The Emperor Waltz (27 page)

‘“We asked Duncan what he would save from his stock, if his shop caught on fire. What are the five books he couldn’t live without?”’ Duncan read out loud. ‘This is really the most boring interview. I can’t imagine anyone coming to the bookshop after reading this.’

‘I came,’ Arthur said simply. ‘I went to wrong street and then right one. And you aren’t even open yet. If I came all the way from Sheffield, there are loads of people who are going to come from all over England – all over world, probably. I read your five favourite books. I think they’re amazing. You’ve got to give me a job.’

‘Oh, God. You’re going straight back to Sheffield,’ Duncan said. ‘I haven’t got any money to pay anyone with, and I don’t know that I ever will. Don’t start going on about bacon. It’s not going to work on me. I can’t employ every runaway.’

‘Oh, I don’t want paying,’ Arthur said. ‘I’d work here for nothing, if you could just find somewhere I could live for nothing. I could live in stockroom, even. If there were just a bed in there. I would wash in little kitchen and make myself things to eat. I’d manage somehow. I can’t go back to Sheffield. You see, I went back home with my copy of
Gay News
, and my stepfather, Donald, who’s married to my mother, he said he was sick of me making a spectacle of myself. And I said it weren’t me who were making people stare. And he goes, well, who the hell is it then? And I go if they don’t want to stare they shouldn’t stare. That’s their decision and I’m only carrying a magazine, they don’t have to read magazine theirselves. Then he goes it’s not just the magazine, it’s your clothes and way you walk and way you talk, and he goes say “decision” again. And I say “decision”, and he says no, “decision”, and I say yes, “decision”, and he’s about to hit me.’

‘What?’ said Paul. ‘I can’t understand
what
you’re saying. It all sounds
terribly thrilling
, but why did your stepfather make you say “decision”?’

‘Because of my lisp, I’ve got a bit of a lisp, my stepfather’s always on about it, I can’t say “decision” and it drives him up wall. So he’s saying say “decision” and I’m trying to say “decision”, and my mum’s coming out of kitchen and she says no, Don, don’t do it, it’s just a phase he’s going through. And he stops and he looks at his hand, and then a right mean look comes over his face and he belts me one, with the back of his hand, across my face.’

He was telling it as an exciting story, his cheeks flushed and his voice fast. But now he saw Paul’s face, and Duncan’s, and Dommie’s, and he slowed down.

‘So I went upstairs and threw some things into a knapsack. And then I came down with it, and I went straight back down to town. By now it’s nearly nine o’clock. I know where Donald keeps his money, and I’d taken all of it, three hundred and fifty pounds, it’s illegal cash payments, he’s a builder, so I’m not worried about being pursued by police. I buy myself a ticket to London, and I say to myself, I don’t care, I’m going to that bookshop and they’re going to give me a job. And I catch last train to London, and I get here about half past midnight. I don’t know why I thought you’d be here. I came here anyway and I slept in doorway, it wasn’t so cold last night. Then that man over road came and gave me a cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich. Then he brought me over and she were here –’ nodding at Dommie ‘– so I told her the story, then he came –’ nodding at Paul ‘– so I told the story again, and now you’re here and it’s the third time she’s heard the story and the second time him.’

Duncan waited for a pause. It seemed to have come. Dommie got up and went to the back kitchen. There, she filled the new kettle from the new tap. Duncan watched her. There were five mugs back there; for the moment, they matched, but in five years’ time they would have been smashed, and replaced, and would be a jumble, a mismatch, witnesses to passing moments. For now they were five in different pastel shades, all the same size. There was a new jar of Nescafé, which Dommie was unscrewing, then puncturing with one of the new teaspoons. There was a delicious smell, the first thing out of a new jar of instant coffee, though perhaps in time they would stretch to a percolator and proper coffee. Dommie was measuring out the coffee into the mugs; she was asking the boiler man if he wanted one; she was opening the bookshop’s new fridge and taking out the single object inside it, a pint of milk, which the milkman must have brought that morning for the first time. There was even a little bowl of sugar in the kitchen cupboards for Dommie’s sake, and anyone else who still took sugar in their coffee. One day – perhaps soon – there would be biscuits, two sorts of biscuits, and customers reading, absorbed. Dommie handed the green mug to the boiler man; she placed the other four on the ceramic tray with a view of the Taj Mahal; she brought them and gave them to her brother, to Paul, to Arthur, to herself, the pink, the white, the blue, the purple. Duncan contemplated his business decision. There was no doubt that Arthur would cost money. He had worked out that he could get to London and live rent-free, but what was he going to eat? How was he going to use the launderette? What would he wash with and eat off and sleep on? It was all a very bad idea. He was the one new human in the shop.

‘You’ve got no experience,’ Duncan said.

‘I’m very experienced!’ Arthur said.

‘In retail,’ Duncan clarified.

‘He’s not asking you how many men you’ve had sex with,’ Paul said. ‘That’s not a useful qualification for working in a bookshop.’

‘Oh. No. I haven’t, really.’

‘And you’ve never stuck at anything.’

‘Well, I would stick at this!’

‘And your parents don’t trust you.’

‘No, but they’re evil, they’re horrible, you wouldn’t want to take their word on anything, you wouldn’t.’

‘All right,’ Duncan said. ‘You can stay. I’ll get some kind of bed for the stockroom upstairs. I’ll pay you twenty-five pounds a week.’

‘Mind,’ Paul chipped in, glaring at Duncan, ‘there’s to be no hanky-panky upstairs, no mucking around. No boys. You meet a boy, you go to his place. You’re not letting people in to steal the stock.’

‘Never, never, never,’ Arthur said. ‘Now I never need to see my mum and stepfather ever again. You don’t know what this means.’

The boiler man sauntered over. ‘It’s got to go,’ he said, and pushed his pencil back behind his ear in a solitary, assured, assessing manner. ‘There’s no two ways about it. You can’t carry on with that boiler. It’s illegal for one thing.’ Then he took a look at Arthur, whose eyes were moist with tears. ‘You lot,’ he said. ‘You lot. It’s always drama with you lot, isn’t it? Can’t you just get from one end of a day to the other without the waterworks and the kissing and making up? What’s wrong with him?’

‘Tell us about the boiler,’ Duncan said, standing up.

13.

Two days later, it was the day of the party. The stock was on the shelves, shining and new and glossy as racehorses; there was a nice little corner with books that had been much loved and read repeatedly, priced up by Dommie in a more or less random way. The two hundred and fifty copies of the new novel, it turned out, would fill an entire bookcase, which wasn’t reasonable. The author had come in yesterday, announcing himself in a diffident way. He’d had a dreadful cough, and was painfully thin in the face. He spoke in an undertone, saying that it was exciting, he supposed, to have a book out, but he just felt so tired all the time, ‘like an old man, and I’m only thirty’. He signed slowly, scrupulously, taking nearly two and a half hours to get through the two hundred and fifty books – he had to have three breaks in between. Arthur had turned the pages and held the book open as he signed. It was his first task in the bookshop, and he did it with nervous care.

‘We love your book,’ Duncan said, as he was going, quite truthfully. ‘I hope you’re writing something new.’

‘There won’t be another one,’ the author said. ‘I don’t think there’ll be another one.’

‘I hope that’s not true,’ Duncan said, smiling. ‘And will you come to our party, tomorrow night?’

‘I’ll do my best,’ the author said, holding on to the door. Then he glanced at Duncan with dark, shadowed eyes. He looked very ill. Duncan wondered what was wrong with him. His eyes dropped, and he went like a wraith in a black PVC raincoat.

The invitations had gone out to the whole of the street, as well as to everyone else. The leader of the GLC had replied, and Angus Wilson, and Derek Jarman, and Maureen Duffy, and John Schlesinger, and Maggi Hambling, and half a dozen actors, asking if they could bring friends. But the fishmonger had not replied, or the hardware shop – didn’t expect him to – or the suitcase man, the greengrocer, the bookmaker, the newsagent or the butcher. Some of those, Duncan thought, would probably come round when they realized what sort of business the Big Gay Bookshop was – just an ordinary bookshop, no trouble to anyone. He felt that when the wife of the suitcase man, Mrs Dasgupta, had sidled out behind her husband and looked in a frightened but not hostile way at Duncan, the one time he had dropped in and told them about the shop he was on the verge of opening and he hoped they would come to the party to open it, he had felt that she was in her own way a little bit interested. Those Indian women were often steely; they made a pretence of being downtrodden and not speaking up before their men, but they ran the show when they thought no one outside the family was looking. It took only one person to change their mind, one person at a time. It had to be done like that, in fact.

But he was disappointed that Andy, the Greek sandwich man, hadn’t responded, or his son, though Duncan had been careful to specify both wife and girlfriend on the invitation. Duncan had religiously gone every morning to get the coffees – the day Arthur had turned up was the first day they had moved to instant coffee from their own kitchen – and every lunchtime to get sandwiches for him and whoever had turned up to help, Paul or Andrew or Freddie Sempill that one time. They’d been good customers of Andy over the last two months, and Andy had seemed quite cheerful to see them, not hostile like the hardware man or the underage lunchtime drinkers at the corner pub. (Arthur had reported, in recent days, that the abuse from the drinkers in that pub grew worse in the evenings.)

‘Maybe he’ll come,’ Duncan said to Dommie. ‘It would be too bad if nobody from Heatherwick Street came, not one person.’

‘Well, you could ask him,’ Dommie said. ‘Why don’t you ask him directly? You could phrase it as a reminder.’

It was a hard thing to ask. Duncan put it off and put it off. And then it was the day of the party, and everything was complete. The shop was painted; the shelves were filled; the carpet was down; Thomas, the florist four streets away, and perhaps the nearest sympathetic neighbour, had donated four big bouquets and loaned some vases; there was a record player on the cherrywood table, and Nat had promised to put a ballgown on and play Dusty Springfield all night; the white wine was in the fridge or in the bathtub; Arthur had been talked into a white shirt and black trousers, and to walk round filling glasses. The stuffed pheasant and the chandelier looked eccentric but not insane. Duncan had actually come to be rather attached to the pheasant, though not to the point of giving it a name. The bookshop smelt so good, with books, and paint, and flowers, and a big round of Brie and salami and baguettes. Duncan had fretted over what to wear, and in the end had bought a bold red shirt and some drainpipes, and had decided to give himself a rockabilly look with gel and a quiff. He had achieved it all. The only two things left to do were to sell perhaps one book, to one paying customer, and to be bold, say to Andy that he was really looking forward to seeing him and his wife, and Chris and his girlfriend, later that evening.

At twelve thirty, he went over, a little earlier than usual.

‘Looking good, Mr Duncan,’ Reggie, the black junior sandwich-maker, said.

‘Thanks, Reggie,’ Duncan said. ‘It’s finally there, I reckon. Big opening tonight.’

‘What can I do for you?’ Andy said, rubbing his big knife clean with a dishcloth. ‘Same as usual for you? And is your sister ready for her lunch?’

‘Same as usual for me,’ Duncan said. ‘Roast beef and tomatoes on granary and extra mayonnaise. My sister’s not in today – she’s had to go to work herself. She’s been taking too much time off, I told her to go in and just come this evening, to the party. That reminds me – I do hope …’

‘What can I get you?’ Andy said, turning his attention to the customer behind Duncan, a black workman from the council in navy boilersuit and fudgy, concrete-encrusted boots. ‘Coronation chicken, is it, Dave, my son?’

The order was taken; Duncan still stood there, foolishly.

‘I do hope,’ he said, in a moment, ‘I do hope that you and your wife are going to be able to drop in to help christen the shop. At the party tonight.’

Andy made the gesture that people make, not when they have forgotten and remembered something, but when they want to make it clear that they have forgotten and now been reminded of something. He struck his forehead with the palm of his fat, heavy hand; he shook his head, he rolled his eyes, he let out a sound resembling ‘K-chuh’; he turned back to Duncan. ‘Not tonight, is it?’ he said. ‘Not tonight? My wife’ll kill me. She’s only gone and asked her sister to come over with her kids to dinner. Tonight, Mr Duncan – I’m very sorry, but there’s been a terrible mix-up.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Duncan said limply.

‘Now, it was a roast beef on granary, tomatoes, extra mayonnaise,’ he said. ‘Let me go back and see to that myself.’

Andy went into the little back kitchen; there was nobody there but Chris, slicing and cutting. The workman waited patiently. Reggie, behind the counter, made a faint smile and nodded, as if singing along to some imaginary music – one of those Viennese waltzes Chris always had on in the shop. He moved to one side, and started rearranging the bottles of ketchup and mustard for something to do. There had been something amused and supercilious about Andy’s response. For some reason, it made Duncan want to look into the kitchen. He walked about the shop in a casual way, inspecting the drinks and the cans and the posters of Greece and Switzerland, and ended up in an unplanned way where you could see right into the kitchen. At that moment, in the back room, Andy was holding up the top slice of granary bread; his son Chris was bending over, silently spitting onto the beef and tomato and mayonnaise. They shuddered with silent laughter. Duncan moved back, quickly, behind the counter, not showing to Reggie that he had seen anything, just smiling and nodding. It was not the first time that they had done this. That was obviously the case. And in a moment Andy came out with the sandwich, wrapped in greaseproof paper, placed it in a bag, twirled the bag about to close it. ‘That’ll be sixty pence, Mr Duncan,’ he said. ‘I’m sure your party will be a great success. Me and the wife – we’re not great party people. Not your sort of party people. You wouldn’t miss us.’