Last Chance Café

by Liz Byrski

  It’s clear, when she returns to her seat at the table, that no one has noticed anything unusual about Emma’s absence, and fortunately no one is peering closely at her trying to determine whether or not she might have been crying.

  ‘Look at these, Mum,’ Rosie says, dumping her pile of plastic cracker charms on the table beside her. ‘Everyone gave me their things.’ She pushes the pile towards Emma and then turns, squeezing in between the chairs to crawl onto Laurence’s knee.

  ‘Can you make this work, Grandad?’ she asks, handing him a small plastic comb from a cracker, sealed in a tiny plastic bag.

  Laurence tears the plastic, extracts the sections of the comb and slots them together. ‘There,’ he says, removing Rosie’s paper hat and sliding the comb through her silky hair. ‘It works now.’

  Rosie takes the comb from him and drags it roughly through his beard. ‘Ouch, you’re so rough, Rosie,’ he says, grasping her hand and kissing it. ‘Go gently, I’m an old man.’

  ‘Sorry, Grandad,’ Rosie says, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him several times. ‘Sorry, I love you.’

  Emma, still struggling with the lump in her throat, sees that Laurence is deeply touched by this. He hugs Rosie and with her arms still around his neck she combs the back of his hair. Laurence looks across at Emma – it’s a look she knows from her childhood, a look of enormous sadness. That look is engraved on her memory from the day he turned back at the door before walking out of their house and into another life. If he was so sad, she had wondered then, why would he go? Was it her fault? Back then she had believed it was and now, all these years later when she knows, understands and accepts the truth, when she knows she had no part in it, she still hasn’t quite forgiven him for going, nor forgiven herself for not being good enough to make him want to stay.

  Laurence smiles and strokes the back of her hand and Emma wishes she could make that final step and have the words fall from her lips as they had from Rosie’s. But the words still won’t come, and she smiles and grips his hand, and hopes it is enough.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Late in January, as the city heaves and sighs under a suffocating blanket of heat, Margot gathers together the typed pages and taps them vertically, then horizontally, on the desk to align the edges. For a moment she holds the stack of paper in both hands, willing herself to remember how this moment feels, to register the relief and the satisfaction of finishing it. It is done and the question of whether she will be able to return to the keyboard each morning, move the characters along and eventually find an ending, are answered. She did, she has. Now someone, probably several people, will shuffle its pages, pencil their comments and questions into its margins and so decide its fate. It has its own life now, apart from her; just like a child on their first day at school, others will nourish or reject it, will trim it or ask her to expand it. They will read into it their own meanings according to their prejudices, their loves and hates, their real pasts and imagined futures. It is no longer hers in the way that it was in the writing. The moment is full of promise: of acceptance and admiration, of rejection and criticism, and of the emptiness of waiting for what lies beyond this hiatus of its passing into the hands of others. And what will she do now, without it, without its demanding presence calling her back day after day?

  ‘It’s beautifully written,’ the agent to whom she sent a couple of chapters had said on the phone. ‘I like the idea and what I’ve seen so far. So, if you could send me a complete manuscript I’ll read it and get back to you as soon as possible.’

  How long is that? Margot wonders as she puts the manuscript into a padded envelope and seals it. Weeks? Months? Picking up the package she gets in the car and drives to the post office, still caught in the enormity of this moment. All her life she has dreamed of this, of holding it in her hands, a work entirely of her own creation, and now this has all happened so quickly. Can she really have done anything worthwhile in such a short time? ‘Perhaps,’ she murmurs to herself as she locks the car and crosses the street, running the last few steps into the post office just as it is about to close, ‘perhaps I have been at it for years. Maybe I’ve been writing it for years and all I had to do was get it out of my head and onto the page. Maybe I just had to be this age, at this time and in this place, before I knew what to do with it.’ And she hands the Express Delivery package over the counter and watches as her hopes and dreams are tossed into a sack. Then, unwilling to return to the strange empty stillness of a house where there is no work in progress, she goes back to the car, does an illegal U-turn, and heads for Phyllida’s place.

  The drive is full of cars and the front door is ajar. Margot pushes it open and follows the sound of voices to the back of the house and out onto the verandah where, once again, a crowd of people sits around the table.

  ‘Margot!’ Phyllida cries, getting to her feet. ‘How lovely, we were just talking about you, come and join us,’ and she pours her a glass of wine.

  ‘Another party? You didn’t invite me,’ she says, sitting down.

  ‘It’s a campaign meeting,’ Dot says. ‘We would have invited you but we didn’t want to take you away from your writing.’

  From the end of the table Alyssa pushes a plate of raspberry friands towards her. ‘You should help us eat these, quickly, before Dot wolfs the lot.’

  Margot takes one and samples it. ‘Delicious. How’s it going? Are you planning the march?’

  ‘We are,’ Dot says, ‘and I’d forgotten what a monumental task it is.’

  ‘We’re trying to work out a plan to distribute the fliers and get some advance publicity,’ Wendy says. ‘Dot’s using some of her old contacts, but we need someone to coordinate the volunteers to get the fliers into libraries and cafés and so on.’

  ‘I could do that,’ Margot says, through her cake. ‘I’ve done it before, years ago, remember?’

  Dot nods but then shakes her head. ‘I do, but you shouldn’t do anything right now that stops you from finishing what you’re writing.’

  ‘It’s finished,’ Margot says, looking around the table. ‘I’ve just sent it off.’ And there is a pause followed by cheers and toasts. ‘So I really do need something to do.’

  ‘I am definitely going home,’ Dot says. ‘You’ve been wonderful, I’m so grateful, but I’ve already outstayed my welcome.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Phyllida says from the doorway of the bedroom where Dot is zipping up her bag. ‘You’re the last person I ever thought I’d say this to, Dot, but I’m really going to miss you.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Dot says. ‘I misjudged you, Phyl. I thought you were a very different sort of person.’

  ‘You didn’t misjudge me, I was a different sort of person.’

  ‘Well I like this one better than the old one,’ Dot says. ‘Much better.’

  ‘So do I.’ Phyllida takes the case from her and hands her the stick she is still using. ‘Come on then, let’s get this bag in the car and I’ll drive you home.’

  It is odd in the car; silent, awkward, as though neither of them knows what to say. The ease of the past few weeks seems to have deserted them since they left the house. Dot wonders if this is her fault, if, in her anxiety about going home, she has said or done something stupid without realising it. Phyllida’s invitation had come when she was panicking about how she would manage at home alone. She had brushed off all offers of help. The only one acceptable to Dot had been Margot’s offer to stay with her. It was the ideal solution but Dot, accustomed to the sight of Margot propping up other people at considerable cost to herself, was not going to consider anything that might disrupt her friend’s writing.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she’d said to anyone who asked. ‘I’ll be able to whiz down to the shops in my wheelchair and whiz around the house. I’ll have the crutches for getting in and out of bed, and I can put a stool in the shower so I don’t have to stand.’

  But that was before she’d done a test run in the chair along the hospital corridor. All that whizzing around
turned out to be rather more difficult and hazardous than she’d imagined. It hurt her arms; she got her hand caught in the side of the chair, crashed into a trolley, and ran over a doctor’s foot. It was pretty unnerving but Phyllida’s invitation had come at just the right time; it offered privacy, comfort, convenience and the safety net of both Phyllida and Emma being in the same house. She had never expected to enjoy it, and she had certainly never expected to feel this fear and sadness at leaving.

  ‘You know, Phyllida,’ Dot says now, shifting slightly in her seat, wanting to break the silence. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like to sit around with women friends, with a bottle of wine, and talk. I started thinking about it after Margot’s party. We used to do it a lot, Margot and I and those other women, but I haven’t been good at keeping in touch. I suppose I was arrogant enough to think I didn’t need it.’

  Phyllida changes gear and looks across at her. ‘I’ve never done it before,’ she says. ‘I’ve done dinner parties with Donald’s friends and their wives, playing golf but not getting involved in the social life of the club …’ She hesitates. ‘When you and Margot were doing it all those years ago I was actively trying to avoid it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes … I never really knew how to be with other women, and it was partly about putting everything into my marriage and resisting anything that might challenge it.’

  ‘And you thought friendships and the women’s movement might do that?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Ha! Well yes, I guess so. It certainly spelled the end of a lot of marriages.’

  ‘I put all my energy and attention into being Donald’s wife and built walls to keep myself in and others out. My mother always insisted that it was family that mattered and it was best to keep everyone else at a distance. I never understood how Margot could be so open to people.’

  ‘So what now? What’s next?’

  Phyllida shrugs. ‘Not sure yet. A move definitely, and working out what I really want to do in my old age.’ She swings the car slowly into Dot’s driveway. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t fancy trying out a book club?’

  Dot’s instinctive caution about commitment cuts in. ‘What sort of book club? Where is it?’

  ‘The Boatshed, down by the water just –’

  ‘Yes, I know it, I know the women who run it, but I didn’t know they had a book club.’

  ‘Been going a couple of years apparently. I’ve just finished the book for the next meeting. It’s called Instances of the Number 3.’

  ‘Salley Vickers,’ Dot says. ‘I’ve read some of hers, but not that one.’ She turns sideways in her seat. ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go. But I don’t promise to keep going if I don’t enjoy the first time.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Phyllida says. ‘I’ll drop the book off for you in the next couple of days. Even if you change your mind and decide not to go I’d still like to know what you think of it.’

  The house has a staleness about it as Phyllida carries Dot’s suitcase through to the bedroom and goes back to the car for the shopping she had picked up for her this morning.

  ‘It feels so strange,’ Dot says, hobbling around on her one crutch, opening windows and shuffling through the mail while Phyllida unpacks the shopping and puts it away.

  ‘It does,’ Phyllida says, looking around. ‘But it’s a lovely place, Dot, and you’ll soon get back the old feeling.’

  They stand facing each other, silence bearing down on them.

  ‘Well then,’ Phyllida says, ‘I’d best be off. You know you can call any time … if there’s anything …’ She stops, swallows and takes a deep breath. ‘Well then …’ and awkwardly she steps forward, hesitates, takes another step as Dot moves towards her. For a moment they cling to each other in a sort of desperation until Dot’s stick clatters to the floor. They step awkwardly back from each other and Phyllida laughs, brushes something from her eyes and bends towards the stick.

  ‘No!’ Dot says. ‘I need to know I can do this alone.’ And cautiously, steadying herself with one hand against the wall, she bends and retrieves it. ‘Success!’ she says, straightening up. ‘And independence.’

  ‘Good,’ Phyllida says. ‘That’s very good. Well, you don’t need me anymore so I’ll be off.’ And she turns away and walks briskly along the passage to the front door.

  ‘Phyllida.’

  She stops and turns, and Dot hobbles towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘All that time ago – calling you Falada.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Phyllida says. ‘I always rather liked it. In fact it was the one thing I did like about you, Dot. Until now, that

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Melbourne aches under the burden of the heat and the acrid smoke from fires that continue to burn beyond the city boundaries. Fire has consumed lives, homes, businesses, even small towns, and it dulls the spirit and the imagination of those in comparative safety beyond its reach. It hangs like a pall not only across the state but across the nation as people watch its progress on news bulletins and online, as they pledge money, clothes, toys, household goods and effort to help those whose lives have been devastated.

  At a table outside the Boatshed Emma waits nervously, shifting her position slightly as the fleeting promise of a breeze falters and is lost. Perhaps this is a bad time, she thinks. Everyone is so preoccupied, even she finds it hard to think beyond the image of the fires. At this time it seems almost trivial to be pursuing questions about something that happened years ago, but Phyllida keeps asking whether there is anything in the files they should be concerned about, and Emma feels duplicitous each time she reassures her. She glances nervously at the other tables where couples and families sit waiting for their food or eating it, pushing away half-eaten lunches, pouring iced water, mopping sweat and trying to distract uncomfortable, fractious children. And then she sees her, walking across the grass between the car park and the footpath, just as she imagined: medium height, in her fifties perhaps, black hair greying at the temples, cut in a jagged modern style, dressed in a white linen skirt and a lime green shirt, with big black sunglasses. Emma has never seen her before but she just knows it’s May, and as she crosses the path and comes up the Boatshed steps, she stands up to greet her.

  ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘I’m Emma. Thanks for coming to meet me.’

  May removes her glasses, smiles and takes a seat at the table. ‘Donald was very fond of you, he often talked about you. But really I can’t image how I can help.’

  Emma orders tea and they talk awkwardly about the heat, the horror of the fires, and the women who have turned the Boatshed into a café and craft gallery. The tea arrives and when Emma has poured it May leans towards her across the table.

  ‘Perhaps we should talk about whatever it is that’s bothering you?’

  Emma nods. ‘Yes, yes of course – and I do appreciate …’ She hesitates, fascinated by this woman who is so centred, so quietly elegant. Why Donald? Emma longs to ask her, along with so many other intrusive questions she will never get to ask. ‘Well … it’s about Donald of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I wonder if you know anything about the death of a patient called Tony Stiles, about seven years ago.’

  May puts down her cup and looks away, out across the liquid glass of the water as the river curves into the distance. ‘Not much,’ she says. ‘I was away in Hong Kong when it happened, so I only know what Donald told me, and murmurings on the hospital grapevine. Why?’

  Emma reaches down into the bag which is occupying the third seat at the table, her heart pounding. Even showing it to May seems risky, but she takes out the file and lays it on the table.

  May tilts back in shock. ‘You have the file? It was missing. How did you get it?’

  ‘I found it in a box file in his study along with some other papers.’

  ‘You mean he … Donald … you think he … ?

  ‘Stole it? I think he may have done
.’

  May shakes her head. ‘More deception,’ she says. ‘He told me that it had gone missing.’

  ‘And when it wasn’t ever found?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I asked later, he said there was no problem. I should forget about it.’

  ‘So, what did he tell you?’

  ‘A patient died on the operating table. A young man – a street kid, I think. There was a big football match that night under floodlights, and just as the crowd started to leave the grounds a storm broke, thunder and lightning, torrential rain, and there were a lot of people on the streets, there were accidents, and some fighting. Emergency was in chaos. Donald was about to go home, but he stayed on to help. This man … boy, Tony Stiles, was brought in, badly injured. I don’t know if it was a fight or perhaps he was hit by a car, but he had a head wound, and some internal damage – his kidneys, I think, but I’m not sure.’

  ‘And something went wrong.’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t remember what. They were very short of staff and Donald was operating with just the theatre nurse and the anaesthetist. I really can’t remember the details, but he died. Donald said it was unavoidable, but he had some sort of argument with the nurse – she blamed him. She was quite experienced but he said she was wrong, unprofessional, and he’d always found her difficult to work with. May I?’ She reaches out for the file and draws it towards her.

  Emma leans back in her chair, watching, waiting as May reads, sighs, shakes her head, reads on, and finally closes it and looks up, her hand clasped over her mouth.

  ‘So it was his fault,’ she says finally, shaking her head.

  ‘Well I guess we’ll never know now for sure,’ Emma says. ‘The nurse’s statement is pretty clear but Donald denies it completely and the anaesthetist didn’t see what happened.’

  ‘But the anaesthetist also mentions that Donald appeared to have been drinking, possibly heavily. And the very fact that Donald has hidden the file … well, it seems like a sign of guilt. But then he was a very senior person, they would believe him before the nurse, but he also had much more to lose.’