The Emperor Waltz (62 page)

‘What’s that you’re putting in the window?’ Andrew said.

‘It’s that new novel,’ Arthur said. ‘The swimming-pool one. We can’t sell enough of it. We’ve re-ordered four times now.’

‘Thank God,’ the millionaire said. ‘If it carries on like that, this’ll save our bacon.’

Andrew noticed but did not comment on ‘our’ bacon. The millionaire was wearing a deep blue suit with some kind of red check in it, and a tie that had, what was it, horseshoes? The smell that came from the millionaire was some kind of luxury smell, of
gentlemen
; of
money
; of
toiletries
. In the middle of the bookshop, the smell transformed it, quite at once, into a place for the exchange of money for goods, for a profit.

‘It’s about rich people, isn’t it?’ Andrew said. ‘Rich people fucking poor people. Charming.’

‘It’s fantastic,’ Arthur said. ‘Have you read it? Well, you should. Everyone’s reading it. We keep quoting bits of it to each other. The big bookshops only ordered five copies each, if that, and they were caught on the hop, so everyone for a week had to come and get it from us if they wanted a copy. We’ve had all sorts in. They’ve come in for that and then they’ve said, I didn’t know you were here, and they’ve wandered round and bought all sorts. It’s been fantastic. We’ve never had such a fortnight. It’s not just
poor
people, it’s
poor black
people that get fucked in it, Andrew.’

‘I must read it,’ Andrew said. ‘I simply can’t wait. Is nobody here yet?’

‘What for?’ Arthur said. ‘Oh, it’s your group. No, nobody’s here. Do you think—’

All at once he turned away and busied himself, as if it were not for him to finish the sentence, as if he had overstepped the mark. To begin with he stood at the round table at the front of the shop and squared copies of the books; but they were square, and in a moment to carry on busying himself, Arthur went to the counter and squared the stuffed pheasant. One eye was missing now, and had been for a year or two. Then he picked up the silver teapot – the one that just sat on the shelf at elbow level above the till, was never used and indeed looked fairly unusable. Andrew watched him levelly. His occupation was steady and his movements involved, but he had no doubt that Arthur was fluttering about with his hands so that he would seem busy and not have to talk to Andrew. The millionaire Duncan was going out with was more confident, however; he switched one leg over the other, standing cross-legged at the knee; he folded his arms and stood looking at Andrew without apparently feeling any need to address him. Like a squire. Andrew had been coming to this shop much longer than any millionaire. The shop had been in part his idea – he remembered those days at CHE when they had talked about how they could have a place to meet in, a neutral place to discuss and take the movement forward. It had been his idea and Nat’s, and Simon’s, and all those people’s as well as Duncan’s. A radical space. And here came the money-maker from the back of the shop, wearing – Christ, no – a bow-tie like a professional book-seller in an advert for toffees. His hair was different since last week, clipped neatly short and grey; he looked and, as he approached, smelt like the millionaire.

‘Andrew,’ Duncan said. There was something wrong: Duncan had a businesslike air.

‘Hello, sweetie,’ Andrew said, poisonously.

‘It’s so nice to see you,’ Duncan said. ‘Always so nice to see you. Are you here for your discussion group?’

‘That’s a nice tie you’re wearing,’ Andrew said. ‘I don’t remember seeing you in a bow-tie before.’

‘You’re here for your discussion group,’ Duncan said again. Arthur was pretending, not very convincingly, to sort out the postcards in a pile by the till.

‘Every Wednesday,’ Andrew said.

‘I don’t think I can stay tonight,’ Duncan said. ‘We’re going – Ronnie and I, we’re going to the theatre.’

‘Judi Dench,’ the millionaire said, grinning.

‘Oh, yes,’ Andrew said. He waited.

‘And actually Arthur said he can’t stay either tonight, for once.’

‘Actually Arthur said he doesn’t want to stay tonight,’ Arthur said, raising his head. ‘Actually Arthur’s sick to death of it, sticking around all evening listening to you.’

‘It’s not compulsory,’ Andrew said. ‘You don’t have to stay.’

‘Yes, well, someone’s got to stay to lock up,’ Duncan said. ‘And tonight I don’t think anyone can.’

‘I’ll lock up,’ Andrew said. ‘It’s no bother.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Duncan said resolutely. ‘The thing is, Andrew – is anyone else coming tonight? I mean, last week, who came?’

‘It was that black boy from Leicester who sometimes comes,’ Andrew said. ‘He came.’

‘No, that were week before,’ Arthur said. ‘Last week it were just you and me and Alan, and Alan said to me afterwards, that’s last time he’s coming, he’s sick of listening to you and Trotsky, he’s better off spending his evenings in Coleherne or even wi’ his old mother. That’s what he said to me, Andrew.’

‘It’s important—’ Andrew began, but the millionaire interrupted.

‘It’s important – what?’

‘I was going to say—’ Andrew said, but the millionaire went on.

‘It’s important to have a discussion group, to have a safe radical space where you can plot your revolutions? The thing is—’

‘Ronnie,’ Duncan said. ‘It’s best if I talk, really. Let’s be calm about this. The thing is, Andrew, the time for these discussion groups, it’s over. There’s nothing to stop you having your discussion group at home, or just round a table in a pub. But this – it can’t go on. Every Wednesday we’ve got to make up numbers, we’ve got to stay and talk, or listen to you talking and lock up afterwards. This is just a bookshop. In the evenings, we might want to have readings every now and then, instead of your discussion group.’

‘To a paying audience, I expect.’

‘Yes,’ Duncan said, not angrily, but perhaps even puzzled at the objection. ‘Look—’

‘What is this?’ Andrew said. ‘The Thatcherite revolution in action?’

‘When was the last time you even paid anything towards group?’ Arthur said, coming out from behind the till and walking with his shoulders back towards Andrew, who quailed: it was as if he were about to be hit, and hard. ‘You never pay anything, and at end, you always just put a book in your bag when you think no one’s looking.’

‘That’s not true,’ Andrew said.

‘Punchy little number,’ the millionaire said, puzzlingly, and he and Duncan exchanged a look, a secret smile.

‘Oh yes it is,’ Arthur said. ‘You always put a book in your bag. You wait until we’re at door, talking to someone, then it comes out, your hand, and book’s in bag. You’ve not paid for a book in this shop while 1984. Leave you in charge to lock up? It’d be like leaving Lady Isobel frigging Barnett in charge, you hairy thieving little shit. You say to yourself you’re just benefiting from community resource, but you’re in community and we’re not benefiting from you. We’re losing twenty pounds every bloody time you step over threshold. So frig off, you twat, and don’t come back till you’re prepared to spend some frigging money of your own.’

As Arthur had begun to shout in Andrew’s face, Andrew took his hat and placed it firmly on his head. He paid no attention to Arthur’s display, buttoning his coat with dignity, and turned without saying goodbye to any of them. He left the shop as Arthur shouted after him, turned and paused. He was trembling. From the shop there was a moment of silence, and then a single cheer – the millionaire’s drawling voice made the huzzah. But then there was something worse: the noise of laughter from the three of them. One of them was shouting something in glee; it might have been
Punchy little number
, even. Over the road, a black man stood and looked at Andrew, bent over as if about to be sick. It was not the boy from Leicester. Andrew thought, as he straightened up, that it might be the man who worked in the sandwich shop opposite, the ones who hated the bookshop. He needed a drink.

19.

When Nat heard that Freddie Sempill had died, it struck him like news from a previous existence. It had been years since he had seen or heard of Freddie Sempill.

Christopher had rung him on the train. Nat now had eight flats and had stopped using the expression ‘property empire’ – when he’d bought the last two last November, he’d done the sums and realized there was no point in working any more: he should just devote his whole time to what he owned. It was useful still to be in touch when he was out and about, talking to the builders who were doing up those last two. They were still working on them in June, and Nat was on the overground train to the Queenstown Road when his phone went. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he said to the lady opposite, who had leapt up in a startled way, looking about her for where this ringing might be coming from. It was a hot day. Nat delved in his bag for the phone, not wearing a jacket to put it in. Around him, people craned to look, some with expressions already disapproving.

‘I haven’t heard from him for years,’ he said to Christopher. ‘To be honest, I thought he’d died years back. When did I last see him?’

He’d last seen him at that party to raise funds for Duncan’s bookshop. That was more than three years ago. Nat remembered that was the evening when he’d got off with that double-bass player, and they’d gone round the corner to what had been then only his second flat; it was still being done up. It was impossible for the three of them, Nat and the double-bass player and the instrument, to get into the lift together. They’d had to take relays. Anyway. Was that the last time they’d seen Freddie Sempill? He’d fainted, that’s right. Andrew Scott had come in a dress and was it then that Duncan had got off with Ronnie for the first time?

The woman sitting opposite Nat leant forward and tapped him on the knee. ‘Is this conversation going to go on much longer?’ she said sharply. ‘Not everyone wants to listen to the details of your personal life.’

‘Got to go, darling,’ Nat said into the phone. ‘People getting awfully cross. Speak later.’ He hung up – hung up? Was that still what you said, or did you now say switched off, or something of that sort? Anyway, he stopped the phone call, and glared at the woman. ‘I’m only going two stops,’ he said. ‘Honestly.’

The builders were, for once, hard at work when he arrived, and the flat looked close to completion: the windows were in, the paint dry, the floors sanded. With the first flat, he’d made the mistake of decorating it in a cool style, in grey with yellow details, and it had taken for ever to let. Ever since, he’d painted everything brilliant white, and nothing had taken more than a week to go. It was strange to think how, eight years ago, he’d been so worried about stretching himself that he’d constantly chivvied the builders and decorators at that first flat to get a move on. Now the cash flow was fine, and it didn’t really worry him that the builders were a month behind schedule, that asbestos had been discovered two months before in the flat downstairs, that the whole thing was costing money and not bringing money in. The other six flats were doing just fine, bringing in a nice steady income from nice steady gay tenants, hand-picked by Nat. The whole thing was a pleasure to think of on a nice June morning with the sun shining through the windows, and Radio 1 singing out on a plaster-encrusted radio, and Nat, a property mogul now, in his shorts and sandals. He remembered Freddie Sempill was dead. Well, that was sad. But you couldn’t say they hadn’t had enough practice at early deaths.

‘He looked absolutely terrible the last time I saw him,’ Christopher said to Simon that night, as Simon was making dinner. They were both watching their weight these days, and there was a no-alcohol rule Monday to Friday for Simon, who was making what he called Complicated Salad, with prawns and hardboiled eggs. ‘When did we last see him?’

‘No idea,’ Simon said. ‘I thought he’d died years ago. I never really knew him.’

‘He came to Paul’s funeral, didn’t he?’

‘Did he? I don’t remember. That was such years ago. With Donna Summer and
I Will Survive
. Ironic, really. Did he really come to Paul’s? Was he friends with Paul?’

‘Well, I think he came,’ Christopher said. ‘Nat thought he hadn’t seen him since that party at Duncan’s – you know, the one to raise funds.’

‘Oh, God, yes,’ Simon said, with a relishing, nostalgic, warm tone. ‘I can’t believe he’s only just died. He looked weeks away from the end, then.’

‘Oh, well,’ Christopher said. ‘He’s gone now. I don’t know how Duncan came to know about it. He phoned me at work – that over-zealous secretary of mine came into a meeting with the chancellor and passed me a note saying please phone Duncan Flannery AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, in capitals.’

‘Are we going? Did we like him enough?’

‘It’s in Richmond, Duncan said.’

‘Well, it’s not far, at least.’

Simon stopped shelling the egg in his hand; with his saintly bald glow in the reflected light from the garden window and the hard white egg in his hand, he suddenly looked like a martyr in Piero della Francesca. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not Richmond upon Thames. Richmond in Yorkshire.’

‘What’s Freddie Sempill doing being buried in Richmond in Yorkshire? Is that where his people came from? I thought he was born in Simpson’s menswear department on Piccadilly.’

‘I believe you’re right,’ Simon said.

But it turned out that Freddie Sempill’s people, as he always put it, came from Essex. They were in Shoeburyness, as they always had been. His father had worked for the Ministry of Defence there. Very hush-hush, Freddie Sempill had always said. After his retirement, they’d stayed there, liking it. Freddie Sempill had always lived in Fulham in an awful flat on the second floor of a converted semi, with a strange smell of disinfectant on the stairs. Then he’d moved to Richmond in Yorkshire.

Simon was telling all of this in Duncan’s car as they were driving up. It was a bit of a squeeze. Alan, surprisingly, had said he wanted to come, and Nat too; and then some people had heard about the trip and about the funeral and said they might as well come, even though they had hardly known Freddie Sempill, or not known him one bit. Duncan’s boyfriend Ronnie was driving another car, and his sister Dommie had been landed with Clive and Stephen. Christopher hadn’t wanted to come, and it was in any case hard to get a whole day off from the Treasury. Arthur’s friend Tim was minding the shop; Arthur was in with Ronnie and Dommie’s ten-year-old daughter Celia, who loved funerals, anything like that.