Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Tell me something,’ says Don Glossop, then sneezes like a donkey braying. ‘Why do so many young men nowadays choose to ponce around looking like girls? It’s got so bad, I’m no longer sure which is which.’

‘Maybe you should look more closely,’ suggests Jasper.

Don Glossop frowns as if Jasper’s answer didn’t match his sentence. ‘But the hair! Why in God’s name don’t you get a haircut?’

Griff and Dean were with Jasper on the coach from St Matthias Church. Jasper wishes he hadn’t lost them.

Don Glossop peers into Jasper’s face: ‘Cat got your tongue?’

Jasper rewinds. Why in God’s name don’t you get a haircut? ‘I like my hair long. It’s that simple, really.’

Don Glossop squints. ‘You look like a ruddy nancy-boy!’

‘Only to you, Mr Glossop, and—’

‘Every – single – person in this banquet room’ll take one look at you just now and think, Nancy-boy! I guarantee it.’

Jasper avoids the onlooking faces. He sips water.

‘I think you’ll find that’s my water,’ declares a voice.

Concentrate: ‘If every homosexual on Earth – if that’s what you mean by “nancy-boy” – had long hair, your statement might be logical. But long hair’s only been fashionable for a few years. Surely, the homosexuals you’ve met were short-haired.’ Don Glossop looks blank so Jasper tries to help with examples. ‘In jail, or the Royal Navy, or public school, perhaps. One master at Ely was famous for interfering with boys, and he wore a wig like yours. Your logic is flawed. I suggest. Respectfully.’

‘What?’ Don Glossop has turned pale maroon. ‘ What? ’

Perhaps he’s hard of hearing. ‘I said, “One master at Ely was famous for interfering with boys, and he wore a wig—”’

‘My husband means ,’ Brenda Glossop says, ‘he has spent no time whatsoever consorting with “types” like that.’

‘Then how could he be an expert on “nancy-boys”?’

‘It’s common knowledge!’ Don Glossop leans forwards, dangling his tie in his food. ‘Nancy-boys have long hair!’

‘Those awful Rolling Stones have long hair,’ says a woman with a frizzy halo of mauve hair. ‘And they’re a disgrace.’

‘National Service would’ve sorted them out, but that’s gone too now, of course.’ The new speaker wears a regimental tie and a medal. ‘Another nail in the coffin.’

‘My point exactly, Brigadier,’ says Don Glossop. ‘We didn’t smack the Nazis for six just for a mob of guitar-twanging oiks to turn Great Britain into a land of yeah-yeahs and ooo-babys.’

‘That Keith Jagger’s father worked in a factory,’ says Brenda Glossop. ‘Now he swans about in a Tudor mansion.’

‘And thanks to the Evening News ,’ says Frizzy Halo, ‘we now know exactly what goes on inside, don’t we?’

‘I hope Judge Block makes a proper example of ’em,’ says the brigadier. ‘No doubt you think they’re the bee’s knees.’

Jasper remembers he’s here. ‘I’ve never met them. Though I’d chance my arm and say their best music will outlive all of us.’

‘Their primitive mating calls aren’t “music”,’ scoffs Don Glossop. ‘“Strangers In The Night” by Frank Sinatra is music. “Land of Hope and Glory” is music. This “rock ’n’ roll” is a poisonous racket.’

‘Yet to Sir Edward Elgar,’ says Jasper, ‘“Strangers In The Night” might have been a poisonous racket. Generations pass. Aesthetics evolve. Why is this fact a threat?’

‘Jasper.’ It’s Elf’s sister Bea, the one who’s got into RADA. ‘Um, you’re sitting at the wrong table.’

‘You can ruddy well say that again,’ says the brigadier.

‘Oh.’ Jasper stands up and gives the guests at the wrong table a slight bow. Be polite. ‘Well, it was lovely to meet you all …’

At the correct table, Jasper survives the prawn cocktail and the coq au vin , but by dessert he is drowning in dialogues. Levon is discussing changes to the tax system with an accountant from Dublin. Dean is discussing Eddie Cochran with Lawrence’s best man. Griff is whispering into a giggling bridesmaid’s hot pink ear. Look at them all. Question; answer; witticism; fact; morsel of gossip; response. How effortlessly they do it. Jasper speaks fluent English and Dutch, good French, passable German and Latin, but the languages of face and tone are as impenetrable as Sanskrit. Jasper knows the tell-tale signs that he’s failing to engage: the diagonal head-swivel; a gluey nod; narrowed eyes. He can disguise it as eccentricity, but after an hour, he crumples. Jasper doesn’t know if his facial and tonal dyslexia is a cause or effect of his emotional dyslexia. He knows what grief, rage, jealousy, hatred, joy and the normal spectrum of feelings are – but he experiences them only as mild changes of temperature. If Normals learn this about him, they mistrust him, so Jasper is condemned to act like a Normal and to fail. When he fails, Normals think he’s shifty, or mocking them. Only four humans and one disembodied entity have ever accepted Jasper as he truly is. Of these, Trix is in Amsterdam, Dr Galavazi is retired and Grootvader Wim is dead. Formaggio is in nearby Oxford, but the Mongolian will never pass his way again.

Mecca, who might have been a fifth, is lost to America.

A person is a thing who leaves. Jasper estimates the time required by dessert, coffee and further speeches. His watch says 10.10. That makes no sense. He holds it to his ear. Time stopped . Unable to concoct a plausible lie, Jasper slips away. He finds himself in a hallway lined with inoffensive English landscapes and carpeted with swarms of dots. A party of golfers spills through the front doors. They are talking at baffling speeds and volumes. A flight of stairs offers him a way out …

The rooftop terrace has a bench, flowers in pots, views over a golf course and the roofs and trees of Epsom. The afternoon is drowsy and pollenated. Jasper lights up a Marlboro and lies on the bench. Rudderless cloud-wrecks float, unmoored. Breathe it in and breathe it out . Jasper remembers summers in Domburg, at Rijksdorp Clinic, and in Amsterdam. Time is what stops everything happening at once. Jasper remembers last Thursday, looking out through the window of Levon’s third-floor office. Garbage fumes ebbed in. On a flat roof a couple of streets away, three women sunbathed in bikinis. Possibly it was a knocking shop, Soho being Soho, and the women were between shifts. Two had black skin. One turned up a transistor radio and Jasper caught a faint whiff of Ringo Starr singing ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’.

‘Care to join us, Jasper?’ It was Levon.

‘I’m here.’ Jasper turned around.

‘So what did they say?’ asked Dean. ‘Have we got a deal?’

‘Your second question first,’ said Levon. ‘No. We don’t have a deal. All four labels turned us down.’

For a moment nobody spoke.

‘Hallejulah,’ said Dean. ‘Praise the Lord.’

‘You could’ve told us that on the phone,’ said Griff.

‘What did they say?’ asked Elf.

‘Tony Reynolds at EMI liked the demos, but they already have one underground band in Pink Floyd.’

‘But me ’n’ Elf sound nothing like Pink Floyd,’ objected Dean. ‘He did listen to all three demos? Not just “Darkroom”?’

‘Yes. I sat with him. But he wasn’t budging.’

‘What about Vic Walsh at Phillips?’ asked Elf.

‘Vic liked the general sound but he kept asking, “Who’s the Jagger? Who’s the Ray Davies? Who’s the face?”’

‘Who’s the face of the fookin’ Beatles?’ asked Griff.