The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher

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СКАЧАТЬ the worse. In curiosity rather than anything else, he turned on the bedside lamp. It was the same pink fringed one his mother had always had. The light showed an old, unshaven man, the cheeks sunk in deep under the cheekbones and the eye sockets like a skull’s, falling profoundly into worlds of darkness. The skin was yellow and slack, as if its possessor had slept long under bridges, living on methylated spirits. Only the cleanliness of the dark blue pyjamas with white piping, and the neatness of the sheets, suggested anything but the derelict. It was as if an old tramp had been taken from his streetside cardboard box by a benevolent, given a bath and set down within clean linen to die. Duncan resisted the temptation to run his hand down the side of his father’s face. There was no temptation to kiss it. But the thought came to mind like this: what would it be like to have a father who, on his deathbed, you wanted to kiss? The light had disturbed Samuel in his sudden sleep, and now he woke, raising his fists to his eyes and rubbing them, yawning like a cat, turning about to see what the disturbance was.

      ‘Oh, it’s you again,’ Samuel said. ‘I didn’t know if it was really you. I keep thinking people are here. You should have stayed in Spain. No, in Italy, that’s where you’ve been.’

      ‘I’ve come back,’ Duncan said. ‘I’m not going to tire you out. I’ll come back tomorrow.’

      ‘Yes, perhaps that’s best,’ Samuel said.

      (And downstairs Rachel was turning to her sisters and saying what she should have said hours, or days ago; saying that she had, in fact, not got round to taking anything to the solicitor’s, that she was rather afraid that the will was upstairs still, in poor Samuel’s keeping. ‘But he won’t know about that, the son, will he?’ she was saying plaintively, and Ruth was shaking her head, and Rebecca was shaking her head, too.)

      Samuel looked around conspiratorially. ‘I’ll tell you something important tomorrow, if you come back.’

      ‘You can tell me now, if you like,’ Duncan said. ‘I don’t mind listening.’

      ‘It’s not a question of whether you want to listen or not,’ Samuel said. ‘It’s whether I want to tell you. It’s my business.’

      ‘Well, you can tell me or not tell me,’ Duncan said. ‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t put anything much off until tomorrow that you want people to know.’

      ‘You wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?’ Samuel said. But doubt set in, and he started saying ‘You wouldn’t, would you – would, would, wouldn’t, should,’ until he could no longer decide what it was normal to say, and he fell silent.

      ‘You know,’ Duncan said, quite calmly, ‘it’s very bad luck, getting lung cancer like that. Not smoking, ever, and then you get lung cancer. I don’t know that that’s supposed to happen.’

      ‘I did smoke,’ Samuel said. ‘But before you were born. Before I met your mother, even. It was when I was at school, and when I had my first job. I was a clerk in the office of – of – of – they were Jews. That’s right, they were Jews, the first people I worked for. I smoked because they didn’t, none of them. But it didn’t do me any good. I gave up just before I met your mother and before I went to another job. That was when I realized that I was never going to be promoted in that place. They only promoted their own type.’

      ‘That must have been fifty years ago,’ Duncan said. He wondered that he did not know that his father had ever smoked. His mother, he was sure, never had. ‘I don’t think you get lung cancer from that, decades later.’

      ‘They don’t know,’ Samuel said. ‘Doctors never know. I’m glad I’m not in hospital. I’m glad they’re letting me stay here.’

      ‘Do you remember,’ Duncan said, and Samuel, for the first time, turned his head towards him, and almost smiled. ‘Do you remember that day when you and Mummy and Dommie and I, we went out for the day? I think it must have been for Dommie’s birthday.’

      ‘I think so,’ Samuel said. His lips were dry and flaking; he was running his tongue over them.

      ‘Where did we go? Did we go to Whipsnade, or some other zoo, or Box Hill, or was it to the theatre? It would have been a special treat. I don’t know that Whipsnade was open then, come to think of it, so maybe not there. And did you ask Dommie if she’d like to bring ten friends with her? I wish I could remember what her special treat was.’

      Samuel turned his head away. ‘When it gets worse,’ he said, ‘they’ll take me into hospital, but I hope I’m not going to know about any of that.’

      ‘Oh, you’re not going to get any worse than this,’ Duncan said lightly. ‘This is probably it. I wouldn’t have thought you had long to go. About Dommie’s birthday. What was it that we all did together? I think I remember now. She was going to be nine, and you told her that you thought she was too old to have a party, and she couldn’t ask her friends round because it would cost too much and it would be too much noise and trouble. But since you ask, you’re not going to get any worse. You’re probably going to die quite soon.’

      Samuel turned his face to Duncan in disbelief. His hollows and unshaven angles said only this: it’s your obligation to do whatever I say. It was not for Duncan to do anything but to give way.

      ‘So,’ Duncan said. ‘Are you comfortable? Can I do anything for you, in your last hours? Or do you just want me to go away so that you can sit with Rebecca and Ruth and Rachel? I don’t really care.’

      ‘Oh, you think you’re so clever,’ Samuel said, breathing deeply, the air juddering within. He raised his thin hand to his hairy, bony chest in the gap in his pyjama jacket. ‘That’s what you were always like, showing off. Let me do my dance – I made it up, Mummy. Look, Aunty Rachel, look, Uncle Harold, look at the dolly I made, isn’t it pretty. Oh, yes. I can see you came back to show off and tell me to bugger off before I die. But I can show you one thing.’

      There was a long pause; Samuel’s breath guttered and shuddered; he twisted in pain; he pulled at the bedsheets. Duncan waited. He did not want to help his father. He wanted to see how long it would take him to return to the point where he could speak again, or sleep. He watched with interest. In less than five minutes, his father had calmed. Outside the door, a chair scraped against the parquet. Sister Balls must have returned, and be sitting outside. He did not have a lot of time.

      ‘It hurts to talk,’ Samuel said. ‘There’s one thing I want you to see. In that box, there, on the dressing-table.’

      Duncan went over and drew it out. It was a document; a pre-printed form filled in in Samuel’s wavering looping hand, a will. ‘I don’t want to see this,’ Duncan said.

      ‘Look at it,’ Samuel said.

      Duncan did. There was what looked like a duplicate underneath. In a moment he read that his father was leaving his whole estate in equal parts to his two children, his three sisters, his five nephews and nieces, and seven named charities and educational institutions, including the Harrow rugby club, and Harrow School, which neither Duncan nor his father had attended. ‘I see,’ Duncan said. The will, which was to give him, what, a seventeenth part of this ugly house and the bank balance, was dated from two months ago. It was witnessed by a Corinna Balls, and another woman, whose handwriting made Duncan think she was another nurse.

      ‘You didn’t ask Aunt Rebecca or Aunt Ruth to witness it,’ he said.

      ‘No, you stupid boy,’ Samuel said. ‘You can’t get people to witness something they’re going to—’ He broke down СКАЧАТЬ