The Emperor Waltz

by Philip Hensher

  ‘Yeah, you don’t want to go downstairs with no clothes on,’ Tim said. ‘Did Kevin show you the bathroom? You don’t want to use that more than you have to. He’s a bit of a pervert, that Kevin. He likes to watch, that’s what he’s into. I wouldn’t have any more to do with him than you have to. Sometimes Bruce said to him, if I let you come and watch, will you let me off this week’s rent, ’cause I’m a bit skint, and I don’t think he ever let him off the rent, but that was after he’d come to watch Bruce and his trick anyway. Then there’s Stuart on the ground floor. He’s into role play and dressing up. Some people like that … I don’t think it’s for me – it takes too much effort. And next to him there’s Lyndon, he’s Australian, he’s gorgeous, he goes to the gym, he’s into worship, he’ll just stand there like a statue, flexing. First floor François, he’s French, from Paris, I reckon, and Tony in the room next door, he’s into feet. Then, let’s see—’

  ‘I’ve got to get on,’ Arthur said.

  3.

  The gay men’s group had moved its meetings to the bookshop three years before. Sometimes when the weather was hot, nobody turned up on a Wednesday: people went to the pool in Covent Garden or up to the ponds in Hampstead, or just out for a gin and tonic in St Martin’s Lane. Tonight, at the beginning of summer, Christopher had turned up half an hour before closing time and was downstairs with Arthur while Duncan had another look at the room upstairs. Andrew, who sort of ran the gay men’s group and was sometimes on speaking terms with Duncan, sometimes not, would probably turn up after closing time with his ring-binder and cuttings book. Christopher seemed to find it easier to turn up early. Perhaps the economy was looking after itself for a change. Duncan had tried to charge the same as the old landlord of the pub had, and they had agreed to make contributions, but it hadn’t stuck. Only Alan devotedly and regularly paid his subs to Duncan. The rest of them thought it was Duncan’s responsibility to the community to host it, and only paid for the occasional jar of Nescafé.

  Since Arthur had moved out, three months before, Duncan had thought constantly about what use he might make of the space upstairs. It was incredible to him that Arthur had managed to live there for four years. The space was full of potential, as estate agents always said. There were two big casement windows at the front, and in the back room, the remains of a stripped-out kitchen in which nothing worked. Arthur had lived there, surrounded by the two hundred and thirty-eight signed copies of The Garden King, which had remained downstairs for six months, a great bronze wall of reproach after the shop’s opening, until Duncan and Arthur could no longer stand it and had moved all the unsaleable copies upstairs. Now that Duncan had some experience in these things, he could hardly believe that he had talked himself into buying two hundred and fifty copies of a first novel, four years before. Four copies had been sold at cover price; eight had been given away to members of the gay men’s group, three of which had been returned unread; two had been lifted, or conceivably just lost by Arthur carrying a copy around London; one was still downstairs, on the fiction shelves. There had been an unpleasant scene, a year after the shop opening, when Duncan had discovered something else about the retail trade. All two hundred and fifty copies, it turned out, were unreturnable, as the rep had regretfully explained, having been signed by the author. ‘Defaced,’ Dommie said, with disgust. If it hadn’t been for the cheque from Sir Angus, Dommie said she didn’t know what they would have done. It was, all the same, Arthur’s favourite novel, or so he said.

  The room was hot and still, the motes moving in the afternoon light, the atmosphere entranced and blanketed with unmoving air, as if a room behind a secret panel. The noises from the street were clear, and yet detached, remote, insignificant, like sounds heard from a sick room. It was only up the stairs behind the painted plywood door. Arthur had survived up there, despite there being no proper bathroom; he had used the toilet at the back of the shop and washed in the sink in the kitchenette, twice a week going for a shower to the swimming baths in Covent Garden where people went. He had slept on an old mattress that Dommie had needed to get rid of, sitting on the floor, and neatly transferred his washing from plastic supermarket bags to the launderette, going there every Sunday afternoon. He was clean, but not immaculate; his shirts were crumpled, since he had no iron, and when he wore his one jacket, a curious urban smell of the second-hand clothes shop, the mothy, fungoid, warm jumble sale, rose from him. He had lived on what the kitchenette could deal with, and what could be produced without too lingering a smell. At the weekends, sometimes, Dommie had him over for dinner on a Saturday, muttering about the dangers of scurvy. He had suppressed his concern by telling himself that young people could eat any old stuff – Pot Noodle, soup from powder – and not die of malnutrition, think of (he went on to Dommie), think of all those children that crop up in newspapers from time to time, saying that they’ve eaten nothing but toast and Marmite for three years and they look all right. Possessionless, constantly preoccupied with washing himself, curling up upstairs among books and boxes, living on the same foodstuffs night after night without interest or complaint, Arthur might have been a cat. Duncan had liked arriving in the morning to find Arthur already by the till, reading a publisher’s proof of a new novel, a cup of instant coffee by the side of the stuffed pheasant, smelling faintly mouldy and fresh-faced in his unironed but clean shirt, blue, purple, white or khaki. Arthur habitually sat in his socks in the shop, on a high stool with a book, explaining that it hurt his feet to wear shoes all day long and he wasn’t old enough to put slippers on just yet. It had been nice. There had also been the point that Arthur was already on the scene when bricks were thrown through the window at night. They had not expected him to stick it for four years, and Duncan was still not quite clear in his mind why he had told him to move out. ‘Oh, I could see him still living like that when he was forty,’ he would say when asked, and that was certainly part of it. Hardly any of Arthur’s life seemed to have changed, however, in the months since he had moved out into what sounded like a terrible gay boarding house. His shirts had remained unironed.

  There was the noise of the plywood door being opened downstairs, and Arthur’s shoeless pad on the wooden stairs. Without turning round, Duncan could hear Arthur yawning as he came in, then scratching himself.

  ‘I’m going senile,’ Duncan said. ‘I came up here for a reason, and I can’t think what it was any more.’

  ‘That’s first sign, intit?’ Arthur said. ‘Going into a room, saying, I don’t know what I’ve come here for. Was it to fetch stock down?’

  ‘No, I’ll do that tomorrow,’ Duncan said. ‘We’ve sold ten copies of A Boy’s Own Story since Saturday. I’ve never had such a hit. Actually I was just thinking about turning this into a meeting room again. Just a table and chairs and a proper light.’

  ‘There’s probably rules and regulations about that,’ Arthur said. ‘Like that man from Camden who come in, said you were running a café.’

  ‘It would just be a meeting room – they’d come and sit round a table and discuss things. You don’t need to get a licence for that.’

  ‘You don’t need a licence for any of it,’ Arthur said. ‘Nothing but a kettle and a big jar of instant and some Rich Tea biscuits. Café, indeed.’

  ‘It was probably the Cup a Soup you were drinking at the time that did it,’ Duncan said lightly.

  ‘Yes, or that Andy over the road, informing on us. I know which side his grandfather was on in the Second World War, down there in Greece, getting invaded. Shall I turn sign round? Christopher’s downstairs, he’s thrilled to bits to be in charge. Are you staying tonight?’

  Duncan made a noncommittal noise. ‘Well,’ he said, in the end, ‘I’m supposed to go and buy some queen’s book collection. In Hammersmith. He died and I don’t think the boyfriend reads. But I only said some time this week. I could stay, I suppose.’

  It had been a while since Duncan had stayed at a gay men’s group meeting. If Arthur couldn’t stay, Duncan’s preferenc
e was generally for going round the corner for a pint and a pie while it was going on and coming back at nine to lock up.

  ‘Christopher says there wasn’t going to be a turnout, much, and then he said Alan decided he was going to come tonight anyway, and Nat was going to visit Freddie Sempill in hospital, but apparently he’s a bit better so Nat’s putting it off until weekend, and that new boy, the black boy from Leicester, he might come or he might not, Paul says, and George and that Tim I live with. I don’t know about Simon, Christopher didn’t mention. So it’s all going to be all right. Alan’s coming too, did I say that?’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Duncan said. ‘Is there any milk in the fridge?’

  ‘I’ll get Christopher to go out and get some from newsagent’s,’ Arthur said. ‘And he’s not taking money from till this time. The instant coffee I got Alan to buy, last jar, that hurt him, I can tell you. We’re not buying milk any more, they’re just taking piss with that one, every week it were, and biscuits and all we’ve paid for while they go on and on about gay men and oppression and why they don’t know any lesbians and all that. They should go back to meeting in pub. I’m sick of the lot of them.’

  ‘That’s a new one,’ said Duncan, though in fact he had had some inkling of this.

  ‘Aye, well,’ Arthur said. ‘I’m thinking of going to that group that meets at Old Street. When I come to Andrew’s group—’

  ‘It’s not Andrew’s group,’ Duncan said.

  ‘When I come to Andrew’s group,’ Arthur said, ‘I’m always the youngest by about ten years. Apart from the black boy from Leicester but I don’t think he’s coming back anyway, he only came those two times. I don’t know why you don’t think it’s Andrew’s group – he’s the one keeps them all up to scratch, decides what they’re going to talk about.’

  ‘It’s only Tim starting to come that’s put you off,’ Duncan said gleefully. ‘You were quite all right till he started coming and gazing at you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not me he’s gazing at,’ Arthur said. ‘I can promise you that. He’s had me, anyway. He’s moved on to Tony on the first floor – they’ve lived in the same house for a year and a half but never got round to each other, Tim says he doesn’t know why. He’s grown a moustache now, under Tony’s influence. I don’t want to call them clones, but, you know …’

  ‘Tony who’s into feet?’ Duncan said.

  ‘Yes, how do you know that?’ Arthur said. ‘I said, I suppose. Tim says he doesn’t know why he’s not seen the appeal of feet till now, he’s grateful to Tony for showing him a new direction. He’s got a new interest in life. It’s like he’s retired or summat. He says you ought to have a shelf of books about it. Feet.’

  ‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ Duncan said. ‘The day we start … Tell Tim and Tony who’s into feet that we’ll order any books they want to read on the subject of feet but they’ll have to pay upfront for them and I’m not putting them on shelves. We’re not porn barons.’

  ‘It’s only feet,’ Arthur said. ‘Who’s that? Was that someone coming in? I’d best get down.’

  4.

  As Arthur went downstairs, his mind went onto sex, as it so often did, and at the forefront of his mind was an image of Tony and Tim at each other’s feet. He did not really know, he realized, what was involved when someone said they were into feet. He tried various possibilities, turning the scenario round in his mind, altering it until it seemed plausible, and then trying to see if changes would make it more so. The Tony and Tim in his head picked up the foot of each other, applied it to themselves, removed it and tried something different, with a quizzical naked air. The scene changed, like an object picked up and rotated, as the figures in Arthur’s mind tried one thing after another. One day there had been only one gay man in London who was into feet. But how would that one gay man find someone else in London who was into feet like him? It would be easier to convert someone who had never thought about it. So then the next day this single gay man had met another gay man, in his bed, and had asked him if he were into feet, and the other had said no, but then had allowed himself to be introduced to feet, and they had enjoyed it. The next day the both of them had gone out and met new people, and had both independently asked if the new one were into feet, and they had explained and demonstrated, and so the word had spread. On Monday, there had been only one gay man in London who was into feet, and the next day there were two, and the day after, four, and by Thursday eight, then sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight, two hundred and fifty-six, and in ten days five hundred and twelve. What a good idea, another five hundred and twelve were saying on the eleventh day to the original five hundred and twelve, we had never thought of doing that, and now we, too, are into feet, doing with each other in bed whatever it might be that men who were into feet did with each other. Soon there would be no gay man in London who was not into feet; the question would not need to be asked, because it would be like saying are you into men or do you like kissing or do you think love is a good idea; it would be universal. But what gay men who were into feet did to each Arthur did not know. And, of course, it would not always multiply like that. Sometimes a Tony and a Tim would not go out the next day and convert new people to the pleasures of being into feet. Sometimes they would stay with each other and just do things with each other’s feet, like chiropodists. Perhaps Arthur could ask Tony or Tim, one of these days, what you did with each other if you were into feet; how men who were into feet might signal to others, in a bar or a club, that that was their interest without having to say anything at all. He trembled with laughter as he walked down the stairs.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Christopher said, as he came into the shop. The man who had come in was only Alan.

  ‘I was wondering about coloured hankies,’ Arthur said. Christopher and Alan exchanged a baffled glance.

  5.

  ‘Got Aids yet?’ a child shouted in at the door, and ran off like a celebrant in a street fair, followed by two or three children of the neighbourhood who paused to say, ‘Fucking bummers,’ before running after their friend. ‘Did you hear what I …’ you could hear them calling as they ran.

  Alan tutted and looked away. He was no more than fifty-five, they reckoned, from his talk of ‘before the war’ as a remote childhood paradise, but he dressed and presented himself like a pensioner. His hair was quite white and combed upwards into a cockatoo’s crest, listing sideways; his walk was strict, his hands held firmly downwards by his hips in case they broke out into florid gesture. He lived, as he always had, in a shabby but now rather valuable house in Fulham, on the borders of Chelsea, with his mother. Nothing there had changed since 1957, when the hall wallpaper had been removed and distemper applied. ‘Oh,’ Nat used to say, with a despairing wave of his hand, ‘Alan’s really just like his house. He’s so much like Tregunter Road, it’s hardly true.’ His clothes, too, were sourced by his mother from a west London emporium quite isolated from the 1980s, or indeed the 1970s; like a pensioner, he dressed imperviously to the heat, as if his mother had warned him to wrap up warm, it might turn nasty later. He wore a tweed jacket, with broad lapels and gold buttons, in brilliant oranges and greens; a tie was making a break in a floral direction; his shirt and trousers were different shades of man-made brown. Despite his age, both performed and real, his face was puzzled and yet eager, like a keen dull boy at the front of a maths class. It was as if he had not understood what the youths had shouted in.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Arthur said. ‘I’m just making one.’

  ‘That is so kind of you,’ Alan said. ‘Milk, no sugar. Christopher?’

  ‘Oh, tea,’ Christopher said. ‘I’ve had such a day you wouldn’t believe. That Lawson! You just would not believe what he’s decided to do with us.’

  ‘Still, you got off on time,’ Alan said. ‘I don’t see him keeping you behind at the office just yet. I was supposed to have a meeting with the deputy VC, but he’d gone off to play some golf, the weather being so nice. Just slid off.’<
br />
  ‘The trick is, Alan,’ Christopher said, ‘around four twenty-five, you start ruffling your papers as if you’ve got a meeting at four thirty, you start checking your watch, and then – this is the clever bit – you leave your jacket over the back of your chair and just walk straight out. It’s really a cinch. It does mean that you’ve got to be back early the next morning to bundle your jacket from yesterday into your briefcase. I’ve done it for years. I’d love a cup of tea, thank you, Arthur. Is this the book everyone’s talking about?’

  He picked up a copy of A Boy’s Own Story from a pile of eight.

  ‘We’ve done ever so well with it,’ Duncan said. ‘We’ve had to reorder four times already. Everyone’s reading it.’

  ‘Nat was telling me about it,’ Alan said. ‘He’s not a great reader, is he? I mean, not even his best friends. But he said he couldn’t put it down. He got to page twelve and he had to have a wank, and then he was a bit ashamed of himself, because it’s actually about fourteen-year-olds having it off, or cornholing each other – had you ever heard of cornholing before? I said to Nat, there’s no need to apologize, it’s only words on a page, but he said – well. Mother read it, actually, she saw it on the coffee-table, and when I was busy in the kitchen, I was running up a little apple-and-cinnamon strudel that I’d been saving up for a quiet afternoon, I was otherwise occupied in any case, and when I came back in, all hot and bothered, she was reading it, twenty pages in, and she said straight out to me, Alan, I hope you don’t go in for any of that cornholing. It sounds very ill-advised. You could have knocked me down with a feather, because you know, Mother and I, we don’t talk about any of that side of my life, but she then said what an interesting way of writing the author had, and now I really think that I might have to buy another copy – she’s passed the one she read on to her friend Dolly with a strong recommendation and I hadn’t even finished it. Dolly’s a man, by the way.’