The Penultimate Chance Saloon

by Simon Brett

  ‘Because it’s real. Full frontal reality. Not good for you. Humankind, it has been observed by one wiser than me, cannot bear very much reality. I know I can’t.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Because the real world is so bloody depressing.’ Trevor raised his pint mug and peered through it. ‘That’s why I can only survive by looking through beer-tinted glasses.’

  Early in every conversation with Trevor there came a reminder that he was a depressive. Bill, who’d never experienced the condition, could sympathise, but not empathise. And secretly he reckoned his friend got a lot of mileage out of his depression. The drinking was justified on the grounds that he was a depressive; so was his appalling lack of responsibility in the matter of women. No bad behaviour was the fault of Trevor Rainsford; it was always the fault of whatever malign deity had made Trevor Rainsford a depressive.

  As ever, the mention of his depression seemed to lift it a bit. He raised his glass again, this time to Bill. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On being unmarried.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m unmarried.’

  ‘Then what are you?’

  ‘Well ...’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re unmarried. By definition.’

  This didn’t seem right, but Bill couldn’t fault the logic.

  ‘And a good thing too,’ Trevor went on.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘That you got away from Andrea.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you were so unsuited to each other. Everyone could see that.’

  Everyone except me, thought Bill. He was getting a little miffed about the way everyone was getting at his marriage. Ginnie ... Carolyn ... now Trevor ... not to mention Andrea herself. Was he the only person in the wide world who thought they’d had a vaguely workable marriage? Apparently so.

  ‘Do you hear from her much?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lucky bastard. One or other of my ex-wives is on the phone every day, moaning about something. Usually money.’

  ‘Andrea and I managed to sort out that side of things fairly amicably.’

  ‘All right for some.’

  ‘Do you still see any of them?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘See any of the children?’

  ‘Not if they can help it.’ Trevor let out a deep sigh. His lack of relationship with his children caused him a lot of depression ... though not enough depression to make him go and try to build bridges with them. On the whole, he preferred the depression to the children.

  ‘You were lucky not to have kids.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bill didn’t want the conversation to proceed any further down that route. The discovery of Andrea’s deliberate avoidance of conception was the area of his former marriage which continued to hurt most. ‘You still betting on the horses?’ he asked uncontroversially, knowing that the question would usually unleash a catalogue of equine disasters.

  But to his surprise, Trevor answered, ‘No. Given it up. What’s the point? Either a horse is going to win or it isn’t.’

  ‘Come on, that’s not the gambler’s spirit.’

  ‘True, though.’

  ‘Yes, everyone knows it’s true, but I thought gamblers were impervious to the truth. Everyone knows betting’s a mug’s game, everyone knows that statistically you’re almost definitely going to lose, but gamblers ignore that ... keep their optimism in the face of the overwhelming justification for pessimism.’

  ‘That’s how gambling used to work with me, Bill, but, as with all illusions, once you’ve seen through it, you can never really believe again. It’s like losing your faith.’

  ‘And you’ve lost your faith in horses?’

  ‘Totally. Gambling just doesn’t do it any more. Which is a pity, because that’s another of the activities that used to speed time up a bit for me. The tension of picking a horse to back, the build-up to the “off", the excitement of the race itself, the reaction to the result ... even when it was a loss, which it usually was, half-hours could flash by during that process, until you were aware of time again. And then you could build yourself up again for the next race ... There was a stage when I’d bet on anything the betting shop would offer ... horses, greyhounds ... even virtual horse racing. I mean, how sad is that – grown men getting excited about contests between computer-generated animations of horses? But now ...’ Trevor shook his head mournfully.

  ‘Doesn’t do it for you?’

  ‘Nothing does.’ Another swig from the pint pot. ‘Except this.’

  ‘What about women? Now you too are unmarried?’

  A lugubrious shake of the head. ‘No more sex for me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Can’t seem to do it. Bloody thing doesn’t work any more.’

  ‘Don’t you think that might have something to do with the alcohol?’

  ‘Who cares what it’s to do with? All I know is that it’s an unalloyed blessing. There was a period when even an undressed salad would get me randy, but that’s all gone. When I think of all the time over the years I’ve wasted thinking about sex, trying to get sex, trying to get out of sexual relationships ... you can’t believe how good it is to know all that nonsense is over. I’ve even stopped having fantasies ... God, the brain activity I used to devote to dreams of making it with a younger woman, you know, a pretty little thing in her twenties ...’

  For a moment the nostalgic thought almost rekindled something, but only for a moment. The fire was truly out. ‘All gone, I’m glad to say.

  ‘I mean, Bill, if you stop to think how much of a man’s life is wasted by women. Trying to get them into bed, yes, trying to get them to like you, but also – and this is the real time-waster – trying to understand them. That old Freud poser, “What do women want?” The answer is: nobody bloody knows. Even women don’t know, so how the hell should poor pathetic men have an inkling? The point about the question is that, like all the really important questions of life, it doesn’t have an answer. It’s taken me far too long to realise that, but finally I have got a handle on it. And you can’t believe the relief. I no longer feel guilty about my inability to understand women, because now I know for a fact that the assignment is impossible. For the first time in my life, I can think straight. My mind is completely unclouded.’

  ‘So you cloud it up again with alcohol.’

  ‘I know.’ Trevor grinned. ‘Bliss, isn’t it?’ He looked across at Bill, and once more raised his glass. ‘Welcome to post-sex heaven.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Count your blessings. You’ve managed to get out of your marriage to that witch Andrea.. .now you can enjoy yourself.’

  Yes, I intend to,’ said Bill cautiously.

  And you never have to think about women again.’

  The memories of Ginnie’s kiss and Carolyn’s back were too recent for Bill entirely to endorse that sentiment. He couldn’t quite envisage a definition of enjoying himself that involved no women at all.

  ‘I think I’ll let my mind follow its own course, Trevor. If it wants to stop thinking about sex, then fine. If not ... well ... I’ll wait and see.’

  ‘There is stuff you can take to stop you thinking about sex, you know ...’

  ‘What? Are you talking about bromide, given to the soldiers in the First World War – and supposedly during National Service too?’

  ‘I’m not talking about bromide. I’m talking about this’ Trevor gathered up their glasses. ‘Come on, we’ll have a couple more of these.’

  Chapter Five

  ... and, by way of contrast,

  a man in New York has proposed to his

  psychotherapist, reckoning marriage

  would be cheaper than paying her by the hour.

  ‘You’re still nursing a lot of anger.’

  ‘I don’t know that I am.’

  ‘Believe me, Bill, you are. I’ve just read this boo
k called Anger: Men At Work, and you fit perfectly into the B3 Category. You’re a “Mr Nice Guy”. You match the profile exactly.’

  Bill offered no prompt, knowing that Sal would elucidate anyway. They were having lunch in a little Turkish place in Fitzrovia, just round the corner from the office of Sal Juster Associates. In so far as the vagaries of Sal’s diets would allow, this was their most regular meeting place.

  ‘It says in the book that “Mr Nice Guys” like to be liked.’ ‘Don’t most of us?’

  ‘Yes, but with them it’s an obsession. And they’re afraid that if they express anger, then people will stop liking them.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable to me.’

  ‘No, but the point is, they won’t even express legitimate, justified anger. When someone’s really shafted them, they’ll still be nice to them.’

  ‘Anything for a quiet life,’ said Bill easily.

  ‘It may be a quiet life, but it’s not a healthy life. “Mr Nice Guys” are prone to stomach ulcers, sleep disturbance and depression.’

  ‘Well then, I must be in the wrong category, because I don’t suffer from any of those.’

  ‘Potentially. You suffer from them potentially.’

  ‘You mean they’ll catch up with me one day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can wait.’

  ‘Bill, repressing anger is very dangerous. And you must have so much hatred of Andrea inside you that you’re just not vocalising.’

  ‘You don’t know how much I vocalised it. When she first said she wanted a divorce, some fairly vicious comments were exchanged.’

  ‘Yes, but that was just between each other. And now that you no longer have Andrea around to vocalise your anger to, you’re suppressing it.’

  ‘You’re suggesting that I should moan on to everyone I meet about what a cow my ex-wife was?’

  ‘Why not? That’s what most divorcees do.’

  ‘Well, I don’t need to. Sorry to disappoint you, Sal, but I think I’ve pretty well got over the divorce.’

  ‘Oh, you may think that, but you haven’t. I read in this book, The Relationship Amoeba: Splitting and Starting a New Life, that to get over a divorce, it takes a month for each year that you were married.’

  ‘Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones, who gets off more lightly than that.’

  ‘I do worry about you, Bill.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, and it’s much appreciated. But it’s not necessary.’

  He grinned across at his agent. Sal Juster was small, with short dark hair, and rather endearingly stained teeth from the cigarettes she kept giving up and going back to again. Her navy-blue eyes were surrounded by wrinkles of permanent anxiety. She wasn’t just anxious for herself, she was anxious for everyone else, and particularly for her clients. Her role in life was as a Little Miss Fixit. If she saw something was wrong with the circumstances of one of her friends, then her God-given mission was to sort it out. The trouble was that her friends were often totally unaware of the problems that she set out to fix for them.

  Still, Bill appreciated her as a good agent and a pleasant lunch companion. She didn’t look as old as the sixty years which mere mathematics dictated she must have lived. And she never talked of retirement; ‘Agents don’t retire,’ she said. Her make-up was heavy, with punctiliously defined lips and eyebrows. She was full-breasted, and would probably have been plumper but for the ever-changing regimes of dieting and exercise to which she subjected her body.

  Her emotional life had been chequered – indeed positively tartan – and she changed partners as frequently as she changed belief systems. Given her history of relationship disasters, she remained surprisingly optimistic. Just as she continuously believed she would one day find the perfect lifestyle, so she was certain she would eventually find the perfect man (or woman – she’d tried both).

  In spite of her moments of sheer loopiness, Bill liked Sal, and in his newly-awoken state, found himself wondering what it would be like to go to bed with her. Interesting, certainly – he felt sure she’d put as much research into sexual technique as she had to all other aspects of her life. No, the sex would be fun. What might not be quite so much fun would be the inevitable deconstruction of the act afterwards. And the quotations from all the books she would have read on the subject.

  ‘I still don’t believe you,’ Sal went on. ‘You must be bottling up a lot of resentment.’

  ‘Why?’

  All those years with Andrea. “The corrosion of continuity.’”

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It’s a quotation from a book called Throttling the Individual: An Analysis of Marriage. It says how destructive living with someone totally unsuitable for you can be.’

  ‘You’re saying Andrea was totally unsuitable for me?’

  ‘Always. Totally.’

  Another to add to the list of gloomy commentators on his marriage. If they all thought that, why had none of them said anything before? He suspected there might be an element of hindsight here He knew the divorce had polarised his and Andrea’s friends. Those who had decided to join his faction perhaps felt they needed to be extravagantly anti-her. And possibly, gathered round a sizzling nut cutlet in the Roberts household in Muswell Hill, Andrea and Dewi's friends were equally dismissive of Bill Stratton.

  ‘Yes, well, if you don’t mind, Sal, I’d quite like to move off the subject of my marriage. When I arrived here today, I was feeling quite good about it, had come to terms with the situation, but now –’ ‘Ah, no, you only think you’ve come to terms with the situation. There’s a very good bit on that in this book Front-Loading: Tht Masks We Make for –’

  He raised both hands in supplication. ‘Please. Could we just talk about anything other than my marriage?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, why not my so-called “career”? You are my agent, after all.’

  ‘Yes...’ Sal hesitated for a moment, unwilling to give up the opportunity of sorting out Bill’s post-divorce trauma, but decided she could always come back to that. All right, I did want to talk to you about work, anyway. I think the moment has come for us to get pro-active.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Now you no longer have Andrea holding you back, it’s time for us to maximise your earning potential.’

  ‘Just a minute. I wasn’t aware that Andrea ever “held me back”.’

  ‘Of course she did. She disapproved of you capitalising on your commercial appeal.’

  ‘She never said that.’

  ‘She didn’t have to say anything. She’d just wrinkle her nose at the idea of you being paid for opening supermarkets or handing out prizes at awards ceremonies.’

  When he thought about it, Bill realised that Sal was probably right. Andrea had always been dismissive of celebrities ‘prostituting themselves’, and she had been pretty sniffy about the personal appearances - or ‘PAs’, as they were known in the business – that he had done. The further he got away from the marriage, the more he could sympathise with the outsiders’ views of it. Andrea and he really had had very little in common.

  ‘She thought that stuff was beneath you, Bill.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But you don’t, do you?’

  ‘God, no. I might question the sanity of someone who’d be prepared to pay me for doing that kind of stuff, but I have no reservations about doing it.’

  ‘Good. I’ll do some ringing round. Lots of people always looking for PAs – any name from the television, doesn’t matter who it is.’ Bill had known this reality for so long that it had no power to wound him. ‘And I really do think it’s time you were launched on the after- dinner speaking circuit. You always used to say your evenings were sacrosanct, you liked spending them with Andrea ...’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Though from various other things you said, I gather she was out most evenings doing health service committee work and what- have-you ...’

  Once again, Sal had come very close to the truth. There ha
d certainly been more busy evenings for Andrea towards the end of I the marriage. Idly, Bill wondered whether they had been genuine health service committees, or ‘what-have-you’ cover-ups for evenings spent with Dewi. Presumably the affair had started with clandestine, snatched moments and paroxysms of guilt. Bill wondered how much the knowledge would have worried him if he’d been aware at the time. It certainly didn’t worry him now. He seemed to be coming round to the consensus view, that the only thing remarkable about his marriage was that it had lasted as long as it did.

  ‘Anyway, now you don’t have that problem, I can really start building up the after-dinner bookings for you.’

  ‘Whoa, whoa, Sal, just a minute. One thing you’re forgetting is that I’ve never done an after-dinner speech in my life.’

  Not technically, but for heaven’s sake, you’ve spent your entire professional life talking in public.’

  ‘Reading in public. Big difference.’

  ‘No, it’s not. For an after-dinner speech, you just learn what you would otherwise have read. Easy-peasy.’

  ‘But people who do after-dinner speaking are usually people who’ve done something with their lives. So they have something to talk about.’

  ‘A lot of them have never done anything. They’re just people who the audience recognises from the television, who stand up, drop a few names, and tell a few jokes. You fit the profile perfectly.’

  ‘Thank you. I would point out, though, that I don’t know any jokes.’

  ‘Bill, you have the biggest archive of jokes of anyone I know. ‘How do you mean?’

  Are you being deliberately dense? BWOC’

  ‘Oh.’

  What is BWOC but an infinite resource of funny stories?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. I’d never thought of using it in that

  way.’

  ‘Really, Bill. You have the commercial instinct of a frozen pea Of course you can use it. All tried and tested lines –’

  And all – however unlikely they sound – genuine news stories.’

  ‘Exactly. They’re perfect. Combining humour and journalistic integrity – what a formula. They’d go down a storm on the after-dinner circuit. And also, the great thing is, that’s what the audience expects of you. They see your name and they immediately think “by way of contrast”. The fact that you then tell a stream of “by way of contrast” stories is exactly what they want from you.’