The Emperor Waltz (26 page)

‘Us? No, mate, not us,’ Andy said. ‘Don’t be a berk. No, they’ll be along in another couple of hours. We’re just the sandwich over the road.’

‘You don’t want to sleep in this doorway, mate,’ Chris said, yawning and rubbing his eyes with his fists. ‘You don’t want that. You don’t know how they’ll wake you up when they get here. Didn’t you see the name of the shop, son?’

Andy looked at the boy. He had been a runaway, too, he reckoned. Well, he’d had to run away from Cyprus, like all the rest of the Greeks. Sometimes people ended up sleeping where they didn’t want to sleep because of circumstances beyond their control. His mum and dad had left their house in such a hurry that they hadn’t had time to clear up the table from lunch. It was a source of shame to his mother that they had left like that, and ever since, she had sometimes said that those Turks, they would be able to come in and see the lamb dish festooned with mould and maggots and flies and making the whole place stink, and be able to say that those Greeks, by God, they were dirty people. So Andy knew that sometimes you had to leave the place where you’d lived for years, that sometimes people would treat you with not much respect because of the way you’d had to go or the way you’d had to leave things. There was a lamb dish abandoned, somewhere, by this boy; not a real lamb dish, but something he’d had to leave that would make people talk about him in a bad way when he was gone.

So because of all that, Andy turned to Chris and said, ‘Shut your mouth,’ before telling the boy that he could come over to the shop and they’d give him a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea.

‘Are we going to give him a sandwich?’ Chris said.

‘Yes, Chris,’ Andy said, with a warning look. ‘We’re going to give him a sandwich.’

11.

The phone had rung at seven – the earliest possible time anyone could ring anyone else, even a brother to a sister. A catastrophe had happened, had struck both shop and flat simultaneously. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ Duncan had said to Dommie. She calmed him down, and it turned out that the boiler in the flat and the boiler in the shop had broken down simultaneously. He had been warned. He was going to replace the one in the shop, but the one in the flat had seemed to be working perfectly well. It was all my eye about it needing to go altogether, just another way of making some money out of a customer, Duncan had thought at the time. Then the water had had to be switched off for a couple of days while the bathroom had been fitted, and when they had switched it back on, water was just pouring out of the boiler. God knew how. They’d told Duncan, he said, they told me that a washer was perished and only holding together because normally it was damp and flexible and then they turned it off and it dried out and then it broke and when someone switched it back on again …

Dommie could not quite follow everything, but it seemed as if he needed to stay at home while the boiler was being fixed, and someone else needed to be in the shop to let the workmen in to install the new boiler there.

‘When is he coming, the boiler man? I can come over so long as I leave by twelve,’ she said.

‘Oh, Dommie, that is kind of you,’ said Duncan. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

So Dommie decided to call in sick, saying she had a headache and sometimes these things cleared up by lunchtime but sometimes they didn’t. She had a key to the shop for exactly these emergencies, though she had not been inside it on her own. She had been three times, every time when Duncan was there. She came in: she sat while Duncan’s friends did some handiwork, talking amusingly all the while. Sometimes they knew who she was, but sometimes they overlooked her. The professional handymen were more interested once they knew she was Duncan’s sister. The sign painter, who of course knew what the shop was to be called and what sort of customers they were going to have, found it extraordinary that Duncan was in touch with his family, even. There was an awful man called Freddie Sempill, who talked in a false and unconvincing way to her, which she could not understand; then she realized that he was putting on a performance for the benefit of the electrician. There was Christopher, who was a stiff old thing, old beyond his years, talking carefully in sentences and holding himself rigidly upright. There was Paul, who she’d met before, who was, he said, Duncan’s best friend; she quite liked him once she realized that his performance was the most sincere of all of them. It was interesting to sit and watch a business taking shape in such a physical way. But all the time she had longed to be alone in the shop, to take charge.

She was at the shop by eight thirty, with a sense of joy at putting things right. She did not turn on the lights. She liked the dim mercantile shadow; the clean smell of shaved wood and new paint, the kitchenette with its cupboards and sink still in part wrapped in coloured cellophane. The sound of birdsong filled the shadowy interior. The troublesome boiler was in the middle of all that kitchen newness and, looking at it, Dommie wondered why Duncan hadn’t decided to have a new one from the start. The floor was filled with boxes of stock; there would be a stockroom upstairs in time, but this stock would fill the shelves, and her brother’s stock boxes stood filled with promise.

She had always wanted to play shops when she was little, and she had always wanted to have her own shop when she was older. Perhaps a dress shop for glamorous older women, but her thoughts hadn’t really got that far. She saw herself placing a book in a paper bag, saying, ‘I do hope you enjoy it,’ to the customer, a distinguished silvery fellow a touch too perfectly dressed; taking his money; putting it in the till; and saying, ‘Goodbye, then,’ and listening to the shop-door bell ring. It would be simply perfect.

There was a shape at the window, peering in. It was not the boiler man, but the sandwich man from across the street. With him was someone unfamiliar, a teenage boy with a sullen, inexpressive face and a rucksack. Dommie turned on the lights as if she had been about to do that all the time and, smiling, opened the door.

‘This young man wants a word,’ the sandwich man said. ‘This lady can help you. Now off you go. And remember, your parents are the most important people in your life, and they’re not going to be there for ever.’

The sandwich man turned round and crossed the road. The boy, outside the shop, looked at Dommie, and Dommie, inside the shop, looked at him.

‘I thought you were gay men,’ the boy said. He had a northern accent. ‘I thought you’d all be gay men. Are you a lesbian?’

‘Indeed no,’ Dommie said. ‘It’s my brother’s shop. I’m just here this morning to let the man in to mend the boiler. You wanted a word, did he say?’

‘I’m Arthur,’ the boy said. He reflected, looked about with his long neck and jutting chin and nose; he looked Dommie up and down, and then about him at the street. ‘You’ve not got anything in your window yet.’

‘I don’t think he’s quite got round to it,’ Dommie said. ‘That probably comes last. There are still a few things to get right.’

‘I’ve run away from home,’ the boy said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Well, I don’t see why not,’ Dommie said. ‘No, you don’t need to take your shoes off. This is only a shop. But the rucksack by the door, please.’

12.

When Duncan turned up at the shop at half past eleven, he was in a much better mood. The boiler man had looked, and said that the old boiler in the flat didn’t need replacing: if he put together half a dozen parts, it would be good for a couple of years yet. That was a relief. Duncan had left him to it. Now for the boiler in the shop.

He arrived, and inside the shop, there were Dommie and Paul and, at the back of the shop working, another boiler man. With them was a boy Duncan didn’t know. They were sitting on chairs around the table, which had arrived yesterday, the table for group discussions: large, polished and round, it would hold twelve, fifteen at a pinch.

‘This is Arthur,’ Dommie said. ‘He’s come about a job.’

‘A job?’ Duncan said, pulling up a chair and sitting down. ‘A job in the bookshop?’

‘I told you,’ Paul said to the boy. ‘I told you he’s not taking on help.’

‘You’ve got to take me on,’ Arthur said. ‘You’ve just got to.’

‘How did you hear about the shop?’ Duncan said. ‘We aren’t opening for another week or ten days.’

‘If it’s ten days,’ Paul said, ‘we won’t be open before the party.’

‘It was yesterday,’ Arthur said. ‘I was in newsagent near the City Hall where I buy my
Gay News
. I’m from Sheffield, this is in Sheffield. It’s the only newsagent I know of in town that sells
Gay News
, it’s the fourth time I’ve bought it. And I was reading it on bus home. I don’t buy it and then hide it in a newspaper, I read it on bus, I don’t care, me. And there was this article about you. You’ve seen article?’

‘No, what article?’ Duncan said. ‘I knew she was going to write something, but I haven’t seen it. She was supposed to send me a copy when the magazine came out. When did it come out?’

‘It’s only just out,’ Arthur said. ‘It’s supposed to be out on the fourth of month, but I start looking for it on third – it sometimes comes a day early. Don’t you get it early in London? It’s published here, we’re always miles behind in Sheffield. Look, it’s here – I was showing your sister and your friend.’

Arthur reached into his pocket, and handed over the magazine. On the cover an interview was flagged up with a Broadway legend, who perhaps did not know what she was letting herself in for, and features about types of lesbian, amyl nitrate, ‘Is Earls Court’s Day Over?’ and ‘Does London Really Need a Gay Bookshop?’ The magazine, much-handled, was folded down the middle, its ink smeared by Arthur’s hot hands.

‘Cheeky cow,’ Duncan said. ‘Why write about it if you don’t think London needs one?’

‘It’s better than it sounds,’ Arthur said. ‘I read it and I wanted to come to London to find you straight away.’

‘I want to read this,’ Duncan said, turning the pages – there were adverts for bum-douches under the slogan ‘For That Big Night Out’, and for bed-and-breakfasts in Blackpool, and a fashion spread, which seemed to have been shot against a backdrop of foil by a photographer’s stand-in. The types-of-lesbian article was illustrated with cartoons of ‘Gay Woman’, ‘Lesbian’, ‘Butch’, ‘Dyke’ and ‘Gay Lady’, this last one sitting on a bar stool wearing a fedora. Over the page was Duncan. The photograph was simply terrible, in dim light and with Duncan standing bolt upright, looking startled. He was sure he had managed to smile at one point, at least, during the session. The headline was ‘Read All About It! We investigate the opening of London’s first gay bookshop and talk to its manager Duncan.’

‘“There’s nothing better than curling up with a good book,”’ Duncan read out loud. ‘Oh my God. “Unless you count curling up with a good bookshop owner. When GAY NEWS heard that Duncan Flannery, thirty-three, was planning to open a gay bookshop in London’s King’s Cross –”’

‘We’re not in King’s Cross here,’ Dommie said. ‘This is practically what I would call Marylebone.’

‘“– London’s King’s Cross,”’ Duncan went on, ‘“we thought, What a good idea! So we minced on down to Canning Street in the West End, to ask its manager and owner Duncan Flannery what plans he has for this shop. “I’ve always loved reading,” Duncan said, “and men. So I thought I would put my two passions together.”’ She said that. She said to me when I said, “I love reading,” she said, “And men, too,” and I thought that was embarrassing, but I sort of agreed. I never said that.’

‘Oh, go on,’ Paul said. ‘We don’t care if it’s
accurate
, just if it’s
sensational
. Shame she got the street wrong, even.’

‘No, she got it right later on – “Heatherwick Street seems not quite sure yet about its new addition,” blah blah. I’m not going to go on,’ Duncan said. ‘I’ll curl up with it later. Like a good book. Oh, God.’

‘So I saw this article,’ Arthur said, in a faintly aggrieved tone. ‘It was on bus back home. And I thought immediately, I love men, I love books, I can’t get enough of them. I’ve taken
Maurice
out of the central library about ten times almost. That’s a fantastic book. I love it when Scudder says to Maurice, when he says, well, when he says anything, really. They should make a film out of that, it would be magic. And I hate it at school, I really hate it. When did you know you were gay? I knew when I was
nine,
the first time I heard of it, I knew that was me all right. But them – they’ve all known I was gay since I was fifteen, and this boy came over one Saturday, we got drunk on gin and vodka and the boy said he had to stay the night because his mum couldn’t see him like that, and we slept in my mum and dad’s bed, they were away, and I said I thought everyone was really bisexual—’

‘Heavens above, are they still using that old chestnut?’ Paul said. ‘Everyone’s really bisexual? It
doesn’t work
, child. It’s never worked. If they’re going to have sex with you, they’ll have sex with you. There’s no point in bringing in the mirror stage and the Wolf Man and Uncle Sigmund’s ideas. It won’t work.’

‘How do you know about the Wolf Man?’ Dommie said. ‘You’re full of surprises.’

‘I wasn’t landed the last time the wind blew from the east, darling,’ Paul said. ‘I am an
educated
queen, if you please.’

‘It didn’t work, you’re right,’ Arthur said. ‘He looked at me as if I was just talking rubbish, which I was. But he kissed me and he felt my cock and I felt his cock, and we were both really hard. But then on Monday it turned out that he’d told everyone and that I’d told him I was gay and then had tried to force myself on him and he’d had to go home. Which wasn’t true, he’d stayed and had breakfast and everything, he asked if I’d cook him bacon, but we didn’t have bacon in. I thought that was a bit cheeky. But I didn’t know where to run away to, until I read this article about your bookshop. And then I knew. It’s going to change world, your bookshop.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Duncan said, looking up from the article. ‘No trouble.’ The tone of irony in his voice could not be shed.

‘I love, love, love, books,’ the boy said. ‘Please let me stay. I won’t be any trouble. I’d cook you bacon, any day.’