The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher

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СКАЧАТЬ out. She hasn’t been to see me. So you’ll get a little bit more. That’ll be nice, won’t it.’

      ‘And a lawyer’s drawn this up, has he?’ Duncan said. Samuel looked withdrawn and serene. ‘Oh, I see – it’s just something you’ve bought from the newsagent and filled in. Got Sister Balls to get from the newsagent. Something for everyone to discover after you die? I see. You just want people to know that they don’t deserve anything from you.’

      Duncan looked at his father. He knew perfectly well that Duncan would take this document and destroy it. It could have no effect on what happened to Samuel’s estate. But before Samuel died, he wanted to make clear to Duncan what he thought of him.

      ‘The thing is,’ Duncan said, ‘I don’t think that Domenica would take your money anyway. I think she’d probably take however much it was, and hand it over to the NSPCC. Do you think she wants anything to do with you?’

      ‘I’m her father,’ Samuel said.

      ‘There was an afternoon, wasn’t there,’ Duncan said, ‘when you said, Let’s all go out swimming, the children and I. Which was odd, because you never suggested anything like that for the children’s pleasure. You know, don’t you, that because Dommie never had any parties after she was eight years old, no one ever thought to ask her to theirs? I don’t suppose you ever thought of that. You only ever wanted to do your own thing. And Dommie said that she couldn’t swim, she didn’t know how, and you said that didn’t matter. You’d gone to the effort of buying her a swimming costume. She didn’t have one. She was only six. And when we all got to the swimming pool, you said to her, This is the way to swim, you know, and you picked her up by her arms and legs and threw her into the deep end, with no floats or anything, and just stood there. The lifeguard jumped in and rescued her. He gave you what for, you horrible old man, asking you what you thought you were doing. Don’t you remember?’

      Samuel shook his head demurely. He looked like such a small person, a small entrapped dwarf in a fairytale with a secret.

      ‘I remember. Even in the 1950s, you didn’t just throw small children into the deep end of swimming pools and wait to see if they drowned or not.’

      ‘Oh, once,’ Samuel said, shaking his head.

      ‘Every week,’ Duncan said. ‘Making her wait at the table to eat mutton fat. Making her walk all the way back to school in the dark in January to make her find a pencil case she had dropped. Do you know, you’ve never once given me any help or advice – you’ve never done anything for me, except once. Mummy made you explain to me how to shave. You couldn’t get out of that. That was it. I’m glad you’re dying. It won’t make the slightest difference to anyone. And what’s this rubbish?’ He held up the will. In the light it was a sad object: the handwritten parts were shaky and full of uneven gaps and holes. ‘No one’s going to pay any attention to that. I’m surprised Balls didn’t tell you not to be so stupid. Shall I burn it or shall I just tear it up?’

      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ