Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Dean told Jasper, ‘I’ll do the talking.’

He pressed the bell and an eye-level door slot snapped open. An all-seeing eye examined the pair. ‘And you gentlemen are?’

‘Friends o’ Brian’s. Said he’d put us on the list.’

The reply came, ‘Brian Jones or Brian Epstein?’

‘Epstein.’

‘Then I’ll just check my list … Ah, right, Brian is expecting … uh … Are you Neil and Ben, by any chance?’

Dean couldn’t believe his luck. ‘That’s us.’

‘Perfect. Let me double-check the surnames … so you’d be Mr Neil Downe and your mate here’s Mr Ben Dover?’

‘That’s us all right,’ said Dean, then got the puns.

The All-Seeing Eye gleamed and the slot shut.

Dean pressed the doorbell again. The slot opened and the All-Seeing Eye peered out. ‘And you gentlemen are?’

‘I was out of order just now. Sorry. But we are musicians. We’re in Utopia Avenue. We’re playing Brighton Poly tomorrow.’

‘Submit a membership application, plus fee, and management will consider the matter. Or get on Top of the Pops and the fee might be waived. Step aside, please.’

A quiff, a nose and a neck-ruff whooshed past Dean. The door of 13A half-opened and a burst of ‘How’ve yer been, Mr Humperdinck?’ escaped before the door closed again.

Dean jabbed the doorbell three times.

The slot snapped open. ‘And you gentlemen are?’

‘Dean Moss. This is Jasper de Zoet. Remember our names. One o’ these days we’re coming in.’ He strode off across Mason’s Yard.

Jasper trotted to keep up. ‘Maybe it’s for the best. Our first gig’s tomorrow. A hangover won’t help.’

‘That smug shit was a shitting ponce.’

‘Was he? I thought he was quite polite.’

Dean stopped. ‘Don’t yer ever get pissed off?’

‘I’ve tried, but I’m unconvincing.’

‘It’s not a matter of “convincing”! It’s a bloody emotion !’

Jasper blinked. ‘Exactly.’

The traffic is sluggish all the way from Waterloo to Croydon, so Dean doesn’t have the chance to take the Beast above 30 m.p.h. The gearstick is clunky as hell and the van keeps stalling at junctions. South of Croydon, they get stuck behind a slow convoy of caravans, so only now, beyond the yawn-and-you-miss-it town of Hooley, where the A23 crests the shoulder of the South Downs, is the road empty enough for Dean to put his foot down.

‘It’s not exactly built for speed,’ says Dean.

‘She’s a “She” not an “It”,’ says Griff in the back. ‘And she’s loaded up with four musicians and their gear.’

When the speedo touches 45 m.p.h., the Beast starts to shudder ominously.

‘That doesn’t sound good,’ says Elf.

Dean drops back down to forty and the shuddering subsides. ‘Griff, did yer actually test-drive this piece of crap?’

‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth.’

Dean had to borrow fifteen pounds from Moonwhale to pay his quarter share of this ‘gift’. More debt … I’m going to have to start serving coffees again, at this rate. ‘Yer should always look a gift horse in its mouth. They’re never gifts.’

‘We needed a van so I got us one,’ said Griff.

‘Yeah – we needed a van. Not a twenty-five-year-old ex-hearse with holes in the floor yer can see the road through.’

‘Didn’t see you putting in the leg-work,’ says Griff.

‘Well, I think the Beast has character,’ says Elf.

‘As long as it gets us from A to B,’ says Jasper.

‘Thanks for yer expert opinions,’ Dean retorts. ‘When the crankshaft shears off at two a.m. on the hard shoulder I’ll let yer fix it with a bit o’ “character”, Elf. And when are you ,’ he asks Jasper, ‘getting your driving licence so you can do that A-to-B bit?’

‘I’m not sure I’d trust myself behind the wheel.’

‘How bloody convenient.’

Jasper, predictably, says nothing. Is he pissed off? Cowed? Or does he not give a toss? Dean is still never sure what his flatmate-bandmate’s thinking. Guessing gets tiring.

‘There’s a bloke in Wales,’ says Griff, ‘who’ll sit your test for you. You pay twenty-five quid and a fortnight later your licence arrives. Keith Moon got his that way.’

The anecdote deserves a response, but Dean’s heard it before. ‘Anyone got a ciggie?’ Nobody replies. ‘Please.’

Elf lights a Benson & Hedges and passes it to him.

‘Ta. If this is the Beast’s top speed –’ Dean takes a drag ‘– we’re in for some long bloody drives. Radio’s knackered too.’

‘If someone gave you a million quid,’ says Griff, ‘you’d complain they didn’t fookin’ pack it right.’

‘Comrades,’ says Elf, schoolmarmishly, ‘tonight’s our first gig. We’ll make music history. Let love and peace reign.’

The A23 curves out of the woods and climbs a hill.

Sussex unrolls all the way to the English Channel.

The golden afternoon is threaded by a silver river.

The sky turns dark. Dean sucks a toffee as the Beast passes through Pease Pottage, a village less quaint than its name. ‘If I had to choose one gig, it’d be Little Richard at the Folkestone Odeon. ’Bout ten years ago. Bill Shanks took us. Bill owns the record shop in Gravesend and sold me my first proper guitar. He drove my brother Ray ’n’ me and a few of us down to Folkestone in his van. Little Richard … Jesus, he’s a one-man power station. The screaming, the energy, the theatrics. The girls. I thought, Well, now I know what I’m doing when I grow up . Then, halfway through “Tutti Frutti”, he was doing his thing, leaping on the piano, howling like a werewolf – when he stopped. Clutched his chest, went into a spasm … and hit the deck like a sack o’ spanners.’

The Beast passes a gypsy encampment in a lay-by.

‘That was part of his act, right?’ asks Elf.

‘So we thought. Little Richard’s such a card , we thought. He’s codding us, we thought. But then the band noticed. They stopped playing. Then, dead silence. Little Richard lay there, twitching … and then stopped. Meanwhile a manager dashed up, tried to find a heartbeat, and shouted, “Mr Richard? Mr Richard?” Yer could hear a pin drop. The manager stood up, dead pale ’n’ sweaty, and asked if there was a doctor in the house. We all looked at each other thinking, Bloody hell, Little Richard’s dying on us … A man called back, “I’m a doctor, let me through, let me through.” He hurried up onto the stage, took Little Richard’s pulse, uncorked a bottle, held it under his nose, and then this –’ Dean overtakes a tractor pulling a load of horse-manure ‘– ear-splitting “ Awop-bop-a-loo-bop a-lop-bam-boom! ” rang out. Little Richard sprang up – and the band came in bang on the chorus. The whole thing had been a put-on. Even the guys screamed! And it was on with the show.’

Raindrops splatter on the windscreen.

The wiper scree-scraws ineffectually.

Dean drops down to 30 m.p.h. ‘After the show, Shanks ’n’ Ray and the others pissed off down the boozer. I was left to my own devices so I reckoned I’d go for Little Richard’s autograph. Told the bouncer at the Odeon that I was Little Richard’s nephew, and if he didn’t let me in, he’d be in trouble. He told me to piss off. So I went round the back and joined the fans at the stage door. After a bit the manager showed up and said Little Richard’d gone already. They all believed him. The very same geezer who’d given it the whole is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house stunt. I played along but I sneaked back a minute later just as a window opened, three floors up. There he was. Little Richard, large as life. He took a few puffs of his joint, flicked away the butt, then shut the window. I did what any normal twelve-year-old Tarzan fan’d do. Climbed the drainpipes.’ The Beast approaches a bedraggled hitchhiker whose sign reads ‘ANYWHERE’. The ink is running. Dean asks, ‘Can we squeeze that poor bastard in?’