The Emperor Waltz (52 page)

‘We’re all one of them, I thought,’ Christopher said.

‘That’s what I thought. He kept saying it,’ Arthur said. ‘But then he came out with it, why he didn’t expect we ever saw one of his type in BGB. The thing is, Arthur,’ he dropped into impersonation, cocking his head somewhat, ‘I don’t see any reason to hide it, I’m just a Thatcherite, and I don’t see why not. I think we should all be so proud of that woman after what she achieved last year. I for one certainly intend to vote for her.’

‘Oh,’ Christopher said, as they sat down. ‘One of them.’

Andrew made an elaborate chest-crossing gesture; Alan made a deal out of not hearing what Arthur had said, perhaps confirming what Duncan had heard him say in private, that he saw a good deal of Mother in the Prime Minister and would hardly not vote for her.

‘Don’t call it the BGB,’ Duncan said to Arthur. ‘It’s the Big – Gay – Bookshop. It makes me think that you’re going to talk me into hiding behind initials.’

‘Anyway,’ Andrew said. ‘Thanks for coming. I thought we might start tonight by looking at this article I found in the radical press, about lesbian separatism.’

He started to pass pieces of paper round, purple, camphor-smelling Roneos.

‘Where are the lesbians tonight, then?’ Alan said. ‘Why are we talking about them when they’re not interested enough to come to the discussion?’

‘They’re separatismed,’ Duncan said.

‘Still,’ Andrew said. ‘I think their situation raises some really very interesting questions.’

6.

In the end, four more people came, apologizing for their late arrival. There were a couple of people who were irregular attenders, the guy from Leicester and Arthur’s co-lodger Tim, and then Nat had come as he had promised, though George hadn’t, and a person whom nobody had known or recognized, who must have read about the gay men’s group in
City Limits
. Like most people who had just read about it and turned up, he had sat with eyes burning and saying nothing; he might come again but probably wouldn’t. The discussion came to an end, and everyone was standing up and taking their mugs to wash and continuing it with each other. Duncan went upstairs to turn the lights out and check the windows were locked. Of course, he said to himself, if it did raise interesting questions, you might wonder what the answers to those questions were, and if you couldn’t think of those interesting answers, you might wonder whether those interesting questions were questions at all, or worth speaking out loud. If you wanted lesbians to come to a discussion, too, it might be better not to call your group the Gay Men’s Group. He foresaw another evening-long discussion about the group’s name.

Downstairs, voices were raised. He knew exactly what about.

‘No,’ Arthur was saying, as he came back into the shop. ‘No, you can’t. You can buy copies. You can’t just take them.’

‘Is this a community resource or not?’ Andrew said. He was holding seven copies of
A Boy’s Own Story
, apparently about to hand them out to the group. Only one was still on the table.

‘Yes, it is,’ Arthur said. ‘And we want it to stay here. So if you want it to keep going, you pay for the books.’

‘We’ve had a really interesting discussion about it,’ Andrew said. ‘And now you’re preventing those who haven’t read it from going away and reading it.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Duncan said. ‘We would be delighted if everyone read it. You just need to buy a copy first.’

‘Not everyone can buy a copy,’ the boy from Leicester said. ‘Not everyone can afford a full-price book. Seven pounds ninety-nine – that’s a lot of money to a lot of people.’

‘Well, in that case, a lot of people can borrow copies from well-intentioned people who actually buy their books, once they’re finished with it,’ Arthur said. ‘You don’t borrow them from us.’

‘Come on, Duncan,’ Andrew said. ‘You said you thought it was the most important book in years.’

‘Yes, I did,’ Duncan said. ‘So important, you ought to pay for it, not just waltz off with it. I’m sorry. The answer’s no. Do you want to buy copies? I really recommend it.’

Two of them did: five of the copies went back on the table. Sometimes Duncan really hated gay liberation. As they left, Tim was saying to the boy from Leicester that he could borrow his copy when he’d finished with it; he wouldn’t be long. And after that he didn’t mind lending it again. Everyone would enjoy it, he was sure, he said pointedly, as they all headed off to the not-really-gay bar near by. Suddenly Duncan realized he was really very hungry; he hadn’t had any lunch.

7.

Duncan was woken by the phone, and for a moment was confused. ‘My God,’ he said, levering himself out of bed and reaching for the silk dressing-gown he kept on the bedside chair. It was freezing cold in the flat – he’d been warm as toast under the continental quilt and had overslept. ‘My God,’ he said, looking at the clock in the hallway as he picked up the phone.

‘You weren’t asleep?’ Dommie said, at the other end of the line.

‘I was, actually,’ Duncan said. ‘I thought I’d have a little lie-in.’

‘Oh, a little lie-in?’

‘No, Dommie,’ Duncan said. ‘Not what you seem to be suggesting. We’re going to Brighton, aren’t we?’

‘You’ve really only just woken up,’ Dommie said. ‘I’ve been up for hours. Have you looked out of the window?’

Duncan pulled back the heavy brown velvet curtains and peered out. ‘My God, it’s snowing,’ he said. ‘Are we still going?’

‘It says it’s not too bad on the weather,’ Dommie said. ‘It’s settled a bit, but it’s not supposed to carry on. What do you reckon?’

‘Oh, all right,’ Duncan said. ‘And Arthur’s arranged for his friend Tim to come and help him out in the shop. If we get stuck in Brighton, mind …’

‘Celia will be very pleased,’ Dommie said, and there was real pleasure in her voice.

‘Celia won’t notice or care where she is,’ Duncan said, but not crossly. ‘She’s happy in Brighton or Tooting or wherever.’ This was true. Celia, Dommie’s daughter, was eighteen months old, and cheerful in temperament. There was no need to cart her across three counties to show her a good time. Today’s trip, to Brighton and the Lanes so that Duncan and Dommie could buy all the Christmas presents they needed, was more of a day out for the pair of them.

Duncan couldn’t understand why it was so cold in the flat, and went to turn the thermostat: it had to be turned almost to the top of the dial before the system juddered into noisy life. The bath yielded water slowly, and you had to run the hot tap for a few minutes before the temperature was raised to anything above that of the room. There was no question about it: the boiler, which should have been replaced four years ago, was now going to have to be replaced. The money was there, just about – he had managed to invest what was left of his father’s after buying and doing up the shop and the flat, and it brought in enough of an income that he didn’t have to panic immediately when the shop had a quiet week or two. But when he looked at it coldly, he had the same sort of income as he’d had at the unemployment exchange as a junior clerk. The only advantage he now had was that he didn’t have to pay anything in rent or mortgage, since he’d bought the flat outright. But anything that needed money spending on it, like the boiler or the car, filled him with terror. Only that week, he had paid a queen in Highgate’s boyfriend three hundred pounds to take away a book collection. Not quite out of kindness – there were some nice things – but he wouldn’t have taken the whole collection if its owner hadn’t been buried the day before. How much did a new boiler cost? Eight hundred pounds? A thousand? Two thousand? He had no idea. He knew he didn’t have a thousand pounds in his current account, and it would have to come from savings.

Existence was such a drain. He felt his energy going out of him like money. He wished he did not think of his personal resources, like money, like the contents of a bank account, but there it was. Everything that was good in him spilt out, like water from a holed bucket, and he had no idea what happened to it. The shop window, ceaselessly installed, ceaselessly broken, ceaselessly replaced – and that was another bit of expenditure, since the insurance was no longer going to cover the constant shatterings and seemed to think it was the bookshop’s own fault for not having a solid wooden cover, like a sex shop in Soho. Shivering in the bedroom, he dressed in his drainpipes and a favourite black poloneck; just the thing for Brighton in December.

Outside, the snow was falling but not settling, and there was a brightness in the sky that suggested it would not be falling for long. Duncan’s neighbour, Hubert St George, was standing on his steps, staring vaguely upwards, confused at what the sky was now producing, though after three decades away from Trinidad, snow in London could not have been so astonishing as all that. He was wearing pyjamas, a pair of army boots and a woman’s overcoat with a hand-knitted scarf wrapped round his neck a dozen times; the characteristic smell of weed and Hubert was perceptible.

‘Hello, Hubert,’ Duncan said, locking his front door and pulling his woollen hat on. ‘Caught us all by surprise, the snow.’

Hubert St George looked around slowly, creakily. ‘Oh, it you,’ he said. ‘Yeah, Mr Batty Bummer Bend-it Backdoor, don’t you come anywhere near of me.’

‘No, I certainly won’t,’ Duncan said. ‘See you around, Hubert.’

Every day, Duncan regretted having bought an Austin Princess. Its only recommendation was that it would never be stolen, even in drug-addled Notting Hill, even by one of Hubert St George’s terminally confused friends. It sat on the road, its mushroom colour veiled by a thin layer of snow, somehow smugly. You can never go wrong with a British car, his father’s voice had sounded in his ear four years before. That had guided him with wallet open, knowing nothing, towards the incredulously joyful Austin Princess salesman. Paul, bless his heart, had instantly observed that the Austin Princess Duncan had come to pick him up in had the appearance of a woman looking down her nose, and not a very smart woman at that. And the back half doesn’t seem to have any kind of connection with the front half, he had gone on. But beggars could not be choosers, he supposed, he had concluded, stepping as gracefully into the car as a finishing-school debutante demonstrating the art. How long could it be before he could justify getting rid of the thing in favour of something better? Something Japanese, something Korean, something tinny and deplorable from far away that would never fall apart.

‘Lovely!’ Dommie said, stepping out from the front door of her tiny terraced house off Clapham High Street, her daughter asleep and already strapped into a sort of car seat. Dommie could by now reconstruct a pram with one hand while holding a sleeping Celia on the crook of her elbow. ‘Lovely! Bang on time. No traffic? Good. I’ve got everything. Madam woke me up at five forty-five, full of beans, then two hours’ charging about, then breakfast, and then, like a log, whoosh, back off to sleep. I can’t help thinking she hasn’t made a rational assessment of her sleep needs.’

‘You don’t look like someone who’s been deprived of sleep,’ Duncan said. ‘Shall I take that?’

Dommie had surprised Duncan when, two years before, she had taken him out to dinner at Ménage à Trois – a flash place for her and definitely for him. He’d at first thought she might be trimming the bill when she ordered water to drink. He hadn’t believed it. The father, Dommie said, was nobody; she had just found the best-looking and healthiest specimen she could reasonably persuade to take part in the transaction, and let him go his way afterwards. He wouldn’t know anything about it. Duncan had been amazed. ‘After all,’ Dommie said, ‘I’m not getting any younger. I’m not going to hang around for a man to show up, and then years of debate about whether we had a future, and then years of trying, and then it’s all too late.’ Over a dinner that consisted, modishly, of two starters each, one with a kiwi-fruit garnish, another exploiting aubergine, she confided in her brother, ‘I really wanted a child much more than I wanted a husband and a father to the child. So there you are.’

There had been other and much more difficult dinners in the past, reconciling or arguing, Dommie making herself into a new person or living up to what other people hoped to turn her into. Duncan had been the first on the scene when the child was born in St George’s, Tooting – he would have stood by her side, but she’d said she really only wanted professionals, not weak-minded boys who would probably faint at the sight of where babies came from. Duncan was relieved and guilty, but had come with a great bunch of flowers, and had not gone into it too much when Dommie had said what the child was going to be called. The child had lain in her white cot in the white room, with smiling, tranquil nurses around her, in the happy part of the hospital where everyone, more or less, was well, and her face turned to the air with its flushed red cheeks and nose, her surprising scrub of very dark hair; her tiny fists flailed in the air like those of a floored tiny boxer. Duncan loved her, not knowing why. She looked nothing like their father Samuel. The father, Dommie mentioned much later in passing, had been Syrian, and beautiful.

‘How’s the shop?’ Dommie said, when they were out of London. The snow was not quite over, and on green spaces, gardens and roofs, it was settling.

‘Mostly lovely,’ he said. ‘We had Paul Bailey in last week signing copies of his new novel and all the old stock we could get hold of. He was charming. Told a lot of stories about actors. Oh, God, get off the sodding road if you can’t be bothered to … Sorry. It’s the ones wearing trilbies when they drive I can’t cope with. It’s like a symbol of non-driving ability, that bloody trilby.’

‘But your author.’

‘Oh, yes, he was charming. Bought a lot of stock as well, I mean other books, and left a box of old things for us to sell in the second-hand corner. A donation, he said. Very nice of him. We offered him a tenner for the lot, and at first he wouldn’t hear of it, then he would. Perfectly reasonable of him, really.’

‘I hope you didn’t let him sign too many of his own books.’

‘Ten of the new one, five of the last, two each of the novels before that, the ones we had, I mean. That should do us quite well. Anyway, he’s only in Shepherd’s Bush so he can come back and sign some more.’