The Emperor Waltz

by Philip Hensher

  ‘I don’t know that those posters are Tory propaganda,’ Nat said, puzzling. ‘How do you work that one out? I thought they were from the Terrence Higgins Trust.’

  ‘Tories,’ Andrew said, taking a huge swig from his glass of parsnip wine. He left a pink lipstick stain on the rim. ‘Don’t you understand, Nat? I thought you were one of the thoughtful ones. We’d never have disagreed about this at CHE. The government’s got its own moral agenda to pursue. Stop men sleeping with each other. Stop them exchanging fluids in love and fun. So there’s this conspiracy, ooh, stop them, frighten them, tell them they’re going to die unless they stop sleeping with other men and maybe marry Maureen next door and have two point four children and never think about how you could change society. Or at best – if you’re going to have to sleep with men, you sick pervert, we’ll allow you to so long as you use one of these condoms, thanks, we take credit cards, they’re manufactured, these condoms, by some very good friends of ours in the pharmaceutical industry. Did you see what happened to the price of shares in the condom manufacturers, after the first time the government advert told everyone to use them, all the time, whenever anything looks like happening?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Nat said. He settled back in his chair. There seemed to be something underneath the cushion – he cautiously fished it out, thinking it might be a book, but it was an empty package of some sort.

  ‘The shares – they shot up. Doubled in value. Massive profits for private enterprise, off the back of dead people,’ Andrew said. ‘Every dead gay man means another million in condom sales. Every one. Did you know that?’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Nat said, dropping the package on the floor, ‘if you use a condom, you’re probably not going to die, fingers crossed.’

  ‘We’re all going to die,’ Andrew said. ‘Capitalism can’t stop people dying. And it can’t stop the progress of progressive working-class thought. Promiscuity is a radical critique of the heteronormative structures of this society,’ he went on, and thoughtfully rolled it round his tongue once more. ‘Promiscuity, Nat, is a deeply – profoundly – radical critique of the heteronormative structures that keep everyone in this society in place. Surely you can understand that.’

  Oh, do shut up, Nat thought. Honestly. You don’t half go on, Nat thought. And it was all too clear how this one would end. He would talk and grouse and then he would say that it was important to get your point across after all, and he would get into the car with his green eyeshadow on and his flowery dress and his Doc Martens. My days, how that Andrew goes on, Nat thought, and there isn’t even a drink in the house apart from parsnip wine and if you were very lucky some organic potato vodka made by Welsh lesbians, which you could have with beetroot juice. And the party would end with Andrew pawing at someone, drunk as a skunk, and still going on about capitalist structures. A bit less energy devoted to grousing, and a bit more to housework, would work miracles with Andrew.

  ‘Did I tell you about the Brazilian I met at the Vauxhall Tavern last Friday?’ Nat said, when they were finally in the car.

  ‘No!’ Andrew said, then he remembered himself. ‘I suppose there was a reason why he’s had to come to this country, though.’

  Here we go, thought Nat.

  12.

  Arthur had put up a notice in the window in his neat Roman capitals, done on a sheet of pink A3 with a green marker pen, both bought especially for this purpose. The notice read ‘PRIVATE PARTY – EVERYONE WELCOME’. Dommie had thought that you didn’t want to have just anyone wandering in. You could get people who wanted to smash the place up. But Duncan thought they probably wouldn’t want to come into a shop called the Big Gay Bookshop for a party. He did put the kibosh on Arthur’s suggestion that the invitations read ‘You Can’t Get Aids Off A Glass Or Six Of Wine’.

  ‘Who’s coming from your house?’ Duncan said.

  ‘Tony and Tim said definitely,’ Arthur said. ‘There’s a new boy who said he might – he’s in room that Frenchman used to be in. Kevin said he might, but he’s got to be up early mixing marge wi’ butter, whatever that means.’

  ‘I don’t know why you stick it there,’ Duncan said. ‘How long’s it been?’

  ‘Three years now,’ Arthur said. ‘I’ve been working here seven.’

  ‘Seven years,’ Duncan said. ‘If they get their way and close us down, we can say we gave it a good go. Bugger this, I’m going to have a glass of wine before anyone comes.’

  ‘They’re not going to close us down,’ Arthur said. ‘We’re going to win this one. They’re not going to have us up for selling dirty books when exhibit A is The Garden King and exhibit B is summat about Greek vases. They’re honestly not.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Duncan said. ‘I can always go back to working at the dole office, I suppose. It’s just you I worry about – I mean, it’s not like you’ve got any talents or anything.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about me,’ Arthur said, smiling and running his hands through his hair. ‘I’ll go back to that rich bloke who lived off King’s Road, I’ll be a kept boy.’

  ‘That rich bloke who never stopped ringing, you mean?’ Duncan said. ‘Is that Dommie with the ice?’

  But it was only the Greek sandwich-maker from over the road and his son. He paused outside the shop window, as he sometimes did on his way to his van at the end of the day, and said something to the son that they fortunately couldn’t hear. He looked in with an expression of disgust; his eyes might have caught theirs, but he was standing in the light and them in the dark. The son looked in too, even raising his hands to shadow his eyes. He said something contemptuous to his dad, and they both laughed. From across the road, locking the door of their sandwich shop, came the black dogsbody whose name they couldn’t remember. The Greek sandwich-maker swore at him, and held out his hand; the dogsbody dropped the keys into his palm, raised his hand weakly in farewell, and they went in their separate directions. It had been seven years since Arthur or Duncan had said anything to any of them, though they worked directly opposite.

  ‘And music,’ Arthur said. ‘I’ve got a pile of cassettes here, but I don’t know what any of them are. I thought we’d play something different to usual stuff we play during the day – I’m sick to death of Sade and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. I don’t know whether any of it’s any good.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ Duncan said. Arthur was just slotting a tape into the shop’s ghetto-blaster.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said, and the music started. They had both expected party music, but it was classical music, an orchestral piece; a sort of Toytown march with frills and trills and perky Toytown cheerfulness. ‘What’s this, then?’

  But then it changed; a waltz started, and it was rather nice. ‘I know this,’ Duncan said. ‘Leave it on.’ Arthur thought he knew it too, and proved it by starting to sing along. But he didn’t know what it was. How could you know a piece of music without knowing what it was? The waltz continued, having come into their lives separately, without their judging it or deciding it or making any kind of move towards it, and they found they knew it all. ‘I like this old stuff, really,’ one of them said, and the other one even started moving his arms and feet as if in a one-man Viennese dance. It caught the ear, and the ear had already assented to it. It had spread from player to ear, from music to memory, and passed on and on, through fashion and neglect making its way in the world. It was so easy to pass on a piece of music, like a benevolent contagion, without requiring persuasion or argument. ‘It’s the Emperor Waltz,’ Dommie somehow knew and told them as soon as she came in and found Duncan and Arthur waltzing together, Arthur’s head reclining in a beautifully ballroom gesture. ‘We’re not having this at the party, surely.’

  ‘Only for the auction,’ Duncan said. ‘It’ll make them feel rich and classy.’ But he was not as cynical as he made himself sound. It was sad when the Emperor Waltz came to an end. It carried on for a while as Duncan went round, setting out glasses; continued in his head as he hummed
its best bits. ‘I’m really quite nervous about the speech,’ he said to Arthur as he went round. ‘And the auction. I think I’ll have a drink before anyone gets here.’ In his head was the Emperor Waltz. He had no idea where he had first heard it, and how it had come to be so familiar to him. It seemed as if he heard it every day, as if from just over the road.

  ‘And here I am,’ Sir Angus Wilson said, coming in through the door with his charming friend Tony behind, carrying all the bags. ‘Here I am, writer of all those big gay books, and the party can begin. Is there such a thing as a very small – a very small – glass of white wine?’

  13.

  ‘“My old mother! And another! They both said – I always, always should …”’ Nat bawled, the chorus of an old music-hall song. He was standing on the counter, hanging onto a double-bass player, who had for some reason come with his instrument and hauled it up onto the counter too, slapping and plucking it in generalized accompaniment to Nat’s performance. Somewhere at the back of the heaving mass a couple of people were joining in, or were they just cheering? Anyway, Nat, who had lost his trousers somewhere along the way, did a shapely high kick or two. It was lucky he had a glamorous pair of new white boxer shorts on, and he had such good legs, everyone always said. Where was the capercaillie that usually stood here? There it was, safely on top of the lesbian bookcase.

  ‘Look at all these people!’ Duncan said. He wasn’t quite clear who to. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to have to make a speech to them. And conduct an auction. I’ve never conducted an auction. I’m terrified.’

  ‘So just – fuck off,’ Maggi Hambling was saying. ‘It’s perfectly simple, darling. They just have to be told – very, very firmly – just fuck off, darling.’

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ the girl whose name hadn’t been caught said. She couldn’t gesture, as she was pressed so tightly against Maggi Hambling, but she meant the can of Special Brew being held somewhere above shoulder height.

  ‘Brought it. Where’s your drink? Your glass?’

  The girl nodded downwards; there was a half-full bottle of red wine between her breasts. ‘That’s my glass. Thought I’d pick it up and hang on to it,’ she said.

  ‘Excellent idea.’

  The man in the dinner jacket and bow-tie had seemed quite nice, and had pointed out to George that there seemed to be a bit of space over there by the bookcase that read TRAVEL on top. He’d said this after a dyke had jogged George’s elbow and spilt white wine down his new shirt for the third time. George hadn’t been quite sure that he would come. It was only that the new boy on the flight last week had mentioned it, and George had said he’d come along, since they were both laying off in London that day. They’d met outside the tube, and almost the second they’d entered the room, the new boy had gone to get a drink and had never come back. His name was Dmitrios, but he’d said to call him Mike. This man was rather older than George usually went for, and he wasn’t quite sure how they had got into conversation anyway, but he looked very distinguished in his dinner jacket. George followed him as he continued, saying, ‘Excuse me – excuse me – so sorry – just making my way through – if you don’t mind,’ and they reached the other side in five minutes. Unfortunately, the space by the travel bookcase was illusionary: it had been created by a very drunk man who had slumped to the floor and was reading a book about Syria, George observed.

  ‘That’s nearly a coincidence,’ George said. ‘My family are from Cyprus, which is not far from Syria.’

  ‘What did you say?’ the man in the dinner jacket said. ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

  ‘Cyprus,’ George said. ‘Not far from Syria. That’s where my family comes from.’

  ‘Where what comes from?’

  ‘My family.’

  ‘No, I meant where were you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I was saying Syria, that’s where my family doesn’t come from, we come from Cyprus.’

  The man giggled, raising the back of his hand to his mouth. ‘I’m ever so tiddly,’ he said. ‘Have you got a friend?’

  ‘Oh, yes, lots of friends,’ George said. ‘But there’s always room for one more.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the dyke said behind him, in an accusing way. She and her fat girlfriend had followed them over from the other side of the room, perhaps also thinking that there was space here. She craned over, and observed the drunk man on the floor. ‘Get him to stand up, there’s not room. For Christ’s sake.’ She turned in a disappointed way, nudging George’s elbow, which spilt white wine down his new shirt for the fourth time, or possibly only the third.

  ‘Really,’ Christopher was saying to Olivia Tempest, the disgruntled lady novelist, ‘anal sex was always very important to me. From almost the first, you might say.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Olivia Tempest was saying bravely. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve read all my books. You’d see if you did that I was really the first – almost the very first – to …’

  Duncan was talking to a man he was not quite sure he knew. It seemed possible.

  ‘And then my father died, and he left me half the house and his money, though it was a really close thing, my aunts, they tried to keep it from me and keep it to themselves, and I thought, I know what I really want to do, I want to open a bookshop. Have you ever been to my bookshop?’ Duncan said.

  ‘I’m in it now,’ the gentleman who was a friend of Christopher’s said, smiling. Was he a friend of Christopher’s? Or had Duncan confused something here? Christopher had introduced him, certainly. But had he met him only ten seconds before?

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Duncan said, beating the man gently on his breastbone.’But I meant before.’

  ‘Once or twice,’ the man said. They were somewhere in the middle of the room. There was such a crush! Duncan was glad he’d thought to put Paul’s pheasant on top of a bookcase and his Bauhaus teapot in a locked drawer, or they would have been crushed or stolen or anything could have happened. Poor Paul! He would have loved to be here tonight, raising money for the bookshop that was probably about to close down. Duncan and this man were jammed together, their smiling faces only an inch apart. Duncan hoped he didn’t have bad breath from the piece of celery and hummus he’d eaten earlier. That was the last of any food he’d seen, hours before. He hadn’t recognized this man when Christopher introduced him, and now he couldn’t remember his name – Raymond, or Randy, or Raphael, or Rodrigo – but Christopher’s introduction had had something confidential about it, a kind of handing over of precious goods, as if the name would mean a great deal to Duncan. ‘This is Raymond,’ he’d said – or Randy, or Raphael – and off he’d gone, leaving Duncan to do his important task.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Duncan said.

  ‘Victoria,’ the man said. ‘I’ve only just moved in.’

  ‘No one lives in Victoria,’ Duncan said. ‘Victoria! That’s just a bus station and a railway station and three theatres, or two, I forget. It’s either Pimlico or Belgravia.’

  ‘I don’t believe in Belgravia,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think you say you live in Belgravia, do you?’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ Duncan said. ‘I never say that. Because I live in Notting Hill, you fool. Do you know, I’m convinced I’m going to kiss you. I don’t know why! I just think it’s going to happen, like looking up at clouds and saying those are rainclouds, it’s going to rain today, that’s what it’s like.’

  ‘I see,’ the man said, not kissing Duncan, but he was amused.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’m just so nervous,’ Duncan said. ‘It’s this speech I’m going to have to make, you see.’

  ‘You need another drink,’ the man said. He was positively grinning; his brilliant teeth shone in his dark face.

  ‘Oh, how kind. What lovely manners. Where are my manners? Where do you live?’ Duncan said, to improve the general tone of his thoughts.

  ‘Victoria,’ the man said, smiling. ‘But I used to live in Chelsea.’

  ‘Oh, I s
ee,’ Duncan said, realizing why Christopher had handed the man over with such ceremony. He wondered why Christopher knew such a plutocrat, if he knew him. And how much this millionaire would be prepared to sign a cheque for and if he had a boyfriend and whether it was the hummus after all that was keeping him from kissing Duncan. The hummus! Duncan thought, accepting another drink. The hummus!

  The party had poured in every possible direction. The sash window at the back had been pushed up, and three boys were sitting on the ledge with their legs dangling out, passing a bottle of vodka one to another and a spliff, by the smell of it. The door upstairs to the stock room was open, and people were spilling up the stairs. Arthur, passing a bottle of cider forward, hoped there was nothing to steal up there, but then reassured himself that, apart from unopened boxes, there was nothing but a lot of copies of that unsaleable novel, and they were welcome to steal that. Against the far wall two men, either both over six foot seven in height, or both standing on a pile of lesbian magazines, were kissing furiously; underneath them, Paul Bailey was casting up amused looks, half listening to a fan telling him how much he’d loved his last book. People were drinking on the pavement, too; the party was so full that anyone who arrived late, or who went out to the off-licence to pick up some more to drink, found themselves carrying on outside, drinking from bottles and cans.

  ‘I really don’t give a fuck any more,’ Freddie Sempill was saying on the pavement outside. ‘Really, not one fuck. I’ve thought about it and I really don’t give a fuck.’

  ‘About what?’ the man was saying. He had introduced himself as Rupert – he was a publisher’s rep, he had said, but he thought he had a lovely relationship with the shop, so he’d come to show support. Rupert had come, he explained confidentially, in a jacket and tie; the jacket, a brilliant mauve, was somewhere inside – he’d hung it on a hook, and that was the last he’d seen of it. ‘What do you not give a fuck about?’