Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Not unless he’ll fit in the fookin’ ashtray,’ says Griff.

‘So you were climbing up the drainpipes,’ says Elf.

The Beast passes the hitchhiker. ‘Got to the third floor, where I shimmied up a diagonal pipe towards Little Richard’s window … and the drainpipe came away from the wall. Fifty feet up! I lunged for the vertical section, grabbed it, and heard the pipe smash on the ground below. It looked like half a mile down. My only hope was to haul myself up to Little Richard’s windowsill and go knock-knock-knock on the glass. It was that cloudy glass you can’t see through. No one answered. I was clinging to the pipe like a koala but my hands were cramping up and my feet couldn’t get any purchase. I knocked again. Nothing. Thought I was a goner – and if the window hadn’t slid upwards on my third knock, I would’ve been. It was Little Richard himself. Shiny quiff, pencil moustache, looking at this kid literally hanging on by his fingernails saying, “Hello, Mr Richard, can I have yer autograph please?”’

A bus flings a spume of spray onto the windscreen.

Dean’s driving blind until the water’s run off.

‘You can’t end on that cliff-hanger,’ says Griff.

‘First, he hauled me inside and gave me an earful ’bout how I’d just nearly killed myself but I was thinking, This is amazing, I’m getting a bollocking off of Little Richard. Then he asked who was in charge of me. I said my brother but he was in the pub. I told him my name and said I was going to be a star too. That softened him up a bit. “Son,” he said, “ain’t no star ever went by the name of Moffat.” I said my mother’s maiden name was “Moss” and he said, “Dean Moss, that’ll work,” and he wrote on a photo, “ To Dean Moss, Climber to the Stars – from Little Richard ”. Then one of his people escorted me out past the bouncer who hadn’t let me in and my adventure was over. Ray ’n’ the others thought I was making it all up till I showed them my photographic evidence.’

A sign says it’s twenty-seven miles to Brighton.

‘Do you still have it?’ asks Griff. ‘The photo?’

‘Nah.’ Do I tell them? ‘My old man burned it.’

Elf’s horrified. ‘Why would your dad do such a thing?’

The middle classes have no bloody idea.

Dean’s lip-scar throbs. ‘Long story.’

‘Nina Simone at Ronnie Scott’s,’ says Elf. The Beast rattles through a village called Handcross. ‘I was seventeen. My parents would never have let me go into Soho alone, but Imogen and a boy from church chaperoned me into Satan’s Lair. I’d been sneaking off to the Folk Barge at Richmond since I was fifteen but Nina Simone was in a higher league. Way higher. She floated across Ronnie Scott’s like Cleopatra on her barge. A black orchid dress. Pearls the size of pebbles. She sat down and announced “I am Nina Simone”, as if daring you to contradict her. That was it. No “ Thank you for coming ”, no “ I’m honoured to be here .” It was our job to thank her for coming. We were honoured to be there. A drummer, a bassist and a saxophonist, that was it. She played a bluesy, folkie set. “Cotton-eyed Joe”, “Gin House Blues”, “Twelfth Of Never”, “Black Is The Color Of My True Love’s Hair”. No banter. No jokes. No fake heart attack. Once, a couple were whispering too loud. She eyeballed the offenders, and said, “Pardon me, am I singing too loud for y’all?” The couple combusted on the spot.’

A sign says Brighton is twenty miles away.

‘In awe of her as I was, I never wanted to be Nina Simone,’ continues Elf. ‘I’m a white English folk singer. She’s a coloured Juilliard-trained genius. She plays blues with her left hand and Bach with her right. I saw her do it. All I wanted was a few ounces of her self-assurance. I still do. Heckling Nina Simone would be like heckling a mountain. Unthinkable. Pointless. At the end she told the audience, “I will sing one encore, and one only.” It was “The Last Rose Of Summer”. I was by the cloakroom with my sister when she left. One woman held up an album and a pen but Nina just said, “I am here to S-I-N-G, not S-I-G-N.” A minder opened the door and off she departed to her secret London palace. I used to think you became a star by having hits. After that show, I started to think, No – you are a star first, therefore you have the hits. ’

The Beast’s wheel thumps into a pothole.

The vehicle jolts but carries on at 40 m.p.h.

‘ Which is probably why I’m not a star.’

‘Until tonight,’ says Griff. ‘Until tonight.’

A cherry-red Triumph Spitfire Mark II overtakes the Beast on a downhill stretch lined with orchards. If Utopia Avenue ever makes real money , thinks Dean, I’m getting one o’ them. I’ll drive to Gravesend, and slow down outside Harry Moffat’s flat and I’ll rev the engine once to say, ‘Screw’ and again to say, ‘You’ …

The real Triumph Spitfire drives away, into the future.

The road is patchy with puddles mirroring the sky.

‘What about your best show, then, Zooto?’ asks Griff.

Jasper thinks. ‘Big Bill Broonzy once played “Key To The Highway” just for me. Does that count?’

‘Give over,’ says Griff. ‘He’s been dead donkey’s years.’

‘I was eleven. It was 1956. I was spending the summer in Domburg in the Netherlands. My Dutch grandfather was an old friend of the vicar in the town, and every year I’d stay with the vicar and his wife during the school holidays. That summer I made a model Spitfire out of balsa wood. It flew beautifully. It was the best I’d ever made. One evening, I launched it on my final throw and the breeze carried it over the high wall of the last garden in Domburg you’d want your prize glider to land in. The garden of Captain Verplancke. He had been in the wartime Resistance and had quite a reputation. The other boys told me I should go and get the vicar. Kids didn’t just knock on Captain Verplancke’s door at eight o’clock at night. But I thought, The worst he’ll do is just say no. So in I went, up to the house and knocked. Nobody answered. I knocked again. Nothing. So I walked around the back and there, on Walcheren Island, a stone’s throw from the North Sea, was a scene off a Mississippi whiskey label. Porch, lantern, rocking chair and a big black man playing a guitar, hoarsely crooning in English and smoking a roll-up. I’d never spoken to a person who wasn’t white before. I hadn’t heard of blues guitar, let alone heard any. He may as well have been a Martian playing Martian music. Yet I was transfixed. What was it? How could music be so sad, so sparse, so dilatory, so jagged, so many things all at once? Pretty soon the guitarist noticed me, but he carried on playing. He played the whole of “Key To The Highway” . At the end, he asked me in English, “So, what’s the verdict, Shorty?” I asked if I could ever learn to play like that. “No,” he told me, “because” – I’ll always remember this – “you haven’t lived my life and the blues is a language you can’t lie in.” But if I wanted it enough, he said, then one day I’d learn to play like me. The vicar arrived at this point to apologise for my intrusion, and my audience with the mystery stranger was over. The next day, Captain Verplancke’s housekeeper dropped by with the Big Bill Broonzy and Washboard Sam LP, signed with the words “ Play It Like You ”.’

A sign says Brighton is only ten miles away.

‘I hope nobody burned that LP,’ remarks Griff.

‘I’ll show it to you when you’re next over,’ says Jasper.

‘Did you get your model Spitfire back?’ asks Elf.