Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Without fuss or ritual, Elf shook the dice and threw it. It dropped onto the glass and landed on 6 …

… but skidded off the edge and onto the floor.

‘Throw again!’ said Dean. ‘Second rule. Throw again.’

‘I’m not deaf, Dean.’ Elf re-threw. She got a 1.

‘We rolled a dice,’ admits Elf in the Seven Dials restaurant.

‘A dice?’ checks their mother. ‘A dice?’

‘It seemed better than a shouting match.’

Bea munches celery. ‘Does the record company know?’

‘They don’t need to. As it happens, Victor the A&R man wanted “Darkroom”. He may be regretting it now. It’s done nothing.’

‘Nobody can accuse you of slacking, darling.’ Her mum sounds indignant. ‘You’re all working like Trojans.’

‘We are.’ Elf finishes her champagne. It’s now fizz-less. ‘And we have nothing to show for it.’

‘Not true.’ Imogen reopens this week’s Melody Maker and reads out the review: ‘ Take a prime cut of Pink Floyd, add a dash of Cream, a pinch of Dusty Springfield, marinade overnight and whaddaya get? “Darkroom”, a smashing debut served up by newcomers Utopia Avenue. Could be destined for great things. ’

‘A nice thirty-word write-up is better than a nasty one.’ Elf squishes her thumb onto breadcrumbs. ‘But without airplay we’re just four keen beans paying to be in a band.’

‘Don’t get cold feet now,’ says Bea.

‘I like recording, when the guys aren’t being –’ dicks ‘– idiots. I love playing live. We’re upping each other’s games as songwriters. But the sharks, creeps, setbacks, the miles and miles in the van, the feeling that nobody’s listening … it wears you down. I can’t say you didn’t warn me, Mum.’

‘Big of you to say so, darling.’

‘I’ll say this too. Having two worried parents is a gift Dean and Jasper don’t have. Gosh, I’m blethering. It’s the champagne.’

‘If you can blame the champagne,’ says Elf’s mum, ‘so can I. When you told us you wanted to swap university for folk-singing, your father and I had our doubts.’

‘ Uuuuuu nderstatement,’ sing-songs Bea.

‘We were afraid you’d be taken advantage of. That you’d—’

‘End up penniless and up the duff,’ stage-whispers Bea.

‘Thank you, Bea. But look what you’ve done, Elf. A song on an American LP that went gold. Two EPs. Six hundred people paying to see you at Basingstoke town hall. You’re doing what you want to. Despite all the obstacles. That’s why I – we – and Dad too, even if he doesn’t say so, are jolly proud of you.’

‘It won’t get any better than this.’ Bea holds up her glass. The four of them clink over the table. ‘To “Darkroom”.’

They drink. Elf records the memory.

Imogen clears her throat. ‘Speaking of being up the duff …’

Elf, Bea and their mother turn to look at her.

Their mouths are already starting to droop.

‘I meant to wait until the coffee,’ says Imogen, ‘but the champagne’s gone to my head as well …’

I’m going to be an aunt. Denmark Street is hot as engines and smells of tar. Pigeons row, not flap, through the humid air. Still half aglow from the champagne and buzzing from the coffee, Elf crosses Charing Cross Road. The doors of Foyles bookshop are open to ventilate the shady interior, and Elf feels the pull of its shelved labyrinth … But I need more unread books piling up like I need a bout of thrush . She walks through the ten-yard tunnel at the end of Manette Street under the Pillars of Hercules pub. A midday rent-boy says, ‘Love the hat, sweetheart.’ Elf nods graciously. Greek Street smells of drains. Sleeves and skirts are short. Elf passes two Caribbean-looking women chatting in rapid-fire patois. One is burping a baby girl, who vomits milky gloop down her mum.

I’m going to be an aunt. Elf hurries down to Bateman Street and round the corner to the continental newsagent. She runs her thumb up the rack of Le Monde , Die Welt , Corriere della Sera , De Volkskrant. She and Bruce used to dream about Paris. He’s there now … while I’m working my arse off to flog a single nobody wants. A dustbin buzzes with flies. A rat noses about. Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ escapes through the open door of Andromeda Records. Elf resists the temptation to go in and see how many copies of ‘Darkroom’ … then succumbs and doubles back. On the New Releases shelf she counts fourteen singles; earlier there were sixteen. Two copies sold in two hours. If that happened at, say, 500 record shops nationwide, that’s 1,000 copies since 11 a.m … or 4,000 during an eight-hour day … times six days, that’s twenty-four thousand singles … But who am I kidding? This is Soho, where Utopia Avenue is known. How many ‘Darkroom’s are the likes of Peter Pope likely to sell? Elf leaves the shop, worried.

Never mind. I’m going to be an aunt. In the window of Primo’s, a boy feeds his girlfriend ice-cream from a knickerbocker glory. He pulls out his licked-clean spoon. He looks plain. She’s gorgeous, like a she-wolf. I wish I was him. She squashes the thought and crosses Dean Street into Meard Street. It narrows into an alley as dim as dusk where a prostitute pulls a John through a side-door, her finger hooked through his belt. The alley ejects Elf onto the sunny side of Wardour Street. Cherries on a greengrocer’s stall gleam. Elf joins the queue. A few yards away there is a telephone box. A pane of glass is missing, and Elf hears the yelling woman inside: ‘This ain’t no divine conception, Gary! It’s yours! You PROMISED! Gary? GARY!’ The woman falls silent. Elf thinks, A classic folk-song narrative. The woman stumbles out of the phone box. Her mascara’s running. She’s pregnant. She plunges into the market-crowd, sobbing. The receiver rotates on its cable like a body on its rope.

I’m going to be an aunt. Elf asks for a quarter-pound of cherries. The man weighs them, hands her the brown-paper bag and pockets her coins. ‘You’re looking pale today, pet. Burn the candle at both ends, and soon you’ve got no candle.’ Elf commits the line to memory and walks up Peter Street, squishing a cherry in her mouth. Summer oozes through the torn, sun-warmed skin. She spits out the pip. It plops down a drain.

A funeral cortège is blocking Broadwick Street. Elf steps into the launderette to let the group pass. Chain-smoking Mrs Hughes, her hair in curlers, appears with a basket of laundry. ‘Nelly Macroom passed away last week. Her family’s got the chipper on Warwick Street.’ Mrs Hughes taps ash onto the floor. ‘She went to get her usual at Brenda’s salon last week. Her snooze in the perming helmet turned out to be eternal. Lucky so-and-so.’

‘Why lucky?’ asks Elf.

‘Her last ever hair-do was on the house.’

The hearse draws level. Elf glimpses the coffin between the bodies of the living.

‘At your age,’ says Mrs Hughes, ‘you think getting old and dying’s what other people do. At my age, you think, Where did it all go? If you want to do something, do it. ’Cause your turn to be in that box, it’s coming. No doctor, no diet, no nothing’ll keep it away. It’ll be here. Quick as’ – she snaps her fingers and Elf blinks – ‘ that .’

Livonia Street is a cobbled cul-de-sac with an alley that cuts through to Portland Mews, used only by Soho locals or lost tourists. Elf slips her key into the door marked ‘9’, between a secretive locksmith on one side and a seamstress’s shop, run by several Russian sisters, on the other. Elf’s flat is upstairs from Mr Watney, a widower who lives on the first floor with his corgis, minds his own business and is nearly deaf, a useful quality in a pianist’s neighbour. In the dingy hallway Elf finds three letters and a bill on the doormat, all for Mr Watney. She props them on the shelf by his door and climbs two flights of scuffed steps to her own front door. Inside, Angus’s shoes are placed side by side and Fats Domino is singing ‘Blueberry Hill’ on the radio. Angus calls from the bathroom, ‘Miss Holloway, I presume?’