The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher

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СКАЧАТЬ a man, a student-type in a neckerchief, with long hair and purple bags, had come into the pub just before the afternoon closing and asked if they had rooms that they hired out for meetings. Tarquin had shown him the upper room, then piled high with lumber and old broken things, and had said it could be cleared out easily if this was going to be a regular thing. It was – Jones and his group of revolutionaries met every Wednesday night, paid five pounds for the privilege and managed to sink a few drinks downstairs once their meeting was over. The revolution didn’t come, during which Tarquin and Nora, Nora observed sardonically, would probably have been strung up as bloodsuckers by Jones’s group. Instead, Jones’s group kept coming, every Wednesday night, the same eight or nine of them, give or take a few.

      The word spread. These days, there were four weekly groups and three that met once a fortnight or once a month, all shelling out eight pounds each, now that the costs had gone up so much, as regular and uncomplaining as clockwork. Nora thought they should raise the cost of hire again, but Tarquin thought they’d jib at ten pounds. ‘They’ll pay up,’ Nora said. ‘They always feel more passionately about revolution when there’s a Tory government. They don’t like her, you see. They talk about women’s rights, but they don’t like it when there’s a woman in charge.’

      He didn’t really know what they were all up to. They were all lefties, he supposed, but you got that, living in Camden Town, these days. The biggest one was CND – he knew what they were, all right. It was so popular; the group that met here was only the West Camden division, and still forty people came every week. They brought their own film projector, quite often, and liked to sit in darkness, watching old films about nuclear war. It took all sorts to make a world. There was one that might be something to do with vivisection or vegetarians, judging by their strange shoes. But they paid their eight pounds like anyone else. ‘I draw the line only at nudists,’ Tarquin said sagely to his son, Tom, who shook his head. Tom had voted for Mrs Thatcher in May.

      Tonight was one of the fortnightly ones. They were all men, coming in ones and the occasional pair, but not talking loudly or, most of them, even greeting Tarquin. They just ducked their heads and moved through the quiet pub as quickly as possible. They wore, most of them, checked lumberjack shirts and denim trousers or, until the weather really hotted up, leather trousers; one or two, now that it had hotted up, some bright-coloured shorts, like the ones the teenagers wore, though these daft Herberts were verging on middle age. ‘I know what they are,’ Nora had said tonight, but Tarquin didn’t respond. He didn’t care, so long as they were just talking upstairs. One of the first to arrive had asked if he could pin up a sign, on the brown-painted doorframe by the side of the bar, directing ‘anyone new,’ he said hopefully. On it, now, pinned neatly with two drawing pins was a piece of paper reading ‘CHE meeting – this way!’ There was another on the door of the pub outside – he hoped that wouldn’t lead to trouble, he said to the main one. But he didn’t think it would. For whatever reason, Tarquin thought that they weren’t a revolutionary group calling for executions in the streets. Whatever CHE meant. It was the exclamation mark, or perhaps the heart underneath, or perhaps just because the notice had been written by the daft Herberts in purple felt-tip pen.

8.

      They had hardly started when the door to the upper room was opened abruptly. There was an unfamiliar face, a big bearded fellow and a slim girl with limp blonde hair behind him. ‘Is this the Central and South American group?’ he said. ‘I was told it met on Fridays.’

      ‘It might well do,’ Christopher said, turning round impatiently. ‘This isn’t it. We’re nothing to do with Central or South America.’

      ‘I saw your sign,’ the man said. ‘So they meet on Fridays still? We want to come to that.’

      ‘I’ve no idea when they meet,’ Christopher said. ‘It might well be Friday. But it’s not today. We’re here today and we’ve got nothing to do with Central or South America.’

      The man and his girl withdrew; she had been holding a bottle of some kind of clear spirits, only two-thirds full. She waved it in obscure greeting, or farewell, walking backwards down the stairs.

      ‘Do you think they’d been drinking that in the street, out of the bottle?’ Nat said, when they had gone.

      ‘Oh, no,’ Alan said. ‘They’re very strait-laced, those revolutionary types. They look scary, but they’re like pussycats, really. They’ll have brought that from home, or from their mum and dad’s, probably. They won’t be drinking out of a bottle in the street. You know, that’s not the first time that’s happened.’

      ‘What, the confusion with the South American struggle?’ Andrew said. Andrew was the most revolutionary of them or, really, the only one.

      ‘It’s being called CHE that does it,’ Nat said. ‘They think it’s something to do with that man they all like so much, the one with the beard and the gaze upwards, you know, Che Guevara. That’s the third time we’ve had that. We should really spell out what we are on the poster, write Campaign for Homosexual Equality, then they wouldn’t come upstairs by mistake.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t mind them coming upstairs. One was quite nice. I was sorry to see him go, to be honest. That one I wasn’t so bothered about.’

      ‘People talk about anal sex as though it’s the be-all and end-all of gay identity,’ Christopher said. He had been trying to revert to what he had been saying before the bearded man came in. ‘And for me it was very important. But I understand if people don’t want to assert it as important. For me—’

      ‘I don’t think we can really write Campaign for Homosexual Equality on the poster,’ Alan said. ‘The landlord might have views about that.’

      ‘Well, we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Honestly!’ Nat said. ‘I thought the point of all of this was to be proud and public. I don’t see anything proud and public about hiding behind initials, in case the landlord doesn’t like it.’

      ‘He’ll get his windows smashed,’ Alan said. ‘And we’d be beaten up.’

      ‘For me, anal sex was always very important,’ Christopher intoned.

      There was a noise on the stairs, and the noise of a homosexual talking to himself. ‘The cheek of it,’ he was saying. ‘Now, where did I put my wallet? Not that pocket, not this pocket, not— Oh, here it is. You’d lose,’ he said, as he came into the room, ‘your head if it wasn’t attached to your shoulders. Hello, hello, hello, hello, Christopher, hello, Nat, hello, all. Am I late? Have you started?’

      ‘Yes, Paul,’ they said. ‘Yes, you’re late, we’ve started, it doesn’t matter, you’re late.’

      ‘Well,’ Paul said. He was always late for CHE meetings. He was wearing, like the rest of them, a lumberjack shirt, but it was oddly assorted with a pair of tiny denim shorts, and he had tied the tails of the shirt somewhat above the waist of the shorts to leave his midriff bare. He had blond hair with highlights, and a glossy moustache; just to the left of his mouth was a beauty spot, which some thought was applied with the end of the same mascara brush that gave his eyelashes such length and curl. ‘You’ll never guess why I’m late. I was just on the way out—’

      ‘Have a seat,’ Andrew said. He was eyeing Paul from head to foot with a faint air of disapproval; his hairy arms were folded across his stomach and his voice was deep and emphatic; he had his revolutionary scowl on.

      ‘I will,’ Paul said, and sat down. From his СКАЧАТЬ