Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Back at the Hull Royal Infirmary, bandaged, plastered and trussed, Griff listened to Levon’s account of Steve’s funeral. He avoided eye contact. Levon tried not to stare at Griff’s shaven skull: they had removed his hair to fit the metal plate. Levon stuck to the facts. The facts were starkly eloquent. Somebody down the corridor was coughing his guts out – an incessant, barely human, smoker’s cough. It was Griff lying in the bed, but Griff wasn’t Griff any more. This Griff looked like he’d never smiled in his life, and never would smile again. Frank Sinatra crooned ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ on the hospital radio, even though Christmas had come and gone. ‘More grapes?’ asked Elf.

‘No, ta.’

‘A ciggie?’

‘Don’t mind.’

‘Got yer a fresh box o’ Dunhills.’ Dean put a cigarette to Griff’s lips and lit it.

Griff held the smoke in his lungs for a while. ‘I don’t know if I’m coming back.’ His voice was a shadow of its old self. ‘I can’t think about drumming. Or gigs. Or chart positions. Steve’s dead.’

‘We understand,’ said Levon.

‘No you don’t.’ Griff rubbed his red eyes. ‘You think I’m only saying this because Steve’s dead. But I don’t know if I want it any more. It’s so fookin’ hard. Night after night after night after night.’

‘This isn’t like you, mate,’ said Dean.

‘That’s the point. I’m not the me I was. My brother’s dead. I was driving.’

‘Nobody’s saying this was your fault,’ said Elf.

‘Not the cops,’ agreed Dean, ‘not Steve’s wife. Nobody.’

‘Fault,’ sighed Griff. ‘Fault, fault, fault. I shut my eyes, and I’m back there. On the motorway. I know what’s coming. I can’t change the ending. It’s always the same. The truck. Me, Steve, there. Upside down like a fookin’ bat. I can’t fookin’ sleep.’

‘Have you told the doctor?’ asks Elf.

‘ More pills? I’m a walking Boots the Chemist. Well. Moot fookin’ point. I’m a lying-down Boots the Chemist.’

‘Your dad said the doctor said—’

‘That could’ve been my funeral. If I hadn’t put my seatbelt on. If the truck’d hit us differently. If the car had flipped over another way. The whole fookin’ universe, a gazillion little ifs. If, if, if. So fookin’ easily, I could be dead in that box …’

The man in the next bed along snored.

It would have been funny, in other circumstances.

‘But you aren’t dead in that box,’ said Jasper.

‘And Steve is. That’s what’s killing me, Zooto.’

It was still raining when the train back left Hull, early the next morning. Roofs, an estuary, a fleet of trawlers, a hard town, a football stadium and bands of rain rolled into the past. Nobody had the heart for small-talk, and there was only one subject that wasn’t small-talk: what now for Utopia Avenue? Elf got out The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Jasper had The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Dean was reading the Daily Mirror . Thinking about other things was not a luxury available to a manager. Levon had cancelled the New Year gig at the Hammersmith Odeon and all bookings for the next month, adding up to four hundred pounds in fees no longer coming in to Moonwhale. Bills were due. Moonwhale’s landlord, the Inland Revenue and the telephone company did not care about Steven Griffin’s tragic death. Levon still had to pay Bethany. Fungus Hut. Fire insurance. Paradise Is the Road to Paradise had crawled up to number fifty-eight on the album chart, but ‘Abandon Hope’ had flopped. Ilex were ‘disappointed’. Victor French had told Levon that the third single would need to ‘perform substantially better’ than ‘Darkroom’. Victor had not needed to add, ‘ Or we’ll be dropping the band ’. Levon thought of Don Arden’s aphorism about having to woo a record label three times: first, when they sign the act; second, when you need their money to promote the band; third, to get them to stick with the act after a song flops. Levon thought of Mussolini’s son-in-law’s aphorism: Victory has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan . Gazing out at the bleak landscape, Levon felt orphan-like. Many people’s view of a band manager was formed by the acerbic, exploitative bully in A Hard Day’s Night . The reality was much harder. Depending on the band, Levon had been a gopher, moneylender, drug-supplier, fall-guy, shrink, pimp, ego-stroker, babysitter, punching bag and diplomat, as the situation demanded. If your act got rich, you might make money. If your act stayed poor, you got poorer. Utopia Avenue was Levon’s last, best shot. Levon liked them as people. Most of the time. He loved their music. But he was exhausted. London was grinding him down. The weather was grey. The gay scene was infested with blackmailers, the vice-squad and chancers. He missed having someone to love. A manager’s life was gruellingly thankless. Could they not say, ‘ Thank you, Levon, for believing in us and busting your ass for us morning noon and night ?’ Just once? When things went right for a band, it was down to their God-given genius. When things went wrong, blame the manager.

Fact one: the band needed a new single out in the New Year – ‘Mona Lisa Sings The Blues’ – and they needed to promote the hell out of it from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. And in Europe.

Fact two: this wouldn’t happen without a drummer.

Dean reached the back page of the Daily Mirror. Levon had a clear view of the front, promoting the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign to save British industry by getting workers to put in an unpaid half-hour every day. Pye Records was bringing out a campaign single by TV face Bruce Forsyth, and DJ Jimmy Savile was working for nine whole days as a volunteer porter in Leeds General Infirmary. Jimmy’s Doing His Bit – Are You?! read the caption. For Levon, the whole campaign belonged in the hinterlands of Bad, Stupid and Naive. The train rocked Dean, Jasper and Elf to sleep. A headache was hatching in Levon’s brainstem, but he had to think. That was his job. Griff said he wasn’t sure if he’d be back. Was this grief talking? Or was it act one of a breakdown? Or a genuine wish to leave the gruelling life of a musician? Should Moonwhale seek to terminate Griff’s contract? What about future percentages? Howie Stoker and Freddy Duke wanted a return on their investment. All Levon had to show them was a modest hit and an LP that had sold poorly. What if ‘Darkroom’ had been a fluke? What if ‘Abandon Hope’ was the real indicator of Great Britain’s appetite for the band he had hand-crafted? What if the real action wasn’t in London any more? What if the epicentre had shifted to San Francisco?

The band drove Levon crazy. Dean’s demands for money they hadn’t earned yet. Elf’s insecurities. Jasper’s day-to-day uselessness. Now Griff was wavering. Levon lit a cigarette. He looked out of the window. Still northern, still rainy, still drab.

He remembered arriving in New York, still deluded enough to believe that he was going to be, simultaneously, a Greenwich Village Baudelaire-in-exile, a beatnik folk singer and author of the Great Canadian Novel. Ten years on, the only part that smacked of any truth was ‘exile’. Propelled by an impulse he hadn’t felt in years, Levon turned to the last page of his accounts book.

Levon’s watch insisted that ninety minutes had passed. From the five pages of scribblings and crossings-out, four simple verses emerged. He made a neat copy on a fresh page.

Love found me when I was young.

A tent, a lake, a shooting star.

I built Utopia in my head, where

We could be the way we are.

They beat me up, they kicked me out,