The Emperor Waltz (57 page)

‘That’s nearly a coincidence,’ George said. ‘My family are from Cyprus, which is not far from Syria.’

‘What did you say?’ the man in the dinner jacket said. ‘I didn’t catch what you said.’

‘Cyprus,’ George said. ‘Not far from Syria. That’s where my family comes from.’

‘Where what comes from?’

‘My family.’

‘No, I meant where were you talking about?’

‘Oh, sorry, I was saying Syria, that’s where my family doesn’t come from, we come from Cyprus.’

The man giggled, raising the back of his hand to his mouth. ‘I’m ever so tiddly,’ he said. ‘Have you got a friend?’

‘Oh, yes, lots of friends,’ George said. ‘But there’s always room for one more.’

‘Excuse me,’ the dyke said behind him, in an accusing way. She and her fat girlfriend had followed them over from the other side of the room, perhaps also thinking that there was space here. She craned over, and observed the drunk man on the floor. ‘Get him to stand up, there’s not room. For Christ’s sake.’ She turned in a disappointed way, nudging George’s elbow, which spilt white wine down his new shirt for the fourth time, or possibly only the third.

‘Really,’ Christopher was saying to Olivia Tempest, the disgruntled lady novelist, ‘anal sex was always very important to me. From almost the first, you might say.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Olivia Tempest was saying bravely. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve read all my books. You’d see if you did that I was really the first – almost the very first – to …’

Duncan was talking to a man he was not quite sure he knew. It seemed possible.

‘And then my father died, and he left me half the house and his money, though it was a really close thing, my aunts, they tried to keep it from me and keep it to themselves, and I thought, I know what I really want to do, I want to open a bookshop. Have you ever been to my bookshop?’ Duncan said.

‘I’m in it now,’ the gentleman who was a friend of Christopher’s said, smiling. Was he a friend of Christopher’s? Or had Duncan confused something here? Christopher had introduced him, certainly. But had he met him only ten seconds before?

‘Oh, I know,’ Duncan said, beating the man gently on his breastbone.’But I meant before.’

‘Once or twice,’ the man said. They were somewhere in the middle of the room. There was such a crush! Duncan was glad he’d thought to put Paul’s pheasant on top of a bookcase and his Bauhaus teapot in a locked drawer, or they would have been crushed or stolen or anything could have happened. Poor Paul! He would have loved to be here tonight, raising money for the bookshop that was probably about to close down. Duncan and this man were jammed together, their smiling faces only an inch apart. Duncan hoped he didn’t have bad breath from the piece of celery and hummus he’d eaten earlier. That was the last of any food he’d seen, hours before. He hadn’t recognized this man when Christopher introduced him, and now he couldn’t remember his name – Raymond, or Randy, or Raphael, or Rodrigo – but Christopher’s introduction had had something confidential about it, a kind of handing over of precious goods, as if the name would mean a great deal to Duncan. ‘This is Raymond,’ he’d said – or Randy, or Raphael – and off he’d gone, leaving Duncan to do his important task.

‘Where do you live?’ Duncan said.

‘Victoria,’ the man said. ‘I’ve only just moved in.’

‘No one lives in Victoria,’ Duncan said. ‘Victoria! That’s just a bus station and a railway station and three theatres, or two, I forget. It’s either Pimlico or Belgravia.’

‘I don’t believe in Belgravia,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think you say you live in Belgravia, do you?’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Duncan said. ‘I never say that. Because I live in Notting Hill, you fool. Do you know, I’m convinced I’m going to kiss you. I don’t know why! I just think it’s going to happen, like looking up at clouds and saying those are rainclouds, it’s going to rain today, that’s what it’s like.’

‘I see,’ the man said, not kissing Duncan, but he was amused.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m just so nervous,’ Duncan said. ‘It’s this speech I’m going to have to make, you see.’

‘You need another drink,’ the man said. He was positively grinning; his brilliant teeth shone in his dark face.

‘Oh, how kind. What lovely manners. Where are my manners? Where do you live?’ Duncan said, to improve the general tone of his thoughts.

‘Victoria,’ the man said, smiling. ‘But I used to live in Chelsea.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Duncan said, realizing why Christopher had handed the man over with such ceremony. He wondered why Christopher knew such a plutocrat, if he knew him. And how much this millionaire would be prepared to sign a cheque for and if he had a boyfriend and whether it was the hummus after all that was keeping him from kissing Duncan. The hummus! Duncan thought, accepting another drink. The hummus!

The party had poured in every possible direction. The sash window at the back had been pushed up, and three boys were sitting on the ledge with their legs dangling out, passing a bottle of vodka one to another and a spliff, by the smell of it. The door upstairs to the stock room was open, and people were spilling up the stairs. Arthur, passing a bottle of cider forward, hoped there was nothing to steal up there, but then reassured himself that, apart from unopened boxes, there was nothing but a lot of copies of that unsaleable novel, and they were welcome to steal that. Against the far wall two men, either both over six foot seven in height, or both standing on a pile of lesbian magazines, were kissing furiously; underneath them, Paul Bailey was casting up amused looks, half listening to a fan telling him how much he’d loved his last book. People were drinking on the pavement, too; the party was so full that anyone who arrived late, or who went out to the off-licence to pick up some more to drink, found themselves carrying on outside, drinking from bottles and cans.

‘I really don’t give a fuck any more,’ Freddie Sempill was saying on the pavement outside. ‘Really, not one fuck. I’ve thought about it and I really don’t give a fuck.’

‘About what?’ the man was saying. He had introduced himself as Rupert – he was a publisher’s rep, he had said, but he thought he had a lovely relationship with the shop, so he’d come to show support. Rupert had come, he explained confidentially, in a jacket and tie; the jacket, a brilliant mauve, was somewhere inside – he’d hung it on a hook, and that was the last he’d seen of it. ‘What do you not give a fuck about?’

‘About any fucking thing,’ Freddie Sempill was saying. He knew he looked ill. He’d been through so many scares now, and he was gaunt and yellow and frail. There was, too, the small matter of the sarcomas all over his neck and hands. You got to recognize the Aids-visitor gaze: the way that their eyes would lock onto yours and not wander to the neck, to the hands; the way that their smile would stick and not falter, the way they would hold your hand for an extra second on parting. He was visited, at his weak times, by men called Buddies. They were OK. But the whole world looked at him like men thinking of volunteering as a Buddy.

Rupert looked at him and started to speak. At first it was difficult for Freddie Sempill to understand all of the words. Then he wondered whether his brain had switched off for a moment and come back again in five minutes. How old was he? He could not think for a moment, then he remembered the year he was born, and the year they were in, which was nineteen eighty-six – or -seven. Or -eight.

‘What year is this?’ he said to Rupert.

But it came out wrong, and perhaps it was only inside his head. He took a big gulp of what was in the glass in his hand, which was white wine, and then everything that Rupert had been saying came to him out of sequence, all at once.

And Rupert had had a wife and three children, well, he still had three children but the wife was detached. ‘I had an important relationship with a guy at university, I was at Christ Church, this was back in the sixties, nearly twenty years ago, and then after university …’ and then it was gone again. Freddie Sempill concentrated and then the man, whose name was Rupert, was telling not just him but a small and very tidy Indian gentleman, looking up and nodding, about the civilized way that his marriage had come to an end. ‘I used to own a suitcase shop opposite,’ Rupert said, with an Indian accent, but surely he was a publisher’s rep. Freddie Sempill looked firmly from one to another and realized it was the Indian gentleman who was talking and explaining that he had come in from Tooting with his wife’s best wishes, and that he – no, the other one, the English one – had married a woman after Oxford hoping for the best, and it had been for ten years or even twelve, but one of the things was meeting Duncan and coming to this bookshop. The two of them looked at Freddie Sempill, and he realized, swaying backwards and forwards, that it was him who had said ‘Washing the car – it’s just so …’ He had no idea what he was about to add to that. They were waiting for him to say something. The boy Rupert, the man, the father rather, he had said everything about his life. Freddie Sempill understood he was talking again, and in embarrassment raised his half-empty glass to his mouth. But it was fully empty. He tipped it up against his mouth; his head leant backwards; a force seemed to be pulling at him. He felt almost a little dizzy as his gaze left the party and swept up towards the summer night sky, which was blue and then black and then starry and then black.

‘Someone’s fallen over outside,’ Tony said to Arthur, carrying two glasses. Arthur was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, doing an impersonation of Duncan losing his temper with an inept shoplifter. He was doing it for the benefit of Dommie, who had seen it before. ‘Have you seen Tim? He said he was going upstairs.’

‘I don’t know,’ Arthur said. ‘Aren’t you hot in all that?’

‘It’s like a little black dress, girlfriend,’ Tony said, gesturing downwards at his leather jacket, his leather trousers and – some acceptance of the heat – a white vest. Dommie looked at him narrowly, inspecting the humour of queens rather than their lamentable wardrobes. ‘It’s fabulous, it’s classic, it’s understated. Some queen’s keeled over outside with the heat.’

‘Who is it?’ Arthur said. ‘Dommie, did you see?’

‘No, I didn’t, honey,’ Dommie said. ‘Here’s Francis King. Who’s fainted, Mr King?’

‘Hm?’ the distinguished novelist said, giving Dommie the once-over in her little black dress – really a purple cocktail dress, which might have been from Antony Price. He went onwards without explaining further.

‘I’m taking this up to Tim,’ Tony said. ‘He’ll be ever so pleased I found it.’

‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ Arthur said.

‘That doesn’t leave much, girlfriend,’ Tony said. ‘See you later.’

‘Who was that?’ Dommie said, and Arthur explained about his housemates.

Gervase was here, and he knew Stephen; they were discussing the case. Just by them, on the counter, a man in his underpants had his arm round a double-bass player, swaying dangerously to and fro. The man in his underpants was singing very raucously, to what Stephen recognized as the march in the Tchaikovsky
Pathétique
symphony.

‘“Why should we go to Pariiiis/When I’d much rather stay at home!”’

‘Who’s that man in the dress?’ Gervase said.

‘No idea,’ Stephen said. ‘He hasn’t made much effort, has he? But the case.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought there was any question about it,’ Gervase said. ‘It’s a perfectly absurd case for them to bring. There’s no question of any of the books they seized being thought obscene. It’ll be thrown out before we’re halfway through.’

‘Astonishing,’ Stephen said. ‘What were the police thinking of?’

‘Well, it’s not my business,’ Gervase said, ‘but the assistant – Arthur, he’s called – said that a policeman came in a week before the raid and asked for five thousand pounds to leave them alone. Unfortunately …’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Stephen said. ‘It always happens, I believe. The upright young man told him to bugger off.’

‘Either that or they bribe them, then think twice later. I know. Maddening. What one would give for just one gentleman in the porn trade who said, Yes, of course, Officer, come back tomorrow, and then had fixed up the joint with tape recorders.’

‘Oh, they’re wise to that one. You’d quickly find your place of meeting being changed at short notice, for some very good reason. Ow!’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ Nat said, bending down and giving Stephen a kiss on the top of his head, then, as he turned his face upwards, a big smacker on the lips. ‘I always do that,’ Nat explained, straightening up and turning to the double-bass player. ‘I’m forever kicking people in the face by accident when I’ve had a dry sherry or two.’

‘Oh, he’ll be fine,’ Arthur said outside. They had propped Freddie Sempill up against the shop window and given him a glass of water.

‘He doesn’t look fine,’ the man said. ‘He really doesn’t look fine, Arthur.’

Arthur hadn’t recognized him. It was Rupert, the publisher’s rep. ‘He’s fine,’ Arthur said. ‘Well, he’s no worse than usual tonight. Just let him sit here.’

The party outside had gathered, gazed, concentrated, and was now dispersing, back to their drinks. At first, five years ago, there had been a natural habit of looking away from anyone who looked as Freddie Sempill looked. Probably that habit was still common in the rest of the world who, if they were forced to turn to a Freddie Sempill, would be apt to say to him stuff like ‘But do you know who you caught it from?’ and ‘How long do the doctors think you have?’ and other sensitive things. In this crowd, you rationally did not look away. You looked at the person as if he were a person, which of course he was. But then you looked away again in a relaxed and ordinary way. The temptation was to turn away and then turn back, one second later, for another appalled look at whatever it had been. But this crowd had had plenty of practice, and they looked away in a sociable, incurious, generally friendly way that had no specifics in it. Then the community spirit was spoilt by Simon, Christopher’s boyfriend, coming up and laying a hand on his elbow and saying, with something very like enjoyment, ‘Is that Freddie Sempill? I haven’t seen him in three years. Is that really him? Jesus Christ.’