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.
10.
‘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.
11.
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.
1.
‘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.’
‘Skeen. And we’re like wagwarn, having to eat all that food and make out you’re liking it, like,’ Nathan said.
‘Leastways,’ Nick said, ‘leastways we don’t have to be eating that food and shit. That looked rank, man.’
‘Don’t laugh at the food, man,’ Nathan said. ‘She said she was bringing us up some food in ten and it ain’t gonna be Claridges.’
‘Oh, man,’ Nick said. ‘I’m glad you bring that bottle of poppers, bro.’
The first speaker was a boy of thirteen, with dark blond hair in curls and thick, adult eyebrows. The second was his identical twin. Both of them had newly deep, grating voices; their faces had grown in large, unexpected directions recently, giving them big noses and angular Adam’s apples. They talked at each other, not looking into each other’s faces, rapidly and with London accents. The room they were in was a large study, with a picnic table set up in the middle with a cloth cast over it. The leather-topped desk had four drawers on either side, and a long drawer under the green leather surface, topped with gold inlay. One drawer to the left was locked, as was the long drawer. The others were all open, but contained nothing interesting: plastic pens, papers of no interest, a ball of string. On the desk sat a small hi-fi system; on it, a man was speaking over the sound of strings playing slowly.
Nick sat in the executive chair at the desk; from time to time he swivelled violently. His twin lay at full length on the green leather sofa to the side of the room, kicking at the underneath of the suspended bookshelves above him, which contained nothing but two dozen boring-sounding books about law.
‘I ain’t eating what they’re eating,’ Nick said.
‘That’s right,’ Nathan said. ‘I’m going to sniff poppers all night, I’m going to get so high, and I ain’t eating that food they’re eating. Did you see that shit?’
‘Who’s coming, apart from us?’ Nick said.
‘There’s that sket whose husband left her,’ Nathan said. ‘She’s got a kid who’s coming.’
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ Nick said.
‘I don’t fucking know,’ Nathan said. ‘She’s that sket with the fat arse down the street.’
‘That why her husband left her?’ Nick said. ‘’Cause her husband’s left her, is it? Was it ’cause she’s so fucking fat, he couldn’t stand it?’
‘Yeah, fat but no tits,’ Nathan said. ‘That’s bad luck in life, man, that’s bad luck. You’re a sket who’s fat, but you’ve got no tits.’
‘Not like Andrew Barley, then,’ Nick said. They convulsed at the thought of Andrew Barley, a boy in their class who was last to be chosen, whom they’d beaten with a torn-off branch from one side of the playground to the other, who’d produced a note from his mum saying that he might be late for chemistry because it was on the other side of school and he couldn’t run because of his weight – it had actually said that, because of his weight. ‘Andrew Barley and his gigantic tits.’
‘Yeah, she’s like that,’ Nick said. ‘She’s coming because they feel sorry for her, is it? And her little boy, we’ve to be looking after him and he’s going to be sent up here.’
‘I look forward to that,’ Nathan said, using a sarcastic phrase they’d heard, with admiration, from Mr Andropoulos next door whenever he’d been told about something really boring or unpleasant about to happen, like the Notting Hill Carnival and Mrs Barley promising to make him her Facebook friend and his garden being bought up to make room for Crossrail and shit.
‘Yeah, I look forward to that too, all right,’ Nick said. ‘And their daughter’s coming in here in a bit, Mrs Khan said. She said she was coming back from something, from orchestra or something, and she’d come and sit with us and have dinner and play cards and that.’
‘Fuck me, Anita Khan,’ Nathan said. ‘I’d forgotten about Anita fucking Khan. She’s fucking mental.’
‘She jezzy,’ Nick said. ‘She’s never gone to orchestra with her flute – she’s out being fucked by the gangsters all the afternoon. She’s just told her dad she’s gone to orchestra.’
‘Poor old Mr Khan,’ Nathan said. ‘She’s piff, but I wouldn’t fuck her. She takes after her mother in that.’
‘Shut your mouth, wallad, she mother coming,’ Nathan said.
There was a noise on the stairs that Nathan had heard, a creak and a clink of glasses. The twins made huge eyes at each other; Nick dug his heels into the carpet to stop his chair and Nathan sat up on the sofa, pulling the bottom of his jeans down. The door to the study opened, and Mrs Khan came in, pushing it backwards and carrying a tray. Behind her came a much smaller woman, carrying another tray. Nick leapt up and held the door open – ‘Oh, thank you so much, you are kind,’ Mrs Khan said. Bina, the housekeeper, set her tray down and left. Mrs Khan set her tray down, also on the desk, but stayed. She was a thin woman with a streak of white in her black hair; her dress was a mauve raw silk with an octagonal neckline showing a slightly wrinkled bosom. She was a sex-bomb, the twins had heard their father say, in a jocular manner, and their mother respond that she was a very good sort all round. Which she was, they hadn’t decided on just yet. She was sket, but the twins described every woman they knew as sket.
‘Hello, boys,’ Mrs Khan said.
‘Hello, Mrs Khan,’ Nathan said, and Nick echoed him.
‘Is Anita not in here yet?’ Mrs Khan said, setting the tray down on the desk. ‘I’m sorry to be leaving you without anything or anyone to entertain you, boys.’
‘That’s all right, Mrs Khan,’ Nick said. ‘You don’t need to make any special effort to entertain us.’
‘We were just chatting,’ Nathan said.
‘It’s so nice to see brothers who get on so well. You could put the television on, you know. I brought it in here because I thought you might like it.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Khan,’ Nick said, ‘but we’re all right, we’re happy just chatting.’
‘How’s Mr Khan?’ Nathan said. ‘Is he well?’
‘Yes, thank you, very well,’ Mrs Khan said, eyeing them strangely. ‘He’ll be up to say hello in a while.’
‘There’s no need for that, Mrs Khan,’ Nathan said. ‘I wouldn’t want to disturb him. We saw him only last week, at the garden centre.’
‘At the garden centre?’ Mrs Khan said. She was fitting a cigarette into a cigarette holder. ‘Are you sure? It might have been someone who just looked like Mr Khan. Don’t worry, I’m not going to light this one in here. I know all about you young people not liking passive smoking.’
‘Last Friday afternoon, it would have been, Mrs Khan,’ Nick said. ‘It was definitely Mr Khan. He was looking at shrubs with … It would have been his secretary, maybe – she was blonde and in a short skirt, a pretty girl it was, Mrs Khan.’
‘Well, then, it certainly wasn’t Mr Khan,’ Mrs Khan said. ‘His secretary is fifty and very fat – I don’t think she would go out in a short skirt. And actually last Friday—’
‘Maybe it wasn’t his secretary, then,’ Nathan said disconsolately.
‘Last Friday I called for Mr Khan at lunchtime and we spent the afternoon together, so it must have been someone else you saw. Now – these are chicken samosas, and this is what we call chaat, and these are pakoras, vegetable pakoras, and these are just little fritters. They are Indian, but there’s nothing to be frightened of. I’m sure you’ll like them. And this is salad, you’d make me so proud if you ate even some of it. Lemon squash, Coke – the television? You’re sure? There’s a pack of cards on Mr Khan’s desk if you want to play whist – Anita will teach you if you don’t know.’
‘Thanks for everything, Mrs Khan,’ Nathan said, as she walked out. There was a click, the noise of a cigarette lighter striking. ‘You’ve been very kind, thank you very much. Man, that sket is bare long.’
‘I thought she’d never shut it and fuck off. I was going to call the feds,’ Nick said.
‘Yeah, and she call the feds on you, wallad,’ Nathan said. ‘Wagwarn with Mr Khan and the jezz at the garden centre? Oh, she blonde, she hot, she short-skirt sket. You know you trouble? You say too much detail when you tell lie, is it. Friday afternoon, blond secretary – she know, Mrs Khan, she know what her man doing Friday afternoon. You leave it vague and imprecise, fool, you plant seed of doubt in Mrs Khan mind.’
‘Yeah, I do better next time,’ Nick said. ‘I buy packet of seeds at garden centre – packet of seeds of doubt and plant them in Mrs Khan mind.’
Nathan and Nick looked at each other, and burst out laughing.
The door opened again. There was Anita Khan. She stood against the jamb, kicking it gently, looking from Nick to Nathan. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it out, letting it drop again. ‘You’re Nick,’ she said, ‘and you’re like Nathan.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Nick said. ‘You’re good. Most people can’t tell the difference.’
‘I can’t tell the difference,’ she said. ‘I was just guessing in like a totally random way, you know, and in my random way I was right? I could have said the other way round, easy. I’m supposed to like entertain you. How old are you anyway?’
‘I’m thirteen,’ Nathan said.
‘Oh, kay,’ she said. ‘And how old are you, little boy?’
‘We’re twins, man,’ Nick said. ‘That means we are like exactly the same age, only by minutes. That’s what twins means.’
‘Wow, is that the case?’ Anita said, coming in and letting the door slam behind her. ‘I never knew that. I was always hearing about twins, you know, but I never believed they like really existed? I was like they’re, like unicorns and shit, mythical beasts, yeah? But here you are. And you’re like the same age, the exact same age, and you have the same birthday, you know what I mean? Wow. Cool. Anyway.’
‘Oh, come on, Anita,’ Nathan said. ‘You know you got to stay in here with us to make sure we don’t trash the place.’
‘Whatever. That’s the best time I ever heard of,’ Anita said. She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Like, spending a whole evening in a room with two thirteen-year-old boys. That sounds like incredible?’
‘There’s an eleven-year-old boy coming as well,’ Nathan said. ‘And they be thirteen-year-olds in the ghetto in Chicago done be killing they third man, so you don’t be treating us like kindergarten, you feel me, Anita. Ain’t they told you that one, about the eleven-year-old? His mum’s coming on her own – she’s that sket where the husband he left her, and she’s wondering why. You get me? She lives down there, ten doors down, is it, and she’s fat but no tits, you know the one.’
The doorbell rang downstairs; a four-toned chime.
‘That’s her,’ Nick said. ‘That’s her with her eleven-year-old we got to entertain.’
‘O-kay,’ Anita said. ‘That sounds fabulous. I’m like running a crèche here, you know what I mean. Are we going to watch CBBC, I hear In the Night Garden’s like on – that’s going to keep them all quiet?’
‘No, it’s X Factor, is it. But that’s dutty. We ain’t seeing that.’
‘That Louis Walsh, he badman, is it.’
The twins laughed. Anita went over to the table where her mother had deposited the tray.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said, running her fingers through her hair. ‘This is like – have you seen this food, it’s like a million calories in like every bite, I’m not touching that. My mother, she’s crazy? She thinks she’s got to feed me up every chance, you know what I mean? You’ve got to eat twice as much or she’ll think I’m anorexic and shit. This food is like so random. This shit, it reminds me, it was like this one time at my friend’s house, like once, it was incredible?’
‘Hey, Anita,’ Nathan said.
‘Yes, Nick,’ Anita said.
‘No, I’m Nathan,’ Nathan said. ‘You got my name right a minute back.’
‘I’ve like forgotten already,’ Anita said. ‘So, Nathan. What were you saying?’
‘Are you going to tell about this one time at your friend’s house, because it was like incredible?’ Nathan said.
‘Oh, fuck you,’ Anita said.
‘I was saying,’ Nick said, ‘that
2.
‘I just couldn’t believe it,’ Mr Carraway was saying, drink in hand. ‘I had a phone call from Simon Wu about the Middlesbrough plant, this is four thirty on a Friday afternoon, an aspect of the sale we hadn’t considered, and could I draw up a memorandum for Helen Barclay’s office, which I did – it was a whole weekend, dawn till dusk – and got it to Simon Wu first thing on Monday morning. It was a piece of work, I can tell you – it was really one of my proudest moments, turning something like that round in, what, forty-eight hours? Next thing I know—’
‘This is amazing, this,’ Mrs Carraway said, confidentially, leaning forward to Mr Khan. ‘Amazing.’
‘The next thing I know, Shabnam, is a furious phone call from Helen Barclay’s office. On my mobile – I was in Birmingham in a meeting on a completely different project that Monday morning, I had to leave to take the call – and it couldn’t wait. What did I think I was doing? I’d sent the report to Simon Wu and cc’d Helen Barclay’s office. They’d have me know that next time I should send it to Helen Barclay’s office and cc Simon Wu. They were in the lead and I should be writing to them.’
‘Doesn’t matter that they would have got the report in the same way, exactly the same way,’ Mrs Carraway said, in the same confidential manner. ‘Can you imagine, Michael?’
Michael Khan shook his head. ‘It’s all about ownership,’ he said. ‘People believe that they own a project and should be addressed first. I’ve met this before. People are so concerned about who comes first in these situations. The main person and the cc is just a part of those questions of hierarchy.’
‘And women,’ Shabnam Khan said. ‘It’s just so typical of a woman in this situation, that a woman like—’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Mr Carraway said.
‘Another drink, Caroline?’ Michael said.
‘Well, I don’t mind if
3.
we can have some fun up here,’ Nathan said. ‘You get me? Anita, you like poppers?’
‘Poppers?’ Anita said. ‘Are you like seriously asking me if I like poppers?’
‘Ah, come on, Anita,’ Nick said. ‘We’re having a bit of banter with you, man. We know you ain’t been to orchestra practice this afternoon like your mum says.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Anita said. ‘So I’ve been like where, then?’
‘You’ve been doing it with some badman all afternoon, ain’t that the truth?’ Nick said. ‘You’ve been lying there, and saying to him, go on, do me, do me.’
‘Whatever. Go away, little boy,’ Anita said. ‘You’re wrong in the head. I went to orchestra practice, you know? I took my violin, and my dad drove me, and I like rehearsed Dvo
‘Ah, come on, Anita, we know you like it, we know you sket deep down,’ Nathan said.
‘And we brought you some poppers,’ Nick said. ‘You like poppers, Anita?’
Out of his back pocket in his falling-down, underpants-showing jeans, Nick pulled a small brown bottle. Anita leant over and examined it. The label said Jungle Juice.
‘That’s Jungle Juice,’ Anita said. ‘That’s poppers, is it?’
‘I love poppers,’ Nathan said, putting it back in his pocket. ‘Oh, we love poppers. You just take one sniff, Anita, and it’s amazing, you’re falling over. One time, right, we were in IT and we were just passing it around, because our IT teacher, Mr Brandon, he never notices anything, you can just show him your screen and he’s lost in space, and the whole class was just high, and, Anita, listen, Mr Brandon just never noticed.’
‘Yeah, Brandon, he wallad,’ Nick said.
‘He what?’ Anita said.
‘He wallad, I said,’ Nick said, thrusting his chin out and shrugging.
‘I have no idea what that means,’ Anita said. ‘I can’t understand half the things you say. Wallad?’
‘Yeah, man, everyone knows wallad,’ Nathan said.
‘I’m like so –’ she made a face of horror and despair, a mask of tragedy and abandonment ‘– when I even like listen to you, you know what I mean? It was like this one time, at my friend’s house, you know, it was just like …’
‘You don’t have to like listen,’ Nick said.
‘Yeah, but I can’t help it, you know, I’m stuck in here.’