Utopia Avenue
Page 18
“Yer never told us last night’s gig was an audition.”
“No good manager would. Get dressed, get Jasper, get on the next train to Charing Cross, get to Moonwhale. We’ve got details to discuss ahead of a meeting at Ilex tomorrow.”
“Okay, see yer. Uh, thanks.”
“Any time. Oh—and, Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Congratulations. You’ve earned this.”
Dean hangs up. The phone pings.
We’ve got a bloody record deal.
“Mate?” His big brother appears from the kitchen, looking concerned. “Yer okay? Yer look like someone’s died.”
* * *
—
THE PLATFORM ROOF drips. The mouth of the tunnel drips. Signage, cables, and signals drip. Pigeons huddle on the dripping girders of the dripping footbridge. The platform is an archipelago of damp patches between puddles. Dean’s right foot’s wet. He has to take his boots back to the cobbler. No, Dean realizes. No, I don’t. I’ll walk into Anello and Davide in Covent Garden and I’ll say, “Hi, I’m Dean Moss, I’m in Utopia Avenue, we just signed with Ilex Records, so kindly show me the best bloody boots yer’ve got.” Dean snorts a laugh.
“What’s funny?” asks Jasper.
“My mind keeps wandering off, and I sort o’ forget, and I think, Why am I feeling so fantastic? Then I remember—Oh, yeah, that’s it, we’ve got a record deal!—and it all goes boom! again.”
“It is good news,” agrees Jasper.
“West Ham winning three–nil away at Arsenal is ‘good news.’ Getting a contract is…orgasmic news. And you get it on top of a real orgasm. Yer should be in a state o’ rapture.”
“I guess so.” He opens his packet of Marlboros. “Two left.”
They light up. “I’m half-afraid,” says Dean, “I’ll wake up on Shanks’s floor and this’ll all be a hookah dream.”
Jasper holds out his hand. Raindrops splash on his palm. “That’s not dream-rain. It’s too wet.”
“Expert in these matters, are yer?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Dean looks up the London-bound railway tracks. He thinks of his younger selves, gazing up the same tracks toward a formless future. He’d like to send a telegram back in time: You’ll be ripped off, mugged, and shat on, but Utopia Avenue’s waiting for yer. Hang on in there. The tracks quiver. “Here comes the train.”
* * *
—
DEAN AND JASPER have their own window seats. Dean looks out onto the far platform, into the waiting room for eastbound trains, and sees Harry Moffat sitting by the window. He’s reading a paper. Before Dean can hide, Harry Moffat looks up and stares straight back. Not maliciously, not accusingly, not mockingly, not despairingly, not imploringly. It’s a simple “Yes, I see you”—like a telephonist putting through a call. Harry Moffat can’t have planned this encounter. Dean didn’t know he was going to be on this train until ten minutes ago. Why is Harry Moffat traveling to Margate on a rainy Sunday morning in July? A holiday? Harry Moffat doesn’t do holidays. Harry Moffat returns to his paper…and at this angle, Dean can no longer swear it’s him. They are, after all, two rainy windowpanes and twenty rainy yards apart. There’s an undeniable resemblance—the glasses, the posture, the thick dark hair, but…it might not be. The London-bound train tenses, takes the strain, and heaves away. The man does not look up again.
“What is it?” asks Jasper.
Gravesend station slides into the past.
“Someone I thought I knew.”
UNEXPECTEDLY
Levon’s parked car was hot and airless. Elf yawned and checked her makeup in her hand-mirror. It’s running. “Is it Thursday?”
A concrete mixer rumbled by, churning fumes and dust.
“Friday.” Dean lay in the backseat, his notebook open on his chest. “Oxford tonight. Southend tomorrow. Don’t look now. It’s Lovely Rita, Meter Maid.” A traffic warden walked past, examining the meter. Dean called, “Lovely day.” She did not reply.
Elf yawned again. “Last time Bruce and I did a gig at Oxford, a student accused us of looting songs from the proletariat. Bruce told him he grew up having to walk through snake-infested bush to an outdoors dunny every time he needed to take a shit, so Oxford Varsity Boy could kiss his arse.”
“Huh.” Dean was only half listening.
Elf wondered what Bruce was doing at that very second. Who cares? I’ve got Angus. “So. Oxford tonight. Southend tomorrow.”
“Southend tomorrow.”
“Ever played there?”
Dean wrote something in his notebook. “Once. With Battleship Potemkin. At the Studio at Westcliff. Lots of mods. They hated us, so here’s hoping they don’t recognize me.”
Elf switched on the car radio: “Even the Bad Times Are Good” by the Tremeloes was playing. “Why’s this at number fifteen when ‘Darkroom’ is nowhere? It’s rubbish.”
“Airplay, airplay, airplay. The piano part’s pretty good.”
“Where’s our airplay? ‘Darkroom’ ’s piano part is incredible.”
“If you do say so yourself.”
“I do.”
“It’s a chicken ’n’ egg thing. If we don’t climb up the charts, we don’t get airplay. If you don’t get airplay, no chart entry.”
“What do other bands do?”
Dean rested his notebook on his chest. “Sleep with DJs. Have a record label rich enough to pay the stations. Write a song so irresistible that it practically plays itself.”
Elf turned the radio dial, finding the final bars of the summer’s biggest hit. The DJ rounded it off: “Scott McKenzie, still going to San Francisco, and still wearing flowers in his hair. You’re tuned to The Bat Segundo Show on Radio Bluebeard one-nine-eight long wave, brought to you by Denta-dazzle gum, now in triple mint and fruity toot. Time for one more summer sizzler. Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Was Made to Love Her.’ Weren’t we all, Mr. Wonder?”
Elf switched the radio off and sighed.
“What’s wrong with Stevie Wonder?” asked Dean.
“Every time it’s not us I feel sick.”
Dean screwed the cup-lid off his Thermos and poured himself a cupful of cold water. “Thirsty?”
“Parched. Which side have you drunk from?”
“No idea.” Dean handed it through the gap between the seats. “What’s a spot of oral herpes between bandmates?”
“When did you become an expert on oral herpes?”
“No comment.”
Elf drank. A guy and a girl rode past on a scooter. “How did Jasper and Griff wriggle out of these courtesy calls again?”
Dean sighed through his nose. “Griff, by being so rude Levon doesn’t dare send him. Jasper, by sounding like he’s on drugs.”
“So you and I are being punished for being polite and sane.”
“Me, I’d rather be doing this with you than stuck in the belly of the Beast with Griff, lugging the gear round.”
A lunchtime lollipop lady took up position on the pelican crossing and directed a crocodile of infants across the road.
The nib of Dean’s pen scratched his notebook.
Elf asked, “Still doing those lyrics?”
“When you’re not asking me stuff.”
“Can I take a look? I’m boooooooooooored…”
Dean surrendered and handed her the notebook.
Fireworks split the sky at night
A hundred rockets screamed and fell.
You swung the axe with all your might
at my guitar and gave it hell.
My record player was next to catch
it. Little Richard had to pay.
You poured on paraffin, one match
lit—awop-bop-a-loola-awop-bam-bay.
Elf smile
d at that and Dean asked, “What? What?”
“Good line. ‘Awop-bop-a-loola.’ ”
Dean looked relieved. “What d’yer think ’bout—”
“Ssh. Let me finish.”
Hope that bonfire in the garden
still burns purple in your eyes,
still turns my future into carbon,
still smolders, your November prize.
“Don’t dream bigger than I do.”
“You are what I say you are.”
“You’ll do what I tell you to.” Go
tell your friend, the morning star.
“An X-ray of the soul,” said Elf. “Is it about your dad?”
“Uh, not exactl—uh…kind o’…Yeah.”
“Do you have a title yet?”
“I was thinking about ‘Still Burning.’ ”
Not great, thought Elf, scanning the lines.
“Don’t yer like it? Have yer got a better one?”
Elf scanned the lines. “What about ‘Purple Flames’?”
Dean thought. An articulated lorry rumbled by. “Maybe.”
“You’ve deployed trochaic tetrameter, I see.”
“I’ve got some ointment for that, but you can’t have sex for a week after the symptoms have cleared up.”
Elf tapped the page. “Dum-dah dum-dah dum-dah dum-dah. ‘Hope that bonfire in the garden.’ A ‘dum-dah’ is a trochee. The word ‘trochee’ is also a trochee, which proves Greeks were show-offs. The word iamb—a ‘dah-dum’—is also an iamb. Your lines are four trochees long—fiddly bits aside—so it’s a trochaic tetrameter.”
“So that’s what yer learn in posh schools.” Dean put a fruit pastille in his mouth and offered her the tube.
Elf took one. Lemon. “At the poshest posh schools—like Jasper’s—you study meter in Latin and Greek. Not just English.”
“At the shittest shit schools—like mine—yer study smoking, skiving, dodging shit, and petty theft.”
“Crucial skills for the Great British workplace.” Elf reread the lyrics. Lemony saliva floods her mouth. “No chorus, no bridge?”
“Not sure if it needs one. If an X-ray of the soul has a catchy chorus, is it still an X-ray of the soul?”
“ ‘Tell your friend, the morning star.’ It’s lonely.”
“Morning Star vodka was Harry Moffat’s main food source.”
Dean tended to veer away from discussion of fathers, but Elf sensed that a locked door was ajar. “If he ever got in touch—if, say, we end up recording that song…what would you do?”
Dean didn’t reply for a while. “I’ve spotted him in Gravesend, now ’n’ then. Sat in a barber’s. At the market. Waiting for a train. But I just blank him out. S’prisingly easy. Since that”—he nodded at his notebook—“Bonfire Night, we never spoke again. Not once.”
“How about when Ray and Shirl got married?”
“Ray fixed it so Harry Moffat was at the register office, and I was at the reception. Never the twain. Happy days.”
Elf looked at the lyrics again. “These lyrics aren’t an olive branch, but they are a message. You exist, and I still think about you. If he was totally dead to you, why write it?”
Dean tapped cigarette ash out of the window.
He’s gone moody. “Sorry if I overstepped the mark.”
“No, no. I was just envying how, if yer want to say something, yer just say it. Is that education? Or is it being a girl?”
“It’s easy being the Enlightened One about other people’s families.” Elf fanned herself. “So why a song about your dad now?”
Dean frowned. “Something just says, ‘My turn,’ and it won’t leave yer alone till yer do it. Isn’t that how it is for you?”
I thought I knew Dean pretty well by now, but I was wrong. “Ye-es. He must be complex. Harry Moffat, I mean.”
“ ‘Complex’ is one word. If yer just met him one time, yer’d think, Life ’n’ soul o’ the party. If yer knew him better, yer’d think, Nice enough fella, but something’s a bit off. If yer were family, yer’d know why he’s got no friends. He doesn’t drink to get drunk. He drinks to act normal. And his idea o’ normal got really bloody nasty.”
A dustcart drove by. Bare-chested binmen clung to the side, one with an Action Man’s physique, one with a darts player’s.
Elf asked, “Why didn’t your mum leave?”
Dean frowned. “Shame. A mother who walks out on her husband’s a failure. That’s what a lot o’ people think. I s’pose she was worried ’bout what’d happen to me ’n’ Ray, too. She was afraid it’d be hand-me-downs ’n’ bread ’n’ marge and never going on holiday. When it comes to divorces, it’s the breadwinner who has the money for a proper lawyer. There’s always a sort o’ twisted hope, too. Hope that last time was the last time. That he’s mellowing out.”
“That’s twisted logic more than twisted hope,” said Elf.
“Agreed.” Dean dropped his cigarette stub out of the window. “The best-selling type.”
“Your father still lives in the house you grew up in?”
“Till about a year ago, when he was in a car smash. He got away with scratches but the Mini he hit was a write-off. The driver’s in a wheelchair and his ten-year-old daughter lost an eye.”
“God, Dean,” said Elf. “That’s awful.”
“Yep. It was an accident waiting to happen, mind. ’Cause he was drunk, the insurance company wouldn’t pay the compo, so he had to sell the house. He’s in a council flat. The cement works’d sacked him. So he had to sign on. Ironic, that. That was why he was so dead set against me being a musician—he was sure I’d just end up on the dole. His drinking buddies stopped standing him rounds. He got barred from pubs. By that point I was thinking, Okay, if it wasn’t Harry Moffat I’d feel a bit o’ pity…But it is Harry Moffat. I just thought, Yer’ve made yer bed, now lie in it.”
“Has he tried to get help?”
“Ray told me he’s going to Alcoholics Anonymous. Who knows how that’ll work out? What’s Harry Moffat without his Morning Star?”
Levon returned, climbed in, and wiped his face on a spotted handkerchief. “Holy crap. When I was chart-hyping for Buster Godwin, chocolates and flattery got the job done. Now they want your first-born child.” Levon took an envelope from the glove compartment and put in five one-pound notes. “A naked bribe.”
“Can’t I have that?” asked Dean. “Or can’t we just buy a million copies of our single in shops?”
“The brutal truth is, the world doesn’t give a shit about ‘Darkroom’ and we have a fortnight to make it care. So whatever it takes to flog this single, we do. Which means me bribing an asshole in a Slough record shop so he’ll report inflated sales figures. It also means you”—Levon looked at Elf—“coming in with me to schmooze the creep. And you”—Levon turned to Dean—“wooing the shop girls with wilting roses. Ready? Once more unto the breach…”
* * *
—
“PETER POPE.” THE trout-lipped manager of Allegro Records stroked Elf’s hand. “At your service.” Engelbert Humperdinck sang “There Goes My Everything” on the stereo. “Welcome to my ‘HQ.’ ”
Elf retrieved her hand. “It looks super, Mr. Pope.”
“We boast branches in Maidenhead and Staines, too. On Saturdays, trade is humming. Is that not so, girls?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Pope,” intoned the two shop assistants. Both were young women Elf’s age, but leggier and twiggier.
“Mmmmmm,” purred Peter Pope. “We have six listening booths. Six. Our competitor by the railway station only has three.”
“Allegro is the only reputable retailer in the Slough area,” declared Levon. “Care for a smoke, Mr. Pope?”
Mr. Pope pocketed the whole packet. “We cater to all palates, from Ellington to Elvi
s to Elgar. Is that not so, girls?”
The two assistants said, “Absolutely, Mr. Pope.”
“Meet Pale Becky and Dark Becky,” said Peter Pope. “Girls. Miss Elf Holloway is a true English nightingale.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Elf.
Pale Becky’s smile said, We’ll decide that.
Dark Becky’s smile said, Yes, you’re in a band, yes, you have a single out, but who’s here begging for favors?
“Here’s a little something”—Dean gave the Rebeccas a bouquet each—“from Utopia Avenue.”
“Fancy that,” said Dark Becky. “Twelve red roses.”
“What will we tell our boyfriends?” fretted Pale Becky.
“That they’re the luckiest fellas in Slough, Maidenhead, and Staines,” replied Dean. Elf could have puked, but the Two Beckies looked at each other like reluctantly impressed judges.
“The stocktaking won’t do itself, girls,” said Peter Pope.
“No, Mr. Pope.” They retreated to the stockroom.
The manager turned to Levon. “So, Mr. Franklin. My little dolce per niente?” Levon handed him the envelope of money. It vanished into Peter Pope’s jacket. “I own your EP Oak, Ash and Thorn, Miss Holloway. It and you are exquisite.”
Elf tried to look pleased. “Thank you, Mr. Pope.”
“There’s a piano in my office.” The manager’s eyes swiveled to a door. “Once upon a time, Allegro sold musical instruments.”
“Is that so?” asked Elf. “Why did you stop?”
“My brother stole that side of the business.” Peter Pope sucked in his cheeks. “No. Your ears do not deceive you.”
“That doesn’t sound very fraternal,” said Levon.
“I never waste a thought on that backstabbing thief or his pigpen of a shop by the station. Success is the sweetest revenge. But since both you and a piano are to hand, Miss Holloway, would it be horribly greedy of me to request a tune? All for myself, I mean?”