Philip Hensher - The Emperor Waltz

‘You do whatever you want to,’ Samuel said, crying. ‘The last wishes of a dying man. The last wishes of your dying father.’

‘The last wishes of my dying father are about as good as the wishes he had during his lifetime,’ Duncan said. ‘I’ll get rid of this, somehow. My conscience is going to deal with it. And it’s all going to come to me and Dommie, your money. You bet. A hundred quid to Balls and another to the other one. They won’t remember they’d ever signed anything. If you’ve told your sisters, do you think anyone’s ever going to believe them? And do you know what I’m going to do with my money? All that lovely money? Because you saved quite a lot from the insurance racket, Daddy. And this horrible house? Not enough to go round seventeen, but plenty for two. Me? I’m going to open a bookshop. I’m going to open the first gay bookshop in London. There are so many good books written by homosexuals. And lesbians. You know what they are. And there’s going to be a bookshop where you’ll be able to buy their books, if they’re dead or foreign or not available, and a place where you can come if you’re a homosexual or a lesbian and spend all day there, buying books and meeting people like you. That’s what your money’s going to do. That’s what you were working towards, all your life, without knowing it, Sam – you were working towards a bookshop celebrating sexual perversion. You know me – you know I’m a sexual pervert, too? My God, the men I’ve had in Sicily. It would make your eyes pop out of their sockets. Oh, I look forward to entertaining your ghost there, in my gay bookshop. We’re going to hang up a picture of you by the front door to say thank you, Sam, for making all of this possible. You thought you were buggering me up, and Dommie, too, and it made you laugh. But you were actually saving up, and giving us the chance to get out from under your stone. So thank you so much. And –’ Duncan took the two wills – ‘I’ll take care of these. Thanks. And ’bye. I won’t be seeing you again, Daddy.’

‘I’ll,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll. Write. It.’ His chest was torn open with coughing. Duncan waited and counted. He would not start caring now. He would not remember his father’s lifelong actions – he could not: most of it was neglect and a sneer. ‘Send. Nurse. Out.’

‘You stupid old man,’ Duncan said. ‘You can’t write it again. Don’t you know? You’re dying. You’re going to die tonight. You might last until tomorrow morning. You can’t write any more. But at least I saw you before you died. Remember that. Oh – I’m sorry. It’s us that will be remembering you, not the other way round. ’Bye then. I’ll send the nurse in.’

Duncan got up, and turned the bedside light off. He folded the two stationers’ wills – they were only a couple of pages each – and put them into his jacket pocket. He stroked his father’s forehead – it was damp and hot, and writhed under the touch. His father cried out, an inarticulate noise, and his arms came up, as if to hit Duncan. The door opened, and the nurse whose name was Balls stood there, her stance inclined and concerned.

‘I’m just leaving,’ Duncan said quietly, going over to her. ‘I think he’s in a little pain, but we’ve managed to talk. I think it meant a lot to him. Thank you for everything, Sister.’

‘It’s my job – you don’t need to thank me. I’ll give him some morphine for the pain,’ Sister Balls said. ‘He does seem bad. It’ll help him to get some rest.’

‘And Daddy,’ Duncan said, raising his voice over the calls of pain, ‘I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.’

But there was no articulate response. Sister Balls switched the light back on, and went to her case on the chest of drawers for the morphine. Duncan left the room and walked downstairs. From the sitting room came a violent shriek, the parrot’s yayayayaya. He ignored the aunts and their clawed familiar, and left the house with the sense of a burden lifting, or about to lift. Somewhere, a knotted little Clapham presence, a girl in a one-bedroom rented flat surrounded by her favourite objects, intensely waited. He could feel Dommie’s northward gaze on him. She knew he was back in her city, and had gone where she would not go. He saw her, in the safety of her room, surrounded by animals in plush on the bed, animals in glass and porcelain on the windowsill. In her frozen menagerie, she was expecting him.

‘Thank God he’s gone,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m going to go upstairs and get the will – the real one, the last one. And then tomorrow I’m going to put it in a very, very safe place.’

But Rebecca and Ruth just shook their heads. Rachel’s parrot raised his head, and looked around from the back of the chair where he prowled and surveyed, and gave one reprimanding, minatory, regretful shriek. He was thirty-four years old, a great age for a parrot. Despite that, his voice was what it had always been, and his plumage as black, and he looked about him with triumph. He enjoyed it when he shrieked, and made the women leap.

It was later than Duncan thought, and the train back into town was almost empty. He stepped into the carriage, its slatted wooden floor and its damp-smelling upholstery familiar but not thought of for months. At the far end of the carriage, a middle-aged black man sat, reading his book. Duncan put his bag on the seat opposite, and opened it. The Embassy would just be opening now. There was no reason not to go. It would be good to spend his first night back in London with a stranger; to get fucked by someone whose name he couldn’t quite remember at the exact moment his father was dying. The suitcases would turn up tomorrow – something else to look forward to. But in the meantime he had the clothes he had been wearing that morning in Sicily, changed out of in the toilets at Charles de Gaulle; a satin pair of shorts and a tight black T-shirt with an American flag on it. He was glad he’d taken the trouble to fold them neatly. He took off his jacket, there in the carriage, and then his white shirt; he pulled his jeans over his trainers, and folded everything. At the end of the carriage, the man had abandoned his book: he was staring, astonished, at the thin man with a shock of blond hair who had got onto the train and quickly stripped to his underpants. Duncan gave a mock curtsy to the man, whose attention quickly focused on the book again. The rackety bopping of the train’s wheels was going all disco in Duncan’s mind; the music on the dance-floor was in his thoughts. He could hardly wait. And then he wriggled into the shorts, glad that he had put on white socks with the trainers; he unfolded the T-shirt, and slipped into it. In his mind was the pump and funk of the two a.m. sweat machine, and the hot grind of jaw and hip after speed; and thirty boys he hadn’t seen for months. To the rhythm of the train’s wheels, he gave an unseen little pirouette, a twist, a shake, a small punch of the fist upwards, just there in the train carriage. And tomorrow he would call Dommie, as soon as he felt up to it.

‘I don’t know why we’ve got to come here,’ Nick said.

‘Allow it. Always the fucking same,’ Nathan said. ‘We were all right where we were. Then they say to you, you can’t stay here, you’ve got to come with us. So we come with them—’

‘Yeah, we come with them,’ Nick said.

‘And when we get there, it’s long, man. They say us, you can’t stay here,’ Nathan said.

‘Not downstairs, no way, is it,’ Nick said.

‘You’ve got to go upstairs,’ Nathan said. ‘That’s for you, is it?’

‘They don’t say that,’ Nick said. ‘They pretend it’s a treat, like it’s what they’re doing it for, like it’s total nang.’