The Penultimate Chance Saloon

by Simon Brett

  Any seduction involved was verbal. He didn’t make passes, he didn’t put unsanctioned hands on thighs or breasts. When he met a woman he fancied and he seemed to be getting on with, he would gently ease the conversation towards talk of sex. If he got no response, he’d move back to less controversial topics.

  But when the response came, he would tease the talk onwards, until some kind of agreement was reached. The negotiations, he knew, could always break down at the last minute, and sometimes they did. But at such moments his reaction, which in his youth would have been an agony of seething frustration, was now mild disappointment.

  The sex itself sometimes worked, and sometimes didn’t. But usually it was at least interesting. And Bill Stratton, having spent most of his adult life with one woman, came to realise how much he liked women as a gender, how much he enjoyed being in the company of women.

  What he remembered about sex from his minimal premarital experience was the difficulty of finding opportunities to do it. He thought back to a time of constant frustration, when he didn’t have a flat or even a car, when parents proved obstinately determined not to leave the house for any length of time, when bus shelters were too public and golf courses too wet.

  But now, for a single adult, the opportunities were infinite. Most of the women he coupled with in London were single too, with homes of their own. When he was travelling round the country doing his after-dinner speaking, his contract always provided him with that philanderer’s essential, a hotel room.

  And of course, his own flat was permanently available. But he never took any of the women back there. He didn’t want them to know about his domestic life. Despite being recognised as a minor celebrity, he wanted to preserve an element of anonymity.

  The fact that his life had become a sequence of one-night stands caused him little guilt. The majority of the women with whom he shared his enthusiasm were equal players and wanted no more. Often divorcees, they were as wary of ‘relationships’ and ‘commitment’ as he was. Yes, there was the occasional tear or harsh word, but they were the exception.

  And Bill Stratton deeply felt that he deserved a lot of sex. He remembered seeing a television interview with John Betjeman towards the end of his life, in which the old reprobate, asked if he had any regrets, stated the plaintive wish that he might have had more sex. Bill Stratton never wanted to find himself in that position. Only once he was out of his marriage to Andrea did he realise how much he had felt cheated of his part in the sixties sexual revolution. He had a right to as many lovers as possible before age finally took its toll, before the descent of that final shutter which would indicate the end of all sexual activity.

  Bill was also surprised by how easy it was. After his ‘Should we?’ moment with Maria, he suffered no more such qualms. The shoulds and should-nots which once ruled his life had lost their potency. Finally, he felt grown-up.

  He knew that not all his friends would agree with his definition of maturity. Though he felt confident it wasn’t, his behaviour might be seen by some as predatory. Sal would psychoanalyse the hell out of him for seeking sex rather than ‘relationships’. Carolyn would shake her head wearily at further confirmation that ‘you men are all the same.’ And Ginnie ... he tried to shut his mind to conjectures about what Ginnie might think.

  The way he avoided hearing such unsolicited opinions about his rediscovered sex life was by the simple expedient of telling nobody. And that went for male friends as well as female. He knew that some men liked nothing better than to share details of their conquests with others, but to Bill the idea of spilling the beans to someone like Trevor was anathema. He liked to think his reticence was a point of honour, an unwillingness to make public the names of ladies with whom he had shared an intimate moment. But really he knew that such self-justification was casuistry.

  Remarkably, even in London, his policy of not going to bed with any woman more than once had not led to any embarrassing subsequent encounters. Dinner parties to which he was invited always tended to be in different circles of acquaintances. Being an unattached presentable straight male was valuable currency in London social life.

  He was also fortunate that the women he chose – or who chose him – seemed to have the same desire for discretion. Which suited him fine.

  He was sure this was partly because of their age. Though like all men, he could be turned on by the sight of a pretty young actress on television or in a movie, what appealed to Bill Stratton was his own generation of women. He fancied the women he should have been making love to in the late sixties, when he should have been sowing his wild oats. Meeting Andrea had consigned those wild oats to rot away in the large barn of marriage, but now he lusted after the women he had missed out on, the women he should have had, the women who were his by right.

  So almost all of his bed-mates were around his age or older. Despite occasional wistfulness for the resilience of young flesh, he found mature women infinitely attractive. Maybe having lived with Andrea all that time, having watched her body imperceptibly change, made him more forgiving of the flaws of age. The glazed cotton of young skin might have turned to muslin, but it was still warm, the touch of flesh remained unique. Hands might be veined and freckled, but they could still hold and caress. For the first time he encountered stretch-marks, the silver flashes of unknowable experience. Like old houses, older women’s bodies wore their quirky histories with a pride that he found more appealing than the slick convenient brand-newness of a starter home.

  And then there were their eyes; infinitely various, infinitely wise. The eyes of young women had a bland, anonymous beauty; it was the surrounding wrinkles that created character.

  There was also a basic fairness about Bill Stratton. How could he possibly blame women for the changes time had wrought on their bodies, when it had worked the same malign magic on his? Whitening hair, prominent veins and general sagging had caught up with him. What right had he to criticise their other victims?

  One of the big advantages older women possessed was that they were knowledgeable about sex. Procreation or the prevention of procreation had long since ceased to be relevant; the only purpose of sex was to achieve pleasure. The potentially coy ones dropped out early in the course of mutual chat-up. Those who stayed the course revealed themselves to be at least as keen on a sexual encounter as Bill himself. They knew what they wanted, and they weren’t afraid to instruct him on how to help them achieve it. As a result, Bill Stratton’s sexual technique improved beyond recognition. He was a diligent and generous pupil, ready to pass on to his next partner the benefits of what he had learnt from the previous one.

  And, though he wouldn’t have been so crude as to subscribe to the line that ‘it’s better to make love to older women because they’re so grateful’, he was pleased that his efforts usually seemed to be appreciated.

  He rather suspected his current life-style could not last for ever, but he felt no qualms about it. And had anyone asked him to explain his behaviour, he might well have used the justification of that great arbiter of contemporary morals, Bill Clinton...‘Because I could’.

  ‘Could’ in Bill Stratton’s book, was a great improvement on ‘should’.

  * * *

  Varied and wonderful were the sexual encounters of his period of freedom.

  * * *

  ‘Bill, that was stunning.’

  ‘Thank you, Rachel. We aim to please.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Her hand leapt to her mouth. ‘I haven’t taken my pill!’

  ‘But surely you’re, er ... well, not to put too fine a point on it ... at your age ...’

  ‘Not that. Blood pressure.’

  ‘Ah.’

  * * *

  ‘Cheryl, you’re insatiable.’

  ‘No, I’m not, Bill. I can be satisfied.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘By the right person.’

  ‘Ah.’

  * * *

  ‘Sheila, was that from a car crash?’

  ‘No. Hip replacement.’<
br />
  * * *

  ‘And, by way of contrast, let’s try this!

  ‘Ooh...Celia!’

  * * *

  He never stayed the night. Some of the women claimed they wanted him to, but most made no demurral when he left. Partly, they had learnt by experience, and that was what they expected of men. And partly, they were realistic about the unforgiving focus daylight might bring to their charms. God is merciful, as we get older – he gives us failing eyesight, together with the instinct to take our glasses off in bed. But He still hasn’t managed to fix the way we look in the cold light of day.

  Bill knew, anyway, that his magnetism was finite. He didn’t want to stay the night with any of the women. He didn’t want to risk getting too close to what he thought of as his ‘GCD.’ In Bill’s mind ‘GCD’ stood for Guaranteed Charisma Duration. It’s the length of time for which a man can still stay attractive to a woman who doesn’t know him that well. In other words, it’s how long he can stay fiendishly witty/charming/caring/fantastic in bed. The length of time before he becomes tired/selfish/thoughtless/short-tempered/sexually-drained/ himself. The length of time during which the magic of a relationship can be sustained ... in other words, until he needs a shave, a fart or a crap, just like every other man she’s met before.

  Bill was punctilious, though, about his expressions of gratitude. Even when the sex hadn’t been that good, a graceful message of thanks was always conveyed. And, having tried it out satisfactorily on Maria, he saw no reason to change the formula in which the message was expressed. His online Interflora account was kept busy. Nor did he bother to think up a new form of words to accompany the flowers. And, by way of contrast, thank you for an unforgettable experience.’ It sounded all right, it was gracious, and it reminded the woman that she’d been made love to by a minor celebrity. So far as he was concerned, the flowers closed the transaction. The moment he’d given the woman thanks for an unforgettable experience, he was at liberty to forget her as soon as possible.

  Bill was generally very impressed by the efficiency of the Interflora website, though from his point of view it did have one flaw. The service would remember a customer’s credit card details, and an address list of the recipients of the customer’s floral gifts, but it didn’t have a memory for the messages sent with each bouquet. Bill Stratton would have found that a convenience. But it seemed to be a service for which there wasn’t a demand. Most Interflora customers, Bill was forced to conclude, sent different messages to different people.

  * * *

  And, in his late-flowering promiscuity, did Bill Stratton himself change? Very little. Oh, he visited the gym more often. He had no illusions that he would ever recapture the physique of a young, muscle-bound Adonis (which he had never had), but since his body was going to be on display, he tried to ensure there was as little of it as possible. He wasn’t obsessive about fitness, though. He didn’t need to be. Nobody was going to see that much. Generally speaking, the women who shared his sexual encounters were even keener on muted lighting than he was.

  The one big change he made was to his underwear. He found the small black briefs, variations of which he’d worn throughout his married life, were greeted too frequently in bedrooms with suppressed giggles. In boxer shorts he felt less tethered, but they did get fewer laughs ... which was actually strange to Bill, because when he’d been growing up, the only times he’d seen boxer shorts were in American cartoons, on men who were meant to look funny in them.

  And as for negative feelings – the suspicion that there might be something rather sad about a sixty-year-old man whose relationships were reduced to sexual scalp-counting – he managed to force such thoughts out of his mind. Bill Stratton had always been good at forcing unwelcome thoughts out of his mind.

  Chapter Nine

  ... and, by way of contrast,

  an eighteen-year old woman in Macedonia

  has been granted a divorce from her

  ninety-seven-year-old husband on the

  grounds of his unreasonable sexual demands.

  Bill Stratton did not let his sex life impinge on his friendships. He still saw Carolyn at the BWOC office, had lunches and the occasional dinner party with Sal, and downed mournful pints in The Annexe with Trevor – but he never mentioned his sexual encounters. Carolyn probed with her customary innuendo. Sal – in her Miss Fixit role – tried to set up new trysts and get the low-down on old ones. But it seemed to Bill that he had no difficulty in deflecting their enquiries. And, of course, Trevor was no problem. Like most men, he was entirely uninterested in anyone’s sex life but his own. Since that appeared to be moribund, he just maundered on about his past failures with women, which, transformed in the telling, increasingly took on the form of past glories.

  And Ginnie ... Bill didn’t see much of Ginnie during that period. She had taken over the part of Mother Superior in a long- running television series about medieval nuns that was shooting in Croatia, where the cheapness of locations and labour made recreating the England of the Middle Ages much more attractive to television producers than it would have been in England. As a result, Bill and Ginnie had little contact other than snatched telephone conversations when she briefly touched base back in London. Bill was, in many ways, quite relieved about that. He had no problem in keeping his sex life secret from his other friends; he didn’t know, though, whether he’d be able to withstand interrogation from the famous hazel eyes of Virginia Fairbrother.

  There was no curiosity about his new lifestyle from his ex-wife. Andrea showed no interest in him at all. Occasional necessary phone-calls about final financial details were conducted quickly, without animosity, but neither of them volunteered information about themselves. Presumably, Andrea was enjoying Muswell Hill and domestic vegetarian bliss in the company of Dewi, which brought with it a licence for unbridled whingeing about the NHS. She had reached her nirvana.

  Only once did Bill feel tempted to share some of the secrets of his new emancipation. And that was, surprisingly, with Trevor. They were sitting in the inevitable Annexe, and Trevor was working through his inevitable depression about how old he felt.

  ‘... and you keep asking yourself, “What’s the point?” Why should one go on when there’s nothing left to look forward to? I mean, I see my body decaying by the minute. Every morning there are more dead, irreplaceable hairs on my pillow. My teeth feel more brittle every time I brush them. The veins on my legs look like the Piccadilly and Metropolitan Lines have taken over the entire tube map.’ He took a long swig of beer, luxuriating in his misery. ‘Even this is having less effect. It takes more booze to dull the pain, and the more booze you have, the more pain you feel when you wake up the next morning, which means you need even more booze to ...’ He sighed with satisfaction at the completeness of his despair. And there are so many things you just know you’re never going to achieve ... so many ambitions that will never be realised ... I mean, I used to dream of being alone in a bedroom with a girl in her twenties ...’

  And as Trevor lifted his unfocused gaze towards his beer-tinted horizon, Bill Stratton felt really tempted to say, ‘Actually, I’ve done that ...’

  But of course he didn’t.

  Not least because he did feel a degree of embarrassment about the whole episode.

  * * *

  The younger woman was encountered at a book launch. She worked, in some capacity Bill never quite established, for the company which had taken over his original publisher. (The enterprising young publisher who had seen the potential of the By Way Of Contrast books had, in the way of enterprising young publishers, sold out to one of the big publishing conglomerates. He kept some minor advisory role in the business, but mainly he just enjoyed spending the huge amount of money he had made from the deal. And in the way of big publishing conglomerates, the big publishing conglomerate which had bought his company for its flexibility, low overheads and ability to react quickly to the market, proceeded to make their new purchase inflexible, to increase its overheads, and m
ake it as slow to react to the market as all the other publishing houses under its umbrella.)

  The girl’s name was Kirstie, and her job was something to do with ‘rights’. Rights in what, or whose rights, or rights to do what, Bill never did find out. But she seemed happy to chat to him at the launch. She said she vaguely recognised him from the television, from when she used to ‘watch with her parents’. Bill wasn’t very good at judging the ages of people younger than himself, but he reckoned she couldn’t yet have reached thirty.

  The conversation followed a predictable format. He entertained her with some of his well-remembered ‘by way of contrast’ stories, in the constant expectation that she would shortly move away to join some of her contemporary colleagues. But she didn’t. She seemed more than happy to stay listening to him, and they were still together when the trickle of departing guests became a gush. Asking her to join him for a bite to eat seemed an entirely logical next step.

  They’d both had quite a lot to drink at the launch, and they continued to drink throughout their dinner at a convenient nearby Italian. Precisely the sequence of words that led to Kirstie suggesting that they should adjourn afterwards to her flat Bill could not remember. But again, logic seemed to be on their side. The idea made perfect sense to both of them.

  As soon as the cab deposited them outside her block - it was clear that Kirstie had a private income. Nothing anyone did with publishing rights would earn enough to pay for a flat in that neighbourhood of Fulham. Rich parents would be the probable explanation, but Bill didn’t ask. He had no wish to hear that the girl’s parents were younger than he was.

  The interior of the flat confirmed the impression of wealth. So, now Bill came to think of it, did Kirstie’s vowels. Their cut glass had been engraved to a very expensive standard by all the right schools.