Philip Hensher - The Emperor Waltz

‘And I suppose he did, though?’ Anita said.

‘Yes, he certainly did, sometimes in the same evening as the morning when he’d said, Never again or sometimes the next day. That was certainly a pie-crust promise.’

‘That was what are you even saying?’ Nick said.

‘That was a pie-crust promise, I said,’ Basil said.

‘What the fuck is a pricrust promise?’ Nathan said.

‘Not pricrust, pie-crust,’ Basil said. ‘It’s like the crust of a pie. Easily made, easily broken. Have you never heard that before?’

‘No, I ain’t never heard nothing like that before, man,’ Nick said. ‘Did you hear it when you were sitting on some massive organ, you might have misheard somewhat, man.’

‘Yeah, you so pricrust,’ Nathan said to Nick. ‘Easy to break, you are.’

‘So, boys,’ Anita said. ‘I’m not going to give you rum, because, you know, he’s right, it smells when the parents like come upstairs at the end of the evening? And gin less so but still it smells in the room and they’re definitely going to come in in some like totally random way and they’re going to like smell it? But vodka, that’s cool, we can put a little Mr V in our Mrs OJ and they won’t smell that. I’ve done that before? Like this one time at like my friend’s house, this is my friend Alice, we got like so wasted, and no one could tell, though her mum, the next day … We can do that, sure.’

‘I’ve never had vodka,’ Basil said, with the air of a reminiscing old colonel. ‘I’ve had a glass of champagne at my uncle’s wedding, when he got married to Carol, that’s his second wife, and once Polly, who’s my daddy’s girlfriend, she let me taste a bit of her margarita –’ and as Anita left the room, he turned to Nathan to go on ‘– because she likes making herself cocktails before dinner and I was there one night on a Saturday and my mummy was supposed to pick me up, only she thought that my daddy was supposed to bring me over, and I was still there when Polly had made her margarita and was putting their dinner in the oven – they get readymeals from Marks & Spencer, my daddy says Polly can’t cook and they like different things. I didn’t know,’ Basil went on confidingly, turning from Nathan to Nick, as Nathan, open-mouthed with disgust, got to his stockinged feet and followed Anita out, ‘I didn’t know about the margarita, whether I liked it or not, it was really strange. I don’t know what was in that, it was more of a mixture. But I’ve never had vodka. Oh, and once this boy in our class brought a can of beer to school and we all had a taste, I really don’t know why people like that, it was horrible.’

‘Yeah, you talking to yourself, man,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t know why you think anyone in this room even listening to what you

‘Well, that is kind of you,’ Vivienne Osborne was saying. ‘Just a very weak one. I’ve been so looking forward to this, I can’t tell you – I’ve had such a week at work.’

‘I do like your blouse,’ Shabnam Khan said.

‘It’s new, actually,’ Vivienne said. ‘I bought it only yesterday in Marks & Spencer – I shouldn’t say, but we all do, don’t we? It’s such good quality, and much better than it used to be, I mean from the point of view of fashion. You really wouldn’t know sometimes that it wasn’t from some Italian designer in Bond Street.’

‘What do you do, Vivienne?’ Charles Carraway said.

‘Me? I teach economics at one of the London colleges – you won’t have heard of it, I won’t even embarrass you by asking you.’

‘Try me,’ Charles Carraway said drily.

‘Oh, I shall, I shall,’ Vivienne said, with a lowering of her head, a glance upwards with her eyes that dated her to the early 1980s. She had seemed, initially, confused and unprepared as she had come in, handing coat and umbrella and glimpsed son over to Shabnam as if she had thought that Shabnam might be the housekeeper named Bina. Now she appeared to have resources of flirtatiousness, directed for the moment at Charles Carraway. ‘It’s called London Cosmopolitan University – people say it sounds like a cocktail. So you haven’t heard of it and now we can move on.’

‘I think I do know the name,’ Charles said. ‘Is it in Bethnal Green?’

‘Close,’ Vivienne said. ‘Oh, thank you so much, a lovely weak gin and tonic. Perfect. No, we’re in Fulham, actually. But I’m thrilled that you’ve heard of it. Thank you so much –’ she gestured with her drink, which spilt a little ‘– for asking me. I’ve just recently been going through the dreaded breakdown-and-separation-and-divorce from my husband,’ she explained, turning to Caroline Carraway and making quotation marks in the air, ‘though, Heaven knows, there wasn’t much to dread about that, it was really quite a relief in the end. We had a long period of not getting on, then of him moving into the spare bedroom, then of spending time avoiding each other in the house, I think he ate at the Chiswick Pizza Express every night for a month, and then his girlfriend, who I wasn’t supposed to know about, moved to a slightly larger place and he decided to move out. It was really not just a relief but a real pleasure for Basil and I when my husband moved out. That would have been two years ago. But nobody asks a divorced woman with a great lump of a son out for dinner. This is so kind of you – I mean to make the most of it. And you must come round to mine for dinner too! Very soon. Single women can entertain and make a success of it, I mean to show you. You have a son, don’t you, Caroline?’

‘They’re upstairs,’ Caroline said. ‘Actually, there are two. They’re twins. Do you like it, there, at the Cosmopolitan University?’

She had tried, apparently, to say the name of the university without altering her tone; she had almost succeeded.

‘It is a silly name, I know,’ Vivienne said. ‘But they decided when they turned into a university to appeal to Asian students, students from Asia I mean, which was very forward-thinking of them, and now we’re all quite used to the name and hardly notice how silly it is any more. Well, it would be nicer if my ex-husband, soon-to-be-ex husband, no, really ex-husband now, of course, didn’t also work there, so I see him all the time and occasionally have to deal with him. He’s the registrar. So I’m looking for another job, somewhere else.’

‘It shouldn’t be hard,’ Michael Khan said. ‘Economists must be so in demand everywhere, these days, with things in the shape they’re in.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you, but I’m not really that sort of economist,’ Vivienne said. ‘But it’s nice of you to say so. The thing is, after my husband left, it was really an immense relief. For Basil, too – Basil’s my son, Shabnam – Shabnam? It is Shabnam, isn’t it? You get good at names in my trade. Now, you know, this is an awfully unfashionable thing to say, but I really am enjoying being single, for the first time in years, decades, since I was fifteen perhaps, maybe ever! Anyway. Basil, too. Well, that is kind of you – I will have another drink, a very weak one, though, please, Michael.’

‘And an olive?’ Caroline said, passing over a ceramic bowl. She herself would not touch olives, death to the digestion, straight to the hips.

‘Thank you,’ Vivienne said, hovering and then judiciously taking one, as if she were judging produce in the market. ‘The truth of the matter is that

‘Give it me in my Coke,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t like that OJ, I drink Coke, me.’

‘Oh, my God.’ Anita took her half-full bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and poured an inch into a glass. ‘Vodka and Coke, that’s a terrible drink, that’s a really like thirteen-year-old’s drink when you’ll drink anything? Oh, I forgot, you are thirteen. And you, Nathan, what do you want?’