The Emperor Waltz (56 page)

The gang were coming, the men’s group, and the gay radicals from the old CHE days, and they were bringing their radical friends. Andrew lived in a little house in Clapham, and Nat, who lived in a little house in Kennington, was going to pick him up and drive him to Marylebone. It had not been Andrew’s usual way to request a lift, and it was going in slightly the wrong direction, really, but Nat had agreed. When Andrew opened the door of his little terraced house in North Street, Clapham, Nat saw why he had asked. Andrew was wearing radical drag.

‘I like your frock,’ Nat said ironically. It wasn’t a frock to be liked. Andrew hadn’t shaved his beard, and he had applied green eyeshadow and pink lipstick with an inexpert hand. The dress was tight on him, the bosom flapping loose over his hairy chest, the cap sleeves tight on Andrew’s hairy upper arms. He was wearing Dr Martens boots.

‘It’s a radical critique of gender roles performed in the urban space today,’ Andrew said, in a perfunctory way. ‘Come in.’

Nat cautiously followed Andrew into the hallway, making his way past the bicycle, a pile of leaflets on the floor, and surreptitiously trying to reattach a soggy piece of peeling green-and-yellow flock wallpaper that was peeling off.

‘Where did you get it?’ Nat said. ‘Your frock.’

‘Littlewoods catalogue,’ Andrew said. ‘They’ll never stop sending me their stuff now, I know.’

‘You should have gone to Evans,’ Nat said. ‘They’ve got outsize. I suppose you would be outsize for a girl.’

‘Be that as it may. I’m not sure if I’m going tonight,’ Andrew said. They were in Andrew’s kitchen, and he opened the fridge door and poured them both a glass of wine. Nat sat down at the scrubbed-pine table. The fridge was chock full of dirty-looking vegetables, preparatory to being turned into some enormous and tasteless meatless stew, a vague orange colour. Nat’s fridge in Kennington, it contained a bottle of wine, a bottle of vodka and maybe some olives and a yogurt. But he was everyone’s friend; he never really cooked for himself.

‘Oh, Andrew. Honestly. Why not?’ Nat said.

‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ Andrew said, sitting down heavily in his frock and green eyeshadow, ‘and I don’t know it’s what I want to support any more. Duncan – he’s just in it to make money.’

‘Well, it’s a shop – it’s got to make some money, or it won’t stay a shop much longer.’

‘We’ve been through this,’ Andrew said. ‘It could be a collective, and give out books to the community. A meeting place for people of all sorts, to discuss the future of society, young and old, straight and gay, male and female, working-class people of all sorts, and how to bring down this government. That’s what we should be talking about. I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘Yes, that would be simply lovely,’ Nat said. ‘What’s this wine?’

‘Parsnip,’ Andrew said. ‘And I don’t think Duncan’s really behind that. He looks as if he likes the community, as if he’s there for us, but I don’t think he really is. Maybe we should just let this trial run its course, see what happens to the bookshop. Afterwards, someone else could take it over.’

‘Oh,’ Nat said. ‘Oh – really?’

‘The last straw was last week,’ Andrew said. ‘I was in there buying –
buying
– that new anthropological book about gay weddings in the Kalahari, and there’s a new poster on the wall, saying “Use Condoms Always”, or something like that.’

‘Yes, I saw it,’ Nat said. ‘You’ve not been in for a while – that’s been up for months.’

‘Tory propaganda,’ Andrew said. ‘It’s just Tory propaganda, in what ought to be a radical bookshop. But it’s being run for money, for profit, and it’s putting up Tory propaganda now. I don’t know that I want to support him in this case at all. Let the police prosecute him, close the place down. It was an experiment and it didn’t work.’

‘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.