The Emperor Waltz (58 page)

‘Look,’ Nat said, still standing on the shop counter, ‘here’s Duncan.’

Duncan had been coming through the party for ten minutes now, accepting congratulations and good wishes, and pushing through the crowd where he could. He didn’t believe that it could grow any larger now, and the party had been going for an hour. He believed that, from this point, it could only grow argumentative, tearful, bad-tempered. They had been quite enjoying the crush. Soon there would be a shortage of drink, and people would start complaining about it. This was the point, or possibly a little after that point, of maximum goodwill towards the bookshop, and he ought to make his speech and conduct the auction now.

‘Help me up,’ Duncan said to Nat. He found himself poised between his old friend Nat, standing in his underpants, and rather a plump double-bass player. How did he know he was a double-bass player? Ah, that would be because the man was standing with a double bass on the counter. ‘Is he going to get down?’ Duncan said. ‘I don’t know that there’s room up here for all four of us.’

Nat burst out laughing. ‘Oh, that’s good. Her name’s Susan, he says – that thing he’s holding. I don’t know why she’s come, though.’

‘She’s come because she used to bring – she used to bring – the teas – she used to bring—’ Duncan started. It was all terribly funny; the best joke he would ever invent or make. But he was choking with laughter, and he was swaying backwards and forwards in quite an alarming way, up there on the shop counter. There was a great gust of
Wooooo
beneath him, and he saw the faces turning upwards in comedy or alarm. Oh, he would be fine. He just needed to get his balance.

‘I was going to ask my friend here to get down so there’d be room on the counter for you, and then I was going to get down after,’ Nat said. ‘But thinking about it, I think we’re both going to stay up here, if that’s all right. I don’t know where he’d put his giant instrument, anyway.’

Duncan was overcome for a moment with love for Nat. He was the nicest person he knew. How long had he known him? He had no idea. Nat with his nice blond curly hair and his way of saying ‘Honestly’ and the way he had of never reading a book and never saying anything about his job, but always wanting to listen to gossip and always saying funny things like, I don’t know where he’s going to put his instrument. He was so nice. The nicest, nicest person he knew.

‘Nat,’ Duncan said, his hand on Nat’s shoulder to balance. ‘How long is it we’ve known each other?’

‘We were at school together, you silly cow,’ Nat said. ‘I taught you how to smoke –
behind the bicycle sheds
. Honestly.’

‘I don’t remember the bicycle sheds,’ Duncan said.

‘It’s a figure of speech,’ Nat said. ‘I think it was actually on the bus home, on the upper deck, among other places.’

‘I’ve known this one for
ever
,’ Duncan said, turning to the double-bass player, still slapping away joyously. Sweat was gleaming on his face with the effort, and his head jerking up and down as if his neck had no bones left in it. ‘He wasn’t at school with us, too?’ he said, turning back.

‘I’ve only just met him this evening,’ Nat said. ‘I don’t know who he is. I thought you were going to make a speech.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Duncan said. He really started to feel rather drunk.

14.

‘Ladies and – ladies and – ladies and gentlemen,’ Duncan began. ‘They can’t hear me, Nat. How do I get them to shut up and listen?’

‘Quiet, please,’ Nat said. ‘Quiet, please. No, it doesn’t seem to work.’ He raised his hands to his face like a megaphone, and bellowed. Duncan had a bright idea; he took the keys from his pocket, and dropping them into his empty glass, started jangling them. The ringing noise was quite successful; at any rate, people in the front half of the shop quietened down, though not so much on the pavement or at the back.

‘Hello, everybody,’ Duncan said.

‘He’s going to make a speech,’ Nat said. ‘I’m not.’

There was a great gale of laughter, as at anything not actually tragic spoken at a fundraising audience.

‘No,’ Duncan said. ‘He’s
not
. Now. Where was it? I know it was here somewhere.’

‘Find your speech
before
you ask for quiet,’ a cross dyke in tweeds called. ‘That would be a good thing.’

‘Why?’ Duncan said. ‘Are you in a hurry or something?’ The dyke started to make some principled objection – she got as far as saying ‘Secondly’ before those around her told her to pipe down. ‘Now. I don’t know what I was going to say but I can say it anyway, I believe. It was seven years ago I opened this bookshop and it was with the benefit of some money I came into. No one had ever opened a bookshop for gay people. There are bookshops for socialists and bookshops for French people and bookshops for women—’

‘Yeah!’ the dykes at the other end of the room shouted.

‘Yes, hurrah to that,’ Duncan said. ‘We’re not a bookshop just for women, but hurrah to that, anyway. And bookshops for music and bookshops for art and bookshops for soldiers and – and – and—’

‘Is there much more of this?’ Arthur called out.

‘You listen patiently,’ Duncan said, ‘or you’ll be on the dole in the morning. So there were lots of bookshops for all sorts of people but not a bookshop for gay people. And the one thing we all know gay people really want to do is …’ He made a big upward gesture with his arms, and everyone near him shouted, ‘READ!’

Apart from Nat, who said, ‘Screw,’ apparently sincerely intended, since he covered his face with his hands, and Andrew, who was standing underneath, might have called out, ‘Ferment the working-class revolution,’ or possibly ‘foment’, and obviously didn’t get that it was meant as a joke. Andrew had come wearing a dress and lipstick, but not having shaved his beard off. Now he was very drunk, like everyone, but drunk in a dress with his lipstick smeared. Duncan averted his eyes as from a road accident, as the rest of the party had been doing.

‘Yes, well,’ Duncan said. ‘So it’s thanks to Dommie, my sister, and Arthur, who turned up on the first day or maybe even a little bit before that and demanded a job. It’s been fantastic. There are other people I want to thank too, but let me just say this once. Let me just say this. I want to thank you all by name but it would take too long. So let me just say this once.’

‘Just say it once,’ a wit called out.

‘Let me just say this once,’ Duncan said.

‘Oh, get on with it,’ Dommie called, not bad-humouredly.

‘Those people I want to thank –
you know who you are.
And then there are lots of people who aren’t with us any more. I wish they could have been here today. I really wish that. But we’re not here to celebrate the bookshop. We’re here because nearly a year ago some policemen came in and started inspecting our stock. And then they came back, wearing gloves in case our stock might infect them or something, and they took a lot of it away. And now we’re being prosecuted for selling porn, which it isn’t, but never mind that. They just want to wear us down and get through what little money we’ve got, and then we’ll close down and that’ll be that. It’s because we didn’t – Arthur didn’t, thank you, Arthur – Arthur didn’t hand over five thousand pounds as a bribe to the first policemen, the ones who came in without gloves and pretended to be customers.

‘I hope they didn’t get Aids, anyway.’

‘I hope they
did
,’ Sir Angus said, in his famous tones, from the bottom of the staircase. Quite a lot of people had thought of saying it, but only Sir Angus, perhaps, could.

‘Yes, well,’ Duncan went on. ‘The thing is, about those books, the ones they took away. Loads of people have come and bought books from here in the last seven years, and all of them, they’ve spread through the world, they’ve gone out like little candles. Sometimes someone on their own has read the book they bought, and thought, I’ll lend that to my friend John. Or sometimes they’ve thought I’ve got to stop being so alone, I’ll go out and I’ll try to meet people like me. I’ll stop being so ashamed. And sometimes they’ve just loved a novel and handed it to their mum or their best friend, and said, You’ll love this, and the mum or the best friend, they have, and they’ve lent it on rather than give it back.

‘Books are like that. They go into the world. They’re like us. We’ve got to go into the world. We’ve got to go even though there aren’t many of us and even though most of the world hates us and would put us in gaol and wants us to die of this disease. A book can go out into the world. It’s like a ten-pound note, it’s like a virus, it’s like an idea, it’s like a brilliant joke, it’s like a tune, it goes from one person to another. It never stops. It goes out into the world and and it changes things a little bit even if people hate it, they don’t want it, they want to go and read something better or they start thinking that it’s all wrong, I’m not going to agree with any of that, and they talk to someone about what they think, and that other person listens. Do you see what I’m saying?’

He was losing his audience, he could see: they were turning to each other and speaking with low amusement. Nat and the man playing the double bass had their hands on his arms, and were holding him upright. It was so hot in here. He had forgotten how he got onto this part of his speech, and then suddenly remembered that in his jacket pocket he had the speech he had written, short and witty and full of good points. He had a feeling that he had covered some of those points, but had brought other things into the discussion that he’d only just thought of. It was too late now, surely, to reach into his jacket pocket and get out the notes and start making his speech again. Gays would start shouting, ‘You’ve already done this bit.’ What was it he’d been talking about? But then, as if by a miracle, he remembered why he’d started talking about books changing the world, mind by shining mind, and he came back. Had it been a long silence?

‘The thing is, people,’ Duncan said, ‘the thing is that those books the policemen took away – they’re the only books ever that didn’t do anything, that just left here and fell to the ground. No one’s ever going to engage with those books. No one’s ever going to have their mind changed by those books, the physical books and what’s in them. They’re just Exhibit A, and that’s no way to treat my lovely books. So these people – they can’t be allowed to get away with it. They can’t. We’re a bit hard up, what with all the loss of stock and the lawyers’ fees, and we’re going to be more hard up if things don’t go our way, which they might not. So Arthur and I and Dommie too, my sister who’s been so great the last seven years, we thought we’d have an auction of wonderful donated lots from lots of wonderful people. Please give generously. Where’s that box? There’s two boxes, Arthur. Just the first one for the moment.’

He swayed and, for a second, thought he was going to be sick onto the heads of the people below him. Then he was all right. Life, he thought, was like that, as the crowd saw that he’d finished with what must be considered a speech, though in a not very decisive way, and parts of it began to applaud uncertainly. Life was like that: thinking you were going to be sick on someone’s head, then realizing you weren’t, that you were OK really. Down there, a box was being passed over the heads of half a dozen people from where it had been safely stowed. His eye caught the eye of the rich man, the one who had lived in Chelsea and now lived in Victoria. The man looked, of all things, immensely full of pride – personal pride, as if he’d had every faith in Duncan to get through his speech without falling off the counter. Duncan realized who the man must be. He must be the man who had once, years before, picked up Arthur in the shop and taken him back to his great big four-storey house off the King’s Road. His name, he’d said, was Rupert. It was Randy. It was Rudolph. It was Raymond. No, it wasn’t Rupert – that was the name of the publisher’s rep he’d had just that one time in the stock room, the one Duncan thought he’d seen tonight, actually. This one’s name was Raphael. It was Rufus. Then the man looked around, as if nervous in case anyone might glimpse him, and gave Duncan an immense smile. Another sort of man, Duncan felt, would have given him a thumbs-up, but for Ronnie, that nice smile was enough. You could see him encouraging his staff in the City with a smile.

Oh, yes. That was his name. His name was Ronnie.

15.

Annunziata had managed to finish all her shopping for Mr Hayward’s Christmas the day before Christmas Eve. That was a blessing. He would only be on his own on Christmas Day and the day after that, on his own and with his friend who was coming. She liked working for Mr Hayward. He was thoughtful and had said, as he always said, that she need not come after the twenty-third, that he would certainly be able to manage on his own for four or five days. But Annunziata was not so certain about that. She had worked for Mr Hayward for eight years now. She had worked for him when he lived on the other side of Sloane Square, in another white house, very much like this one, and she had come with him when he had moved. She had never left him on his own for as much as four days without arranging for someone else to come and help him out.

She had bought vegetables, potatoes and root vegetables, and had peeled and prepared them all. She looked up, from the basement of the house in Chester Terrace, at the grey weather and the occasional passer-by. But there were not very many people passing by. This was a very quiet neighbourhood normally, one of the best in London, she knew, but now at Christmas there was nobody at home. They had all gone away, all of Mr Hayward’s neighbours. To the country, Mr Hayward had explained. But he was not going away this year. The carrots and potatoes and parsnips were peeled and placed in a dish and were now roasting; the smell of the garlic and the thyme was very good in the warm kitchen. That could be taken out and left for Mr Hayward to heat up tomorrow. Then there were the Brussels sprouts, only a very few; Mr Hayward had said that he did not like them, but you had to have them. And then there was the black fruit pudding, a Christmas pudding it was called. Annunziata had taken advice about that from Mr Hayward’s mother, and had bought one from Waitrose – not the luxury one, Mrs Hayward had said, but only the ordinary one; it was cheaper but better. Annunziata had the utmost respect for Mrs Hayward, and her beautiful though quite frightening manners. The pudding, too, Annunziata was cooking, in a pan of water, for Mr Hayward to heat up tomorrow in the microwave. Brandy was involved in its preparation, Annunziata remembered, but Mr Hayward could see to that himself. And the duck’s skin had been pierced, and she had poured boiling water over it, and the fat had run out from under the skin. Now it was only for Mr Hayward to put it in the oven at the right time, and take it out at the right time, and pour over the delicious sauce she had made for it, out of orange, and cornflour, and onion and carrot and celery, and the roasted wings of the bird, and all manner of spices. She was sure that there was something she had forgotten. It would come to her in the middle of her own Christmas morning, when there was nothing to be done.