Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘ Go castrate yourself with a rusty spoon, you crusty pervert were the words that sprang to mind,’ Bea looks both ways as they cross Denmark Street, ‘but then I thought, This is my sister’ s boss … So I kept my mouth shut.’

‘Technically,’ says Elf, ‘he’s Levon’s boss, but it’s true, he could still press the ejector button on us. So thanks.’

A bicycle courier flashes by. Bea asks, ‘Dad’s lawyer friend’s still checking those contracts, right?’

‘Yes. Hopefully he’s up to the job. I could count the musicians who haven’t been shafted on the fingers of no hands.’

‘ Extra, extra! ’ hollers a raw-throated newspaper vendor in his tiny shack. ‘ Harold Wilson Found Dead In A Coffin With A Stake Through His Heart! Extra, extra! ’

Bea and Elf stop. They both look at the newspaper vendor who tells them, ‘I like to check if anyone’s listening. Listening’s a dying art. I mean, look at ’em all.’

People hurry along Denmark Street in the May sunshine.

‘Perhaps they hear you,’ suggests Elf, ‘but just think, Ah well, that’s another Soho eccentric .’

‘Nah,’ says the vendor. ‘Folks only hear what they expect to. Not one in a hundred has ears like you two.’

Three young men leaving the Gioconda café stand aside to let the sisters pass, and to get a better look at Bea . From their battered art folders and clothes, Elf guesses they are students at Saint Martin’s College of Art, a minute away on Charing Cross Road. Bea breezes by as if the boys don’t exist, and they file out of the café.

Elf asks, ‘What can I get you?’

‘Just a coffee. Milk, no sugar.’

‘Not much of a breakfast,’ says Elf.

‘I had half a grapefruit before I left.’

‘At the risk of sounding like Dad,’ says Elf, ‘is half a grapefruit enough for an audition? Let me get you a scone.’

‘No, really. I’m full of butterflies as it is.’

‘If you’re sure.’ Elf orders a bacon sandwich plus two coffees from Mrs Biggs, matriarch of the Gioconda, who relays the order through a hatch to a kitchen slave. The sisters take the window table. ‘What monologue did you settle on for the audition?’

‘Joan of Arc from Henry the Sixth, Part One . And for my song, a pleasing ditty entitled “Any Way The Wind Blows” by English songstress Elf Holloway. I didn’t ask permission. Will she mind?’

‘I’d say that Miss Holloway – whom I happen to know slightly – will be utterly delighted. Why that one?’

‘It’s beautiful unaccompanied, and because I happened to be upstairs while you wrote it – a story I may let slip to the panel, because I’m a shameless name-dropper. Where’s the loo?’

‘Down the steps, under the Mona Lisa picture. Be warned. It’s a bit of a Journey to the Centre of the Earth …’

The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’ comes on the radio. Elf looks out at Denmark Street. Hundreds of people pass by. Reality erases itself as it rerecords itself , Elf thinks. Time is the Great Forgetter. She gets her notebook from her handbag and writes, Memories are unreliable … Art is memory made public. Time wins in the long run. Books turn to dust, negatives decay, records get worn out, civilisations burn. But as long as the art endures, a song or a view or a thought or a feeling someone once thought worth keeping is saved and stays share-able. Others can say, ‘I feel that too.’

Across the road in a brick doorway, under a poster for Berkshire stockings, a couple are kissing. Elf’s line of sight, the depth of the doorway and the speed of the foot-traffic are such that, chances are, the lovers are visible to Elf alone. They press their foreheads together and talk. Arrangements, sweet nothings, promises, see-you-laters … He’s averagely good-looking but she’s the first day of spring in a female body, Elf decides. Her poise, her clothes, her tomboyishness, her throat-length dark hair and, most of all, that wild crooked smile.

You’re ogling. Elf fumbles in her handbag for her packet of Camels, ferrets about for a lighter, and lights up. I wasn’t ogling , I was just looking. Elf remembers the voice she heard on the 97 bus last January, shunting along Cromwell Road …

The doorbell at 101 Cromwell Road shrieked like a banshee. Music throbbed. ‘Sounds like the party’s started,’ said Bruce. They had travelled back from Cambridge that day and Elf would have preferred to stay at her flat, but Wotsit was Bruce’s oldest friend from Melbourne and he’d just arrived in London, so Bruce was going, and Elf was afraid that if she didn’t go, he might not be back until the following morning, full of easy-to-believe lies about where he had spent the night. The door of 101 was opened by a gangly man in a peach Afghan coat, beads and a straggly moustache. ‘Brucie Fletch! Get inside, it’s freezing out!’

‘Wotsit! How the bugger are you?’

‘Alive. Well. Hydra was Paradise. You have to go.’

‘God, I’d love to. I’m stuck here for now, though.’

‘This,’ Wotsit turned to Elf, ‘must be … uh …’

Bruce stepped in. ‘The one, the only, Elf Holloway.’

Elf shook his bony hand. ‘Bruce has told me a lot about you.’

‘Of all the gorgeous male Aussies in London,’ Wotsit had a toothy smile, ‘why pick this shameless larrikin, eh?’

‘Sexual charisma,’ said Bruce. ‘Genius. My vast estate.’

‘That must be it,’ said Elf, who paid all the bills and expenses.

Wotsit ushered them down a hallway, past a mural of an elephant, a jade Buddha in a nook and an Om prayer flag hanging in the stairwell. The Freak Out! album by the Mothers of Invention boomed through a marshy pong of dope, lentils and incense. In the long lounge, thirty or forty people were chattering, drinking, smoking, dancing, laughing. ‘Hey, everyone,’ Wotsit announced, ‘this is Bruce and his good lady Elf.’ There was a small chorus of ‘Hi, Bruce!’ and ‘Hi, Elf!’ and someone gave Elf a beer. She had a few sips. A sleek woman in copper and gold with kohl-ringed eyes materialised. ‘Elf, I’m Vanessa. I a dore your records.’ Home Counties. ‘“Shepherd’s Crook” overwhelms me. I do a bit of modelling, and I was at Mike Anglesey’s studio in Chelsea for a Christmas knees-up, and at some point Mike put your EP on and told us all,’ Vanessa does a posh girl’s Cockney imitation, ‘“Get your shell-likes around this!” and … wow.’

‘Thanks, Vanessa,’ said Bruce. ‘We’re proud of it.’

Someone tapped Elf’s shoulder. She turned to find Marc Bolan’s big doggy eyes. ‘Where’ve you been hiding, Goldilocks?’

‘Marc! Bruce and I have been—’

‘I heard “Shepherd’s Crook” EP.’ Marc wore mascara, a leather jacket and a knotted scarf. ‘Lots there to admire. The best songs reminded me of yours truly’s new work, in fact. I’ve got these new songs that would fit perfectly on your label. It’s an album’s-worth, really. Who should I speak to?’

‘Toby Green. But it’s only a small—’

‘Toby Green. Got it. He’ll cream his pants when he hears my idea: a song for each companion in The Fellowship of the Ring – with an interlude for Gollum and a climax for the One Ring itself.’

Elf guessed she was supposed to be bowled over. She looked around for Bruce for clues but he had vanished. As had Vanessa.

‘You have read The Lord of the Rings ?’ asked Marc Bolan.

‘Bruce lent me the first volume, but if I’m honest—’

‘I always tell girls: “If you want to understand me, read The Lord of the Rings right now.” It’s that simple.’