Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Elf realises she’s dropped her plectrum.

She’s sweating through her makeup.

She thinks, This is how a career dies …

Abort the gig . Leave with your dignity intact. What’s left of it. As Elf lowers her guitar, a figure in the front row reaches forward. The spotlight’s outer edge reveals a guy of about her age with feminine good looks: oval face, black hair down to his jaw, plush lips, clever eyes. He’s holding Elf’s lucky plectrum. Elf’s fingers take it from his.

Elf was sure she was quitting. Now she’s not.

To the left of the plectrum retriever sits a taller guy in a purple jacket. He addresses her semi-audibly, like a stage prompter: ‘If you do not go with me, I’ll surely find another.’

Elf addresses the audience. ‘I thought I’d revise this bit –’ she starts to finger-pick ‘– to reflect the wreckage I call my love-life …’ She counts herself in and sings: ‘ Even if you go with me, I’ll still sleep with another … ’ she switches to an Australian accent ‘… ’cause my name is Brucie Fletcher, and I’ll even do your mother …’

Shrieks of glee slosh around the club. Elf finishes the song with no further revisions, and the applause is buoyant.

Oh, why not? She goes to the piano. ‘I’d like to road-test three new songs. They’re not strictly folk, but …’

‘Play ’em, Elf,’ calls John Martyn.

Elf grasps the hairiest nettle first and plays the intro to ‘Never Enough’. During the middle eight she veers into ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’. She saw Nina Simone do this at Ronnie Scott’s – splice a passage of one song into the middle of another. The two songs resonate. Elf returns to ‘Never Enough’ and ends on a clanging unresolved F sharp. Applause swells up and buoys her. Al Stewart’s over to the side, clapping with delight. Elf returns to her guitar to play ‘Your Polaroid Eyes’ and ‘I Watch You Sleep’. Next, she sings a cappella a folk song she learned from Anne Briggs called ‘Willie O’ Winsbury’, cupping her hand to her ear à la Ewan MacColl. She sings the king’s lines imperiously, his pregnant daughter’s lines defiantly, and Willie’s lines coolly. She’s never sung it better. ‘Time for one more,’ she says, resuming her seat.

‘Sing it, Elf,’ says Bert Jansch, ‘or Andy won’t let you out.’

If ‘Any Way The Wind Blows’ is an albatross around Elf’s neck, it’s been a generous albatross. ‘So my last song is my big American hit.’ That D-string’s loose again. ‘My big American hit for Wanda Virtue.’ The line earns its reliable laugh. Elf was singing this song years before she met Bruce, before he monkeyed about with the ending to make it segue into his Ned Kelly ballad. She shuts her eyes. Strum down-up-down down-up . A deep breath …

One round of applause, half a dozen hugs, many variations of ‘ You’re better off without him ’ and several reviews of the new songs later, Elf gets to the stockroom that doubles as Andy’s office. To her surprise, she finds four men squeezed into it, as well as Andy. Elf recognises two: the good-looking plectrum-retriever and his lankier neighbour who cued her ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ line. The third man has cloudy brown hair, a Regency moustache, lidded eyes that look like they’re smirking, and a caddish air. The fourth, leaning against the filing cabinet, is a few years older. A big, bony face with receding hair, glasses with light blue lenses, a halo of confidence and a Prussian blue suit with sunset-red buttons.

‘The woman of the hour,’ declares Andy. ‘The new songs are corkers. Someone will record them, if A&B are too stupid to.’

‘Glad you approve,’ says Elf. ‘If you’re all having a meeting, I’ll come back.’

‘Less a meeting,’ says Andy, ‘more a plotters’ huddle. Meet Levon Frankland. An old partner in crime.’

The blue-glasses guy puts his hand on his heart. ‘Great show. Truly.’ He’s American. ‘Those three new songs? Dynamite.’

‘Thanks.’ Elf wonders if he’s gay. She turns to the darker shorter one. ‘And thank you for my plectrum.’

‘Any time. Dean Moss. Loved yer set. That pause, when yer made us think yer’d forgotten the words. Brilliant stagecraft.’

Elf confesses: ‘It wasn’t stagecraft.’

Dean Moss just nods as if, after all, that makes sense.

Elf wonders if his face is familiar. ‘Have we met?’

‘A year ago. Auditions for a talent show at Thames TV. I was in a band called Battleship Potemkin. You sang a folk song.’

‘That’s it. We all lost to a child ventriloquist with a dodo thing,’ Elf recalls. ‘Sorry I didn’t recognise you.’

‘ Pfff. It was one o’ them days yer want to forget. As well as that, I was working at the Etna coffee shop on D’Arblay Street till last month. Yer’d come in quite often, though I was stuck behind the machines, so yer prob’ly didn’t notice me.’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t. Why didn’t you come out and tell me, “ Oy, I’m that guy from the Thames TV thing ”?’

Dean looks at his hands. ‘Embarrassment, I s’pose.’

Elf’s not sure what to say. ‘That’s very honest.’

‘I’m Griff,’ says the tousled, moustached one. ‘I play drums. I liked “Polaroid Eyes” best. A cracker.’ He’s an obvious northerner. ‘And this bleeder,’ Griff nods at the tall, skinny red-haired one, ‘is Jasper de Zoet. His real name, believe it or not.’

Jasper shakes Elf’s hand as if following instructions. ‘I’ve never met anyone called “Elf” before.’ He sounds upper-class.

‘It’s the “El” of “Elizabeth” and the “F” of “Frances”. My sister Bea started it when she was little, and it’s stuck.’

‘It’s apt,’ says Jasper. ‘Your voice is elvish. I’ve played “Oak, Ash And Thorn” over a hundred times. Your recording of “King Of Trafalgar” has remarkable’ – he does a finger-twirl – ‘psycho-acoustics. Is that a word?’

‘Possibly,’ says Elf, adding unguardedly, ‘if it is a word, it rhymes with “Pooh sticks”.’

Jasper looks diagonally. ‘Or “Why throw the Pooh sticks?”’

Ooo , thinks Elf. Somebody else is a lyricist.

Levon removes his glasses. ‘We have a proposal, Elf.’

‘Okay. Since you’re a friend of Andy’s, I’ll listen to it.’

‘I’ll make myself scarce.’ Andy hands her an envelope. ‘Here’s your fee. It’s the duo rate. You earned it.’ He exits.

‘First, a little context.’ Levon Frankland shuts the door. ‘I’m a music manager. Raised in Toronto, but I went to New York to become a folk-singing colossus. My turtleneck sweaters were spot on, but everything else came up short, so I worked on Tin Pan Alley for a spell. First with a publisher, then with a booking agent who looked after British invasion acts. I came to London four years ago to mind some American names on tour here and stayed on. I clocked up studio time gophering for Mickie Most, shifted into A&R for a year, and now it’s management. An all-rounder, you could call me. Various people call me various things. I never take it personally. Cigarette?’

‘Sure,’ says Elf.

Levon distributes his Rothmans. ‘Late last year, I had dinner with two gentlemen named Freddy Duke and Howie Stoker. Freddy’s a tour agent based in Denmark Street. Old school, but open to new ideas. Howie’s an American investor who recently acquired Van Dyke Talent, a middle-sized New York promotions agency. Freddy and Howie’s big plan was – is – to merge the companies into a single-bodied two-headed transatlantic agency to be a gateway for British acts wanting to tour in the States, and vice versa. Foreign tours are a minefield without local knowledge. The music unions’ regulations rob your will to live. So Freddy and Howie came to me with a fresh plan. How would I like to sign a small stable of talent, record demos, manage and get my acts signed and recorded, tour them via Duke-Stoker and grow them into household names? I’d be operating from their offices in Denmark Street but with artistic autonomy. Duke-Stoker would pay seed money and my salary for a year, in return for a – relatively modest – cut of future profits. We’d shaken on it before the dessert trolley arrived. Lo, Moonwhale Music was born.’