The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher

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СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_976580ab-9e12-5a51-b5c7-180f650d9a04">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.

BOOK 3

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 СКАЧАТЬ