Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Me and Elf?’ Griff splutters a laugh. ‘No. No no no.’

‘What’s so funny? She’s got the right curves and bits.’

He imagined Elf’s response. ‘Maybe if we weren’t in the same band … but sex can’t compete with music.’

‘If you say so. So are you getting any?’ asks Steve.

‘Any what?’

‘Oh, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’

Griff thinks of Mary and Venus. They moved into his new flat the night of the Paradise party at the Duke of Argyll. They have a key and come and go as they wish, but most nights, the three of them share a bed. They cook and clean. They smoke dope together. They tell him next-to-nothing about themselves, and Griff has stopped probing. If I find out too much , Griff half fears, they’ll vanish in a puff of reality. They don’t make the usual demands. They don’t want gifts. They don’t want access to parties. They are absolutely in control. And Griff is fine with his abdication of control. He doubts their affair – if that’s the right word – can last. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t told anyone about them, not even Dean, who met them briefly. Mary and Venus are one of the strangest paragraphs in his life. ‘No,’ Griff lies to his brother. ‘I’m still on the prowl …’

‘HULL 40,’ says a road sign. The Jaguar’s needle touches 40 m.p.h. Even I can do the maths . It’s 2.15 a.m. now so they’ll get to Albert Avenue in forty minutes, give or take.

‘Will Dad still be up, do you reckon?’ asks Griff.

‘He’ll be on the sofa,’ predicts Steve. ‘He’ll say “By heck, look what the cat dragged in.” And he’ll look at your moustache and say, “Something’s stuck to your lip, son. Is it a squashed mouse?”’

‘Good old Dad. Always standing by with a big shiny needle, in case we get too puffed up.’

‘Don’t go thinking he’s not proud as Punch. This is the man who once bragged to his passengers how his son was Yorkshire’s youngest ever professional drummer. And now you’ve been on the BBC, there’s no stopping him. He’s even dug out that biscuit tin drum-kit me and him put together for you.’

Griff glances sideways. ‘You’re joking.’

‘He’d kept it in his shed.’ Steve is strobed by the orange gleam of a motorway light. His brother laughs. ‘He even—’ Steve’s face changes to wide-eyed horror. Griff looks ahead and sees the juggernaut ahead jack-knifing and tipping over. A second oncoming truck is ripping up the centre barrier. Its undercarriage fills the Jaguar’s windscreen. Griff’s hauling at the wheel like a sailor in a storm. Tyres shriek. The steering locks. We’ll need a miracle to —

‘We’re all right.’ Steve’s voice, from light years and inches away. A croak. Something’s pressing into Griff. He’s squashed. That truck hit us. It was bad. I’m alive. So’s Steve. Where there’s life … Griff opens one eye. The other eye is gone. I can still play the drums with one eye. One leg, one arm, that would be harder. One eye, I can do. Orange light seeps into the wrecked car. Steve’s bent like an Action Man with its limbs twisted the wrong way. The floor’s the roof. We flipped over. Griff tries to move his right arm. Nothing happens. Not fookin’ good . Griff tries moving his legs. Nothing. He’s not in pain. A mercy. An ominous mercy. If your spine’s snapped you won’t feel pain. A noise comes from Steve’s mouth. Not words. A bubbling gurgling. Griff says, ‘It’s okay, we’ll be okay,’ but what comes out is, ‘ Shkay , ee’ll eeshkay .’ Like Griff’s granddad after his stroke. Or like I’m bladdered . Blood dribbles from Steve’s mouth. It drips up his face, the wrong way. Black as oil in orange light. Pooling in his eye-sockets. Dripping off his eyebrows. He splutters feebly. Griff says, ‘Steve, stay with us.’ It comes out as ‘ Shtee, shaywhus … ’ A tide comes rushing in.

Thump -thump, thump-thump , thump- thump , thump - thump , thump- thump . A tide goes out. Griff re-enters his body. My pulse . A jagged groan. He’s cold. That’s good. People freezing to death feel warm. Steve’s next to him. Steve’s very still. Maybe he’s saving his strength. I’d like stars. There should be stars . There’s Steve, the roof, a thousand bits of glass scattered on the floor. Which was the roof. There are the pedals. A, B, C. Accelerator, brake, clutch. Close enough to touch. If only my arms worked . Glinting amber from the M1 lights. Voices. A long way off. Or tiny, tinny and close. Coming through the speaker, late at night, under the blanket, in his and Steve’s old room at Albert Avenue. ‘Love Me Tender’. Dean strums it sometimes when he does his Elvis impression. Elf looks across the Beatles table at the Blue Boar. Jasper glances up at the end of ‘Purple Flames’, ready to kill the song stone dead on the same beat. ‘Cyril! Over here! Bring the cutting gear!’ Why? The accident. What accident? This accident . Griff tries to call out, to tell them Steve needs help first. His voice isn’t working. It just isn’t. Where there’s life there’s hope . But that ain’t necessarily so. There’s a song. About things you’re liable to read in the Bible. Griff’s mum sang it as she hung out the washing. Stars. A spring day. Griff was the boy at the window. Stars.

Waiting for his life to start.

Builders

Rain drummed on the umbrellas and on the coffin lid. Rain whisked the water in the rectangular hole: seven feet long, three feet wide and, famously, six feet deep. Levon pitied the gravediggers who had shifted these one hundred and twenty-six cubic feet of cold wet earth. Somebody sobbed. When the chapel bell fell silent, the vicar – who had a bad cold – began: ‘ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return … ’ Yobbish crows in the yews half smothered the Book of Genesis. The vicar’s voice began to crack and fade, like a dying amp. ‘Tragedy … Only the Almighty understands … Gave so much, had so much yet to give.’ A percussive boom boom boom , deep as a bass drum, struck the outer edge of Levon’s hearing. The North Sea, perhaps . His feet were wet. His socks sponged up water from the sodden turf. As the vicar wound up his brief address, a line to sign the book of condolence formed. Levon thought they should have done this during the service in the chapel, out of the rain. Sixty or seventy people filed past Mr and Mrs Griffin and their eldest daughter and son, both in their thirties. Gloves on gloves. Levon shook their hands in turn. The family resemblance was immediate. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Griff’s dad, the bus driver. Such inadequate words, Levon thought, but then what words could begin to dent this grief? Mr Griffin looked back like a man who could not understand how this day could be happening. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told Griff’s mum, from whom Griff got his chin. Her eyes were sunken and red. Her lips twitched as if to say, ‘ Thank you ’ but no sound escaped. Levon doubted she knew who he was. At the end of the line, a sexton offered a trowel for anyone who wanted to tip some earth onto the coffin in the grave. About half did. Elf, ahead of Levon, shook her head and swallowed a sob. Dean put his arm around her and escorted her off. Jasper took the trowel, looking around him like an observant anthropologist in the field. The hollow rattle of wet earth on wood was, to Levon’s ear, the saddest sound he had ever heard.