Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  “We’re at cross-purposes here,” replies Dean. “I’ve been beaten black ’n’ blue by Italian police. I’ve had drugs planted on me by this”—Dean points without looking him in the eye—“Ferlinghetti. I don’t want a pardon, Mr. Symonds. I want a bloody apology. In writing. And till I get one”—Dean stands and presses his wrists together—“it’s the Hotel Shithole for me.”

  Ferlinghetti looks angry but also, Dean thinks, anxious.

  Symonds addresses Levon. “If this is about publicity, be warned. It’s high-stakes poker and your boy’s liberty’s at stake.”

  “One moment.” Levon is scribbling rapidly in his reporter’s notebook. “The columnist Felix Finch at the Post asked me to keep track of proceedings, ahead of his arrival tomorrow…So. Where were we? ‘Poker.’ ‘Publicity.’ No no no. Let me assure you, this is Dean’s decision. I suggested he do the wretched deal. But as you see, Dean’s a man of moral fiber.”

  “Yer a decent bloke, Mr. Symonds,” says Dean. “We got off on the wrong foot. Sorry ’bout that. I was scared. But look me in the eye. If yer were me—innocent—would yer sign that confession?”

  Her Majesty’s Consular Representative sniffs, looks away, looks back, twitches his nose, and takes a deep breath…

  * * *

  —

  ALBERT MURRAY, MEMBER of Parliament for Gravesend, meets flight BA546 on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport along with the Post photographer. The evening sky has the drama and colors of an exploding battleship. Dean, Levon, Griff, and Jasper—still jittery from the flight—are ushered aside for brief introductions and handshakes, not before fifty or sixty or seventy girls on the viewing platform atop the terminal building spot the party and shriek “Deeeeeeaaan!” A sign is draped over the safety rail: DEAN WELCOME HOME. Dean waves. The Monkees and the Beatles get many hundreds, but they started off with tens, once, surely. He can’t help but notice the signs read DEAN, not JASPER or GRIFF. “Deeeeeeaaan!”

  Levon steers Dean back to the parliamentarian. “The band’s truly touched you found the time, Mr. Murray. And arranged such glorious weather for Dean’s homecoming.”

  “Nothing’s too good for a Gravesend hero. We were proud of his music before, but now we’re proud of his backbone.”

  Felix Finch inserts himself. “Felix Finch, sir—of A Finch About Town. Would you elaborate on Dean’s backbone?”

  “With pleasure. The Italian Gestapo did their damnedest to get Dean to kowtow. But did he? Did he heck. I read your column from time to time, Mr. Finch, so I know we’d disagree on a lot, politically. But can we not agree, me as a socialist and you as a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, that in that godforsaken dungeon in Rome, what Dean Moss showed was true British bulldog spirit? Can we not agree?”

  “We most certainly can, Mr. Murray.” Finch’s pencil captures every word. “Superbly put, sir. Superb.”

  “Rightio,” says Albert Murray. “Time for a few pictures.”

  The columnist, the politician, the manager, and Utopia Avenue stand as the photographers’ flashbulbs pop and dazzle.

  * * *

  —

  AN AIRPORT OFFICIAL escorts the band through a VIP entrance. The immigration man tells Dean he doesn’t need to see his passport—but could he write “To Becky, with love” and sign his daughter’s autograph book? Dean obliges. Steps lead to a corridor, to more steps and a side room next to a busy-sounding conference room. Waiting there are Elf, Bethany, Ray, Ted Silver, and Günther Marx and Victor French from Ilex. First, Dean hugs Elf. She looks hollowed, like Griff in the days after Steve’s death. He murmurs, “Hey. Thanks for coming.”

  “Welcome back, jailbird. You’ve lost weight.”

  “Trust you lot to go skiving off in Italy,” says Bethany.

  “Nan Moss ’n’ Bill ’n’ the aunts send their love,” says Ray. “They was planning a prison bust. Seriously.”

  “Enzo Endrizzi’s made himself the most famous crook in Europe,” says Ted Silver. “Professional suicide.”

  “Did you write a prison ballad?” asks Victor French.

  “We could rush it out before the next album,” says Günther.

  Dean examines the sentence. “The next album?”

  The German is almost smiling. “Pending negotiations.”

  I didn’t think today could get any better. Dean looks at Levon who tells him, “Günther wanted to give you the good news.”

  “Let’s get incarcerated more often,” says Griff.

  “Next time,” says Dean, “you get banged up. Greef.”

  Griff cackles. Jasper looks as pleased as Jasper ever looks. Elf looks complicated. Victor French is peering through the slats of a blind. “You should see this.” Utopia Avenue and their manager look into the function room. There must be thirty reporters and photographers waiting for the press conference. Up front is a TV camera with THAMES WEEKEND TELEVISION on the side.

  “That,” says Levon, “is the next chapter.”

  EVEN THE BLUEBELLS

  The taxi drives off. Elf stares at Imogen and Lawrence’s house. Her suitcase stays by her feet. Honeysuckle blooms around the porch. Her father’s Rover stands in the drive, behind Lawrence’s Morris. The other car must belong to Lawrence’s parents. The day had been a sleep-deprived blur, of saying goodbye to Dean and the others in Rome; a drive to the airport; the flight; navigating Heathrow; a coach to Birmingham; a taxi, all the time thinking, Faster, faster…yet now that she’s here, Elf’s courage has deserted her. What can I say to Immy? What can I possibly do? The late April afternoon is cruelly perfect. A thrush sings, very near. A word, “threnody,” arrives in Elf’s head. If she once knew what it meant, she doesn’t now. You’ll never feel ready for this, so just begin. She picks up her suitcase and walks to the front door. The upstairs bedroom curtains are drawn, so Elf taps on the front window quietly, in case Imogen is sleeping. The net curtains part and Elf’s mother looks out, inches away. Normally her eyes would have lit up. Today isn’t “Normally.”

  * * *

  —

  LAWRENCE, HIS PARENTS, Bea, and their parents greet her in the living room. Everyone is whispering. Imogen is upstairs, “resting.” Her husband is miserable, broken, and looks five years older than he did a fortnight ago, when Elf was last here. She tells him she’s sorry, appalled by the inadequacy of the phrase. Lawrence nods. Elf’s father and Mr. Sinclair exude uncertainty about what to exude. Her mum, Mrs. Sinclair, and Bea are red-eyed and weepy. Bea takes Elf to the kitchen. “Mark had started sleeping through the night. Immy gave him his last feed at midnight on Friday and put him down for the night. She and Lawrence fell asleep. Immy woke at six thirty. She thought, Great, Mark’s slept through, and went to see him.” Bea shuts her eyes and tears well up. She breathes in, breathes out, breathes in, breathes out. Elf holds her. “So, yeah. Mark was where she left him. But…not alive.”

  The electric kettle boils and clicks off.

  “Lawrence called the ambulance, but…Mark was gone. They sedated Immy. Lawrence called his mum and dad first, who called ours. They got here yesterday. I came up this morning. Dad called the hospital where Mark”—Bea swallows noisily—“was taken. The coroner said he may have had a cardiac defect but until the autopsy—tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on…uh…” Bea’s focus lapses “…how many people died in Birmingham over the weekend. Sorry. I couldn’t think of a nicer way to say it. I didn’t sleep.”

  “Me neither. Don’t worry.”

  Bea grabs a tissue. “We’re getting through boxes and boxes. I shouldn’t bother with makeup for a while.”

  Elf asks, “Have you seen Immy?”

  “Only for a few minutes this morning. She’s an awful mess. She was asleep for much of yesterday. Being awake is torture. She’s taking Valium. She saw Mum for a few minutes. Lawrence is in and out of her room. Just keeping an eye on her. I called Moonwhale yesterday at, uh…I don’t
know, two-ish. Bethany put a call through to your Italian promoter’s office and called me back to say she’d left the message with his secretary in Rome…What is it, Elf?”

  Elf realizes that Enzo Endrizzi knew about Mark before they performed at the Mercurio Theatre but had said nothing. So the show would go ahead. “I didn’t know until…midnight.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I’ll make that cuppa. There’s ginger nuts somewhere…”

  Footsteps come down the stairs. It’s Lawrence. “Elf? She’d like to see you. Just you, for now.”

  Elf feels trepidation and guilt that she and not Bea or the two mothers-on-tenterhooks are being summoned. “Now?”

  Lawrence nods. “Yes, if that’s, uh…”

  “Of course,” says Elf. “Of course. Of course.”

  “I’ll put a cup of tea on a tray for her, too,” says Bea.

  “It’ll be a comfort to speak to her sister,” says Mrs. Sinclair.

  * * *

  —

  ELF CLIMBS THE carpeted stairs to the landing. The letters M, A, R, and K are on the nursery door. The only pain worse than seeing the letters, Elf guesses, would be taking them down. She takes a quick look inside. The same two blue and two pink walls. The mobile of little ducks, the simple cross on the wall, the pile of nappies on the changing table. Talcum powder still scents the air. The teddy Elf had bought and named John Wesley Harding still sits on the chest of drawers.

  Mark is dead. Him, and all Mark’s future selves—a toddler mastering verticality, a boy bunking off school, a youth fixing his hair for his first date, a man leaving his hometown, a husband, a father, some old bloke watching the TV and declaring, “The entire world has lost its mind!” None would now exist.

  She puts down the tray. She composes herself.

  Elf crosses the landing to the bedroom. “Immy?”

  * * *

  —

  “ELF?” GRIEF-SCOOPED, WRUNG-OUT Imogen is propped up in bed. She’s wearing a nightie under a dressing gown. Her hair is disheveled. It’s the first time in years Elf has seen Imogen without a dab of makeup. “You’re here.”

  “I’m here. Bea made us tea.”

  “Mm.”

  Elf brings the tray to the nightstand. She notices an ashtray and a packet of Benson & Hedges. Imogen quit smoking three years ago. “I’m taking Valium,” says Imogen. Her voice is dulled and plodding. “Is it like marijuana?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Ims. I’ve never taken Valium.”

  “Did you really fly back from Italy today?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “You must be tired.” She indicates the upright armchair in the window bay. Their mother had nursed Imogen, Elf, and Bea on it and, for eight weeks, Imogen had breastfed Mark.

  Sunlight passes through daisies on the curtain.

  Elf remembers to breathe. “I have no idea what to say.”

  “I’ve had, ‘I’m so sorry.’ I’ve had, ‘It’s just awful.’ I’ve had, ‘It’s like a bad dream.’ Mostly, people just cry. Dad cried. It was so weird that for a few seconds I didn’t think about Mark. People are…are…Oh, sorry. I can’t finish my sentences very well.”

  “Valium and grief will do that, I suppose.”

  Imogen lights a cigarette and slumps into her pillow. “I’ve started smoking again.”

  “I’m on no high horse. I’m on twenty a day.”

  “You can cry yourself dry, Elf. Did you know that?”

  “I did not.” Elf opens the window to let a little air in.

  “It’s like when you vomit and vomit until there’s nothing left, but you still vomit, and it’s only air. Like that, but with my tear glands. Like that song, ‘Cry Me a River.’ Who sings that?”

  “Julie London.”

  “Julie London. I’m learning all sorts of things. Mark was wrapped in his Winnie-the-Pooh blanket, and when it was time for the ambulance man to take him, my arms, my body, wouldn’t let go. My arms just gripped. As if that was any use. At that stage. Where was I when his heart was stopping? Here. Sleeping.”

  Elf tries to hide her eyes. “Don’t think that way.”

  “How, Elf? Can you control what you think?”

  “Not very well. Distraction helps, a little.”

  “My breasts get sore. They’re still making milk. They haven’t cottoned on. I have to express it by hand, the doctor said, or I’ll get mastitis. If you ever want to write the saddest song in the world, you can use that.”

  Elf feels her tears starting. She helps herself to a Benson & Hedges. “I’ll never ever write a song like that.”

  Imogen looks at Elf across a void. “Do I sound mad?”

  The blossom outside the window in the late sunshine is heartbreakingly beautiful. “I’m not a psychologist,” says Elf, “but I’m pretty sure that people who are mad don’t ask, ‘Am I going mad?’ I think they just…are.”

  Imogen’s shallow breaths grow further apart. She murmurs, “You always know the right thing to say, Elf.”

  Elf watches her sister fall asleep. “If only.”

  * * *

  —

  THE CRICKETER’S ARMS Hotel by the Sparkbrook roundabout is adorned with cricketing memorabilia, photographs, and signed cricket bats mounted in small glass-fronted boxes. Bea, Elf, and their father are staying at the hotel and eating dinner in its restaurant. Elf gives a potted version of the band’s Italian tour, and her dad musters an account of the Richmond Rotary Club’s gala. Bea talks about her upcoming role as Abigail Williams, villainess of The Crucible. Arthur Miller the playwright is due to give a couple of classes at RADA next week. Small talk, thinks Elf, is Polyfilla you fill cracks with so you don’t have to watch them widening. The food arrives. Shepherd’s pie and peas for their dad, salad and an omelette for Bea, and a bowl of minestrone soup for Elf. The soup contains bits of everything else on the menu.

  “It’s awful to see her like that,” says Bea.

  “It’s awful to be so helpless,” says Elf.

  “She’s not on her own,” says their dad. Outside, across the car park, traffic goes round and round the roundabout. “It won’t hurt this much forever. One day your sister will be back again. Our job is to help her get from here to there. What is it, my darlings?”

  The sight of Bea crying has set Elf off.

  “So much for my wise words of solace,” says their dad.

  * * *

  —

  THE THREE HOLLOWAYS have the residents lounge to themselves. Bea and Elf forget to pretend they don’t smoke, and their dad forgets to voice his disapproval. The news on TV shows French police storming the Latin Quarter in Paris to take down protesters’ barricades. Teargas was fired, stones hurled, hundreds of injuries sustained, hundreds of arrests made. “Is that how you build a better world?” asks Elf’s dad. “Pelting the police with stones?”

  In Bonn, a vast crowd of students marched on the German parliament to protest against new emergency laws. “If I had my way,” says Elf’s dad, “I’d give ’em a country of their own. Belgium, for example. I’d tell ’em, ‘It’s all yours. You sort out food for millions, organize sewage, banking, law and order, schools. You keep them safe in their beds at night. All the boring, nitty-gritty stuff. Hearing aids. Nails. Potatoes.’ Then come back in twelve months and see what kind of a dog’s dinner they’ve made of it…”

  In Vietnam, an American base called Khâm Duc has been overrun by the North Vietnamese. Nine U.S. military planes were shot down, and hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed. “The entire world,” declares Elf’s dad, “has lost its mind.”

  Bea and Elf exchange a look. Their father rarely watches the news without uttering the phrase at least once.

  “I’m off to bed,” says Elf. “It’s been a long day.”

  * * *

  —


  MONDAY IS CLOUDY. Elf telephones Moonwhale from the hotel to ask Levon to cancel the band’s gigs later in the week. She’s never canceled a ticketed gig in her life. Moonwhale’s line is engaged. Their dad drives Elf and Bea around the cricket ground to Imogen’s house. Elf’s mum lets them in.

  “How was the night?” whispers their dad.

  “Pretty rotten,” replies their mum.

  “Can we see her?” asks Bea. “Is she up?”

  “Later, love. She’s asleep now. Lawrence and his father have gone to the hospital to meet the coroner.”

  “Right, then,” says Elf’s dad. “That lawn needs a mow.” Bea and Elf peg out some washing and walk to the shops for groceries and cigarettes. In the newsagent’s, Shandy Fontayne comes on the radio singing “Waltz for My Guy.” Bea’s watching her. Elf says, “If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.” Elf buys Imogen a packet of Benson & Hedges and the week’s Melody Maker. Back at the house, Imogen is downstairs, staring at a jigsaw of a tulip field and a windmill their mother is working on. Elf wishes she could say, “You’re looking better,” but it would be an obvious lie.

  Elf tries calling Moonwhale again, but the line is still engaged. She tries Jasper’s flat, but nobody replies. She wonders if anything’s wrong, then tells herself not to be paranoid.

  Elf and Bea are preparing a salad when the Sinclairs arrive back. They enter through the back door. “Well,” reports Lawrence’s dad, “the coroner’s put ‘Accidental Infant Death’ on the certificate. Which says everything and nothing.”

  There’s a raw sob. Imogen’s hands are covering her mouth.

  “Oh, pet.” Mr. Sinclair is horrified. “I didn’t see you, I…”