Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Elf wished her family could meet this new improved Bruce. No invitations to Chislehurst Road had been issued. Bea had been over a few times after drama school, which Bruce was grateful for. He said he was willing to wait and prove by his actions that he’d done a lot of growing up in the last twelve months.

Mrs Biggs arrived with their bacon sandwiches. Bruce sank his teeth in and ketchup oozed out. ‘God, I need this.’

Elf dabbed ketchup off Bruce’s chin with a napkin … and an abdominal twinge told her that her period was on its way. She wasn’t late, but she felt relief. Then, she wondered if, just if , she and Bruce ever had a kid, what a half-Fletcher-half-Holloway co-creation would look like.

‘I finished off “Whirlpool In My Heart”,’ said Bruce. ‘It’s sounding pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.’

‘What did you decide about the chorus?’

‘Like you said, it sounded better slower. Thanks.’

‘You’re so welcome. You’re making a real go of this.’

‘You’re the inspiration, Wombat. You, “Any Way the Wind Blows” and Messrs Moss, Griffin and De Zoet. I’m not your bandmates’ favourite person, but I dig how they’ve shaken the Soho music tree to see what falls out. Your best teachers aren’t always your friends. Sometimes your best teachers are your mistakes.’

‘Write that line down,’ Elf insisted, ‘or it didn’t happen.’

Bruce obeyed, using a biro and paper napkin.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier,’ asked Elf, ‘to get a band together?’

Bruce clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘We’ve been through this, darling. If I was away as often as you four, we’d drift apart. I’m not losing you twice. No. And think about the big name solo artists who can’t, or don’t, write their own songs. Elvis. Sinatra. Tom Jones. Cilla. Really, there’s loads. Cliff Richard. I can do this. I live with a piano. I’ve got contacts. Freddy Duke. Howie Stoker. Lionel Bart. Look how good “Any Way The Wind Blows” has been for you. Three or four of those out in the world and I could plan for our future a little. So. Songwriter-for-hire. That’s the ladder to the stars I’m on, and that’s the one I’m sticking to.’

Elf leaned across the table and kissed her boyfriend.

Bruce licked his finger. ‘I don’t deserve you, Wombat.’

‘I’ll help any way I can. What’s mine’s yours, Kangaroo.’

Jasper slots a solo into ‘Prove It’ unlike anything he’s tried in rehearsal. It’s glorious. I don’t know how he does it. She glances at Dean, whose face tells her, I don’t know either. Jasper eschews guitar-theatrics, but the music finds a way onto his face. There’s muted bliss at a sweet chord, muffled surprise when an improvisation swings up to a new place, or a half-hidden ferocity when his Stratocaster howls. Only when he’s playing , realises Elf, is his face legible. Jasper’s solo ends on a blistering Iron Man yowl, and his glance her way means, Your turn . Elf takes up the piano figure and expands it into a boogie-woogie solo. I love my job , thinks Elf . If there is a deeper fulfilment than watching strangers connect with a song she’s written, she has never found it. Musically, ‘Prove It’ is closer to Chicago blues than to the folk music Elf played from the Richmond Folk Barge to the Les Cousins chapters of her life. Maybe a brass section, if we ever put this on record. Yet, to Elf’s mind, folk is more an attitude than a genre and its tropes. If a song acknowledges the lives of the lowly, of servants, the poor, the shafted, immigrants and women, then in spirit Elf calls it folk music. It’s political. It says, We matter, and here’s a song about us to prove it . She ends the solo on D2, the second D from the bottom, her favourite note on the keyboard. She looks down at the Pictish Queen and her sisters and thinks of barmaids in Toulouse-Lautrec paintings. They’re worn, tired, ill-used and dream-lit, yearning for a better life … but unbreakable, too. The boys play quietly now, to usher in the ‘sleep verse’. Elf sings hard against the mic so she can soften her voice.

As Soho dreamed deep she played her piano,

The chords came first, the lyrics by stealth.

He lay in her bed and he liked what he heard –

‘What’s hers is mine – she said it herself – so

I’ll take it, adapt it, and smarten it up,

And improve it, improve it, improve it.’

The morning after returning from Steve’s funeral in Hull, Elf woke in the pre-dawn murk. The city played its backing-track while Bruce snored softly. Elf heard a waltz. It came from her piano, in its nook off her kitchen. She wasn’t afraid. Nothing threatening could play music so soulful, so divine. She saw the pianist’s hands. The right hand played overlapping minims: C to C an octave below; F to F, the same; B flat to B flat; E to E. The left hand played jazz-like sixths; blue jazz, not red jazz. It ended. Elf wanted to hear it again. The pianist obliged. This time Elf paid attention to the right-hand thirds: E and G; D and F; C and E; then a yo-yo back up to A and G where the hand opened wider; a thumb on F and pinkie on B flat …

Elf put on her dressing-gown, went to her piano, got a sheet of manuscript paper, wrote out the C, F, B flat and E sequence, then let the topography of the waltz rise up again … There. The first half was very close to how the dream-pianist had performed it. The third quarter needed more guesswork. Elf played a few chords as quietly as she could. By the final quarter, the milk float had jingle-jangled up Livonia Street. Elf had to compose the final bars herself, using the musical logic of the first half. Then it was done. Three pages of music. Elf played the piece through, knowing it was finished.

‘Morning, Wombat.’ Bruce appeared. ‘That’s pretty.’

‘Sorry I woke you. A song arrived in my sleep.’

Bruce shuffled over, yawned and peered at the manuscript. ‘Has it got a name?’

It had, Elf discovered. ‘“Waltz for Griff”.’

Bruce made a face. ‘Guess I ’ll have to get myself into a near-fatal accident on the M1, too. “Ballad of Bruce”, you can call mine.’

A fortnight after the funeral, Levon drove the band back up to Hull to see Griff. The visit was not a success. They passed the Blue Boar but none of them had the heart to suggest a stop. Griff was out of hospital and living at his parents’ house. His dad, a bus driver, was out at work, covering a colleague’s illness. Griff’s Mum was shrivelled by grief and anxious about Griff’s state. He never left the house, barely left his room, and didn’t want to speak with anyone. She served them cakes and tea in the front parlour. Elf helped her arrange the flowers. Griff came downstairs. His bruising was much better, the plaster was off and his hair was starting to grow, but his humour and curiosity were gone. His answers were curt.

‘Any thoughts about coming back at some point?’ asked Levon.

Griff just looked away, lit a cigarette and shrugged.

‘It’s a bloody long drive for a shrug,’ said Dean.

‘Didn’t fookin’ ask you to come,’ replied Griff.

‘We don’t want to rush you,’ said Levon, ‘but—’

‘Why are you fookin’ here, then?’

‘McGoo’s in Glasgow offered us the third Saturday next month,’ Levon explained. ‘Four weeks from now. Good money. Great exposure. If we do it, I think I can persuade Ilex to rush out “Mona Lisa” as a single. But we’d need to tour the living Bejesus out of it in March. I know you’re in mourning. It’s not fair to ask you. But we’ve got to know. Are you on board or not?’

Griff shut his eyes and sank back into the armchair.