The first lady’s eyes open wide. ‘Is that so? Was he brought to any kind of justice? Couldn’t the governor intervene?’
‘Once the U-boat menace was over, the scoundrel high-tailed it to South Africa. Miss Wallace was left alone, in that state, in Bombay, with nothing but a third-class passage. What with the delays at Bombay and Aden, however, and nature taking its course earlier than expected …’
‘While it takes two to tango,’ the first lady fans herself, ‘one would need a heart of stone not to feel for the poor woman.’
Zoom in on … the coffin, and Jasper at three days old.
Second Lady voiceover: ‘Look at the sorry mite. Motherless, illegitimate. Hardly the best start in life, is it?’
Four sailors in uniform carry the coffin to the edge of the railing. A fifth plays The Last Post.
Cut to – underwater. The hull of the Salisbury floats above. The sun is an orb of dazzle. A coffin plunges through the roof of the surface. Fish dart away. Milly Wallace’s coffin sinks … sinks … sinks and settles on the ruckled seabed. The Salisbury’s propellers churn and rumble. The vessel moves off, leaving strains of Saint-Saëns’ ‘Aquarium’ in its wake. Fish inspect this latest offering.
For the first time he can remember, Jasper’s eyes swell with tears. It is an alien, astonishing sensation. So this is how it feels.
Might Milly Wallace have a message? The coffin grows until its lid fills the screen. Jasper presses his ear against the wood …
Knock –
Knock knock knock –
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
Jasper’s up and running for the exit …
People fill the corridor, talking, flirting, drinking, smoking, arguing. Jasper’s gasping for breath. His heart’s thumping. The knocking didn’t follow Jasper up the steep Escher-like stairs, but the sense of a death sentence did. Knock Knock’s excavating himself and there’s nothing I can do about it. Brian Jones appears in a cape, beads and gold. ‘I’ve a bone to pick with you.’ His breath is yeasty and ill. ‘The lyrics in “The Prize”. I recognise a few lines. From that night in the Scotch.’
Jasper hauls his thoughts from Knock Knock to the ailing Stone. ‘It’s true. Some of them are yours. Thank you.’
‘The magic word.’ Brian Jones makes the sign of the cross. ‘I absolve you. See? I come up with tons of ideas for Mick and Keith but all I get from them is sarcasm. I ought to write songs, you know. Even Wyman’s got one on Satanic Travesties. That settles it. I begin. Tomorrow. Got any drugs?’
‘Lord de Zoet of Mayfair and King Brian of Cotchford Farm.’ Rod Dempsey, Dean’s drug dealer, sidles up. ‘Did I hear my favourite three words in the English language, or did my ears deceive me? “Got any drugs” was it?’
‘Rescue me, Sir Rodney of Gravesend,’ says Brian Jones. ‘I daren’t leave the house with so much as an aspirin nowadays.’
‘For you, my friend,’ Rod Dempsey slips a packet into Brian Jones’s waistcoat pocket, ‘the doctor is always in.’ He turns to Jasper. ‘Prellies, Mandy, Miss Mary J. Acid as pure as driven snow.’
‘Another time, maybe.’
‘Easy come easy go, that’s me. Brian, I’ll drop by yer crib next week to settle yer tab. It’s mounting up. Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ Rod Dempsey winks and exits between bodies.
Dean arrives through the same gap. ‘Jasper. Mr Jones.’
‘Fellow jailbird.’ Brian Jones grips Dean’s shoulders. ‘I’ve had the most mind-blowing wheeze. Let’s you and me make a prison film! Mick’s doing one. Some gangster bollocks. Him and Anita get naked in a bath and Keith’s as jealous as hell. That’s what I call justice … Anyway, we’ll get Hershey to direct ours. We’ll call it The Unbreakables. What do you say?’
‘“How much dough?” and “Where do I sign?”’
‘“A ton of” and “In blood on the dotted line”.’
‘Then I’m in, Brian. One o’them Oscar statues’d look just the ticket on my nan’s piano.’
‘Perfect. I’ll speak with … with my people. I’m off to the little boy’s room to open my present from Dempsey. See you later.’
They watch him go. ‘As if he could put together a cheese sandwich,’ says Dean. ‘Let alone a film. Where’ve yer been hiding for the last three hours, flatmate? I thought you’d buggered off early.’
‘I fell asleep in the cinema.’
Dean gives him an odd look. ‘Yer’ve been to the cinema?’
‘There’s one in the cellar. Syd Barrett was there. I think.’
‘Syd’s here? There’s too many famous people at this party. It’s bloody ridiculous. Just bumped into Hendrix coming out o’ the bog.’
‘Is John Lennon still around?’
‘Thataway.’ Dean points down a crowded passageway of bookshelves. ‘With his Oriental lady, talking to someone who looks very like Judy Garland. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of Elf for a while. Levon’s mingling. Colm’s around somewhere. See yer at the flat if I don’t see yer later, or see yer at Fungus Hut tomorrow if I don’t see yer at the flat …’
‘Sure.’ Jasper doesn’t get far before his path is blocked by Amy Boxer, Dean’s ex-girlfriend and the Daily Mail’s newest ace-reporter. ‘I would say, “Fancy meeting you here!” but, really, who isn’t here?’ Amy Boxer taps ash into a crystal bowl of pot-pourri. ‘Tony and Tiffany have played it very clever. I presume they’ve given you the whole “We’re making a rock ’n’ roll movie but should we cast actors, singers or both” schtick?’
‘“Schtick”?’ Jasper doesn’t know the word.
‘Jasper, sweetie, the Hersheys have lured London’s starriest to their Midsummer Ball, ensuring it’s both the event of the season and a mammoth pre-audition for a film that may –’ Amy Boxer presses in close to let Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon pass by ‘– or may not get made.’
‘I had no idea,’ says Jasper.
‘Which is why,’ Amy tugs Jasper’s tie like a bell-rope, ‘ding-dong ding-dong, you’re adorable. You know, you still owe me for getting you all out of jail in Italy. What are your plans for paying me back? Ding-dong ding-dong?’
The twilit sky is slate and mother-of-pearl. The floodlit swimming pool is afternoon blue. The marquee on the back lawn pulses with inner light, and a trumpet plus jazz-piano trio plays ‘Summertime’. Jasper drifts over to Griff, who’s surrounded by a huddle of models, actresses, intelligentsia and who-knows-who. ‘I couldn’t sleep. There was screaming from the next cell – all night long. It was in Italian, so I didn’t know exactly what were going down until the morning after. There, on my breakfast tray …’ Griff drops his voice to a hush, ‘plopped in my baked beans, was a human thumb.’
Squeals of disgust. A voice asks in Jasper’s ear, ‘Now is that for real? Or is the cat’s imagination getting the better of him?’
Jasper turns to find curious eyes, framed by an Afro and a snakeskin top hat with a bright blue feather. I know you …
‘Chuffin’ Heck!’ Griff looks over. ‘It’s Jimi Hendrix!’
‘That’s your solo album, Jimi,’ says Keith Moon. ‘Right there: Chuffing Heck, It’s Jimi Hendrix! I’m calling mine Man on the Moon. Or does that sound too much like a gay porno mag?’
‘Utopia Avenue, I dig you cats.’ Jimi Hendrix shakes hands with Griff and Jasper. ‘Your album’s out there.’
Return a compliment, thinks Jasper. ‘Axis is seminal.’
‘I can’t listen to it, man,’ says Jimi Hendrix. ‘The sound quality’s a fuck-up. I left the original master in a cab—’
‘Or Man in the Moon?’ wonders the Who’s drummer. ‘Or is that even smuttier? Once you start, you can’t stop …’
‘So we used a crumpled copy of Noel’s. Chas had to iron out the tape. Literally. With an iron. Where do you cats record?’
‘Fungus Hut,’ says Jasper, ‘on Denmark Street.’
‘I know it. The Experience made our very first demo there.’
‘Or do I go with
my first choice,’ says Keith Moon, ‘Howling at the Moon? I’ll be on the cover – a hairy werewolf – howling …’
‘What’s your set-up on “Smithereens”?’ Jimi is asking Jasper. ‘I can’t work out if it’s a fuzz pedal.’
‘I plugged my guitar into an old Silvertone of Digger’s. The cone in the speaker was ripped. That gives it the torn sound.’
‘Uh-huh. And is it a Strat or Gibson on that now?’
‘I only own a Strat. A sailor in Rotterdam –’ a body cannonballs into the pool ‘– sold it to me. A 1959 Fiesta Red. The tone’s not as seismic as yours – no fuzz pedal, no spiral coil – but it’s versatile. It’s good and growly for Dean’s new prison song.’
‘Yeah, I read ’bout your Roman holiday. Jail’s heavy shit.’
‘You were lucky Fleet Street rallied to your cause,’ says Brian Jones. ‘They’re baying for my blood. For one bag of weed – planted by Detective Pilcher. The bastard even gave me the choice: “Do you want to be done for weed or for coke?”’
‘The Establishment is scared shitless that your defiance is contagious,’ says a heavy-set man with stern glasses. Jasper knows he is a famous playwright but the name eludes him. ‘If you get a happy ending for flicking the “V”s, why should any pleb tolerate the factory floor? That way revolution lies.’
‘Bang bang, you’re dead.’ A very small boy in a cowboy hat, dressing-gown and slippers shoots the playwright with a toy gun.
‘Who isn’t, in the long run?’ asks the playwright. ‘They give birth astride the grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.’
The boy scans the circle of giants for his next victim. He chooses Jimi Hendrix. ‘Bang bang, you’re dead too.’
‘Hey, Shorty. There are days when I see the appeal.’
The boy twirls his gun and slots it into his holster as Tiffany Hershey arrives. ‘Crispin! Who told you you could come down?’
Crispin replies, ‘Bad Boy Frank,’ as if the matter is settled.
‘My son has a coterie of imaginary friends,’ explains Tiffany. ‘Frank takes the rap for Crispin’s misdemeanours.’
The playwright swaps his empty wine glass for a full one from a passing tray. ‘A healthy imagination is a gift for life.’
‘Crispin’s imagination is beyond “healthy”,’ says Tiffany.
‘Yer a mum?’ exclaimed Dean. Jasper hadn’t noticed him arrive. ‘Seriously? I had no—’
Crispin fires his gun at Dean. ‘Bang bang, you’re dead.’
Tiffany Hershey tells Dean, ‘I’m a mum twice over. Hence my screen hiatus. Righto, Crispin, let’s get you back up to Aggy before this turns into A Midsummer Eve’s Massacre.’
The small boy hasn’t finished. He aims his gun at Jasper and squeezes the trigger, slowly. Jasper looks down the barrel, eye to eye with the man Crispin will be. ‘Whenever you’re ready …’
The small boy sighs like a world-weary adult. ‘Not you.’ He swivels the gun towards Brian Jones – ‘Bang bang, you’re dead’ – and Keith Moon, ‘Bang bang, you too.’
Keith Moon hams it up. ‘It’s all going dark, dear boy.’
‘Go to the light, Keith,’ Brian says, in a ghostly voice. ‘Go towards the light …’
‘Don’t encourage him,’ says Tiffany, but Keith Moon groans hammily, grips Brian Jones’s elbow, and together they totter backwards over the edge of the swimming-pool … They slap into the water, drenching bystanders. Shrieks and laughter fill the terrace.
A saxophonist carves out a muscular ‘How Deep Is The Ocean?’ Jasper is crawling along a pale shaft about four feet wide and three feet high. The ground is soft. Turf. Jasper’s shuffling on his hands and knees. The walls of the shaft are linen. He touches the roof. Wood. His knuckles rap knock-knock. A mistake. Knock- knock. It’s undeniable. Soon, soon, soon. All Jasper can do is keep the Queludrin to hand and keep shuffling onwards. Look … shoes. Side by side. Men’s shoes. Women’s shoes. Slipped-off shoes. Open sandals with painted toenails. I’m underneath the tables in the marquee. He remembers realising this before. He remembers realising he remembered realising this before. Jasper wonders how long this chain goes back. His hand encounters a puffy thing. A bread roll. He squeezes it into a doughy globe. It squelches. Knock-knock. Jasper reaches the far corner. He turns right. No choice. This is not the first circumnavigation of the Undertable. I’ve lost my watch. Time doesn’t care. Along the shaft, at the next corner, a head appears. Another under-table shuffler. Twenty feet away, fifteen, ten, five … The two inspect one another.
‘You’re you, aren’t you?’ asks Jasper.
‘I think so,’ says John Lennon.
‘I’ve been looking for you since I got here.’
‘Congratulations. I’m looking for …’ He needs a prompt.
‘Looking for what, John?’
‘Something I lost,’ says the Beatle.
‘What have you lost, John?’
‘My fuckin’ mind, pal.’
Look Who It Isn’t
The spanking new cherry-red Triumph Spitfire Mark III handled the sharp bends around Marble Arch as if it was steered directly by Dean’s mind. A purring 1296cc engine, walnut dashboard, oxblood leather seats, top speed 95 m.p.h., ‘But she’ll kiss the hundred,’ said the sales manager, ‘if you’re heading downhill and feeling naughty’. Zipping along Bayswater Road with the roof down, under sunshine and leaf-shadow, Dean passed a Mini, a cement truck, a bus packed to the gills and a cab carrying a man in a bowler hat, and stopped on a sixpence at the traffic lights by the Hyde Park Embassy Hotel. Men pretended not to stare, envying Dean his car and the mysterious woman in Philippe Chevallier sunglasses and a snow-white headscarf at his side. Dean, for sure, would envy Dean something rotten if he wasn’t already him. An album at number seventeen in the charts. Brian Jones’s and Jimi Hendrix’s numbers in his little black book – and £4,451 still in his bank account even after paying for his new car. A car that would have cost three or four years of pay-packets if he’d got a job in a factory like Ray. Like Harry Moffat told him to. He rested his hand on the gearstick, inches away from Tiffany Hershey’s caramel thigh. His gearstick vibrated.
‘No buyer’s remorse, then?’ asked the actress.
‘’Bout this? Yer codding me.’
Casually, she patted his hand. ‘It’s a work of art.’
Was that a pat or a touch? ‘Thanks for coming along, Tiff. Did yer see that sales-twat’s face when he realised who yer were?’ Dean did his posh voice. “Oh, you’re a friend of the Hersheys? I’ll fetch Mr Gascoigne.”’
‘Tony’s sorry he couldn’t join us. When the Americans come to town, he drops everything.’
Dean wasn’t sorry about anything. The lights turned green, he pressed the accelerator and the Spitfire slid forwards. Turbulence played with loose strands of Tiffany’s hair. The lights were red again at Kensington Palace Gardens. Her suede glove rested on Dean’s hand. ‘Would it be awful of me to ask for a lap of Knightsbridge, Buck Palace and Pall Mall? I haven’t felt this free for … years.’
‘I’m due at Fungus Hut at twelve, but I’m yours till then.’
‘You are a darling. Take the next left.’
‘There’s gates and a copper. Can yer drive down here?’
‘With Tiffany Seabrook in an open-top Triumph, yes.’
Dean turned left and slowed to a halt at the gates.
‘What an utterly beautiful morning!’ Tiffany removed her sunglasses and beamed. ‘We’re having luncheon with the Yukawas at the Embassy of Japan. May we pass?’
The policeman looked at Tiffany, the car and Dean, in that order. ‘Right yer are, miss. Enjoy yer lunch, sir.’
‘Useful skill, acting,’ remarked Dean, as they moved off.
‘Everyone acts. The trick is to do it well and reap rewards.’
The Spitfire hummed down a tree-lined avenue of embassies. Most of the flags were unfamiliar to Dean. Old empires were coming unstitched and new nations cropping up every year. No
t long ago Dean was facing three years in a Roman prison: now he was flying down Embassy Row in a Triumph Spitfire, and coppers were calling him ‘sir’. Dean turned left at Kensington Road. The lights stayed green as far as the Royal Albert Hall where he told Tiffany, ‘Utopia Avenue’s going to fill that place, one o’ these days.’
‘Reserve me the Royal Box. I’ll gaze down at you adoringly.’
You, Tiffany had said, not all of you or the band, and Dean’s desire shifted up a gear. She conjured a little mirror out of thin air and touched up her lipstick. Dean went through the motions of cautioning himself as to why an affair would not be a smart move. She’s a mother of two. Her husband would axe the band’s now-confirmed role in The Narrow Road to the Deep North soundtrack. Levon, Elf and Griff would be livid. If anyone found out.
Dean imagined unzipping her.
His pulse shifted up another gear.
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she said.
Dean wondered if all women were mind-readers, or just some of them, or just the ones he slept with. ‘I keep my thoughts firmly under lock ’n’ key, Tiffany Seabrook.’
Tiffany did a Nazi villain voice. ‘Vell, Mr Moss, ve have vays of mecking you talk zat you vill not so easily vithstand …’
Side one of Blonde on Blonde clicks off. Tiffany unties Dean’s blindfold and the cords binding his wrists. The breeze nudges the curtains of his room. London hums, drums, speeds up, brakes and breathes. The cocaine has worn off. Dean’s Swiss Army knife and a length of drinking straw are by the mirror. Tiffany could have stuck that knife in anywhere. He’s no longer nervous about the clap, at least. Today is their third liaison since the Triumph Spitfire morning. He would be peeing battery acid by now if she had anything.Tiffany lies down. ‘Sorry I got a bit bitey. When I met Tony, I was down to the last three for Kiss of the Vampire. Some American bimbo got the part …’
Dean touches the love-bite on his collarbone.
‘… then I fell pregnant with Martin, and that was that. On the bright side you’ve passed your audition with flying colours.’
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 42