Last Chance Café

by Liz Byrski

  Alyssa puts two crates in place and wriggles through the window with the help of the thickly folded towels to protect her. ‘Thank god for jeans,’ she says, sliding one leg through. ‘They’re really tough. Ow! Not tough enough, that really hurt.’

  ‘Mind your hands. Oh my god, you’re bleeding already,’ Margot says.

  ‘It’s okay, only a little cut,’ Alyssa says, wriggling the rest of her way through and ending up in the laundry trough. She jumps down and promptly unlocks the kitchen door.

  Margot steps into the kitchen and looks around, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the low light. She peers through into the bathroom and finds it empty, but as she turns to the passage she sees a huddled shape by the bedroom door.

  ‘Quick, Alyssa,’ she cries, ‘call an ambulance, tell them to hurry!’ Blood has seeped from a cut on Dot’s head to form a sticky puddle, and one leg is twisted underneath her. Her face is icy cold and Margot feels for a pulse. ‘Dot,’ she says. ‘Dot, can you hear me? It’s Margot. Can you open your eyes? Can you say something?’ And she sinks to the floor beside her, rubbing one of Dot’s deathly cold hands between her own.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Phyllida chooses her clothes carefully and as she does so she feels the urge to discard several things, not just because they are wrong for today’s task, but because they seem so very much part of the old Phyllida and quite unsuited to the woman she thinks she may possibly become. Pulling them from the wardrobe she drops them on the bed and settles on a pair of loose trousers in tan linen and a cream linen shirt. The linen is French, soft and best unironed; she likes the feel of it and she adds a long string of amber beads as a finishing touch. She wants to look good – strong, firm, in control, and ideally a little intimidating. And she certainly doesn’t want to look as though she has dressed up for the occasion. Through the open door of the wardrobe she sees the glint of black jet beading. It is the dress she bought for the fiftieth anniversary party; that one certainly has to go, and she slips it off the hanger, adds it to the pile, scoops the lot into her arms and dumps it on the spare room bed.

  The apartment is in a small but nicely restored art deco building not far from the hospital and Phyllida parks her car in a visitors’ bay, admiring the tasteful choice of colours and the high quality of the restoration. Number five is on the third floor and as she steps into the lift, where bevelled mirrors and walnut veneer have been used to recreate the original character. What, she wonders, is it like to live in a place like this, small, elegant, intimate almost? There are two apartments on each floor and she steps out of the lift into a carpeted corridor not unlike the foyer of a small hotel. Phyllida has always wondered how people manage to live peaceably in such close proximity to their neighbours, always at the mercy of mutual good will. What did Donald think of it? What was he thinking when he rode up here in this lift? Did he greet the neighbours? Did he ever worry that he might be recognised, his deception discovered?

  Just as she is about to press the bell of apartment number five panic strikes her like a bolt of lightning and she pulls back, heart pounding. She doesn’t have to do this – she could do it through the lawyer – but curiosity compels her; there are things she needs to know. She wants to see this woman again, to see the place where Donald came to visit his mistress. She wants to make a small but hopefully uncomfortable intrusion into May Wong’s space, as May had done to her when she appeared at her front door.

  May is clearly shocked to see her and struggles to compose herself. She is wearing narrow black pants and a loose white top and Phyllida is astounded to see that in one hand she has a lighted cigarette. She had often noticed the vague smell of tobacco on Donald’s clothes, a smell he used to attribute to having stopped off at a bar for a drink with colleagues on the way home. So was he smoking too? Did he come here to smoke as well as to do … well, whatever all those things were that men are said to do with their mistresses but not their wives? Years ago he’d promised her that he’d given up, but perhaps this had been just another part of his deception. The idea of Donald smoking, of him and May smoking together, is just as shocking to Phyllida as the idea of bodies tangled in robust copulation.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ May says. ‘You could have called to let me know you were coming.’

  Phyllida draws breath and focuses on the task at hand. ‘You didn’t call me before arriving on my doorstep,’ she says. ‘I need to talk to you, but if it’s not convenient I can come back another time.’

  May hesitates briefly and then steps back, opening the door wider. ‘Now is as good a time as any, I suppose.’ And she turns and walks away leaving Phyllida to close the door and follow her into the apartment, past the open door to the bedroom into which she desperately wants to look but doesn’t. The room into which May leads her is modestly furnished with carefully chosen pieces that match the style and period of the building. From the long window there is a view across rooftops to the city and, close by, the red brick bulk of the hospital. How convenient for Donald, Phyllida thinks, a stopping off place for a smoke and a … well, whatever else, before heading home.

  ‘Please sit down,’ May says, gesturing to the sofa and sitting down in a chair where she must have been seated when the bell rang, reading the weekend paper, discarded sections of which are scattered on the floor.

  Phyllida sits, still taking in the feel of the room, trying to see it through Donald’s eyes, to experience it as he might have done. May is silent, watching her. It makes Phyllida nervous – why doesn’t the wretched woman say something? – but then she herself is the visitor, it is up to her to explain her visit.

  ‘I have come to return your brooch,’ Phyllida says, attempting to revive her imperious tone, the one she had used in the hospital, but she fails and her voice wavers dangerously. She opens her bag, takes out the velvet pouch and puts it on the coffee table. ‘It’s a very nice piece but not, of course, repaired.’

  ‘Thank you,’ May says. ‘Does this bother you?’ she asks, holding up her cigarette.

  ‘Well I don’t smoke myself, but this is your home.’

  ‘I’ll put it out,’ May says, crushing it into the nearby ashtray. ‘I forgot that you don’t smoke.’

  ‘Did Donald smoke when he … when he was here?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Phyllida nods. There is so much she wants to ask, and yet she wastes a question on smoking. How much more will she be able to ask before she is shown the door? She sits up a little straighter. ‘There are some questions I need to ask you,’ she says.

  May gestures for her to go on.

  ‘When you came to my house you implied that I was aware of your … your involvement with my husband. Is that correct?’

  May nods. ‘Donald told me that you accepted our relationship on condition that it did not intrude in any way on your life.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You didn’t think it strange that I knew this and tolerated it?’

  May shrugs. ‘I thought you were an unusual woman. I rather admired you, and anyway it wasn’t my business. It was between you and Donald. He said you had always had an open marriage, and that in the past he’d had several women – “dalliances”, he called them. He said that as you both grew older it had become a marriage of convenience.’

  Phyllida’s mouth tightens. ‘Dalliances – I see. And your … your relationship was serious?’

  ‘Yes. When it became serious I told him we should end it, that was when he said you knew about it.’

  Phyllida is transfixed by the fleeting expressions of grief and defensiveness on May’s face, the proud flash of her eyes, the way her perfectly shaped lips form the words. ‘And you,’ she asks, ‘how could you accept this life, a life in hiding? Didn’t you want him to divorce me?’

  May shakes her head. ‘I am a solitary person, I did not want to live with him. I was happy with things as they were once I believed there was no deception.’

  ‘Did he c
ome here often?’

  ‘Once a week, perhaps, sometimes more, sometimes less.’

  ‘So it was sex then,’ Phyllida says. It is a statement rather than a question and she thinks it provides a rather satisfactory summing up of the situation.

  ‘At first,’ May says, looking her straight in the eye, ‘but as time went on much less sex, more conversation, companionship, someone to talk to. That was the most important thing for both of us.’

  ‘He told me nothing about his “dalliances”, as you call them –’

  ‘As he called them.’

  ‘Well – yes. He told me nothing. The first I knew of his involvement with you was when you turned up at my door. We did not have an open marriage, it’s a ridiculous suggestion. I was faithful to Donald throughout our marriage and for a rather long engagement.’

  A look of genuine surprise crosses May’s face and it is clear that she is both shocked and embarrassed by Phyllida’s revelation. ‘He told this to his lawyer too,’ she says. ‘He made me go with him so that I would know someone to speak to if I needed help. It was when he made the bequest to me in his will. John Hammond knows. He believed, as I did, that you knew.’

  Phyllida looks away from her towards the window, attempting to hold on to her emotions. ‘I realise that now,’ she says. ‘Do you …’ the effort of asking is almost more than she can bear ‘… can you tell me … did anyone else know? At the hospital, his colleagues, the nurses … ?’

  ‘No, I am sure they didn’t. If one person knew they would soon all have known, it’s that sort of place. Donald and I didn’t work together, I’m not a theatre nurse, and we never took risks at work.’

  ‘And you didn’t come to the funeral.’

  May shakes her head. ‘No. That was hard. But I owed it to him not to embarrass you by my presence.’

  ‘And yet you came to the house.’

  ‘When I knew you were alone. I waited for the young woman who lives with you to leave that morning. I asked John Hammond about my brooch, and he said he would mention it to you, but the weeks went by and there was no news. I was afraid it could be lost or thrown out.’

  Phyllida nods slowly and takes a deep breath. ‘I see.’

  May leans forward. ‘Can I … would you like some tea? This is difficult, for both of us, a shock. Unless you want to leave …’

  ‘No, no, not yet. Some tea, thank you, that would be kind.’ The heat of her hostility has cooled.

  ‘He lied to both of us,’ May says, ‘but to you most of all.’

  ‘He lied to me and about me,’ Phyllida says, ‘and I think the latter is the hardest to take. He implied that I had a choice and that I chose to collude with him in this. I am not a person who would ever agree to something like that. How dare he.’

  ‘I should have known, should have realised …’ May begins.

  Phyllida shakes her head. ‘It’s Donald’s betrayal that is at the heart of this,’ she says. ‘It began before you, and he drew you into it. I tried hard to blame you because it would have been easier that way, and of course you aren’t without responsibility in this, but the truth is that it is Donald who did this, and he has made fools of us both.’

  They sit for a moment in the silence.

  ‘Chinese or Indian?’ May asks, getting up.

  ‘Indian, please,’ Phyllida says. ‘So no one else knows, you’re sure about that?’

  ‘I believe not …’ She hesitates. ‘Except … yes, I remember now, someone found out. It was around the time he bought me the car, some years ago now. And this man – Terence?’

  ‘Trevor?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it, Trevor the car dealer, he found out somehow. Donald was worried at the time but then he stopped mentioning it. I forgot about it – I suppose he must have found a way of getting him to keep the confidence.’

  With a black and purple eye and her burgundy hair poking out in spikes above her bandaged forehead, Dot looks rather rakish, and to everyone’s relief, two days after her accident she is comfortably propped against the pillows beside the window in one corner of a four bed ward, surrounded by flowers and cards.

  ‘I wasn’t drunk, you know,’ she tells Laurence when he arrives with a large quantity of chocolate. ‘Don’t believe the rumours. I only had two glasses of champagne all evening.’

  The fall, and the fact that she lay drifting in and out of consciousness on the bedroom floor for hours, has shocked everyone. Apart from the cut on her head and some broken bones in her foot, she has got off lightly, but the hospital is insisting on keeping her in for observation.

  ‘They think I could have had a stroke,’ she says, ‘but I know what happened – it was the shoes. I haven’t had a stroke and I want to go home.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous, Dot. You’re seventy-five, of course they have to keep an eye on you for a few days. Stop complaining and be thankful that you’re being well looked after. And I don’t think you should be living alone – not that you’ll consider anything different, but I’ve brought you these,’ and he puts a bundle of leaflets on the bed with the chocolate.

  ‘Oh good, you bought big slabs,’ Dot says gleefully, opening the bag of chocolate and tearing the wrapper off a family size bar of rum and raisin. ‘Did you bring coffee?’

  ‘No one said coffee,’ Laurence says, and then hesitates. ‘Hang on, maybe I got it wrong. Lex said large, strong and dark. I thought she meant chocolate.’

  ‘This is excellent,’ Dot says, ‘but I could do with some strong black coffee as well.’

  ‘I can get you some from the café downstairs.’

  Dot shakes her head. ‘No, you need to smuggle it in from outside. The stuff from the café tastes of disinfectant.’

  ‘I’ll remember next time. But as I said, Dot, you shouldn’t be living alone. It’s obviously not safe.’

  ‘In that case you shouldn’t be living alone either,’ Dot says. ‘You’re only six months younger than me.’

  ‘That’s different,’ Laurence says, munching on the chocolate.

  ‘Why? Because you’re a bloke, I suppose. What utter sexist rot.’

  Laurence has the grace to blush, and in fact he’s not as confident as he sounds. In the last few days he’s started watching himself very carefully, checking loose rugs and uneven paving stones, wondering how he would cope if something like this happened to him. ‘Well at least have a look at these,’ he says, picking up the leaflets again and waving them at her. ‘You should get one. You just sign up and you get this thing you hang around your neck and wear all the time, then if you fall you press it and it sets off an alarm at the control centre and someone comes out to help you.’

  Dot glances at a leaflet and tosses it aside. ‘Not much help if you’re unconscious,’ she says. ‘It would have been useless the other night. I was in bed. I’m hardly likely to remember to put it on to get up and go for a pee.’

  ‘I think you’re supposed to wear it all the time, even in bed.’

  ‘Probably strangle myself,’ Dot says, rummaging in the plastic bag to check out the other types of chocolate. ‘And if I fall in the shower? Don’t tell me I’m supposed to wear it there.’

  ‘Well, what about this then?’ Laurence says, holding out another leaflet. ‘You register with them and every morning you call them at a prearranged time. If you don’t call they wait ten minutes and call you, and if you don’t answer they send someone around to check on you.’

  ‘And meanwhile I’ve forgotten and gone shopping,’ Dot says. ‘Forget it, Laurence, it’s not me you’re worried about, it’s yourself. This orange chocolate is divine.’

  Laurence interests himself in the chocolate to hide his embarrassment; he breaks a piece off and samples it. ‘Mmm, it is rather good. But the thing is, Dot, you’re a woman and old women are more likely to suffer from osteoporosis than old men. You could break a hip.’

  ‘I have the bone density of a much younger woman,’ Dot says. ‘I had a test a few years ago, Laurence, what about you?’ She bundl
es the leaflets together and hands them back to him. ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful for your concern,’ she says, ‘and you excelled yourself with the chocolate. Maybe I’ll think about all this sometime in the future, but I’m not ready for it yet. You know, Laurence, last night, when I couldn’t get to sleep in this horrible hard hospital bed, I was thinking about you and me, and Margot, the past, the Push – all that stuff. I was thinking about dancing with you, and actually about fucking you …’

  Laurence chokes on his chocolate and has to fumble for his handkerchief. ‘For heaven’s sake, Dot, keep your voice down, the whole ward can hear you.’

  Dot lowers her voice. ‘Okay, but do you ever think about it now?’

  Laurence is sure his face has flushed a fiery red, and he glances around for eavesdroppers. ‘Well, I … er … well, yes, sometimes I do.’

  ‘In what sort of way?’

  Laurence swallows. ‘Well, it was pretty wild –’

  ‘No,’ Dot interrupts, ‘that’s not what I mean. Don’t you think it’s quite bizarre that here we are, old lovers, old friends, eating chocolate and waiting for the medication and bedpans to take over our lives. But we are still friends. I think that’s rather splendid.’ She laughs loudly and the heads turn again. ‘Back then, if someone had shown us what we’d be doing today we’d never have believed them. We never thought about getting old. You don’t, do you? You just assume you’ll always be young because that’s how you feel inside, it’s how we still feel.’

  She is right of course, Laurence thinks later as he makes his way down in the lift and out into the hospital car park, walking along behind a couple, hands in the back pockets of each other’s jeans, kissing – almost eating each other – as they walk; eighteen or nineteen, perhaps. A generation who, like every generation before them, think they invented sex. We were all like that once, Laurence thinks, all testosterone and bodily fluids and that incredible flush of power and confidence that came with knowing you could have it whenever you wanted it. Now it’s personal alarms and incontinence pads to look forward to. How long will he be able to drive, he wonders, clicking the remote to open the car door; how long will he be able to live independently? As if the loss of Bernard isn’t hard enough to cope with, he’s aware now of all the risk factors, and the bleak reality of the future. Women, he thinks, are far more capable than men of coping not only with getting old, but with living alone. He’d thought he liked getting old, there was a dignity to it, the pleasure of indulging oneself and feeling you’d earned it. But that was when Bernard was around, when the future was filled with Bernard; it’s all different now.