.’ Elf nods graciously. Greek Street smells of drains. Sleeves and skirts are short. Elf passes two Caribbean-looking women chatting in rapid-fire patois. One is burping a baby girl, who vomits milky gloop down her mum.

  I’m going to be an aunt. Elf hurries down to Bateman Street and round the corner to the continental newsagent. She runs her thumb up the rack of Le Monde, Die Welt, Corriere della Sera, De Volkskrant. She and Bruce used to dream about Paris. He’s there now … while I’m working my arse off to flog a single nobody wants. A dustbin buzzes with flies. A rat noses about. Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ escapes through the open door of Andromeda Records. Elf resists the temptation to go in and see how many copies of ‘Darkroom’ … then succumbs and doubles back. On the New Releases shelf she counts fourteen singles; earlier there were sixteen. Two copies sold in two hours. If that happened at, say, 500 record shops nationwide, that’s 1,000 copies since 11 a.m … or 4,000 during an eight-hour day … times six days, that’s twenty-four thousand singles … But who am I kidding? This is Soho, where Utopia Avenue is known. How many ‘Darkroom’s are the likes of Peter Pope likely to sell? Elf leaves the shop, worried.

  Never mind. I’m going to be an aunt. In the window of Primo’s, a boy feeds his girlfriend ice-cream from a knickerbocker glory. He pulls out his licked-clean spoon. He looks plain. She’s gorgeous, like a she-wolf. I wish I was him. She squashes the thought and crosses Dean Street into Meard Street. It narrows into an alley as dim as dusk where a prostitute pulls a John through a side-door, her finger hooked through his belt. The alley ejects Elf onto the sunny side of Wardour Street. Cherries on a greengrocer’s stall gleam. Elf joins the queue. A few yards away there is a telephone box. A pane of glass is missing, and Elf hears the yelling woman inside: ‘This ain’t no divine conception, Gary! It’s yours! You PROMISED! Gary? GARY!’ The woman falls silent. Elf thinks, A classic folk-song narrative. The woman stumbles out of the phone box. Her mascara’s running. She’s pregnant. She plunges into the market-crowd, sobbing. The receiver rotates on its cable like a body on its rope.

  I’m going to be an aunt. Elf asks for a quarter-pound of cherries. The man weighs them, hands her the brown-paper bag and pockets her coins. ‘You’re looking pale today, pet. Burn the candle at both ends, and soon you’ve got no candle.’ Elf commits the line to memory and walks up Peter Street, squishing a cherry in her mouth. Summer oozes through the torn, sun-warmed skin. She spits out the pip. It plops down a drain.

  A funeral cortège is blocking Broadwick Street. Elf steps into the launderette to let the group pass. Chain-smoking Mrs Hughes, her hair in curlers, appears with a basket of laundry. ‘Nelly Macroom passed away last week. Her family’s got the chipper on Warwick Street.’ Mrs Hughes taps ash onto the floor. ‘She went to get her usual at Brenda’s salon last week. Her snooze in the perming helmet turned out to be eternal. Lucky so-and-so.’

  ‘Why lucky?’ asks Elf.

  ‘Her last ever hair-do was on the house.’

  The hearse draws level. Elf glimpses the coffin between the bodies of the living.

  ‘At your age,’ says Mrs Hughes, ‘you think getting old and dying’s what other people do. At my age, you think, Where did it all go? If you want to do something, do it. ’Cause your turn to be in that box, it’s coming. No doctor, no diet, no nothing’ll keep it away. It’ll be here. Quick as’ – she snaps her fingers and
Elf blinks – ‘that.’

  Livonia Street is a cobbled cul-de-sac with an alley that cuts through to Portland Mews, used only by Soho locals or lost tourists. Elf slips her key into the door marked ‘9’, between a secretive locksmith on one side and a seamstress’s shop, run by several Russian sisters, on the other. Elf’s flat is upstairs from Mr Watney, a widower who lives on the first floor with his corgis, minds his own business and is nearly deaf, a useful quality in a pianist’s neighbour. In the dingy hallway Elf finds three letters and a bill on the doormat, all for Mr Watney. She props them on the shelf by his door and climbs two flights of scuffed steps to her own front door. Inside, Angus’s shoes are placed side by side and Fats Domino is singing ‘Blueberry Hill’ on the radio. Angus calls from the bathroom, ‘Miss Holloway, I presume?’

  Elf slips off her shoes. ‘Mr Kirk, I trust.’

  ‘Be warned, if you’re in company,’ Angus has a full-tilt Highlands accent, ‘I’m in the nip.’

  ‘At ease, soldier, I’m alone.’ She hangs her handbag and hat on the coatstand and goes through to the steamy bathroom.

  Angus is in the bath, reading Oz. His groin is hidden by a raft of bubblebath foam. ‘Your modesty-preserver is the same shape as Antarctica.’ Elf takes the chair. ‘You’re boiled pink.’

  ‘How was lunch?’

  ‘I’m going to be an aunt. Imogen’s three months gone.’

  ‘Brilliant news. Right?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘You can show the wee sprog how to roll joints. Then when Imogen finds out, it’ll be “But, Mam, Aunty Elf said I could!”’

  Elf flexes her toes. They’re tired from her heels. ‘What’s showing at the Palace tonight?’

  ‘In the Heat of the Night on screen one. I’m doing Bonnie and Clyde on screen two. I could smuggle you in, if you fancy it.’

  ‘It’s Basingstoke tonight.’

  ‘Just tell ’em you’d rather be with your Highland hunk.’

  ‘It won’t wash, alas. Six hundred tickets sold so far.’

  Angus makes an impressed noise. ‘When are you leaving?’

  ‘Five. The Beast’s at Jasper’s. Are you starting at six?’

  ‘Aye, but I need to go by my bedsit, drop off my crusty cacks and pick up some fresh ones so I should leave here by four.’

  Elf looks at her watch. ‘It’s almost two thirty now, so … we have ninety minutes to ourselves, Mr Kirk.’

  ‘We could play three games of Scrabble.’

  ‘We could boil twenty eggs, one after the other.’

  ‘Or listen to Sergeant Pepper’s. Twice.’

  Elf perches on the bathtub, tilts Angus’s head back, and kisses him. She thinks of the she-wolf in the window of Primo’s. She opens her eyes to see if Angus is watching her. Bruce always does. Did. Angus never has. It makes her feel in charge.

  ‘Deep beneath the frozen wastes of Antarctica,’ intones Angus, ‘an ancient menace awakes …’

  Angus dozes off. Elf wonders what it’s like to be the guy. Her pillow squishes Angus’s face out of shape. Every lover is a lesson and Angus’s lesson is that kindness is sexy. The Beach Boys are singing ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)’ on Radio Bluebeard. It’s a much weirder song than it admits to being, Elf thinks. The wild swans in the mobile over her bed rotate on their endless flight through time. Bea made it for her as a house-warming present. Angus makes a growling noise in his sleep. The gawky, deep-eye-socketed Scot has grown on her. They met in May, he slept over a few nights in June, and now he’s here more nights than not. She introduced him to the band last week. Dean liked him and Jasper liked him, as much as Jasper likes anyone. Griff was a bit off with him. Elf likes the novelty of not going out with a musician. Angus thinks music is magic, which makes Elf a magician. She doesn’t love Angus with that punch-drunk love she loved Bruce with, but liking him is enough. Angus is also proof that she likes men, and that the voice on the number 97 bus was a malicious lie, not a suppressed truth.

  Right?

  Obviously.

  Elf lights a cigarette and shoots out smoke at the swans. Thank God for the Pill, and for the female GPs who’ll prescribe it. The Beach Boys finish their harmonies, and the next song is so familiar it takes Elf a few free-falling seconds to identify it and a few more seconds to believe it …

  ‘Darkroom’ – her chords, her Farfisa – is coming from her Hacker radio. In comes Dean’s bass; in comes Griff’s snare drum; and here’s Jasper’s Lennon-esque phrasing: ‘You took me to your darkroom and you slipped inside my mind …’

  Elf’s heart wallops. IT’S US!

  ‘… where negatives turn positive, where IOUs are signed …’ Pirate radio audience sizes are anybody’s guess, but surely tens of thousands are hearing Utopia Avenue right now. Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand? What if they hate it? What if they see I’m bluffing it? What if they love it? What if they rush out and buy it? She wants to hide. She wants to savour this once-in-a-lifetime first. She wants to tell everyone she knows. ‘Angus!’

  ‘Wassityeahwha’?’

  ‘Listen! The radio!’

  Angus listens. ‘That’s you.’

  Elf can only nod. They listen to the whole song. Bat Segundo only speaks after Elf’s closing refrain. ‘That slice of pop perfection was “Darkroom”, a brand-new song by Utopia Avenue. They’re English, they’re happening, and they’re this week’s Tip-for-the-Top brought to you in proud association with Rocket Cola, the with-it pop drink for the with-it crowd – and if that didn’t give you goosebumps, please see your doctor because you may well be dead. Before Utopia Avenue was the Beach Boys, “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)”, and coming up before we go to the news, we—’

  Angus turns off the radio. ‘You’ll be on Top of the Pops.’

  ‘Only if they send a limo to pick me up,’ says Elf. Angus isn’t smiling, so Elf adds, ‘I’m joking’.

  ‘I’m not,’ replies Angus. ‘This is the start.’

  Don’t even dream it, Elf warns herself.

  Dean picks up: ‘We were just on Bat Segundo.’

  ‘I know. I know! Did Jasper hear it too?’

  ‘Dunno. He’s out. Griff’s not here yet. Should I name my first child “Bat” or “Segundo”?’

  ‘Dean Bat Bluebeard Segundo Moss.’

  ‘This is lift-off, Elf. I bloody feel it.’

  ‘So do I. So do I.’

  Dean laughs. ‘I … God … The radio! Us. The Beachboys!’

  ‘I’ll call Moonwhale. See you later.’

  ‘See yer.’

  Bethany picks up: ‘Good afternoon – Moonwhale Management?’

  ‘Bethany – “Darkroom” was on Bat Segundo.’

  Bethany’s tone turns to giddy delight. ‘Did you catch it?’

  Elf laughs. ‘I caught it.’

  ‘I’ll put you through to Levon.’

  Levon is pleased in his urbane Canadian way. ‘Congratulations. It’s the start of the start. You’re off the blocks.’

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘For once, no. Funnily enough, though, Victor French called earlier to say John Peel’s playing “Darkroom” on The Perfumed Garden tomorrow, but Bat beat him to the draw. It’s only two plays, but one’s enough to trigger a chain reaction. The Home Office—’

  Angus is waving from Elf’s front door. Elf blows him a kiss. Angus pretends to be shot through the heart and staggers off.

  ‘—is closing down the pirate radio ships any day now, so no more Radio Bluebeard or Radio London. But I’m reliably informed John Peel and Bat Segundo are in talks with the BBC to work on Radio One. They’re pals, and a nice lunch with both of them would be a smart investment, if you’re free next week.’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘I’ll set something up. And … sorry, Elf, Bethany’s saying Ilex is on the other line.’

  ‘Go.’

  ‘I’ll see you at De Zoet Towers later.’

  Elf goes to the kitchen window to watch Angus exiting h
er building into Livonia Street below. He disappears into Berwick Street without a backward glance. She goes to the bathroom and asks her reflection if she just dreamed that Utopia Avenue was on the radio.

  ‘It happened,’ her reflection tells her.

  ‘Will you still be my face if I’m famous?’

  ‘Kiss me,’ replies her reflection.

  So Elf does, on the lips.

  Jasper’s right … mirrors really are strange.

  Her reflection laughs, and Elf goes to straighten up her bed, but Angus has already done it. She goes back to the kitchen and pours herself a glass of milk, just as the key turns in the door. She wonders what Angus forgot. His coat?

  ‘Hiya, Wombat!’

  The floor sways like the deck of a ship.

  ‘Hey,’ says Bruce, ‘you’re spilling that milk!’

  So I am. She puts down the bottle.

  He says, ‘Take two. “Hiya, Wombat!”’

  Everything is still and very quiet.

  ‘Wh-what-wh— why? How—’

  ‘Overnight ferry.’ He dumps his rucksack by the coatstand. ‘Haven’t eaten since Calais – so there’s very little I wouldn’t do for a cheese ’n’ ham sarnie. So how in hell have you been?’ He runs his hands back through his lush golden hair. He’s deeply tanned and a little older. ‘God, I missed you.’

  Elf takes a few steps back, into the kitchen cupboard. ‘Hang on – wait – I …’

  Bruce looks confused, then not. ‘Ah … You didn’t get my postcard, I guess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All praise Royal Mail. Or maybe the French facteur cocked up.’ Bruce walks over to the kitchen sink, slaps water over his face, pours himself a mug of water and drinks. He eyes her up. ‘New hair, right? Lost a few pounds, too.’ He drapes himself along the sofa, showing midriff. ‘Cheese and pickle’ll do fine, if you’ve got no ham.’

  Elf feels as if she’s in the wrong play. ‘You dumped me. You pissed off to Paris. You do remember that?’

  Bruce winces. ‘“Dumped”? We needed oxygen. We’re artists.’

  ‘No. You don’t,’ she steels her voice, ‘dump me, break my heart, then turn up and act like the last six months never happened.’