Utopia Avenue : A Novel

by Mitchell, David

  His jokey pout says, Am I in the dog-house?

  ‘I’m serious.’

  His jokey pout fades. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. I came straight here from Charing Cross. I …’

  ‘Maybe Vanessa will be pleased. I’ve got very mixed feelings.’

  Bruce scrunches up his face as if he can’t quite place the name … ‘Oh, her? Oh, Wombat. Jealousy doesn’t suit you.’

  So she dumped him. ‘Try Wotsit.’

  ‘Wotsit’s back in Greece. People move on.’

  ‘What if I’ve moved on too?’

  Bruce pretends she didn’t just say that. ‘Hey, I heard about Utopia Avenue. Review in Melody Maker. Nice one. May I?’ He takes one of her Camels from the little table and lights up.

  Elf fights an impulse to knock it from his hand.

  ‘A long way from Islington Folk Den, eh? I’m proud of you.’

  Elf notices she has no desire to tell him about ‘Darkroom’ on The Bat Segundo Show. ‘Look, I’ve got a gig tonight, so—’

  ‘Cool. I’ll come along and guard your handbag with my life. I could even play, if you’re a guitarist short. Where’s the gig?’

  ‘Basingstoke, but—’

  ‘One of those nowhere places?’

  Elf sighs. I have to say it. ‘You walked out, Bruce. It’s over. We’re over. And I’d like my key back.’

  Bruce lifts his eyebrows, like a teacher waiting for the truth to emerge. ‘And are we “seeing” anyone else?’

  ‘Give me my key. Please.’ Elf hates that ‘please’.

  But Bruce’s cockiness ebbs away. The fridge shudders into silence. ‘What’s good for the gander’s good for the goose, I s’pose.’ He puts the key on the arm of the sofa. ‘Sorry. About February. About everything. The more of a dingo’s arse I am, the more I bluster. I know I can’t wave a magic wand, fix the damage …’ His voice wobbles. ‘Or bring back Fletcher and Holloway.’

  Elf’s throat contracts. ‘True.’

  ‘Thinking that you still hate me, that’s … the worst. Before I throw myself off Waterloo Bridge –’ he makes a brave face ‘– could I … could we … part as mates?’

  Careful. Elf folds her arms. ‘Your apology’s a few months late, but okay. We’re parting as mates. Goodbye.’

  Bruce shuts his eyes. To Elf’s surprise, they start to stream. ‘God, I hate my guts sometimes.’

  ‘I can understand why,’ says Elf. ‘Sometimes.’

  He dabs his eyes on his granddad shirt. ‘Shit, I’m sorry, Elf. But … I’m in a bit of trouble.’

  Drugs? Syphilis? Crime? ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The arse fell out of France. The cops beat me up for busking on the Champs-Élysées. They nicked my guitar. My flatmate did a runner with my savings, clothes, everything. I’m broke. I’ve got two francs, seven centimes, eight shillings and a threepenny bit. I – I – I came via Toby Green’s office.’ Bruce is red and sweaty. ‘He was out, but his secretary checked our “Shepherd’s Crook” royalties.’

  ‘It’s not a lot.’

  ‘It won’t buy a cup of pigeon food. I know I’m a king of the shits for asking you, of all people, but … I honestly, honestly, don’t have anyone else to turn to. So I’m …’ he takes a deep breath to compose himself ‘… I’m begging. Please. If there’s any way you can help … any way at all … please … help.’

  The Prize

  ‘A very very very good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome one and all to this week’s Top of the Pops. I hope you’re feeling fit and well, and if you’re not feeling fit and well, I hope this next half-hour cheers you up.’ The golden mop-topped Jimmy Savile smiles for the TV camera. ‘So, how’s about we start off with a nice, brisk number from one of the best new bands of the summer – and, gentlemen, do not adjust your TV set when you cop a load of the scrrrumdiddleyumptious keyboard player! With no further ado – in at number nineteen with their debut song “Darkroom” – the one, the only, the weird, the wonderful … Utopia Avenue!’

  Electric ‘APPLAUSE’ signs light up; a cheer goes up; Jasper glances offstage at Levon, Bea, Dean’s girlfriend Jude, and Victor French from Ilex. Here we go. The intro comes over the PA and the thirty or forty hip young things selected for the dance-floor sway to Elf’s chords, which she now pretends to play on her unplugged-in Farfisa. Bea and Jude spent three days on Elf’s outfit: an American Indian squaw look with a tasselled suede embroidered headband and glass beads. Dean is in a dusty pink frock coat he bought at the Marshmallow Cricket Bat. He does an Elvis lip-curl for the camera. Griff, drumming on a kit with sound-deadening rubber mats and a special plastic cymbal that goes Tssh!, sports a jazzer’s loose shirt and a psychedelic waistcoat. Vocals. Jasper leans into the mic and lip-synchs his vocal track. A second camera moves closer to Elf. A producer told them that Elf’s the first woman ever to ‘play’ an instrument on Top of the Pops. Jasper moves in to the mic:

  You took me to your darkroom

  Where secrets get undressed.

  Jerusalem is east of there,

  And Mecca’s to the west …

  Dean joins Elf at her mic for the second chorus. He points into the camera’s lens, and out of millions of TV sets across Great Britain. After the bridge a third camera moves in to catch Griff’s drum-burst before Jasper’s solo. He plays it on his unplugged-in Strat as he would onstage, complete with bent notes and shading. Back to Elf and Dean for the last chorus, cut off midway by a big cheer from the audience. APPLAUSE! Their three minutes are up.

  An assistant hustles the band offstage as Jimmy Savile, nestling in a bevy of miniskirted women, introduces the next band on the adjacent stage. ‘How’s about that, then, ladies and gentlemen? “Darkroom” by Utopia Avenue and isn’t it a cracker? Now then now then now then. Three clues about our next guests. Clue one: they’re all quite small. Clue two: they have faces. Clue three: they’re itchy and live in a park. Who can they be? Why, it’s The Small Faces and their latest dotty ditty – “Itchycoo Park”!’

  From the wings, Jasper and Griff watch Diana Ross and the Supremes mime ‘Reflections’. Jasper sees the whites of Diana Ross’s eyes. Elf joins him and Griff. Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong make every other act look amateurish. Us included. Their poise, dark skin and silver gowns are perfect for black-and-white screens. Jasper – and most of Great Britain, he guesses – is entranced by their minimal choreography, how they embody the song, serve it, mean it. No other song on the show – ‘Itchycoo Park’, Traffic’s ‘Hole In My Shoe’, the Move’s ‘Flowers In The Rain, and the Flowerpot Men’s ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’ – struck Jasper as believed in by anyone, from writer to punter.

  When ‘Reflections’ ends, Diana Ross responds to the loud applause with a modest wave and a smile before she and the Supremes are ushered past. As she passes Jasper, he inhales a few of the molecules left in her wake.

  ‘Think we’ll get there some day?’ Elf asks, in a low voice.

  ‘Where?’ asks Jasper.

  ‘America.’

  Jasper considers the question.

  ‘If Herman’s fookin’ Hermits can,’ growls Griff, ‘we will.’

  While Engelbert Humperdinck ends the show with ‘The Last Waltz’, the backstage party at the BBC Lime Grove Studios – ‘Slime Grove’ to its friends – kicks off the London scene’s Thursday-to-Sunday weekend. Musicians, managers, groupies, wives, columnists and hangers-on are circulating, plotting, flirting, bitching and backstabbing. Levon, Jasper and Howie Stoker are in the corner with Victor French and Andrew Loog Oldham. Elf and Bruce – his hand on her hip – are with Bea, Jude and Dean in a huddle with half of Traffic.

  The reappearance of Elf’s ex-boyfriend, and Elf’s abrupt ejection of Angus, triggered a big argument at Pavel Z’s, when Elf brought Bruce to meet the band. As far as Jasper could tell, Dean was angry with Elf for taking Bruce back because Dean thought Bruce had treated Elf badly in the past, and might treat her badly again. At that point, Bruce left, telling Elf he’d get dinne
r ready for when she came home. Elf got angry with Dean because she thought her choice of boyfriend was none of Dean’s business, especially when Dean was two-timing Jude with the Patisserie Valerie waitress from Scunthorpe. That made Dean even angrier, which made Elf even more scornful. Griff began a few drumming exercises, which made both Dean and Elf angry with him. Griff played louder. Jasper was by then totally lost. Why, he wondered, do Normals get so worked up about who’s having sex with whom? Surely, people who want to sleep with each other will do so, until one or both no longer want it. Then it ends. Like the end of the mating season in the animal kingdom. If everyone just accepted that, there would be no more heartache.

  Maybe, Dean is accepting it now. Griff is on a sofa with giggling girls and a saucer-eyed Keith Moon miming a story involving lots of bouncing. Jasper checks his facts: I’m in a band; we got signed; I wrote a song; it’s at number nineteen; we just mimed it on Top of the Pops. Millions saw it.

  Yes, these facts appear to be reliable.

  Jasper thinks of ‘Darkroom’ as a cloud of dandelion seeds, floating across the airwaves, taking root in minds from the Shetlands to the Scillies. They fly through time, too. Perhaps ‘Darkroom’ will land in the minds of people not yet born, or whose parents are not yet born. Who knows? Jasper bumps into a helmet of gold hair, a lime shirt and a magenta tie. He apologises to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones.

  Brian Jones says, ‘No bones broken.’ He puts a cigarette into his mouth and asks, ‘Got a light?’

  Jasper obliges. ‘Congratulations on “We Love You”.’

  ‘Oh, you like that one, do you?’

  ‘It’s a relentless knock-out.’

  Brian Jones holds in smoke, then sighs it out. ‘I play Mellotron on it. Mellotrons are bitches. It’s the delay. Ought I to know you?’

  ‘I’m Jasper. I play guitar in Utopia Avenue.’

  ‘Nice for a holiday. Wouldn’t want to live there.’

  Jasper wonders if that was a joke. ‘Why are you the only Rolling Stone here?’

  Brian Jones frowns. ‘Between us … I don’t quite know.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Things get lodged in my head, sometimes.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Well, the notion that we were doing “We Love You” on Top of the Pops tonight. So, I dropped everything and had Tom drive me in … only to find a lot of baffled BBC chaps who assured me that no, in fact the Stones aren’t performing on the show and never were.’

  ‘So … someone made a hoax call, are you saying?’

  ‘No. It’s more like a message in my head.’

  Jasper thinks of Knock Knock. ‘A message?’

  Brian Jones slouches against the wall. ‘Or the memory of a message. But when you try to find out where it came from, there’s nothing. Like … graffiti that vanishes the moment it’s read.’

  ‘Are you high?’ asks Jasper.

  ‘I wish.’

  ‘Are you ever visited by incorporeal beings?’

  Brian Jones moved the curtain of gold hair from his bloodshot eyes and looked at Jasper properly. ‘Speak to me.’

  During Jasper’s ten years at Bishop’s Ely, he made no enemies worthy of the title and only one friend. Heinz Formaggio was his roommate and the son of Swiss scientists. Three weeks after the first knock-knock on the cricket pitch, when the number of ‘incidents’ had reached double figures, Jasper told his roommate what he was hearing. They were under an oak tree during a free period. Formaggio leaned against the tree while Jasper spoke for half an hour. He didn’t reply for a while. Bees perused the clover. Lines of birdsong got tangled up. A train crossed the fen, heading north.

  ‘Have you told anyone else?’ Formaggio finally said.

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing I want to advertise.’

  ‘Damn right.’

  A burly groundsman pushed a lawnmower.

  Jasper asked, ‘Do you have any theories?’

  Formaggio knitted his fingers. ‘I have four. Theory A posits that the knock-knocks are a fabrication to seek attention.’

  ‘They’re not.’

  ‘You are morbidly honest, de Zoet. Theory A is dismissed.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Theory B posits that the sound is made by a supernatural entity. We might christen him, her, or it “Knock Knock”.’

  ‘It’s a he. “Supernatural entity” isn’t very scientific.’

  ‘Ghosts, demons, angels are anti-scientific and yet, in a straw poll, I’d wager more people believe in these things than believe in the General Theory of Relativity. Why “he”?’

  ‘I don’t know how I know. He’s a he. I’m no fan of Theory B. Being a majority is no guarantee of being right.’

  Formaggio nodded. ‘Also, ghosts manifest. Angels intervene. Demons terrorise. They don’t just make knocking noises. This smacks of a third-rate seance. Let’s reject Theory B for now.’

  Through the open windows of the music room, across the lawn, wafts the sound of thirty boys singing ‘Summer is a-cumin in …’

  ‘You’ll like Theory C the least. It posits that Knock Knock is a psychosis, with no external reality. In a nutshell: you’re nuts.’

  Boys spilled out of the Old Palace down the slope.

  ‘But I hear Knock Knock as clearly as I hear you.’

  ‘Did Joan of Arc really hear the voice of God?’

  A cloud shifted and the oak tree cast a dappled net. ‘So the more real Knock Knock feels, the crazier I am?’

  Formaggio took off his glasses to clean the lenses. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Before that cricket match, I was the only one living in my head. Now, there are two. Even when Knock Knock isn’t knocking, I know he’s there. I know that sounds crazy. I can’t prove I’m not, I suppose. But can you prove I am?’

  Through the window of the music room came the music master’s voice: ‘No no no – that will not do!’

  ‘So what’s Theory D?’ asks Jasper.

  ‘It’s Theory X. Theory X concedes that Knock Knock is neither a lie nor a ghost nor a psychotic episode but an unknown, X.’

  ‘Isn’t Theory X just a fancy way of saying, “I’m clueless”?’

  ‘Literally so: we have no clues. Theory X is about gathering them. Have you tried to engage with Knock Knock?’

  ‘Every day at prayers, I sort of “broadcast” a message: “Speak to me” or “Who are you?” or “What do you want?”’

  ‘No reply so far?’

  ‘No reply so far.’

  Formaggio blew a ladybird off his thumb. ‘We need to think scientifically. Not like a boy who’s afraid he’s insane or haunted.’

  ‘How do we think scientifically?’

  ‘Record the durations, times and patterns of the knocks. Analyse the data. Are the “visitations” random? Are there patterns? Observe. Is Knock Knock tied to Ely, or will he travel to Zeeland in July?’ Bells rang, doves cooed, a mower mowed. ‘Could Knock Knock be some kind of messenger? If so, what’s the message?’

  ‘A “knock-knock-knock” in your head isn’t much of a message.’ Brian Jones cuts in before Jasper gets to what happened next. ‘Is that a birthmark? Or a Hindu spot?’ The Rolling Stone is peering between Jasper’s eyebrows with drug-constricted pupils. He taps the place. ‘Here. It’s closing. It’s shy. Ought I to know you?’

  ‘I’m Jasper. I play guitar in Utopia Avenue.’

  ‘In Gloucestershire, “jaspers” are wasps.’ Brian Jones asks someone over Jasper’s shoulder. ‘I say, Steve. Do you East End herberts call wasps “jaspers”?’

  ‘We don’t call the little bastards nothing. We just splat ’em.’ Steve Marriott of the Small Faces hands Jasper a brown ale. ‘Welcome to the big-time. And for His Satanic Majesty –’ Steve Marriot presses a small Ogden’s snuffbox into Brian Jones’s palm ‘– Happy birthday.’

  ‘Is it today?’ Brian Jones blinks at the box. ‘Snuff?’

  Steve Marriott squeezes a nostril flat and mimes a snort.

  ‘O
h. In that case, I’m off to powder my nose …’

  Jasper takes a swig from the brown ale.

  ‘You just broke the first rule,’ says Steve Marriott. ‘Never accept a drink from a stranger. Could be spiked.’

  ‘You’re not a stranger,’ says Jasper. ‘You’re Steve Marriott.’

  The singer smiles as if Jasper had made a joke. ‘That chick in your band. Is she a gimmick, or does she really play?’

  ‘Elf’s no gimmick. She plays. She sings. She writes.’

  Steve Marriott juts out his jaw. ‘It’s novel, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘There’s Grace Slick. Jefferson Airplane.’

  ‘She sings, she’s sexy as hell, but she don’t play.’

  ‘Rosetta Tharpe.’

  ‘Rosetta Tharpe has a band. She’s not in one.’

  ‘The Carter Family.’

  ‘They’re a real family first who became a band second.’

  ‘Now then, now then.’ A hand grips Jasper’s shoulder, a nasal Yorkshire voice fills his ear. ‘There’s enough star wattage in this room to light up Essex, but I came straight to you, good Sir Jasper, to congratulate you on popping your Top of the Pops cherry.’ Jimmy Savile puffs a fat cigar. ‘How was it for you?’

  ‘It all went by in a bit of blur,’ admits Jasper.

  ‘That’s what the ladies tell young Stephen here.’ Jimmy Savile leers at Steve Marriott. ‘Who is arisen from the dead.’

  ‘Hadn’t noticed I’d died, Jimmy,’ says Steve Marriott.

  ‘The artist’s always the last to know. Jasper: is Captain Didgeridoo over there nobbing your lusty, busty organ player?’

  ‘If you mean Elf and Bruce, they share a flat, yes.’

  ‘She’s a bit old for you, Jimmy, surely,’ says the singer. ‘I mean, she’s over sixteen. Legal, like.’

  ‘Ooofff!’ Jimmy Savile’s chin juts out. ‘Marriott’s right hook strikes again! Is that what you’re aiming at when your Adventures in Stardom sputter out? Boxing? I can’t see it myself. Not with that physique. You’re not called the “Small” Faces for nothing. How does it feel, Young Steven? Getting utterly, royally fleeced out of every last penny by Don Arden? Not even owning the clothes you stand up in? Don’t you just want to shrivel up and die? I know I would.’