The Penultimate Chance Saloon

by Simon Brett

  While this was, in one way, encouraging news, it also necessitated the uncomfortable question: how did Ginnie know? So Bill asked it.

  ‘Oh, purely anecdotal.’ She was such a good actress it was impossible for him to know whether or not she was lying. ‘But I think it’s true. One of the make-up girls told me. He’d come on to her.’

  ‘And presumably he came on to you too?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘I thought you were having a romantic break on Krk.’

  ‘Just a break in filming. No romance involved.’

  ‘But I thought you and Dickie had had a fling at one time.’

  ‘At one time, yes.’

  ‘And you didn’t just pick up where you’d left off when you were on Krk?’

  ‘God, no, darling. How many times do I have to tell you?’ Again Bill wanted to believe her, but couldn’t been sure. He remembered how giggly she’d sounded when telling him why she couldn’t attend Andrea’s funeral.

  ‘I’ve got very few rules in my love life,’ she went on. ‘One is no sex without the possibility of love. The other is: never go back. A relationship that ended in tears once is – however hard you work to resuscitate it – always going to end in tears.’

  ‘So you and Dickie didn’t – ?’

  ‘I spent my time with Dickie on Krk inside dreary little bars, listening to the rain pelting down and him going on and on about how old he felt.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You almost sounded relieved there, Bill.’

  ‘Well ... when I rang you to tell you about Andrea’s death, you were just about to go off to Krk and ... well, for one thing I was disappointed that you wouldn’t be able to come to the funeral, and, well ...’ He hesitated for a moment, then went for it ‘... you made it sound as if you and Dickie were going off to, well ... to rekindle your love affair.’

  ‘Me and Dickie?’ She let out a throaty laugh at the incongruity of the pairing. Then she stopped and, turning the full beam of her hazel eyes on Bill, said, ‘Mind you, I’m touched that you cared.’

  ‘Well ...’ Why not say it?

  ‘I did.’

  Their eyes locked, and the contact was only broken when the waiter came to take their order. He knew Bill as a regular, and there was much coy laughing and Signor Strattoning. Ginnie said she hadn’t the strength to make even the feeblest decision, and asked Bill to order for her. He suggested what he was going to have, his usual Parma Ham and Melon followed by Spaghetti Carbonara. Ginnie said that sounded divine.

  When the waiter had gone, she reached her long thin hand across the table and placed it on top of Bill’s. ‘I’m sorry about the funeral. What I said about the trip to Krk was true, but nothing had been booked at that stage. Dickie had suggested our going there, and I saw it as a potential escape route. I just ... I don’t know, I didn’t think I could face everyone at the funeral. I thought I’d give it a miss.’

  ‘Very wise decision. I wish I’d done the same.’

  ‘So ... don’t tell me if you don’t want to, but how was it?’

  Bill found he did want to tell her. He hadn’t discussed the funeral with anyone and, without realising, had bottled up a lot of resentment on the subject. So he gave Ginnie a blow-by-blow account, from the moment he had entered the chapel, to the disapprobation of most of the congregation.

  As he developed his narrative, he found the experience not only cathartic, but also profoundly funny. The absence of any trace of Andrea, the po-facedness of the mourners, the priggishness of the Roberts family – everything suddenly seemed hilarious. Bill knew he was exaggerating the awfulness, but, rewarded by the tears of laughter trickling down Ginnie’s cheeks, could not help himself from embroidering the story even more. When he quoted the lyrics of the song specially composed by Dewi’s children, she became incapacitated with laughter.

  ‘Signor Stratton, I thought you do your funny talking after dinner, not before,’ said the approaching waiter.

  ‘Sometimes both,’ Bill managed to say through his giggles.

  He realised that only the arrival of the starters had caused Ginnie to remove her hand from his. Otherwise, it had been there right through his funeral routine. He smiled across at her. He felt hugely relieved at having got all that off his chest, at having vented his spleen. Yes, he was being unfair to Dewi and his children, ridiculing their very genuine grief, but what the hell, it made him feel better.

  ‘So how have you reacted since the funeral?’ asked Ginnie, in a softer voice.

  ‘Pretty bad, really. I’ve been very low.’ He was surprised to find himself making the admission – it was not the kind of thing he’d ever said to her before – but at that moment it felt right.

  ‘I’m not surprised. Because, whatever your feelings for Andrea have been since you split up, for a very long time you were in love with her.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, I thought I was.’

  ‘You were.’

  ‘Yup. I thought I’d been part of a happy marriage ... until Andrea told me how wrong I was.’

  ‘I think she made your life pretty tough.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know ...’ Why was he being so diffident? Was he conscious of the old taboo about ‘speaking ill of the dead’?

  ‘I saw you together a lot, Bill, and I thought Andrea gave you a rough ride.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair.’ What strange instinct was it that that found him defending the woman who had rejected him?

  ‘It may not be fair, but it’s true. You have an exceptionally kind, gentle nature, and Andrea took advantage of that.’

  ‘I’m not sure that –’

  ‘Take my word for it, I’m right.’

  He couldn’t think what to say. After what he had been thinking about himself for the previous two weeks, to be told he had ‘an exceptionally kind, gentle nature’ came as something of a shock. ‘You see, Bill, I never really liked Andrea.’

  ‘I know, you said that. If you didn’t like her, then why on earth did you stay in touch with us for so long?’

  ‘It wasn’t the “us” I wanted to stay in touch with, Bill. It was you.’

  Again, Ginnie’s words removed his capacity for speech. He could only gape at her, plastic tooth covers on display.

  She reached forward once again to his hand. This time she did not place hers on top. She held his in a soft but firm grasp. ‘You mean a lot to me, Bill. You have always meant a lot to me.’

  He did manage to croak out, ‘You mean a lot to me too, Ginnie.’

  ‘And I think we ought to get together.’

  ‘You and me?’

  ‘There’s no one else at the table, Bill.’

  ‘No, but ... Ginnie ... I’m sorry, I’m not being very articulate.’ She shook his hand gently. ‘You don’t have to be.'

  ‘But you ... I always thought you were out of my league.’

  “‘Out of your league”? What on earth does that mean?’

  ‘You’re an internationally famous actress and I’m just a nonentity, an ex-newsreader who hasn’t had much success at –’

  ‘Bill, stop it. Don’t put yourself down. All right, I’ve had a modicum of fame, but surely you’ve read enough in the tabloids to know that fame doesn’t bring happiness. It takes you away from people, it puts a barrier between you and the rest of the world. It doesn’t have any effect on who you love.’

  She had used the word. Bill could not believe the way the evening was turning out. ‘I’ve always loved you, Ginnie,’ he said shyly.

  And I’ve always loved you.’

  The rest of the meal flashed by. Bill knew what he was eating, because his order was always the same, but he tasted nothing. He and Ginnie were talking too much to be aware of food.

  They talked about their childhoods, their families, subjects that had never come up during their brittle three-way conversations with Andrea, or even their more recent formal restaurant meetings. No time seemed to have passed when Bill became aware that they were the only people left
in the place, and the waiter, looking significantly at his watch, smiled rather less benignly on Signor Stratton than he had earlier in the evening.

  Outside the restaurant Bill and Ginnie joined together in a long kiss. Not hard, just gentle, teasing, exploratory.

  ‘Not bad for someone with plastic veneers on,’ she said, as they drew apart.

  Bill felt suddenly clumsy, gauche, the adolescent on a date. ‘I don’t know if you fancy, er ... He’d never before invited a woman back, but ...’ My flat’s just round the corner. We could –’

  Ginnie placed one finger gently on his lips. ‘Not tonight, no.’ Obviously he could not hide the disappointment in his face, because she went on, ‘For purely practical reasons. The main one being that I’m still totally knackered and I’ve got a six o’clock make-up call for a shoot tomorrow morning. A commercial for a new Honey and Ginseng Health Drink, would you believe.’ She smiled her famous smile. ‘I want our first time to be special, don’t you, Bill?’

  ‘Yes,’ he breathed.

  ‘How’s Saturday for you?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Come to my flat sevenish. I’ll do dinner for you ... amongst other things ...’

  All right.’ He grinned. ‘And do you know what will have happened by then?’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘I’ll have my proper veneers in.’

  ‘Excellent. We’ll give them an appropriate christening on Saturday.’

  They found her a cab. Another lingering kiss, full of adolescent anticipation, and she was gone.

  Bill Stratton returned to his flat in a state of ecstasy. Unbelievable though it might seem, he was on a promise with Virginia Fairbrother.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  ... and, by way of contrast,

  a woman in Gateshead who was having

  difficulty selling her house offered A

  Night of Love as an inducement to potential purchasers.

  The house is still on the market.

  The day after his were fitted, Bill Stratton had lunch at the Turkish place with Sal to compare veneers. She was impressed and told him not to worry about the expense. He’d soon pay it off, because the cosmetic transformation would lead to a lot more work in front of camera.

  She was still very pleased with her own veneers, but, Bill noticed, seemed set to discolour them as quickly as the originals they covered. She was smoking more than ever, even insisting on what she termed an ‘intercourse cigarette’ between their mezes and their mains.

  ‘I thought you were giving up.’

  ‘Yes, I was, Bill, but I’ve just read this book called Deadly Sins: Six Out of Seven Can’t Be Bad. Its premise is that to avoid all seven is impossible, so choose one you really don’t want to give up, stay with that and stop doing the others.’

  Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, Envy ... I don’t recall Smoking being one of the Deadly Sins.’

  No, the writer’s redefined them for the twenty-first century.’ ‘Oh yes? What’ve they come up with?’

  ‘Booze, Smoking, Doing Drugs, Screwing Around, Racial Intolerance, Road Rage and Obesity.’

  ‘And you’re only allowed to do one?’

  ‘Yes. As you may have noticed, I chose Smoking.’

  ‘So that means you’ve given up Screwing Around?’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. I haven’t given up voluntarily.’ She cocked a thoughtful brown eye at Bill. ‘Funny we’ve never done that, isn’t it?

  ‘What?’

  ‘Screwed around. Shagged each other.’ Apparently she reckoned he still looked uncomprehending. ‘Been to bed together.’

  ‘Yes, I did actually know what you meant.’

  ‘Well, it is quite odd, isn’t it? We’ve known each other a long time.’

  ‘Sal, there are lots of people I’ve known for a long time who I haven’t been to bed with. And I’m sure there are plenty like that in your life too.’

  ‘Hmm...’ She didn’t sound so convinced that there were. ‘Well, do you think we should try it one day?’

  If she’d asked him that on any other occasion since the end of his marriage – except during his period of virtual mourning for Andrea – he’d have leapt at the chance. He always had found Sal attractive, and he couldn’t forget the feeling of her body against his when he had told her that he loved her. Yes, on any other occasion he would have been urgently discussing the logistics of love – where and how soon.

  On any other occasion, he thought with only a trace of wistfulness, as he treated her suggestion as if she’d been joking. But on this occasion he wasn’t interested. He was on a promise with Virginia Fairbrother.

  Thoughts of her filled his waking hours, which were extensive, because he didn’t sleep a lot on the nights running up to the promised Saturday. Him and Ginnie ... everything just seemed so logical. They had been meant for each other from way back. He still remembered the slight pang of lust when Andrea had first introduced him to ‘her friend’, that quickly-suppressed disappointed feeling that he hadn’t got ‘the pretty one’.

  And, over the years, yes, he and Ginnie really had got on. The two of them had so much more in common, exchanging showbiz gossip, than they’d ever had with the conversations of Andrea and her NHS coven.

  And to think Virginia Fairbrother had actually been holding a candle for him all this time ... as soon as she told him that, he realised how big a candle he’d also been holding for her. And they’d both spent so many years hiding their lights under their individual bushels ... God, they had a lot of time to make up.

  There had been many occasions during his marriage when Bill and Ginnie had been alone together, but the thought had never occurred to him to make any advance towards her. Partly, he was faithful to Andrea, but also ... well, he wasn’t in Ginnie’s league. And, besides, their relationship worked. Just friends. That way, nothing could stop them going on seeing each other forever. Nothing was broken, and nothing needed fixing.

  Now he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen the logic of their being together earlier.

  Virginia Fairbrother, though ... imagine turning up to a film première or a book launch with her on his arm, and letting the press know that they were an item. Bill Stratton had always been diffident about the press’s interest in him. He didn’t really think what he did was worthy of their attention. But as the partner of Virginia Fairbrother ...

  He was busy during that week, but the time still didn’t go as quickly as it should have done. His final gluing session with the Australian cotton bud took quite a while. He had a couple of after-dinner speaking bookings, which once again he did on automatic pilot, though this time for reasons of excited preoccupation rather than alcoholic despair.

  And on the Friday he paid his first visit to the BWOC office since Andrea’s funeral. As he went through the door the mix of Carolyn’s cigarette smoke and perfume was as safe and welcoming as ever.

  She looked up from her computer, for once surprised by his arrival. No reference to 'the big boss’. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine.’ Wouldn’t anyone be fine if they knew they were going to be making love to Virginia Fairbrother the following day?

  ‘It’s just ... you seemed so upset at the funeral ... and you haven’t returned my calls and I was worried about you ...’

  Bless your little heart, thought Bill. I’ve never heard you sound less cynical. ‘That’s very kind of you, Carolyn, to think of me. Yes, I was very down for a few weeks –’

  ‘Did you keep smoking?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Drank a bit too much, but no ciggies. Though I would still like to thank you for the one you gave me after the funeral. It was precisely what I needed at the time.’

  ‘My pleasure. But you’re feeling better now, are you?’

  I am actually – for reasons that I can’t possibly tell you – feeling on top of the world. But all he said was, ‘Yes. I was very down for a few weeks, but then I thought ... hell, life goes on.’

  ‘Doesn’t it blood
y just?’ said Carolyn, instantly resuming her customary tough exterior.

  ‘Anyway, reason I’m here ... I did a couple of after-dinner gigs this week and, you know, I’ve been doing the same lines for so long that I’m sick to death of them. I thought maybe I’d interpolate some new ones.’

  ‘That’s bold, changing a winning formula.’

  ‘I’m feeling bold at the moment.’

  ‘Good for you, Bill.’ Her blue eyes gazed quizzically at his. ‘What’s got into you then ...?’ She could never resist the obvious innuendo. ‘Or should I ask what you’ve been getting into?’

  Oh, if you only knew ... but he gave her some reply about having got over the shock of the funeral and feeling more positive by the minute. Then he asked if she’d had any good ‘by way of contrast’ lines in recently.

  ‘A few.’ She shuffled through the papers on her desk. Bill was once again aware of the luxurious curves of her back. Carolyn really was a very attractive woman. He felt very warm towards her. Part of him wanted to reach out and touch her. He might even have suggested their going out for a drink ... if he hadn’t been on a promise with Virginia Fairbrother.

  ‘I quite like this.’ She proffered a sheet of paper.

  Bill took it and read, “‘A giantess in a Ukrainian circus married the company midget, but then divorced him because he didn’t come up to her expectations.” Very good. Funny, a lot of the recent ones read more like made-up jokes than genuine news stories. Still, it just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction ... and various other such platitudes ...’ He passed the paper back. ‘Could you print me out a list of ... I don’t know, say twenty of the new ones you think are up to standard and email them to me? Then, next time I’m doing a gig and think of a new one, I’ll try slipping it in.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that about you.’

  It took him a moment to recognise the double entendre. ‘God, I do set them up for you, don’t I? Should have learned not to do it by now ’cause we’ve known each other ... how long is it?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Carolyn, with an enigmatic, almost insolent smile.

  * * *

  Virginia Fairbrother had a house in Docklands, backing on to the Thames. In her fifties, she had benefited from one of those recurrent phases when Hollywood fell in love with British character actors. She’d had a lot of supporting roles in some very bad films and a couple of half-decent ones. Those had paid for the house.