Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘I plugged my guitar into an old Silvertone of Digger’s. The cone in the speaker was ripped. That gives it the torn sound.’

‘Uh-huh. And is it a Strat or Gibson on that now?’

‘I only own a Strat. A sailor in Rotterdam –’ a body cannonballs into the pool ‘– sold it to me. A 1959 Fiesta Red. The tone’s not as seismic as yours – no fuzz pedal, no spiral coil – but it’s versatile. It’s good and growly for Dean’s new prison song.’

‘Yeah, I read ’bout your Roman holiday. Jail’s heavy shit.’

‘You were lucky Fleet Street rallied to your cause,’ says Brian Jones. ‘They’re baying for my blood. For one bag of weed – planted by Detective Pilcher. The bastard even gave me the choice: “Do you want to be done for weed or for coke?”’

‘The Establishment is scared shitless that your defiance is contagious,’ says a heavy-set man with stern glasses. Jasper knows he is a famous playwright but the name eludes him. ‘If you get a happy ending for flicking the “V”s, why should any pleb tolerate the factory floor? That way revolution lies.’

‘Bang bang, you’re dead.’ A very small boy in a cowboy hat, dressing-gown and slippers shoots the playwright with a toy gun.

‘Who isn’t, in the long run?’ asks the playwright. ‘ They give birth astride the grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more. ’

The boy scans the circle of giants for his next victim. He chooses Jimi Hendrix. ‘Bang bang, you ’re dead too.’

‘Hey, Shorty. There are days when I see the appeal.’

The boy twirls his gun and slots it into his holster as Tiffany Hershey arrives. ‘Crispin! Who told you you could come down?’

Crispin replies, ‘Bad Boy Frank,’ as if the matter is settled.

‘My son has a coterie of imaginary friends,’ explains Tiffany. ‘Frank takes the rap for Crispin’s misdemeanours.’

The playwright swaps his empty wine glass for a full one from a passing tray. ‘A healthy imagination is a gift for life.’

‘Crispin’s imagination is beyond “healthy”,’ says Tiffany.

‘Yer a mum ?’ exclaimed Dean. Jasper hadn’t noticed him arrive. ‘Seriously? I had no—’

Crispin fires his gun at Dean. ‘Bang bang, you’re dead.’

Tiffany Hershey tells Dean, ‘I’m a mum twice over. Hence my screen hiatus. Righto, Crispin, let’s get you back up to Aggy before this turns into A Midsummer Eve’s Massacre.’

The small boy hasn’t finished. He aims his gun at Jasper and squeezes the trigger, slowly. Jasper looks down the barrel, eye to eye with the man Crispin will be. ‘Whenever you’re ready …’

The small boy sighs like a world-weary adult. ‘Not you.’ He swivels the gun towards Brian Jones – ‘Bang bang, you ’re dead’ – and Keith Moon, ‘Bang bang, you too.’

Keith Moon hams it up. ‘It’s all going dark, dear boy.’

‘Go to the light, Keith,’ Brian says, in a ghostly voice. ‘Go towards the light …’

‘Don’t encourage him,’ says Tiffany, but Keith Moon groans hammily, grips Brian Jones’s elbow, and together they totter backwards over the edge of the swimming-pool … They slap into the water, drenching bystanders. Shrieks and laughter fill the terrace.

A saxophonist carves out a muscular ‘How Deep Is The Ocean?’ Jasper is crawling along a pale shaft about four feet wide and three feet high. The ground is soft. Turf. Jasper’s shuffling on his hands and knees. The walls of the shaft are linen. He touches the roof. Wood. His knuckles rap knock-knock. A mistake. Knock- knock. It’s undeniable. Soon, soon, soon. All Jasper can do is keep the Queludrin to hand and keep shuffling onwards. Look … shoes . Side by side. Men’s shoes. Women’s shoes. Slipped-off shoes. Open sandals with painted toenails. I’m underneath the tables in the marquee. He remembers realising this before. He remembers realising he remembered realising this before. Jasper wonders how long this chain goes back. His hand encounters a puffy thing. A bread roll. He squeezes it into a doughy globe. It squelches. Knock-knock . Jasper reaches the far corner. He turns right. No choice. This is not the first circumnavigation of the Undertable. I’ve lost my watch. Time doesn’t care. Along the shaft, at the next corner, a head appears. Another under-table shuffler. Twenty feet away, fifteen, ten, five … The two inspect one another.

‘You’re you, aren’t you?’ asks Jasper.

‘I think so,’ says John Lennon.

‘I’ve been looking for you since I got here.’

‘Congratulations. I’m looking for …’ He needs a prompt.

‘Looking for what, John?’

‘Something I lost,’ says the Beatle.

‘ What have you lost, John?’

‘My fuckin’ mind, pal.’

Look Who It Isn’t

The spanking new cherry-red Triumph Spitfire Mark III handled the sharp bends around Marble Arch as if it was steered directly by Dean’s mind. A purring 1296cc engine, walnut dashboard, oxblood leather seats, top speed 95 m.p.h., ‘But she’ll kiss the hundred,’ said the sales manager, ‘if you’re heading downhill and feeling naughty’. Zipping along Bayswater Road with the roof down, under sunshine and leaf-shadow, Dean passed a Mini, a cement truck, a bus packed to the gills and a cab carrying a man in a bowler hat, and stopped on a sixpence at the traffic lights by the Hyde Park Embassy Hotel. Men pretended not to stare, envying Dean his car and the mysterious woman in Philippe Chevallier sunglasses and a snow-white headscarf at his side. Dean, for sure, would envy Dean something rotten if he wasn’t already him. An album at number seventeen in the charts. Brian Jones’s and Jimi Hendrix’s numbers in his little black book – and £4,451 still in his bank account even after paying for his new car. A car that would have cost three or four years of pay-packets if he’d got a job in a factory like Ray. Like Harry Moffat told him to. He rested his hand on the gearstick, inches away from Tiffany Hershey’s caramel thigh. His gearstick vibrated.

‘No buyer’s remorse, then?’ asked the actress.

‘’Bout this ? Yer codding me.’

Casually, she patted his hand. ‘It’s a work of art.’

Was that a pat or a touch? ‘Thanks for coming along, Tiff. Did yer see that sales-twat’s face when he realised who yer were?’ Dean did his posh voice. “Oh, you’re a friend of the Hersheys? I’ll fetch Mr Gascoigne.”’

‘Tony’s sorry he couldn’t join us. When the Americans come to town, he drops everything.’

Dean wasn’t sorry about anything. The lights turned green, he pressed the accelerator and the Spitfire slid forwards. Turbulence played with loose strands of Tiffany’s hair. The lights were red again at Kensington Palace Gardens. Her suede glove rested on Dean’s hand. ‘Would it be awful of me to ask for a lap of Knightsbridge, Buck Palace and Pall Mall? I haven’t felt this free for … years.’

‘I’m due at Fungus Hut at twelve, but I’m yours till then.’

‘You are a darling. Take the next left.’

‘There’s gates and a copper. Can yer drive down here?’

‘With Tiffany Seabrook in an open-top Triumph, yes.’

Dean turned left and slowed to a halt at the gates.

‘What an utterly beautiful morning!’ Tiffany removed her sunglasses and beamed. ‘We’re having luncheon with the Yukawas at the Embassy of Japan. May we pass?’

The policeman looked at Tiffany, the car and Dean, in that order. ‘Right yer are, miss. Enjoy yer lunch, sir.’

‘Useful skill, acting,’ remarked Dean, as they moved off.