Utopia Avenue

Home > Fiction > Utopia Avenue > Page 21
Utopia Avenue Page 21

by David Mitchell


  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 someday?” 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 dinner 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 apologizes 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 moves the curtain of gold hair from his bloodshot eyes and looks 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 terrorize. They don’t just make knocking noises. This smacks of a third-rate séance. Let’s reject Theory B for now.”

  Through the open windows of the music room, across the lawn, wafted 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?” asked 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. Analyze 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 Marriott 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.

  “Oh. 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 has 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 a 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 knobbing 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.”

  Even Jasper can identify the hatred in Steve Marriott’s face.

  “So sorry if I touched a raw nerve,” says Jimmy Savile. “Shall I lend you the bus fare home?”

  * * *

  —

  CHIN-CHINGGGGGG! HOWIE STOKER, freshly returned from Saint-Tropez, sporting a turquoise blazer, taps a wine glass with a spoon in the private function room in Durrants Hotel. His week in Saint-Tropez has deepened his tan. If he was a roast chicken, thinks Jasper, he was in the oven twenty minutes too long. Chinggggggggg! Howie’s gaze circumambulates the private room. Guests include Freddy Duke of the Duke-Stoker Agency, underneath Moonwhale; Levon, in a raspberry-and-vanilla-striped suit; Bethany, with her hair up, black pearls, and a black dress; Elf still in her Top of the Pops warrior squaw getup; Bruce Fletcher in rusty flannel and shark’s tooth necklace; Bea Holloway, dressed like an acting student at RADA; a pale art student called Trevor Pink who’s come with Bea and has pink paint on his hands, so he’s easy to remember; Dean in his Union Jack jacket; Dean’s girlfriend Jude, who’s fractionally taller than Dean; Griff; Humpty-faced A&R man Victor French; and whippet-faced publicist Nigel Horner. Too many eyes. Social gatherings are archery ranges and memory tests.

  Chinggggg­ggggg­gg! A hush descends.

  “Friends,” Howie Stoker begins, “Moonwhalers and well-wishers. I’d like to say just a few words. So I shall! When I told my buddies back in New York I was venturing into the music biz in London, a typical reaction was, ‘Howie, are you nuts? A Wall Street maestro you may be, but you’re a showbiz novice and those limeys’ll milk you dry!’ My enemies just laughed, fit to bust, at the prospect of Howie Stoker losing his goddamn shirt. Well. Those sons of bitches sure as hell aren’t laughing now! Not now that my very first signing’s very first single is in the UK Top Thirty!”

  Cheers and applause bubble up and spill over.

  “We’re here today because of five truly talented individuals,” says Howie Stoker. “Let’s name ’em and shame ’em, one by one.”

  Five? wonders Jasper. He must be including Levon.

  “First: our gorgeously proportioned, lyre-strumming, ivory-tinkli
ng Queen of Folk. The one, the only, Miss Elf Holloway!”

  Applause. Aristocrats look down from paintings spaced around the room. Elf’s smile strikes Jasper as complicated.

  Howie Stoker turns to Dean. “Plenty of folks say that a bassist is a failed lead guitarist. I say, ‘Horse pucky!’ Round of applause!”

  People applaud. Dean lifts his glass jauntily.

  Howie Stoker pushes on. “Drummers are unjustly the butt of too many jokes. Jokes like…” Howie unfolds a sheet of paper and puts on his glasses “…‘What’s the difference between a drummer and a savings bond?’ Anyone? ‘One will mature and make money.’ ” A few polite smiles. Griff nods, like he’s heard it all before. “ ‘What has three legs and an asshole?’ No? ‘A drum-stool!’ One more? Here we go: ‘What do you call a beautiful woman on the arm of a drummer?’ ”

  Griff makes a megaphone of his hands: “A tattoo.”

  “You’re treading on my lines, Griff! Next up—the man who penned Utopia Avenue’s first hit, first of many, I have no doubt. Our King of the Stratocaster, Jasper de Zoet!” He mispronounces Jasper’s name and raises his glass. Jasper avoids all the eyes by focusing very hard on the flake of pastry on Howie Stoker’s lapel.

  Chinggggg­ggggg­gg. “I’m not a man to blow my own trumpet,” says Howie Stoker, brushing his lapel, “so I won’t bang on about my instrumental role—pun intended, you betcha—in creating Utopia Avenue. So I’ll let the results speak for themselves and say a few words about my guide and my mentor—my own ‘gut instinct.’ Expertise is cheap. Expertise you can learn, hire, or poach. But guts? You’ve got it or you ain’t. Am I right, Victor?”

  The A&R man raises his glass at Howie. “Too true, Howie.”

  “You see? And when I first met Levon at Bertolucci’s on Seventh Avenue, where Rob Redford, Dick Burton, and Humph Bogart often eat, my gut said, Howie, this is your man. Same story when I heard the tapes of the band’s Marquee show. My gut literally sat up and told me, This is your band. When I met Victor at the Dorchester—why stay anywhere else when en frolique in London, right?—my gut said, This is the label. Bang bang bang! Over sixteen thousand sales and one stellar performance on the English TV showcase prove that my gut was on the money again.”

 

‹ Prev