Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘You’re saying he’s an impressionist?’

Have I strayed into a French novel , wonders Levon, where characters talk about art for page after page ? ‘Correct.’

‘Yes, that helps.’ He eyes Levon up. ‘Are you a Soho habitué? Or am I succumbing to wishful thinking?’

‘We’ve not met. My name’s Levon.’

‘My. I’ve never met a Levon in the flesh. Your accent’s a long way from home. Canadian?’

‘That’s impressive. Most people guess American.’

‘You have a cultured, civilised air.’

‘You flatterer, Mr Bacon. I’m a bit of a gypsy, really. I left Toronto at nineteen. For various reasons, I’ve never made it back.’

‘I’m from darkest Wicklow and I have no intention of making it back.’ Francis Bacon makes a shuddery face. ‘Your glass is empty.’ He looks around like a spy in a melodrama before producing a hip-flask. ‘Care for a little bone-warmer? Fear not, you shan’t wake up naked in my garret. Unless you absolutely insist.’

Only in Soho. ‘Why not?’ Levon remembers topping up Dean’s Coke with whisky in the 2i’s basement. That, too, was a seduction of sorts. ’I must be honest – I won’t be the best of company tonight.’

Francis Bacon pours. ‘And why would that be?’

‘A business matter. I won’t bore you. I’m only here because Pavel, the owner, bullied me into coming out.’

‘Here’s to friends who know when to bully us –’ the artist clinks his glass on Levon’s ‘– and to a speedy resolution.’

‘Here’s hoping.’

‘Ah, Humph.’ The painter addresses a man in his forties wearing a cable sweater. ‘Pull up a pew, as they say. Humph, meet my newest friend, Levon. We haven’t reached the surname stage yet.’

‘Levon Frankland.’ Levon holds out his hand.

Humph has a kind face and firm handshake. ‘Humphrey Lyttelton. So you’re a fan of Bill’s?’

‘Yes. Even more after tonight. Humphrey Lyttelton the jazz trumpeter, by any chance?’

‘I have been known to torment unfortunates with that instrument, yes. Levon Frankland the manager, by any chance?’

Levon’s surprised. ‘That’s right.’

‘Then I know about your drummer. I’m a friend of Wally Whitby’s, your boy’s old mentor. How’s he holding up?’

Where do I begin? ‘His brother’s dead. He was driving. He blames himself. The whole thing’s hit him very hard.’

‘Once I knew a stable-boy,’ says Francis Bacon. ‘He used to say, “Grief is the bill of love, fallen due.” I can’t recall his face or even name, but I remember that line. Isn’t it odd, what sticks?’

The walls of the Colony Room Club are slime green. Thirty or forty faces, drink-flushed, drink-ravaged and purgatorial, hover in the narrow enclosed space. A pianist is playing ‘Whisper Not’ on an upright piano in the corner. Christmas decorations and stories criss-cross the bar. A Scottish voice crows: ‘So the judge looked down at me from on high and asked, “Didn’t you think it peculiar that all the men were dancing together?” I told His Honour, “Milord, I’m Inverness born and bred. How would I know what you southerners get up to of a Saturday night?”’ Ornate lamps are reflected in the liver-spotted mirror. Unusual bottles and watchful eyes gleam; gossip bubbles and froths; the fallen and fading stare from framed photographs; aspidistras stand in bronze pots; and Muriel Belcher, steely empress of the Colony, is perched on a stool at the end of her bar, sipping a pink gin and stroking a white poodle. ‘Utopia Avenue?’ She owns a sixty-a-day rasp of a voice. ‘Sounds like a field of four-bedroom houses at the edge of Milton Keynes.’

‘I’d be a shit of a lot richer if it was.’ Levon drains his glass of something thick and Turkish. He’s uncertain what liqueur he’s drinking because the fiery liquid stripped away his taste-buds.

‘ I thought management was a one-way street to fame, fortune and free shank ’n’ loin,’ says George the Cockney. ‘Francis’s manager’s coining it and all she does is throw a party now ’n’ then.’

‘Thou shalt not badmouth Valerie from the Gallery,’ says Francis. ‘It’s biting the hand that feeds the hand that feeds you.’

‘I was under the impression’ – Lucian the artist has a fox’s eyes – ‘that screwing your artists is a perk of the job.’

‘“Screw” as in “screw” or “screw” as in “screw”?’ asks Gerald with the windswept white eyebrows.

‘Neither,’ replies Levon. ‘The boys are straight and I don’t have what it takes to cheat them.’

‘Levon’s father is a reverend.’ Francis rolls the Rs.

‘ Someone ’s going straight to Hell, then,’ says Muriel.

‘Exactly what he told me the last time we met,’ Levon hears himself saying, and blames the Turkish liqueur. ‘Verbatim.’

‘ My father’s last words to me,’ says Gerald, ‘were, and I quote, “If you set foot on this estate again I’ll string you up and flog you until you’re crow-meat” – unquote.’

‘By “I don’t have what it takes to cheat them”,’ Lucian the artist asks Levon, ‘do you mean, “I don’t know how to cheat them”? Or do you mean, “I’m too honest to cheat them”?’

‘The latter,’ replies Levon. ‘I wanted to see them as a long-term investment.’ Or as a sort of family, now I think of it.

‘So ’ow would a manager rip off a band,’ says George the Cockney, ‘if yer weren’t so full o’ bloody scruples, like?’

Levon’s glass is mysteriously full again. ‘Some managers cook the books and pocket the difference between declared and actual earnings. There’re crooked contracts, where you get your client to sign away copyrights for a bowl of soup or a shitty percentage. From then on, the goose is laying its golden eggs for you. There’re complex tax scams. Charity gigs that aren’t really for charity. Lots of ways.’

‘Why don’t yer clients cotton on ’n’ stomp yer skull in with a length o’ lead piping, say?’ asks George the Cockney.

‘Often, the talent doesn’t want to believe it, because that would prove they’re gullible morons. They prefer to look away. I know one manager who gets the talent so hooked on drugs, they’re too fried to ask about the money.’

‘But wouldn’t that strategy kill his clients?’ asks Gerald.

‘Exactly. The dead do not sue for fraud. I know another who got his band to sign a blank page over which he typed a power of attorney. He cleaned them out. When they finally scratched together the money to sue him, he produced a second affidavit they had all signed, forfeiting their right to sue him, in any circumstances – including the forging of affidavits.’

‘A twisted sort of genius,’ announces Muriel the owner. ‘So why, exactly, do you believe honesty pays?’

‘A small slice of a big pie is more pie than a stolen half of a small pie,’ replies Levon. ‘Is what I thought.’

‘Fraud is tawdry,’ says Jerome, a regular. ‘ I pass state secrets to my handler at the Soviet Embassy. That’s treason. A proper crime.’ The others roll their eyes. ‘One can be hanged for it, you know.’

‘What do you think, Francis?’ asks a random voice.

‘What I think is, we ought to mark our first Colonisation of nineteen sixty-eight in style – Ida?’ The barman looks around. ‘Champagne all round! Unleash the Krug!’

The bar cheers. Momentarily, Levon panics – he only has a couple of quid – but Francis tosses a bundle of banknotes to Muriel. A few flutter to the floor. ‘Will this do the trick, Mother?’

Muriel does the maths at a glance. ‘I’d say so.’