“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 potpourri. “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’ shtick?”
“ ‘Shtick’?” 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 fuckup. 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 setup 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 heavyset 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 Vs, 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 of a 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 misdemeanors.”
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?” exclaims 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 toward 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 toward the light…”
“Don’t encourage him,” says Tiffany, but Keith Moon groans hammily, grips Brian Jones’s elbow, and together they totter backward 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 realizing this before. He remembers realizing he remembered realizing 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 undertable 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 t
he 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 mph, “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 realized 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 forward. 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. Not 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 colors.”
“Yeah?” Dean bites his half-eaten apple. “What’s the part?”
“Funny.” She takes his apple and bites the last big chunk. “ ‘Tiffany Moss’ has a nicer ring to it than ‘Tiffany Hershey.’ ”
She’s just toying with you, Dean assures himself.
“I’ll need a bigger engagement ring than Tony’s when we go public. People notice these things.”
Dean chews more slowly. Just let the joke die away…
“My lawyer says my chances of getting the Bayswater house go up if I establish Tony’s adultery. I’ve kept notes, but it’s best if you buy a place for us in the meantime. One needs a roof.”
Dean looks at her to check she’s joking.
“Chelsea’s nice. Somewhere big enough for parties. A flat for a housekeeper and an au pair. The boys need rooms of their own. Crispin likes you. Martin’ll stop hating you eventually…”
The apple sticks in his throat.
“Or sooner, if we give him a little brother.”
The deeply unpleasant thought of a certain young woman named Mandy Craddock and her baby son arrives first; and is shoved aside the next instant by the equally unpleasant thought that Tiffany is not toying with him to get a rise, but is, in fact, stone cold serious. Dean sits up and backs away. “Look, Tiff…I-I-I…I don’t think—”
“No, no, you’re right. Chelsea’s a frightful cliché. I’ll settle for Knightsbridge. We’ll have Harrods on the doorstep.”
“Yeah but…I mean, we only just…but…”
Tiffany sits up, covering her breasts with a sweaty sheet. She’s frowning, genuinely puzzled. “But what, darling?”
Dean stares at his adulterous lover. How the bloody hell do I get out o’ this? Tiffany’s face changes—into a big, naughty grin. Relief dissolves through his bloodstream like sugar. “You evil, evil bloody witch.”
“It’s a basic exercise at drama school.”
“You totally bloody had me.”
“Why thank you. I—” Her face changes to iffy disgust. “Just a minute.” Tiffany snatches Kleenexes from the box, swivels away, and wipes herself. Turning back, she notices a yogurty smear on the back of her thumb. “Look at that.” She peers at it. “Stuff of life.”
* * *
—
TEN MORNINGS AGO, at their flat, Jasper was playing Dean a rough version of his new song when the phone rang. It was Levon, for Dean, sounding grim. “So here’s the story. A girl called Amanda Craddock just visited Moonwhale with her mother, a family-law solicitor, and a three-month-old baby boy. They’re claiming you’re the baby�
�s father.”
First, Dean felt sick. Then, he tried to place the name. “Amanda Craddock.” It wasn’t familiar—but it wasn’t unfamiliar.
“Dean? Are you hearing this?”
Dry mouth, tight throat. “Yeah.”
“Is this girl lying or isn’t she?”
“Dunno…” he croaked. “I…dunno.”
“ ‘Dunno’ isn’t an option. We need a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Both are problematic, but one is much more expensively problematic than the other. Can you come to the office?”
“Right now? Is she still there?”
“No, she’s gone. Yes, right now. Ted Silver’s leaving for his golf weekend after lunch. We all need to talk.”
Dean hung up. Jasper carried on strumming in the sunken lounge. Amanda Craddock? Three months plus nine equals June or July last year, around the time of Imogen’s wedding, or the Gravesend gig. He had been with Jude. There had been extracurricular encounters. Dean had made it clear—or clear-ish—to the women involved that he wasn’t in the market for a steady girlfriend. Casual sex with a celebrity stays very very casual. That’s the unwritten contract. Unfortunately, Dean now realized, unwritten contracts have as much fine print as the written variety.
* * *
—
DEAN SET OFF for Denmark Street on foot, telling Jasper, an unreliable liar, he had an errand. As he walked through a warm and muggy Mayfair, he tried to put last summer’s girls in order. There were two groupies he met at the party of a pal of Roger Daltrey’s in Notting Hill. Was that May? There was the girl in the Land Rover round the back of the Young Farmers’ gig at Loughborough. Was she a Craddock? Izzy Penhaligon in June. Or July. Dean had to admit, he had no idea. He hoped that he could sort this out before Nan Moss and Bill got to hear. In their world, if a guy gets a girl “into trouble” he marries her, plain and simple. Like Ray and Shirl. That’s not Dean’s world now, though. He would’ve paid for an abortion, if he’d known. They’re legal now. Girls don’t have to risk bleeding to death over a bucket in an old maid’s back parlor somewhere. Dean trudged up Greek Street and entered the short tunnel under the Pillars of Hercules pub into Manette Street.
Utopia Avenue Page 44
