The Emperor Waltz. Philip Hensher

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      ‘Oh, my days,’ Nick said. ‘The fuck is that. That is never your dad’s, I don’t fucking believe it.’

      ‘He thinks my mum doesn’t know about it,’ Anita said. ‘He gets it and then he likes to have a little snort off it sometimes in the evenings when we all think he’s working up here. I saw what he looks at on the computer, and it’s all like lesbian porn – he has a snort of this stuff, and then he switches on his computer and watches these like whores going at it, and my mum’s like going don’t disturb your dad and shit, he’s working so hard at the moment, and I’m like trying not to piss myself like laughing.’

      ‘Man that shit is nang,’ Nathan said. ‘Yeah, this is like the best evening ever, turning into.’

      ‘Turning into, man, turning into,’ Nick said, and they bumped their fists together. ‘We is going to watch us some of that lesbian porn and get high. You ever see lesbian porn, Basil, my man?’

      ‘But what on earth is that stuff?’ Basil said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that. What on earth is Mr Khan doing hiding it in his top drawer?’

      ‘Ah, well,’ Nathan said. ‘We is going to show you just how excellent a ting can be, and you is going to have yourself a good time.’

8.

      ‘We’ve just stayed too late for the children,’ Vivienne was saying, helping Basil into his overcoat at the end of the evening. ‘Basil gets so tired, he sort of stops making sense altogether.’

      ‘Poor little boy,’ Michael Khan said. ‘I hope you all had a good time, children.’

      ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Khan,’ Nathan – or was it Nick? – said. The three others were in a line on the stairs, Anita’s head in a shadow from the upstairs landing. ‘We had a smashing time.’

      ‘Come back soon,’ Anita’s disembodied voice said. Michael Khan gave her a glance, a suspicious glance. What had happened? he seemed to be asking himself; but then his head clarified, and he smiled again.

      ‘Come on, you,’ Vivienne said to Basil. ‘It’s time you were in bed, really.’

      ‘Time, yeah,’ Basil said, his head lolling from side to side with tiredness. ‘That is just so wrong.’

      ‘Poor little boy,’ Shabnam Khan said, laughing a little. ‘Your car’s not blocked in, is it, Vivienne? It was lovely to see you, too, Charles – Caroline. I guess the next time we see you, we’ll have been to Washington State, we’ll have lots of lovely boring whale stories to tell you.’

      ‘We look forward to that,’ Charles Carraway said. ‘Come on, boys. Had a good time, did you?’

      ‘Peak, man,’ Nathan said.

      ‘Yeah, peak,’ Basil said.

      His mother gave him a startled glance. And then, without any intervening time, Basil was apparently being driven away. He felt drowsy but full of ideas. It had been very nice, he had told his mummy. The others had been fun. It had been a nice evening. And she had had a nice evening too. He wasn’t going to tell her everything! About the vodka, no fear. She didn’t need to know about that. And the other stuff, that came later, the poppers, he wasn’t going to mention that. There would be a fearful row if he mentioned that, or if she found out about it somehow, she or Daddy. It had been strange and he wasn’t sure at first he liked it. But he had liked it, it had been fun to feel all wobbly and wavey for five minutes. The other stuff, the stuff that Anita had given them from her daddy’s secret drawer, the white stuff called cocaine, he didn’t think that was so good. She had said that he might feel frightened and he hadn’t felt frightened exactly, but he’d wanted to talk a lot and he was worried afterwards, and it made his nose hurt, and it felt really strange, the idea of doing that. He wouldn’t be doing that again, no fear. But it was interesting to have tried all those things and to have found out about that thing called anal sex, which Basil had never heard of before and then to have seen it even later on, that had been really quite a coincidence and Basil felt quite grown-up to know about all these things. Basil remembered that those twins had said that they had bought the poppers from a boy called Kevin or a brother called Chris and their name was Garry. He was fairly sure that there was another brother at his school, a boy called Adam Garry, and on Monday he would surprise him by telling him that he would like him to get some of those poppers for Basil, too. There was the Christmas money which he would spend on it. And then there were plenty of people at school who would be interested to try it. You could charge 50p for every time someone sniffed it. He couldn’t wait to tell people how nice and strange it was, and they carried on journeying the short distance into the night.

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