Last Chance Café

by Liz Byrski

  From the kitchen she can hear the sounds of Margot, Lexie and Emma loading the dishwasher, putting things in cupboards, talking as they work. Phyllida knows she’s not ready for that, she needs some time alone, and she crosses the hall to Donald’s study. It’s an uncomfortable room in her opinion and as always the awkward juxtaposition of elegant art deco and ugly modern technology offends her eye. The large glass and steel desk and the dazzling white computer with its vast screen seem an insult to the panelled walls and art deco fireplace, the walnut veneer drinks cabinet and the matching radio gramophone. Donald loved technology and gadgets, his boy toys he called them: the CD player, sleek and silver, stands alongside the headphones on the shelf of an exquisite walnut cabinet; the iPod sits in its docking station on a walnut wine table, and in the elegant bay of the full length windows the golf simulator crouches like a monster in the failing light. All of this, Phyllida thinks, all of this stuff, his toys, his books, these files and papers, the CDs, the 78s, and everything else – his clothes, his shoes – everything has to be sorted out and the task is hers alone. Picking up the remote control from Donald’s desk she points it at the huge, wall-mounted flat screen TV, sinks into his favourite leather chair and within minutes she is asleep in front of Sky News.

  It is Margot who wakes her almost an hour later with a tray of tea, and who settles silently opposite her to pour it, and offers her a plate of toast spread with peanut butter and cut into quarters – their childhood comfort food. It is this unspoken reference to childhood, to sisterhood, that shifts something in Phyllida and a surprising tear slides down her cheek and she smiles at Margot in a way that says much more than a mere thank you. Margot settles back in her chair, cup in hand, and they sit in silence for a while, eating their toast, until Margot moves to pour more tea.

  ‘We’ve restored everything to normal in the kitchen, and the lounge,’ she says. ‘Emma’s vacuumed and Lexie is just washing the kitchen floor. There’s nothing to do but I don’t think you should be alone tonight, Phyl. I can stay, so can both the girls if you like. I just don’t think you should be alone in an empty house.’

  Phyllida shakes her head. ‘It’s lovely of you,’ she says. ‘I do appreciate all you’ve done for me, not just today, ever since this started, but I think an empty house is what I need. I got used to it while Donald was in hospital. I think I’m at peace with it.’

  Margot nods. ‘Well okay, if you’re sure. By the way, that man next door – Trevor, is it? – he was at the wake and then he came back about half an hour ago. You wouldn’t believe the cheek of it, he wanted to see you to tell you that when you’re ready to sell the house he’ll make you an offer.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Phyllida says, ‘he didn’t waste any time, did he? What did you say?’

  ‘I said I thought he was insensitive and opportunistic and that if you wanted at some point to sell the house you would put it in the hands of an agent and he could deal with them. Then he started to go on about avoiding agent’s fees. In the end I told him to bugger off … well, not quite in those words, but you know what I mean. Was Donald friendly with him?’

  Phyllida shakes her head. ‘Not really. He used to talk to him sometimes, but he didn’t like him. Sell the house, indeed, what an idea. As if I would.’

  And the two of them sit then in awkward silence, each knowing that the other is thinking that selling the house is, in fact, the obvious thing to do.

  What, Phyllida wonders, will I do here all alone? What does a widow in her early seventies need with four bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a huge lounge and dining room, a study, a sunroom and a kitchen in which you could cater for a small army? It was miles too big even for the two of us, and Donald took up a lot of space. What will I do now he’s gone?

  Laurence had been among the first to leave the wake; telling lies about dead people while juggling a plate of tiny triangular sandwiches and a glass of semillon was not to his taste, and staying longer would have demanded some spectacular lies. He would, for example, have had to agree with people who told him what a terrific bloke Donald was, what a great surgeon, husband, family man, philanthropist, golfer and drinking mate. He would have had to look interested as Donald’s medical chums told tedious tales of his escapades as a medical student, or his golfing mates talked about his prowess on the green. For Laurence, who has always thought that Donald was an arrogant, bullying piece of shit, the whole thing was too hard. So he had turned up at the funeral and watched as the coffin made its final journey between the red velvet curtains, wondering what Phyllida would do now. Then he had turned up at the wake, made sure that Margot and the girls saw that he was there doing the right thing, said a few reassuring things to Phyllida and then slipped away. He needs to have a serious conversation with Emma, but the wake just wasn’t the place for that.

  Now, back in his car, Laurence can’t bear the thought of going home. He’s only been back in the country a few days, having gone from Finisterre back to Santiago and then for a few days’ visit to an old friend in Paris. The house feels bleak and neglected, which is exactly how he himself feels. He hadn’t wanted to be at the wake but having left he now realises that he needed something that was there: connection, familiarity, affection, love. Will he ever be able to live peacefully in the house now that it lacks the emotional warmth of a home shared with someone he loved? Bernard has gone and gone for good, taking with him not just personal effects but certain ‘shared’ possessions gathered over decades: a couple of limited edition prints, a small antique leather chair, every Bach and Wagner CD, half the cutlery, bed linen, his desk, his electric wok, and some indigenous art that had hung on the wall of the sitting room. Laurence is still not clear what else has gone and while, to an outsider, the house may appear unchanged, to him these gaps are as obvious and gut-wrenching as the empty space beside him in their bed. And still Laurence is keeping his loss to himself because he hasn’t a clue how to share it, any more than he has a clue how to be single again.

  As he heads reluctantly home via Lygon Street, he slows down outside the cinema and sees that it is screening a festival of classic films; Brief Encounter starts in ten minutes’ time. He parks the car, buys a blueberry chocolate bomb and a bottle of water, and fumbles through the darkness to a seat as the opening credits begin to roll.

  This original version has always had a special magic for Laurence; Celia Johnson’s primly tragic voice mixing with Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, the gloomy station with its café where brittle voices intrude on tender whispered conversations, and all those lingering looks as trains hiss steam and rip through fragile emotions. The first time he’d seen it was with Dot, in the late fifties or maybe a little later. She had hated it, whereas Margot, with whom he’d seen it several years after that, had loved it and cried her eyes out most of the way through. They had always enjoyed the same films, he and Margot, and thinking of her now as he watches the familiar story unfold in black and white on the screen, Laurence is once again reminded not only of his own grief, but of the irony of his own situation and what the break-up might revive for Margot.

  Losing Bernard is like bereavement; there is no balm for this grief, no ritual to mark it, just the loneliness, and an overwhelming sense of failure. Is this how Margot felt when, on that day more than thirty years ago, she had woken him in the middle of the night and demanded the truth? The shame, the guilt, returns to him now as he remembers the shock that crossed her face when he admitted what she was accusing him of – an affair with a student. And then the disbelief, the confusion, the hopelessness that claimed her when he explained that the student was a man.

  On the screen, in the station café, Trevor Howard is removing a piece of grit from Celia Johnson’s eye with the corner of his handkerchief, a moment of intimacy and unfolding sexual tension between strangers. It was a moment Laurence remembers Margot once described as marking the unconscious ignition of passion. They’d enjoyed the same music too, although Margot had never thought much of the Rolling Stone
s. But not so long ago Lexie had told him that Margot had recently developed a bit of a thing for the ageing Mick Jagger, although he still came second to Rod Stewart in her affections. Laurence had always thought Rod Stewart’s voice sounded like a metal plate being dragged across paving stones, but Rod and Mick were probably their only points of difference when it came to music.

  Laurence had loved Margot but not, as he had always been aware, in the way that she loved him. All those years ago he had known that when she had told him she was pregnant and he had promptly suggested that they should get married, she grasped it not just as a solution but as a sign of something more profound; an expression of a love as strong as her own. She had not known that for Laurence it had seemed a sort of salvation from what he feared in himself. A wife, a family – safe, respectable, mainstream. He had thought that the haunting attraction to other men that so scared him in its intensity would be laid to rest. He was in his mid-twenties then and it was several more years before he came to understand that what he had thought of since his teens as his dark side was, in fact, his true self. By that time he was a husband and father. Years later, long after the divorce, Margot had told him that the hardest part had been the recognition that she had never really been what he wanted; that every time he had made love to her he would have been acting against his nature and wanting an entirely different person; that she had, for him, always been a substitute for the real thing.

  As the cinema empties Laurence swallows the final gulp of water from his bottle and strolls out into the street through the incoming audience for Casablanca. Going home is not an option and for a moment he contemplates eating something at Jimmy Watson’s, but remembers that Margot told him that Dot was back from India. It’s ages since he’s seen her and he gets out his phone and dials the number. The call rings out but just the same he thinks he might head off to her place in case she is just not picking up, and if she is out then he’ll get a meal at the little Italian café on the corner, and by the time he’s eaten she might be home.

  Ten minutes later Laurence is driving past Dot’s house, which is in darkness. He heads on down the street, parks the car and is walking back towards the café when he spots that trademark hair glowing in the café’s lights. Dot, looking reassuringly the same, is sitting with a rather exotic elderly woman in a colourful velvet coat, and a younger man, and they are eating pasta and sharing a bottle of wine. Laurence hesitates briefly, considering the wisdom of interrupting, but it’s an awfully long time since he last saw Dot and the impulse to surprise her wins the day.

  ‘Laurence! How wonderful!’ Dot says, jumping to her feet with genuine delight, hugging him and standing back to take a good look at him. ‘You look a bit off colour – too much pilgrimage. Come and join us, have a glass of wine.’

  And she introduces him first to her friend Vinka, and then to the man who is Vinka’s nephew. Laurence, desperate for convivial company, accepts the invitation to join them and they shuffle their chairs to make room for him. He orders tagliatelle with pesto, a green salad and a second bottle of wine.

  ‘So,’ says Vinka, looking him up and down, ‘you are the late husband of Margot?’ and she looks around in surprise as they burst into laughter.

  ‘Well not exactly the late husband,’ Laurence says, sipping the wine Dot has poured for him. ‘If I were that, it would mean I was dead. But I am Margot’s ex-husband.’

  ‘Ach!’ Vinka says, shaking her head in annoyance. ‘This I get wrong again. I always think I will remember it the right way and then I forget.’

  ‘I wondered which member of the family I’d meet next,’ Patrick says. ‘It was Margot first, then Lexie last week. Wendy and I are helping her sort out her uni enrolment.’

  ‘And you are one of the Push men, I think, Laurence?’ Vinka cuts in.

  ‘Really?’ Patrick says. ‘When you turned up we were actually talking about the Push, particularly the men in the Push, and the parties and the politics too of course.’

  ‘Yes, you must tell us,’ Vinka says, ‘we must hear your version. Maybe we do not believe all what Dot tells us about you men in the Push.’

  Laurence is immediately drawn to Vinka: the aged but still beautiful face, white hair pulled into a soft bun and fastened with a large tortoiseshell comb, and that amazing velvet coat. And Dot, dear Dot, who conjures up so many memories at a glance. He is delighted and thankful to have found them this evening.

  ‘We weren’t all sexist bastards, you know,’ he says to Vinka, ‘but the sexual freedom was pretty seductive and some of us may have been a little opportunistic. But why do you want to know about the Push?’

  Patrick tells him about Dot’s lecture, and the one still to come. ‘I inveigled my way into her home and then bullied her into talking to my students.’

  Laurence laughs. ‘Anyone who can bully Dot into anything has my total respect,’ he says.

  ‘It wasn’t that hard,’ Patrick says. ‘I caught her at a weak moment the day after the shopping centre protest.’ And he tells Laurence about Dot chaining herself to the railings.

  ‘Good lord, Dot,’ Laurence says as his pasta arrives. ‘You’re not still doing the chaining up stuff, are you? It all sounds a bit weird and random.’

  ‘Too random,’ she agrees. ‘Anger and frustration got the better of me; it certainly wasn’t my finest hour. But tell us about your pilgrimage.’

  ‘Well, I started out thinking it was a walking holiday, but the very nature of the places, the people and the pain of sticking with it did seem to turn it into a bit of a pilgrimage,’ he says. ‘It was amazing, extraordinary and really quite a humbling experience and physically gruelling. Within the first few days my feet felt as though they’d been shredded and I thought I was heading for a heart attack. I was on the verge of pulling out but then, well, I just seemed to get into the swing of it and to start to enjoy it in a masochistic sort of way. So I made it all the way to Finisterre, which feels like something of an achievement. And I’m very glad I did, but I won’t be repeating it.’ As he speaks he can feel the warmth of Dot’s affection for him and it’s what he needs most right now. ‘You will have to suffer the photographs, Dot.’

  She smiles and pats his arm and it crosses his mind that he might be able to confide in her, tell her about Bernard. But, no, he owes it to Margot to tell her first, and anyway, this is a brief interval in which he can try to push his grief into the background. He is enjoying himself, he wants it not to end, not to have to wind up the evening watching the late news or some mindless reality TV show alone in an empty house.

  ‘We should go on somewhere,’ Patrick says as the waiter removes their empty coffee cups. ‘A club, maybe, listen to some music.’

  ‘No way!’ Dot says. ‘It’ll be packed with people in their twenties and the music will be head-banging stuff. It’s already past my bedtime.’

  ‘But it’s only just nine o’clock,’ Patrick protests.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘I know a place where there are older people and good music,’ Vinka says. ‘Sometimes I go for catching up with old friends. Many years ago I used to work there. Good Polish vodka, sometimes entertainment, it is a gentle place – it makes a good end to the evening, I think.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Patrick says, ‘the Polish Club. It’s only five minutes’ walk from here. Let’s do it! Come on Laurence, Dot.’

  ‘I suppose I could,’ Dot says, ‘but not for too long.’

  ‘I once had a Polish girlfriend who drank vodka,’ Laurence says, and Dot rolls her eyes at the others. ‘She had terrible tantrums and cried a lot.’

  ‘That wasn’t because she was Polish,’ Dot says. ‘Maria had tantrums and cried because she was your girlfriend. We

  all did.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he says. ‘We argued a lot but you never had tantrums or wept buckets, and neither did Margot, nor the others.’

  ‘We all did, Laurence,’ Dot repeats. ‘The only difference was that Maria had her tantrums and shed her tears in front of
you, unlike the rest of us, who did it with our girlfriends or in the lonely silence of our bedsits.’

  ‘No? Really?’ Laurence says in genuine amazement. ‘You’re kidding, Dot.’

  She shakes her head. ‘You blokes were all the same, you had no idea what havoc you were wreaking on us. Until of course you were caught out by circumstances as you eventually were. It was a strange time. The more I think about it the stranger it gets.’

  ‘I think,’ says Vinka, looking straight at Patrick, ‘that we take them to the club and give them plenty of vodka and they tell us much more, no?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Patrick says, urging Dot to her feet. ‘Come on, Dot, you wouldn’t deny me this research opportunity, would you? If you don’t come I’ll only get the blokes’ version.’

  ‘Oh well, in the interests of balance,’ Dot says. ‘I can’t believe I’m going clubbing at a time when I ought to be in my pyjamas. You’re a bad influence on me, Vinka.’

  ‘Yes I think so,’ Vinka says. ‘This is good.’

  ‘Very good,’ Laurence says, taking Dot’s arm and drawing it through his own. ‘Far better than chaining yourself to railings – and I must say, Dot, it’s bloody marvellous to see you again.’

  TWELVE