The Emperor Waltz Read online

  ‘So, general stock, general interest, a few children’s books, perhaps some of our reference lines. We have some very interesting novels coming out this autumn, which I’m sure I could get you a proof to see what your customers would enjoy. A history of exploration in the South Seas …’ and by now Roland Inscape was opening his briefcase, extracting a loose-leaf glossy folder and opening it on the cherrywood counter to show a mock-up of a cover displaying a Gauguin girl and the title in bold, sinuous lettering. ‘And a life of Gluck. Very fashionable, the composer Gluck, and Stephen McGiver, the biographer, he’s always had a passion for Gluck, and we expect it to do at least as well as Stephen’s life of Emmeline Pankhurst, which you may remember from two years ago, twenty-two thousand in hardback and three times that in paperback to date and still selling strongly, no one can say that the Edwardians have lost their appeal to the discerning readership and we expect there to be a lot of coverage of the Gluck biography too, not an Edwardian, of course, but Stephen has a good loyal readership. A real word-of-mouth author, you might say. Shall I put you down for—’

  ‘Is he gay?’ Duncan said.

  ‘Is he …’

  ‘Is he homosexual?’ Duncan said. ‘The biographer. Stephen –’ he peered ‘– McGiver.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m just asking,’ Duncan said.

  ‘He’s only asking,’ Paul said, coming back through the door behind the sales rep with a cup of coffee. ‘Hello.’

  The carpenters were greatly enjoying this; they were only pretending to confer now.

  ‘Well, I really don’t know,’ Roland Inscape said. ‘I really don’t think it’s any of our …’

  ‘Or Gluck,’ Duncan said. ‘At a pinch. I ought to know, I know. Gluck, he was some sort of composer before Mozart, wasn’t he?’

  ‘No, she was a lesbian,’ Paul said. ‘A pre-war sort of lesbian. And there’s Robert Gluck who’s a queen in San Francisco who we really ought to stock but I don’t think you can be talking about him.’

  ‘The Mozart one,’ Roland Inscape said.

  ‘I really ought to know,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m so glad I was thinking of the right Gluck, the Mozart one. Was he – I know …’

  Roland Inscape was staring at them, his hands frozen over his folder, looking wildly from Paul to Duncan and back again, as Paul began to sing: ‘“Che faro …”’

  ‘We’re not really a general bookshop,’ Duncan said kindly.

  ‘You’re not a general bookshop,’ Roland said.

  ‘No,’ Duncan said. ‘We’re a gay bookshop. We stock books about gay people and by gay people. Or we’re going to. Children’s books, no. Or not yet. Homosexuals,’ he clarified. ‘And lesbians.’

  Roland Inscape came to life. He seized Duncan’s hand, and shook it firmly. ‘Well, what an interesting idea,’ he said. ‘What a very interesting idea. Like that bookshop that only stocks science fiction, won’t look at anything else. How very interesting. Let me think. I’m sure there are some things we publish that would interest your customers. You see, when we saw the name of your bookshop, we did wonder, we wondered whether you quite … but Go Gay.’

  ‘Go Gay?’ Paul said.

  ‘Go Gay,’ Roland said. ‘It’s a laundry in Parsons Green. I live in Parsons Green. My wife and children. They think it’s terribly funny. I explain to them, it’s nothing to do with … It’s been called that for ever, since it was an innocent, a sort of …’

  Roland Inscape’s bluster ran out. He looked from one to the other, and his expression was almost pitiable. ‘Let me think,’ he said. ‘We had a great success last year with a life of Ethel Smyth. Very popular, those lady Edwardians. It might appeal to …’

  ‘We’ll take one,’ Duncan said. ‘Perhaps if you leave us your catalogue?’

  ‘Just one?’ Roland said, but Duncan could not be swayed. He would confirm the order when he had had a chance to look through the catalogue; the bookshop would open in six weeks, so there was no particular reason to panic, he told Roland. They shook hands; Roland went; he cast a curious eye at the carpenters as he went, appearing to wonder how it was that two carpenters endured the company of Paul and Duncan. The carpenters watched him go, stumbling over his briefcase in his hurry.

  ‘You can’t open a bookshop with just one book on the shelf,’ Paul said. ‘A life of Ethel Smyth. Who was Ethel Smyth?’

  ‘Lady Edwardian,’ Duncan said, in a veiled way. ‘Very popular with …’

  ‘Are you planning to be popular with …?’ Paul said. ‘I think the word he couldn’t say was Lesbians. That’ll make our fortune. Lesbians and their disposable income, it’s a well-known phenomenon.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ Duncan said. ‘We’ll fill the bookshop with lovely gay stock. I’m full of ideas.’

  ‘I’m sure you are,’ Paul said. ‘Your dad left you a million quid or something, too, which helps with the ideas, I expect.’

  ‘And what’s with the our?’ Duncan said, a moment too late. ‘Less of the our.’

  4.

  There was just so much to do. Duncan put on a brave face to Paul during the day. But in the evening he had to sit and watch the television in his new flat in Notting Hill, a glass of whisky in his hand, and try not to think about how much needed doing, and what needed to be done next. Blankety Blank could not bring his thoughts away from the carpenters, the electrician who had come to fix the lights and declared that the whole place needed rewiring, the people to install a kitchenette at the back, the accountant, the plasterer who had been found necessary, the signwriter, the decorators, the stock ordering, the post office for the telephone account, the paperwork; the stuff, Duncan thought. He had just wanted a place where people could come and buy books about people like them, and people could write a book knowing that somewhere would stock it and appreciate it, where people could meet and talk to each other. What had any of that to do with electricians and accountants? It had been a mistake to buy and renovate this flat at the same time as starting the shop up; he had two sets of carpenters, two of electricians and decorators to deal with, not always knowing who it was who had left the message on the flat’s telephone, since they always began, ‘Hello there, it’s Brian the electrician here.’ Confusion followed, and expenditure; his mind went from the new people in his life to an escalation of figures, which was already cutting into what had seemed a colossal amount of money, six months before, after his father’s death.

  There was some pleasure in deciding on the interior of the shop. The bookcases were an ingenious, lavish design, with a floating case on wheels that you could push to and fro before the stock in the back shelves; it added half as much shelving space again to the shop, though puzzling to the carpenters who had to put it together and make it move smoothly. There would be a display case for community magazines, mock-splendid with Grecian terminations and flourishes. The pretend-tasteful William Morris wallpaper had gone on day one, Paul and he ripping it off with yelps of joy. The floor would be sanded down to the wood, then repainted black; Duncan had it in mind to seek out the previous tenant and buy a couple of Turkey carpets from him. There was some gesture of goodwill in this that he didn’t quite manage to make sense of, even to himself. Paul had turned up with a chandelier and, when this had proved a success, had returned the next day with a stuffed pheasant in a glass case, mounted against a miniature Scots backdrop of moss and heather. ‘You thought that what the shop really needed was a big cock,’ Duncan said, beating Paul to his own joke. ‘No, I’m not having it.’

  ‘I think I’ve shown restraint,’ Paul said. ‘You should have seen the capercaillie, darling.’ And since Paul had bought it, out of his own money, on the Portobello Road and since it was marvellous, the sort of thing your grandchildren would love again if you were going to have grandchildren, which, thank the Lord, they weren’t, Duncan gave way. For the moment the bird was staying, sitting with a beady, quizzical air on the cherrywood counter. Duncan would find the moment to get rid of it after the shop had opene
d.

  There were invitations to be printed for the opening-night party. Not the very opening night, but two or three weeks in, just to make sure everything was all right, and things always overran so with builders. There was the community to consider, not just your friends. (Though there were your friends, too – astonishing how friends, and friends of friends, quickly amounted to three hundred names and addresses.) There was a nice man and a cross girl from Gay News, who had promised them a big spread. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before,’ the man had said, almost before he was through the door. ‘We’re so excited.’

  ‘But there’s always Prinz Eisenherz in Berlin,’ the cross girl had interjected. ‘Do you really think you can be as good a bookshop in London as they are?’

  ‘Let me get you a cup of coffee from Andy over the road,’ Duncan had said. ‘And then we can start the interview, if you like.’

  There was Francis King and Paul Bailey and Maureen Duffy and Angus Wilson and Brigid Brophy and any number of famous great gays; there were painters too, who might as well come if they were in the country, which Maggi Hambling was and David Hockney wasn’t, more’s the pity. There was Gay News and the men’s group magazines that might run something. Then a man turned up from Zipper and Vulcan – God knows how he had heard about it. Zipper and Vulcan were porn mags, run from the same flat in Islington by the same bloke; he got most of his ‘models’ from the steam room at the baths in Bethnal Green, he told Duncan, putting them in Zipper if they were over twenty-five or had hair, in Vulcan if they were under, hairless and ‘just looked a little bit nervous, a little bit scared-like, in front of the camera,’ the man had said, and laughed wheezily, lighting another cigarette, the seventh of nine, in Duncan’s shop. (The shop that would never, ever, stock Zipper or Vulcan, but Duncan wasn’t going to tell the man that.) The man came back two days later with a sample of each, and Duncan liked the Photographer’s World naffness of the props and the studio lighting, and some strange engagement with the laws that meant all the models had erections, but they were held down by the thigh to point downwards in the photographs. Would it be the enthusiasts for hair – that one turned out to be Zipper – or the proto-paedophiles who would read the piece and run to the bookshop? The bloke would make a decision when he’d written the piece, he’d said. Well, he had to be invited to the party, too, Duncan supposed, dropping the terrible porn in the dustbin behind the shop.

  There were the other traders in Heatherwick Street to ask, as well. Duncan had been doing the rounds, buying his fruit from the greengrocer, his morning coffee from Andy opposite and his lunchtime sandwich. He’d made a point of dropping in to buy some rawlplugs from the hardware shop, some fish from the fishmonger, and where there was nothing to buy – you couldn’t expect him to drop ten pounds at the suitcase shop just to make friends – he called in and introduced himself anyway. There was a limit to what could be achieved. The hard, distasteful stare of the old sod in the hardware shop as he had handed over the rawlplugs – that didn’t suggest someone who was going to be welcoming them. Gay people needed lightbulbs too, and they’d be buying them somewhere else. But Andy seemed perfectly cheerful, and the fishmonger had said it would be nice to see a bookshop in the street, though he wasn’t one for reading himself, before handing over some startlingly orange smoked haddock. Duncan hadn’t quite caught his name. All in all, there were about five hundred people on the list, and a week after compiling it, Duncan woke with a start in the middle of the night and remembered that he hadn’t thought to invite a single politician or public administrator.

  5.

  Paul was the first to turn up, and he came almost every day from then on. The next person to turn up to offer his help, or condolences, was Freddie Sempill. Paul and Duncan had been going over the shop, and had settled down behind the counter, where the kitchenette and discussion table were going to go. Outside the window a short figure was standing, his legs astride, his fists on his hips.

  ‘You won’t want to come in,’ Duncan called. ‘It’s a gay bookshop, called the Gay Bookshop. An old closet case like you, it’s not for you, sweetie.’

  Freddie Sempill looked from side to side. There was nobody outside except Andy, standing as usual at the door of his sandwich shop, and two old ladies in tweed coats and hats with a little dog yapping at their feet: respectable old ladies, washed up in this corner of London and left there to maintain a standard of behaviour no one else had cared about for many years. One was indicating the bookshop to the other; it was unlikely that they were about to beat up Freddie Sempill.

  ‘Oh, do come in,’ Paul said. ‘Look at the silly queen, he’s not going to come in unless someone goes and brings him in. Just look. I was saying,’ as he opened the door, ‘I suppose we’ve got to come and fetch you in. Silly old closet-case queen, honestly.’ Freddie Sempill followed him in breathlessly.

  ‘All right, mate?’ Freddie Sempill said.

  ‘What?’ Duncan said. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, all right, mate? Are you all right? How are things going?’

  ‘Oh, you were asking after us,’ Duncan said. ‘Nobody would have guessed –’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Freddie Sempill said.

  ‘– would have guessed that your father was quite an important civil servant, they really wouldn’t. You sounded almost exactly like a Cockney barrow boy.’

  ‘Almost, but interestingly, not quite like,’ Paul said. ‘How are you, my darling old closet case?’

  ‘I’m not a closet case,’ Freddie Sempill said. ‘Most people think I’m straight, that’s all. It’s not the same as being a closet case.’

  ‘Your mother doesn’t think you’re straight,’ Paul said. ‘Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single person who does.’

  ‘Ah, well, the squaddie the other night thought I was,’ Freddie Sempill said triumphantly. ‘He said so. You wouldn’t have heard about him, though, I expect.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘That pub by the Knightsbridge barracks. You should have seen him. Shaved head, fat lip from a fight and a black eye, blond—’

  ‘How do you know he was blond if he had a shaved head?’

  ‘It was sort of glinting blond on his scalp, do you know what I mean? Amazing. And we had a drink, and I told him I was a plumber—’

  ‘Oh, pur-lease,’ Paul said, because Freddie Sempill worked as a manager on the menswear floor in Simpson’s on Piccadilly, ordering in lovely spring modes for the gentleman with the fuller figure.

  ‘It was just like two lads having a beer or two together. There was no reason for him to think I was anything but straight. It would have ruined the evening. But then at closing time he said he was in the mood for another drink, and I said, come back to mine, it’s not far—’

  ‘You’re in Fulham, still, aren’t you?’ Duncan said, but Freddie Sempill ignored this.

  ‘And he came back, and one thing led to another, and we ended up fooling around, if you know what I mean, and he said at one point, I’ve never wanted to do anything like this before, it must be being with another straight lad like you, you’d never tell anyone, would you? And he went off in the morning saying what no one knows doesn’t hurt anyone. He was perfect.’

  ‘He left in the morning?’ Paul said.

  ‘Yes, he stayed all night,’ Freddie Sempill said.

  ‘And he still thought you were straight after the whole night of kissing and cuddling and doing all sorts of awful gay-sex things?’ Duncan said.

  ‘That wasn’t my point,’ Paul said. ‘He’s supposed to be a soldier, and he stayed all night. Don’t they have to spend the night in the barracks, or whatever?’

  ‘He was on leave,’ Freddie Sempill said promptly.

  ‘And he was staying in his barracks anyway,’ Paul said. ‘You stupid queen, you’ve picked up another queen like you, pretending to be a soldier like you were pretending to be a plumber. Anyway. What are you doing here? Just passing? You won’t be coming in once w
e put the sign up that says “Big Gay Bookshop”.’

  Freddie Sempill rolled his eyes; he put his hands to his throat; he laughed boldly. Then he remembered that most people in the world thought he was straight, and he made a straight man’s shrugging gesture. ‘You aren’t seriously going to call it that, mate?’ he said in the end. ‘Not seriously.’

  ‘They are going to call it that,’ one of the carpenters called from the front, coming in after their cigarette break. ‘You’re behind the times, mate. That’s what all shops are going to be called these days. The Big Gay Grocer’s. The Big Gay Furniture Shop. The Big Gay Menswear Shop. The –’

  ‘It’s here. It’s called Simpson’s, sweety,’ Paul said. He had a warm relationship with the carpenters, who thought him a card.

  ‘– Big Gay Bookshop and the Big Gay Butcher’s.’

  ‘Butcher and butcher,’ Paul said. ‘Now, I can see you’re torn, Miss Sempill. You don’t want to stay in a big gay shop in case people think there’s something wrong with you. But you can see we’re about to do something manly and you want to join in, though you’re not quite sure what the manly thing is. Let me enlighten you. We’re going to paint the back wall a nice shade of terracotta.’

  ‘Looks orange to me,’ Freddie Sempill said, with an attempt at manliness, trying to impress the carpenters.

  ‘Well, it’s terracotta,’ Duncan said briskly.

  Freddie Sempill was one of those queens whom every queen knew: his attempt at being perceived as straight saw to that. He made a point of only going to bed with straight men, or those he believed to be straight. It was surprising, at first, that he had come at all to the Big Gay Bookshop. They had thought that, as Paul remarked to Duncan afterwards, he was only going to come before they put the sign up, before anyone could have seen what he was visiting. Once that had gone up, they wouldn’t see him for dust.