Last Chance Café

by Liz Byrski

  Back in the days of sex and drugs and rock’n’roll when overindulgence of various types had sometimes blurred the boundaries of night and day, Dot had occasionally woken up in the clothes she’d been wearing the night before, and in places she’d rather not have been. But since then, apart from a few nights spent in police cells after being forcibly removed from demonstrations, she has maintained a strict bedtime routine. For a person who delights in breaking rules, she is surprisingly disciplined about sticking to her own. They are rules which she has devised for a single woman of uncertain habits living alone. She knows that her weaknesses and her obsessions can lead her to neglect both herself and her living conditions, so hers are rules about looking after herself properly, not letting standards slip, removing makeup, cleaning her teeth, tidying the kitchen before going to bed or out to work in the morning. A few extras have been added over the years in deference to increasing age: extra attention to security, slowing her walking pace to guard against falls, and keeping her mobile with her at night in case of emergencies. But tonight, lying there in her clothes without the scent of toothpaste in her mouth, she has already ignored two of them. The curtains are open still and the bedroom, lit only by moonlight, is deliciously peaceful.

  ‘A quiet day tomorrow,’ Dot murmurs. ‘I might actually do nothing except read the paper and doze in the garden.’ She yawns, stretches and turns on her side, and as she does so remembers that her phone is in her bag which is where she dumped it on the kitchen bench.

  ‘Bugger!’ she says aloud. ‘Oh well, one night won’t matter. I’m not planning on having a stroke or a heart attack tonight.’ She turns onto her other side and looks through the open door of the bedroom along the darkened passage to the kitchen. ‘Bugger!’

  For a person to whom the rules matter, one broken rule disturbs the peace, two are a serious offence and three is an impossibility. ‘Okay, I give in,’ Dot says, and she throws back the quilt and stands up quickly. The shadow patterns of the trees against the moonlit wall blur and spin and she pauses briefly, steadying herself with a hand on the bedside table. As she sets out across the treacherous polished boards the forgotten shoes lie in wait, and as her foot encounters one she jumps back in surprise, sways, slips, and crashes to the floor. It happens so fast that she makes no attempt to break her fall and there is just a micro-second of shock before her head cracks against the doorjamb. Beyond the bedroom window a cloud drifts across the face of the moon and the darkness deepens, and clears again, and Dot, unconscious and with blood trickling from her head, knows nothing of the changing light.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Phyllida wakes early and despite rather a lot of champagne at Margot’s party, she feels energised, as though this is a day that shouldn’t be wasted, a day to do something important. Something strange happened last night as she sat outside with the other women – she actually began to relax and to enjoy their conversation. And so this morning, in a break from her usual habits, she splashes water on her face, pulls on some tracksuit pants and a t-shirt, lets herself out of the house and walks towards the river.

  It is almost seven o’clock and the air is clear and mild. A few lycra-clad cyclists whiz irritatingly past her, two and three abreast on the path, ringing their bells for her to get out of their way and ignoring the signs that say pedestrians have right of way. For years this has been one of Phyllida’s greatest bugbears. She frequently writes to the council and the local papers about the cyclists, has even on occasion shouted abuse as they whipped past so close and at such speed it was a miracle they missed her, but this morning she strides on confidently, immune to such hazards and irritations. She will walk as far as the Boatshed, her favourite café, have a coffee and then walk back. She needs it – it is too long since she did any exercise.

  As Jean Dunne had pointed out last night, it’s months since she had a game of golf. The last, in fact, was just a couple of days before Donald’s collapse. But normal life came to a dramatic end that day and now, for the first time since then, Phyllida realises that something has changed. She feels hopeful, enthusiastic – not about anything specific but just about life generally, life after Donald, the good bits and the painful revelations. She’s almost seventy-four – she could have another ten or fifteen years to look forward to, years of pleasing herself.

  This morning, as she walks briskly along the foreshore, she thinks she’d like to do something that would really piss Donald off, but there is little point to that as he isn’t around to be pissed off. It seems profoundly unfair that he behaved so badly but death saved him from rough justice and spousal revenge. Emma is still working her way through the various files in his office, although as far as Phyllida knows she hasn’t yet discovered any indication of where the money went. She seems to be working consistently hard and methodically though, and Phyllida is impressed. This businesslike commitment is a side of Emma that her family rarely sees but which obviously accounts in part for her professional success. If only, Phyllida thinks, this could be expanded into her personal life, Emma might be able to sort out some of her own problems. Probate will soon go through on the will and when it does John Hammond’s office will draw down the funds for the girls’ bequests.

  ‘Don’t tell them just yet,’ Phyllida had asked Margot. ‘It would be so nice to do it when I can actually hand over the money.’ But this was only part of the reason for delaying the news. The money is not a lot in Phyllida’s view. A few years earlier she had told Donald that she thought they should bump those bequests up a bit – in fact she had suggested doubling them – but could only get him to agree to an additional ten thousand each. She remembers now how twitchy he was about it at the time, but he had eventually promised to make an appointment with Hammond to amend the will.

  ‘I’ll give him a call,’ she’d said, ‘and when it’s ready you can pop over and sign it.’

  He’d seemed rattled by this, she remembers now, and had immediately said he’d prefer to do it himself. ‘I’ll call John today,’ he’d said, ‘no need for you to bother with it.’ But of course he hadn’t and now it makes sense – he was far too concerned with whatever it was that was leaching money from the capital to start making changes to his will. When everything is finalised, she thinks, especially when she sells the house, which is what she has now decided to do, she might just give them the extra herself. It will help Lexie with her uni expenses, but Emma’s bequest is more complicated. Phyllida knows that the responsible thing to do is to tell her niece she must use the money to pay back what she had loaned her. But she really wants Emma to have this, she wants to amortise that debt and give her niece a real chance to get her life on track.

  Phyllida wonders if she could strike a deal with Emma, using the money as an inducement to get some help – sorting out the shopping obsession, getting to the bottom of whatever is about to entice her under the cosmetic surgeon’s knife. But somehow it doesn’t feel quite right. A bequest is a bequest, so would bargaining with Emma in this way be unethical? Would it amount to bribery? But on this glorious, mild, sunlit morning, Phyllida’s mind begins drifting more towards knocking her own life into some new sort of shape.

  This morning, for the first time, she feels as though she has turned a corner, that this has been coming for a while but it finally happened last night, when Jean Dunne’s daughter coaxed her out of the kitchen. As they reached the top of Margot’s verandah steps and Emma turned up and took her other arm, Phyllida had felt like a prisoner walking between jailers and she was sure that Margot had organised it. When she saw that Jean was sitting with Dot she’d felt like turning on her heel and running screaming back to the safety of the kitchen. It was years since she’d seen that woman and she’d have been very happy never to see her again. Dot was and had always been, in Phyllida’s opinion, irresponsible and a troublemaker. Right from the early days when Margot had met her in the Push and then through all that demonstrating and marching and making trouble in the seventies, it was Dot who had been pulling the strings. Admitte
dly those women had made a big difference, and Dot in particular had taken a highly principled and courageous stand on many occasions, but that didn’t mean that Phyllida had to like her, and she was pretty sure that Dot felt the same about her. So she had been surprised when Dot greeted her warmly and appeared genuine when she offered her condolences. She had expected hostility or cool indifference, so courtesy and sensitivity had taken her by surprise. And it had been nice to see Jean Dunne again.

  ‘It’s so long since you’ve been down to the club,’ Jean had said, taking her hand and holding on to it. ‘I hope you haven’t given up on us. When are you coming back?’

  ‘Well, I’m a bit out of practice,’ Phyllida had said. ‘It’s a few months now, I think I’d slow you down.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you would and it wouldn’t matter if you did,’ Jean said. ‘Nobody would mind. We’ve all been wondering when you’ll be back. Tell you what, I’ll give you a call next week, come and play a nice leisurely game and see how you feel.’

  And then Dot had started talking about a campaign; it sounded interesting, possibly even quite important, and Phyllida, who had thought she would sit there for a few moments just to be polite and then escape back to the kitchen, found she wanted to be a part of the conversation. It was clear that no one was whispering about her, no one seemed to think it odd that she was there. Perhaps they didn’t know anything of her circumstances, but Phyllida sensed that it wouldn’t have mattered if they did.

  The Boatshed is busy as usual this morning, but there is still a spare table outside and Phyllida grabs it and orders coffee and an almond croissant and sits facing the water, watching a couple of shags standing, wings spread out to dry, on one of the old stumps of the jetty.

  ‘It is you, Phyllida!’ says the woman who brings her order. ‘Where’ve you been? It’s ages since we saw you,’ and she pulls out a chair and sits down. She’s a big woman with reddish-blonde hair and an engaging smile, one of the owners of the Boatshed, and a well-known food writer.

  Phyllida hesitates. ‘I’ve been busy, Fran …’ she begins and then stops. ‘Well actually, my husband died recently and I haven’t felt –’

  ‘Of course,’ Fran cuts in. ‘I’m so sorry, Phyllida, how very sad.’

  ‘In fact,’ Phyllida says, surprising herself, ‘this is the first morning that I’ve felt any sense of getting back into the world again. I think I’ve been in hiding.’

  ‘Of course, why wouldn’t you? You feel so vulnerable when you lose someone,’ Fran says. ‘It’s such a challenge to reclaim your own reality out of the grief, and work out who you are now that they’re gone. Well that’s how I felt when my mother died. She was such a character and she’d raised me on her own. It was a terrible loss and it took a long time to learn who I was without her.’

  ‘I remember your mother,’ Phyllida says now. ‘On the day you opened here, she was telling everyone how proud she was of you.’

  Fran laughs. ‘That’s right, that was her – no false modesty with Lila, and no sense of restraint. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got family and friends around you right now.’

  ‘I’m rather inclined to keep to myself,’ Phyllida says, ‘but I was thinking this morning that it might be time to be getting out more.’

  ‘Good on you,’ Fran says, standing up. ‘Well, we’re always here and happy to see you, and of course we still have our book club. I’m sure you’d know some of the women who come. We’re not meeting this month because of Christmas but, look – why don’t I give you a flier about the books for next year?’ And she hurries inside the café and returns with a list of meeting dates and book titles.

  Phyllida scans the list and spots something she recognises. ‘Instances of the Number 3,’ she says. ‘I’ve got that book. Someone gave it to me a couple of years ago but I never got around to reading it.’

  ‘Well there you are then,’ Fran says, ‘serendipity. You’re obviously meant to read it now, so do think about coming along then, if not sooner.’

  Phyllida walks home more slowly, contemplating the idea of the book club. She could go along once, she muses, just to see what it’s like. And in the half-hour it takes her to get back to the house she changes her mind about it at least a dozen times. I’ll read the book, she thinks, and see how I feel after that. Back home she has things to do; in the changed state of consciousness which began as she had started to enjoy herself at last night’s party, she had invited Margot and Lexie for Christmas dinner, so she needs to get organised.

  ‘Emma and I will cook for you,’ she’d said and, noticing the look of amazement on Emma’s face, added, ‘We’re a great team in the kitchen, aren’t we, Em? And you must bring your Patrick, Lexie, and his wonderful aunt, whom I’ve just met.’

  And then, in a moment of complete aberration, she had also invited Dot. She was, after all, like Margot and Phyllida herself, a woman on her own. ‘Sisterhood!’ she had said triumphantly to herself, and then flinched, remembering how much she had hated that word when Margot used it years ago. And later there is something else she has to do, something that must be dealt with before she can finally put the mess of grief, hurt and anger behind her, and she knows without hesitation that today is the day to do it. First, though, she goes to the bookshelf, trying to remember what the spine of Instances of the Number 3 looks like. She scans three shelves before spotting it and pulls it out. It is a small paperback with an interesting cover of a detail of Da Vinci’s Virgin and Child with St Anne. The typeface of the cover blurb is too small to read so she takes it to the kitchen where her glasses are sitting on the benchtop. It is, she reads, about a man who dies, leaving behind a wife and mistress who both discover new meanings in their lives. The blurb is cagey, but it implies forgiveness, even friendship.

  ‘What utter rubbish!’ Phyllida shouts aloud to the otherwise empty kitchen. ‘What total crap.’ And she hurls it across the room where it bounces off a cupboard door and lands in the sink.

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ Margot says into the phone. ‘She was supposed to meet us here at the retirement centre an hour ago and there’s no sign of her. Are you at her house now?’

  ‘I’m in the front garden,’ Alyssa says. ‘We’d arranged to do some work together this morning. Dot said ten o’clock, but she wasn’t around, and she’s not answering the phone or the mobile. So I came back about eleven-thirty, and she wasn’t here and now it’s two o’clock and there’s still no sign of her.’

  ‘What about the car?’ Margot asks.

  ‘It’s in the garage. And you know, Margot, it just feels odd. At first I thought she’d forgotten and gone off somewhere. Now – well I just get the feeling something’s happened, I think she’s in there. Do you think I should break in?’

  ‘I think we probably should,’ Margot says. ‘Hang on, Alyssa, I’ll leave now. I can be there in less than ten minutes.’ She closes her phone and stands for a moment, heart beating furiously, wondering whether she should call the police or an ambulance, or wait until she gets there.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Lexie asks, coming out of the office where she and Vinka have been talking with the manager.

  ‘It’s Dot,’ Margot explains, ‘she seems to have gone AWOL and Alyssa’s worried that something might have happened – in the house. I have to go, Lexie. Explain to Vinka, will you?’

  Lexie nods. ‘Of course. Ring us, we can come when we finish here. And, Mum, take care.’

  Margot, waiting at the third set of traffic lights, sees her own hands shaking on the steering wheel. The lights change and she accelerates sharply, hoping to get through the next set and manages it, flying across on amber and turning off the main road into Dot’s street, past the Italian café, and pulling up outside the house where Alyssa is pacing back and forth in the garden.

  ‘Thank god,’ she says as Margot appears at the gate. ‘I really think we should break in. I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.’

  ‘Me too,’ says Margot. ‘But where? She’s got those sh
ark wire security screens. Let’s have a look around the back. Can we get through the garage?’

  Alyssa shakes her head. ‘I tried that, it’s locked. She’d have driven in and then gone in through the back door. I could probably climb over the side gate and unlock it from the inside, if I could find something to stand on.’

  ‘Plastic crates,’ Margot says, ‘in the boot of my car. I was taking them to Vinka to put some of her stuff in.’

  They fetch the crates and pile them one on top of the other against the fence, and Alyssa climbs up, grasping the top of the gate to steady herself as the crates shift and threaten to topple her. Finally she gets both arms over the top of the gate and, with Margot pushing from behind, she hauls herself up and rolls over, landing with a thud on the other side.

  ‘Shit!’ she says. ‘That’s higher than I thought.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Just about,’ Alyssa says, and she opens the gate. ‘Come on; let’s see where we can get in.’

  Dot is security conscious. In the past she’s been a target; once for a rabid men’s group who had thrown rocks at her windows, and a couple of times when right to life campaigners had spray-painted her front door, and a small group of neo fascists carved abuse into the paintwork of her car. There is only one window which doesn’t have shark wire and it’s a small one in the laundry, just large enough for Alyssa to crawl through.

  ‘If she’s just gone out shopping or something she’ll be really pissed off,’ Alyssa says.

  ‘Hard luck,’ Margot says, picking up a brick from the edging of a flower bed. ‘She’ll get over it.’ And she slams the brick into the window. ‘Are you sure you can get through here? Look, there are some towels on the line, we can put them around the frame so you don’t cut yourself.’