Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

It just comes out: ‘Oh, yer’ve got to be bloody joking.’

Harry Moffat takes a shallow breath. ‘Been a while.’

He steps into the yellow light. Dean has a good view.

Harry Moffat is both the same and different.

His liver-spots are splotchier. His eyes have sunk.

He’s shaved. His hair’s neat. He’s made an effort.

Dean stays in his Triumph. ‘Ray tell yer my address, did he?’

Harry Moffat shakes his head. ‘There’s only two de Zoets in the phone book and Mayfair’s likelier than Pinner. Yer might want to go ex-directory.’

Dean stopped scripting possible encounters years ago, so now he has no store of lines to fall back on. ‘What d’yer want?’

Harry Moffat has a new, sad, unsure half-smile. ‘Don’t know if I know, Dean. I … Well, first off, yer album’s brilliant.’

Yer used to belt my mum, and Ray, and me.

‘’Specially “Purple Flames”. Yer really put it across.’

Dean wonders where his own anger and contempt have gone. Time’s a fire-extinguisher , he thinks.

Moths flutter around the garage bulb.

‘Lovely motor,’ says Harry Moffat.

Dean says nothing.

‘We was worried about yer while yer was banged up in Italy.’

Who’s the ‘we’? Moffats ? Gravesenders ?

‘Feels like a long time ago,’ says Dean.

‘Guess yer’ve been busy? Tourin’, recordin’ ’n’ stuff?’

Following a path yer used to shit on, a dream yer once poured paraffin on and set alight. ‘Yep.’

‘Yer’ve done well for yerself.’

Dean can’t help it: ‘Must be all the encouragement yer gave me.’ Harry Moffat flinches. No, I won’t feel guilty.

‘There’s lots o’ things I wish I’d done,’ says Harry Moffat. ‘Lot’s o’ things I wish I’d never.’ He indicates a stool in the mouth of the garage. ‘May I? I won’t keep yer, but my legs ain’t what they was.’

Dean’s gesture says, It’s all the same to me.

He sits and takes off his cap. Dean sees he’s stopped trying to hide his bald patch. ‘I’m in this group. For alcoholics. Thanks to them, I ain’t had a drink since … the accident. Yer heard ’bout that?’

‘The man who can’t walk and the girl with one eye?’

Harry Moffat looks at his hands. ‘Yeah. There’s this lady in our group, Christine, she’s my sponsor. She says, “Not even God can change the past.” It’s true. Yer can’t always fix stuff or put it right. But yer can say sorry. Maybe yer’ll be told to bugger off, maybe they’ll smack yer, but … yer can say it. So …’ Harry Moffat takes a deep breath and scrunches his eyes shut. Dean was sure today had no surprises left in it, but the sight of tears on Harry Moffat’s cheeks proves him wrong. ‘So. Sorry for hitting yer, and yer mum, and Ray. Sorry I let yer down. Sorry I … didn’t see yer mum’s cancer. Sorry I was all yer had. Sorry I went off the rails after yer mum died. As if I was ever on the bloody rails! Sorry I burned yer stuff. Yer guitar. Bonfire Night. Sorry ’bout that time you ’n’ Kenny ’n’ Stew were busking. I did all that.’ He opens his eyes and wipes his cheeks with his palms. ‘I’m not blaming the drink. It was there, God knows, but …’ He shakes his head. ‘Lots o’ men in the AA, they never hurt a fly. I hit my family. That’s on me, that is. I’m sorry.’ Harry Moffat stands up and puts his cap on. He’s about to say one last thing when Elf walks up.

‘Evening.’

‘You’re Elf. Yer in the band.’

‘Ye-es. I saw the garage was open and …’

‘Harry Moffat.’

Elf frowns, and unfrowns. ‘Oh, my God, you’re …’ She glances at Dean and stops herself saying, ‘Dean’s dad.’

‘Yep. That Harry Moffat. Yer got a lovely voice, pet.’

‘Thanks. Thank you.’ Elf is confused. ‘Wait till you hear Dean’s vocals on the new LP, though. He’s been taking harmony lessons and he’s got this song called “The Hook” and, I’m telling you, he’s airtight. ’

‘Yeah? I’ll look forward to hearing it. A lot.’

The stockbroker neighbour with the dog walks by, lobbing in a ‘Lovely evening.’ Dean holds up a hand in greeting.

Elf says, ‘Isn’t it just?’ and the neighbour’s gone. Elf asks Harry Moffat, ‘So … are you … coming up to the boys’ flat? Or is this a garage party?’

Every word of what he just said , thinks Dean, was real. But I can’t just flick a switch. It’s been too long now. ‘He’s leaving.’

‘Bless yer, Elf, but I’m heading back to Gravesend. British Rail waits for no man.’ He nods at Dean. ‘Look after each other, eh?’

With that he slips off, like a man in a story.

Elf turns to Dean. ‘Are you okay?’

Dean taps out a rhythm on the steering wheel. ‘No idea, Elf. None. Look, I’ll, uh … be up in a few minutes.’

Chelsea Hotel #939

‘Wake up, Elf.’ It’s who? It’s Dean .

She hauls herself out of the quicksand of sleep.

‘Cop a load o’ that,’ says Dean, inches to her left.

She opens her eyes to find she fell asleep on Dean’s shoulder. Through the aeroplane window, far, far below, is a metropolis of greys and browns, needlepointed by lights, a tapestry sliding as the plane banks. Elf’s brain plays the opening bars of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. ‘Well, that’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,’ murmurs Elf through a mouth gummy with sleep. It’s Lilliput, Brobdingnag and Laputa, all in one . Manhattan floats on glassy dark, a raft laden with skyscrapers. Bevelled skyscrapers; skyscrapers sharp enough to draw blood; skyscrapers stippled with windows, ledges and braille-like dimples; burnished skyscrapers, lovingly polished. ‘There’s the Statue of Liberty,’ says Dean. ‘See?’

‘She looks bigger in her pictures,’ says Elf.

‘Looks like a garden ornament from up here,’ says Griff.

Elf checks on Jasper, to her right. His woolly hat is pulled down to his nostrils. ‘You alive in there, Jasper? Nearly there.’

Jasper unrolls his hat to reveal bloodshot eyes, fumbles in his bag and extracts a pill bottle, which he drops. He swears in Dutch.

Elf reaches for the bottle. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Did I lose any? Find them all. All of them.’

‘No – the lid’s still on, look. Let me open it. How many?’

Jasper gulps air. ‘Two.’

Elf reads the label – Queludrin – and tips a couple of pills onto Jasper’s sweaty palm. They are big and pale blue.

Jasper swallows them and screws the lid onto the bottle.

‘What are they for?’ asks Elf. ‘Nerves?’

‘Yes.’ Meaning, ‘Leave me alone. ’

‘We’ll be landing soon,’ says Elf.

Jasper pulls the hat over his eyes and Elf returns to the view. New York … a toponym, a symbol, a stage, a byword for Heaven and Hell – but only now, in Elf’s mind, does it qualify as a real place. Frame by frame, her imaginary New York, assembled from West Side Story , Spider-Man comics, On the Waterfront , Breakfast at Tiffany’s , Valley of the Dolls and gangster movies, is dissolving into a solidity of girders, bricks, blocks, cladding, wiring, plumbing, paving, traffic lanes, the tops of buildings, shops, apartments and eight million people … one of whom is Luisa Rey. Elf’s heart thuds. It hurts. But why hasn’t she answered my calls? My telegrams? My telepathic commands? For all of August, Luisa and Elf airmailed letters to each other every day and spoke for a ruinously expensive five minutes every week.

Eleven days ago, the cards and letters stopped. Until day five, Elf told herself there was a logical explanation: a postal strike, somewhere, or a family emergency at Luisa’s end. On day six, she rang Luisa’s apartment. The line was disconnected. On day seven she called the New York Spyglass office only to be told, Luisa was ‘away until further notice’. No further details were forthcoming, however craftily Elf probed. On day eight, the logical explanation began to look sickeningly obvious: Luisa didn’t feel for Elf what Elf felt for Luisa, and this most startling love of Elf’s life had ended as abruptly as it had begun.