Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘You stole my song and sold it to Shandy Fontayne.’

Bruce did an I’m-so-innocent-I-can’t-possibly-have-heard-what-I-thought -you-just-said face. ‘What?’

‘You sold my song to Shandy Fontayne. Or Duke-Stoker did. Or someone did. Tony Blackburn played it on Radio One.’

‘Stole it?’ Bruce looked bemused. ‘Listen to yourself. Why would I need to steal a song from anyone? Freddy Duke says I can write. Lionel Bart says I can write. Lots of Howie’s clients say I can write. Are they all wrong? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I’m saying’ – Elf felt starved of oxygen – ‘that “Waltz For My Guy” is “Waltz For Griff ”, with lyrics and a cheesy chorus.’

‘I’ve got to tell you, Elf, you’re sounding weird—’

‘Don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t make this about me. Don’t.’

Bruce stood there. Out in Livonia Street a dog was barking. ‘Look. We live, breathe, eat, sleep together. Maybe – maybe – I imbibed a musical phrase or two. Why get hysterical?’

‘ Imbibed? It’s the same song!’

‘But “Waltz For My Guy” has a chorus. A brass section. Lyrics. My lyrics. How can it be “the same song”? Anyway, you’ve had a million ideas from me.’

‘Name me five. Three. No, name me one.’

‘The lyrics for “Unexpectedly”.’

‘Are you serious? I asked for your opinion on a few lines . That’s not the same as me taking one of your songs and you only finding out when you hear it on the radio.’

Bruce shook his head, as if stupefied by the illogic of the female brain. ‘Why can’t you be pleased ? When “Darkroom” hit the Top Twenty, nobody was happier than me. If “My Guy” does half as well as Shandy Fontayne’s people reckon, I – we – will be in clover.’

It was like arguing with a tennis-ball launcher: pop, pop, pop – always a comeback. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think the record would flop? Or did you just not care?’

Bruce sighed. ‘Why must you always do this?’

Elf was supposed to say, ‘ Do what? ’ So she didn’t.

Bruce told her anyway. ‘You always cast yourself as the injured party. I stole nothing . “My Guy” is a Bruce Fletcher song.’

Elf was pushed past the point of no return. ‘Then Bruce Fletcher is a liar and a thief.’

The hurt-boyfriend mask evaporated off Bruce’s face. ‘Yeah?’ Even his voice had changed. ‘Prove it.’

Jasper sits on the edge of McGoo’s drum-riser and strums his Strat. Dean’s nod means, I’ll bow out after one more round. Elf hits diminished and augmented chords in rapid progression. Tony Blackburn was right about ‘Waltz For My Guy’: after only two weeks it’s at number eleven in the US charts and number three in the UK, behind only Petula Clark and the Monkees. Last week Shandy Fontayne flew over for Top of the Pops at Lime Grove. Bruce was in Shandy’s entourage in the company of ‘ravishing model Vanessa Foxton’, according to Felix Finch’s column. According to Dean, who heard it from Rod Stewart, who knows these things, Bruce has been ‘twanging her G-string’ since he got back from Paris. Bruce wears Italian suits now. His credit is excellent. The royalties will soon be thundering in. Elf will receive not one penny, cent, pfennig, yen or lira. Ted Silver, the lawyer for Duke-Stoker Agency and Moonwhale Management, concluded that while the musical similarities between ‘Waltz For Griff’ and ‘Waltz For My Guy’ were strong, a defending lawyer would argue that Elf could not prove that she had composed ‘Waltz For Griff’, could not prove that Bruce had heard it, and could not prove that Bruce had plagiarised the song. Elf could well be liable for Bruce’s legal fees as well as her own. If she went to the papers with the story, Bruce could countersue for defamation, leaving Elf vulnerable to the loss of two fortunes, not just one. ‘What should I do, then?’ she asked. Ted Silver suggested needles and a voodoo doll.

Griff, Dean and Jasper stop playing, leaving Elf to carry ‘Prove It’ home on her piano. McGoo’s hushes so as not to miss a word. The spotlight shines on the piano. Two little dots are reflected in the Pictish Queen’s eyes. Her skin turns gold. So do Elf’s hands …

A thief needs a fool to ply his trade,

A gullible fool who’ll trust anyone;

A lover needs a cure for a serious illness.

A singer needs a lawyer and a gun.

‘I’ll prove crime pays,’ said Romeo, ‘I will,

I’ll prove it, I’ll prove it.’ He’s proving it still.

Nightwatchman

Engines churn below the waterline, the grubby sea foams up and the Arnhem pulls away from the concrete Harwich quay. Jasper feels the deck begin to lift, fall and tilt with the swell of the open sea.

‘Amsterdam,’ says Griff. ‘Here we come.’

‘Legal dope,’ says Dean. ‘Here we come.’

‘Tolerated, not legal,’ Levon corrects him. ‘Be discreet. Please. Trouble with the cops could impinge on future tours.’

The Arnhem blasts out three honks on its mighty horn.

‘Is it true,’ says Griff, ‘that in the red-light district, the hookers stand in glass cubicles, that you see into from the street?’

‘It’s true,’ says Jasper.

‘Oh, goody gumdrops,’ says Elf. ‘Dirty mags without the mag.’

Jasper’s pretty sure she’s being sarcastic.

‘If you go,’ Elf tells Dean, ‘don’t tell me. I don’t want to have to lie to Amy. Actually, I won’t lie to Amy.’

‘Pure as the driven snow, me.’ Dean clutches his heart.

‘This is the boat you took every summer?’ Levon asks Jasper.

‘Every summer. A driver would pick me up at Ely, drive me to Harwich, and put me aboard. My grandfather was at the other side to take me to Domburg.’

‘And Domburg’s where the de Zoets live?’ asks Elf.

‘The de Zoets live in Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland. I used to board with a vicar at Domburg, on the coast.’

‘Why couldn’t yer just stay with yer family? asks Dean.

‘Family politics,’ replies Jasper.

‘Didn’t you mind being sent off across the North Sea, all on your own, to stay with strangers?’ says Elf.

Jasper thought of himself, standing at this railing, buffeted by the same North Sea wind, watching everything he’d ever known flatten into a knobbly smear on the horizon. ‘Saying no wasn’t an option. I had nowhere else to go. I like ships. I was born on one.’

‘The ruling classes, eh?’ says Dean.

Salty air fills their lungs. Runaway shadows cross the crumpled sea. Gulls hover alongside the Arnhem . ‘It was an adventure,’ says Jasper. ‘I felt like a boy in a story.’

Trespass in the blood . Jasper awoke seven years ago, the morning after he and Formaggio had communicated with Knock Knock. He felt a sick dread in his guts and a sharp-knuckled knock-knock-knock-knock-knock-knock at the top of his skull like an angry downstairs neighbour hitting his ceiling with a broom handle. It stopped and started several times a minute, water-torture style, as if bent on destroying Jasper’s sanity. He had no appetite and skipped breakfast. The first period was history but Knock Knock buried Mr Humphries’s discourse on the Hundred Years War so Jasper asked to be excused on the grounds of a migraine. He went to Matron via his room, picking up the ‘alphabet matrix’ Formaggio had made the night before. Matron gave him an aspirin – which had no effect on the knocking – and sat knitting for a while. When she left the room, Jasper asked his tormentor aloud what his price of peace was. The answer was a barrage of KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCKs. Jasper understood that no further correspondence was to be entered into.