Utopia Avenue Read online

  Sharon brightens. “In that case”—she hip-wiggles—“I’m glad you asked me first. If there’s anything I can do for you, I’m here.”

  Dean’s not attracted to this sweet but dumpy, dough-faced girl with raisin eyes too close together…but all’s fair in love and war. “Could yer lend us a few bob till Monday? Just till I get paid?”

  Sharon hesitates. “Make it worth my while, will you?”

  Oh, yer flirty flirt. Dean does his half-grin. He yanks the cap off a Coke bottle. “Once I’m on my feet again, I’ll pay yer a ravishing rate of interest.”

  She glows and Dean almost feels guilty at how easy it is. “I might have a few bob in my purse. Just remember me when you’re a millionaire pop star.”

  “Table fifteen still waiting!” yells Mr. Craxi in his Sicilian Cockney accent. “Three hot chocolates! Marshmallows! Move it!”

  “Three hot chocolates,” Dean calls back. Sharon slips away with the sugar pot. Pru arrives to whisk the cappuccino away to table eight and Dean spikes the order slip. It’s up to the two-thirds mark. Mr. Craxi should be in a good mood. I’m bloody snookered if he isn’t. He starts on table nine’s espressos. Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” takes over from the Stones. Steam hisses through the Gaggia. Dean wonders how much Sharon’s “few bob” is likely to be. Not enough for a hotel, that’s for sure. There’s the YMCA on Tottenham Court Road, but he has no idea if they’ll have a spare bed. It’ll be ten thirty by the time he gets there. Once again, Dean combs through his list of Londoners who (a) might help him out and (b) have telephones. The tube closes around midnight, so if Dean shows up on a doorstep in Brixton or Hammersmith with his bass and rucksack and nobody’s home, he’ll be marooned. He even considers his old bandmates in Battleship Potemkin, but he suspects that bridge is well and truly burned.

  Dean glances at the customer with the blue glasses. He’s switched Record Weekly for a book, Down and Out in Paris and London. Dean wonders if he’s a beatnik. A few guys at art college posed as beats. They smoked Gauloises, talked about existentialism, and walked around with French newspapers.

  “Oy, Clapton.” Pru has a gift for nicknames. “You waiting for them hot chocolates to make themselves, or what?”

  “Clapton plays lead,” Dean explains for the hundredth time. “I’m a bloody bassist.” He spots Pru looking pleased with herself.

  * * *

  —

  THE LITTLE COURTYARD behind the Etna’s kitchen is a soot-encrusted well of fog with space for dustbins and not much else. Dean watches a rat climb up a drainpipe toward the square of underlit night-cloud. He draws a last lungful of smoke from his last Dunhill. It’s gone ten o’clock, and his and Sharon’s shift is over. Sharon’s gone off back to her digs, after lending Dean eight shillings. That’s a train ticket to Gravesend, if all else fails. Through the kitchen door, Dean hears Mr. Craxi speaking Italian with the latest nephew to arrive from Sicily. He speaks next to no English, but you don’t need any to serve up the bubbling vats of Bolognese sauce that, dolloped onto spaghetti, is the Etna’s only dish.

  Mr. Craxi appears. “So, you wanna’d a word, Moss.”

  Dean stubs out his cigarette on the brick-paved ground. His boss glares. Damn. Dean retrieves the stub. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t got all night.”

  “Could yer pay me now, please?”

  Mr. Craxi checks he heard correctly: “Pay you ‘now’?”

  “Yeah. My wages. Tonight. Now. Please.”

  Mr. Craxi looks incredulous. “I pay wages at Monday.”

  “Yeah, but like I said earlier, I got robbed.”

  Life and London have made Mr. Craxi suspicious. Or maybe he was born that way. “Is misfortunate. But always, I pay Monday.”

  “I wouldn’t ask yer if I wasn’t desperate. But I couldn’t pay my rent, so my landlady booted me out. That’s why I’ve got my rucksack and my bass in the staff cupboard.”

  “Ah. I think you going on holiday.”

  Dean does a phony smile, in case that was a joke. “If only. But, nah, I really need my wages. Like, for a room at the YMCA or something.”

  Mr. Craxi thinks. “You in the shit, Moss. But is your shit what you shitted. Always I pay wages at Monday.”

  “Could yer just lend me a couple o’ quid? Please?”

  “You have guitar. Go to pawnbrokers.”

  Blood from a stone, thinks Dean. “First off, I haven’t paid the last installment, so the guitar’s not mine to sell. That’s what the money the robbers took was for.”

  “But you say it was for the rent money.”

  “Some of it was rent. Most of it was guitar. Second off, it’s gone ten on a Friday night and the pawnbrokers’ll be shut.”

  “I’m not your bank. I pay Monday. End of the story.”

  “How am I s’posed to be here on Monday if I’ve got double pneumonia after sleeping in Hyde Park all weekend?”

  Mr. Craxi’s cheek twitches. “You no here at Monday, is okay. I pay you fuck-all. A P45 only. Understand?”

  “What’s the difference between paying me now and paying me Monday? I’m not even bloody working this weekend!”

  Mr. Craxi folds his arms. “Moss, you is sacked.”

  “Oh, for fucksake! Yer can’t bloody do this to me.”

  A stubby finger jabs Dean’s solar plexus. “Is easy. Is done. Go.”

  “No.” First my money, then my digs, now my job. “No. No.” Dean swats Craxi’s finger away. “Yer owe me five days’ pay.”

  “Prove it. Sue me. Get a lawyer.”

  Dean forgets he’s five foot seven not six foot five and shouts in Craxi’s face: “YER OWE ME FIVE DAYS’ PAY, YER THIEVING BLOODY SHIT-WEASEL.”

  “Ah, sì, sì, I owe you. Here, I pay what I owe.”

  A powerful fist sinks into Dean’s stomach. Dean folds over and lands on his back, gasping and shocked. Second time today. A dog is barking. Dean gets up, but Craxi is gone, and two Sicilian nephews appear at the kitchen door. One has Dean’s Fender, the other holds his rucksack. They frogmarch Dean out through the coffee shop. The Kinks are singing “Sunny Afternoon” on the jukebox. Dean looks back once. Craxi glowers from the till with his arms folded.

  Dean lifts an up-yours finger at his ex-employer.

  Craxi makes a slashing gesture across his throat.

  * * *

  —

  OUT ON D’ARBLAY Street with nowhere to go, Dean runs through the likely consequences of hurling half a brick through the window of the coffee shop. A police cell would solve his immediate housing dilemma, but a criminal record wouldn’t help in the long run. He goes into the telephone box on the street corner. The inside is littered with Sellotaped-on pieces of paper with girls’ names and phone numbers. He keeps his Fender close by, and his rucksack half propping open the door. Dean gets out a sixpence and leafs through his little black book. He’s moved to Bristol…I still owe him a fiver…he’s gone…Dean finds Rod Dempsey’s number. He doesn’t know Rod well, but he’s a fellow Gravesender. He opened a shop in Camden selling leather jackets and biker accessories last month. Dean dials the number, but nobody answers.

  Now what?

  Dean leaves the phone box. Freezing fog blurs edges, smudges the faces of passersby, hazes neon signs—GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!—and fills Dean’s lungs. He’s got fifteen shillings and threepence and two ways to spend it. He could walk down D’Arblay Street to Charing Cross Road, get a bus to London Bridge station and a train to Gravesend, wake up Ray, Shirl, and their son, confess that Ray’s hard-earned fifty quid—which Shirl doesn’t know about—was nicked within ten minutes of Dean cashing the bank order, and ask to sleep on the sofa. But he can’t stay there forever.

  And tomorrow? Move back into Nan Moss and Bill’s? At the age of twenty-three. Later in the week, he’ll take the Fender back to Selmer’s Guitars and beg for a part
ial refund on what he’s already paid. Minus wear and tear. Rest in peace, Dean Moss the professional musician. Harry Moffat’ll find out, of course. And laugh his tits off.

  Or…Dean looks down Brewer Street, to the clubs, lights, bustle, peep-shows, arcades, pubs…I roll the dice one last time. Goof might be at the Coach and Horses. Nick Woo’s usually at the Mandrake club on Fridays. Al’s at Bunjie’s over on Litchfield Street. Maybe Al will let him sleep on his floor until Monday. Tomorrow he’ll look for a new job at a coffee shop. Ideally, some distance from the Etna. I can live off of bread ’n’ Marmite till I’m paid again.

  But…what if Fortune favors the prudent? What if Dean rolls that dice one last time, spends his money on getting into a club, chatting up some posh girl with a flat of her own, who then clears off while Dean’s in the bog? Wouldn’t be the first time. Or what if a bouncer dumps him, pissed as a newt, onto an icy puke-spattered pavement at three in the morning with his train fare gone? The only way back to Gravesend then’ll be shank’s pony. Across D’Arblay Street a tramp sifts through an overflowing bin in the light of a launderette. What if he once rolled the dice one last time, too?

  Dean says it aloud: “What if my songs are shit ’n’ drivel?”

  What if I’m just codding myself I’m a musician?

  Dean has to decide. He takes out the sixpence again.

  Heads, it’s D’Arblay Street and Gravesend.

  Tails, it’s Brewer Street and Soho and music.

  Dean flips the coin into the air…

  * * *

  —

  “EXCUSE ME, DEAN Moss?” The coin falls into the gutter and out of sight. My sixpence! Dean turns round to see the possible queer beatnik from the counter at the Etna. He’s wearing a fur hat, like a Russian spy, though his accent sounds American. “Jeez, sorry, I made you lose your coin…”

  “Yeah, yer bloody did.”

  “Wait up, here it is, look…” The stranger bends down and retrieves Dean’s sixpence from a crack. “There you go.”

  Dean pockets it. “So who are you, then?”

  “My name’s Levon Frankland. We met in August, backstage at the Brighton Odeon. The Future Stars Revue. I was managing the Great Apes. Or trying to. You were with Battleship Potemkin. You played ‘Dirty River.’ A great song.”

  Dean’s wary of praise, especially from a possible queer. On the other hand, this particular possible queer is a music manager, and of late Dean has been starved of praise from anyone for anything. “I wrote ‘Dirty River.’ That’s my song.”

  “So I gather. I also gather you and the Potemkins parted ways.”

  Dean’s nose-tip is icy. “Got booted out. For ‘revisionism.’ ”

  Levon Frankland laughs straggly clouds of frozen breath. “Makes a change from ‘artistic differences.’ ”

  “They wrote a song ’bout Chairman Mao and I said it was a crock o’ shit. The chorus went, ‘Chairman Mao, Chairman Mao, your red flag’s not a holy cow.’ Honest to God.”

  “You’re better off without them.” Frankland takes out a pack of Rothmans and offers Dean a smoke.

  “I’m bloody skint without ’em.” Numb-fingered, Dean takes a cigarette. “Bloody skint and neck-deep in the shit.”

  Frankland lights Dean’s cigarette, then his own, with a fancy Zippo. “I couldn’t help but overhear…” He nods at the Etna. “So you’ve got nowhere to stay tonight?”

  A platoon of mods marches by in their Friday night finery. On speed and off to the Marquee, Dean guesses. “Nope. Nowhere.”

  “I’ve got a proposal,” decides Frankland.

  Dean shivers. “Do yer? What kind o’ proposal?”

  “There’s a band playing at the 2i’s club tonight. I’d like your opinion as a musician on their potential. If you tag along, you can crash on my sofa. My flat’s in Bayswater. It’s not the Ritz, but it’s warmer than under Waterloo Bridge.”

  “Aren’t yer managing the Great Apes?”

  “Not anymore. Artistic differences. I’m”—glass smashes nearby and demonic laughter rings out—“scouting for fresh talent.”

  Dean’s tempted. It’ll be warm and dry. Tomorrow he’ll be able to cadge a bite of breakfast, get cleaned up, and work through his little black book. Frankland must have a telephone. Problem is, what if this lifeline has a price tag attached?

  “If you’d feel vulnerable on my sofa”—Levon looks amused—“you can sleep in my bath. There’s a lock on the door.”

  So he is a queer, Dean realizes, and he knows I’ve guessed…but if he’s not hung up about it, why should I be? “Sofa’s fine.”

  * * *

  —

  THE CELLAR OF the 2i’s Coffee Bar at 59 Old Compton Street is as hot, dank, and dark as armpits. Two naked bulbs dangle above the low stage made of planks and milk-crates. The walls sweat and the ceiling drips. Yet only five years ago, 2i’s was one of Soho’s hippest showcases for new talent: Cliff Richard, Hank Marvin, Tommy Steele, and Adam Faith began their careers here. Tonight, the stage is occupied by Archie Kinnock’s Blues Cadillac, featuring Archie Kinnock on vocals and rhythm guitar; Larry Ratner, bassist; a drummer in a vest whose kit is too big for the stage; and a tall, thin, wild-looking guitarist with pinkish skin, reddish hair, and narrow eyes. His purple jacket swirls and his hair dangles over his fretboard. The band is playing Archie Kinnock’s old hit “Lonely as Hell.” Within moments, Dean can see that not one but two of the Blues Cadillac’s wheels are coming loose. Archie Kinnock is drunk, stoned, or both. He blues-moans into the mic—“I’m looo-ooonely as hell, babe, looo-ooonely as hell”—but he keeps fluffing his guitar part. Larry Ratner, meanwhile, is lagging behind the beat. His backing vocals—“You’re looo-ooonely as well, babe, you’re looo-ooo-ooo-ooonely as well”—are off-key, not in a good way. He barks at the drummer, “Too bleedin’ slow!” in mid-song. The drummer scowls. The guitarist launches into a solo, sustaining a winding, buzzing note for three bars before checking in with the world-weary riff. Archie Kinnock resumes his rhythm part, sticking to the E-A-G underlay while the lead guitarist takes up the melody and, bewitchingly, inverts it. The second solo impresses Dean even more than the first. People crane their necks to watch the lead guitarist’s fingers fly, pick, clamp, pull, slide, and hammer up and down the fretboard.

  How’s he even doing that?

  * * *

  —

  MUDDY WATERS’S “I’M Your Hoochie Coochie Man” is followed by a lesser Archie Kinnock hit, “Magic Carpet Ride,” which segues into Booker T. and the M.G.s’ “Green Onions.” The guitarist and the drummer play with accelerating verve while the two old hands, Kinnock and Ratner, drag the band down. The bandleader winds up the first set by saluting the double-figures audience as if he just blew the roof off the Albert Hall. “London, I’m Archie Kinnock and I’m back! We’ll be out again soon for part two, okay?” The Blues Cadillac retire to the sunken bunker off to the side of the 2i’s stage. Cream’s “I Feel Free” wails from tinny speakers and half of the audience plod upstairs to buy Coke, orange juice, and coffee.

  Frankland asks Dean, “Well?”

  “Yer brought me here to see the guitarist, didn’t yer?”

  “Correct.”

  “He’s pretty good.”

  Levon makes an is-that-all? face.

  “He’s bloody amazing. Who is he?”

  “His name’s Jasper de Zoet.”

  “Christ. Where I’m from yer’d get lynched for less.”

  “Dutch father, English mother. He’s only been in England six weeks, so he’s still finding his feet. Care for a splash of bourbon in that Coke?”

  Dean holds out his bottle and receives a good glug. “Cheers. He’s pissing his talent away on Archie Kinnock.”

  “He’s like you in Battleship Potemkin.”

  “Who’s the drummer? He’s good too.”

/>   “Peter Griffin. ‘Griff.’ From Yorkshire. He salted his burns on the northern jazz circuit, playing in the Wally Whitby ensemble.”

  “Wally Whitby the jazz trumpet player?”

  “The very same.” Levon swigs from his hip flask.

  “Does Jasper de Thingy write as well as play?” asks Dean.

  “Apparently. But Archie won’t let him play his own material.”

  Dean feels a throb of jealousy. “He’s really got something.”

  Levon dabs his glazed brow with a spotted handkerchief. “Agreed. But he’s also got a problem. He’s too much his own man to slot into a preexisting act like Archie Kinnock’s, but he’s not a solo act either. He needs a handpicked gang of bandmates as gifted as he is, who’ll spur him on and who’ll be spurred on by him.”

  “Which band do yer have in mind?”

  “It doesn’t exist yet. But I believe I’m looking at its bassist.”

  Dean snorts a laugh. “Right.”

  “I’m serious. I’m curating a band. And I’m starting to think that you, Jasper, and Griff might just have that magic chemistry.”

  “Are yer taking the piss?”

  “Do I look like I am?”

  “No, but…what did they say?”

  “I haven’t approached them yet. You’re the first piece in the puzzle, Dean. Very few bassists would be punctual enough for Griff and creative enough for Jasper.”

  Dean plays along. “And yer’ll be the manager?”

  “Obviously.”

  “But Jasper ’n’ Griff are already in a band.”

  “Blues Cadillac is not a band. It’s a dying dog. Putting it out of its misery would be an act of mercy.”

  A drop of sweat from the ceiling finds the back of Dean’s neck. “Their manager’d beg to differ.”

  “Archie’s ex-manager ran off with the piggy bank, so Larry Ratner’s managing the band. Unfortunately, he’s as good a manager as I am a pole-vaulter.”

  Dean swigs his bourbon and Coke. “So this is an offer?”