Last Chance Café

by Liz Byrski

  ‘You are an old fool, Dot,’ Vinka says. ‘You want that the crowd will love you or hate you even. But you run from the love that reaches inside to who you really are. Tell him, Dot, tell him about his father – if you are sure you know who it was then tell him.’

  ‘I know who it was. And I will tell him, but tomorrow, because tomorrow I need him to be strong for me, to get me through what I have to do. If I tell him the truth now it may be too hard for both of us.’

  Vinka shakes her head in frustration. ‘Tomorrow then,’ Vinka says. ‘Or I come again and I do not leave until you talk to him.’ She gets to her feet.

  ‘You and your sister,’ Dot says, ‘you made him read what I wrote, he told me that. You let him think I was something special.’

  ‘Beate thinks that it is fair that he knows you through this,’ Vinka says. ‘She thinks he has a right, because maybe one day he finds out, or maybe we tell him, and then it is good that his mother is not a stranger, he is proud.’

  ‘Proud?’ Dot laughs. ‘How could he be proud? I gave him away, Vinka, and he was very lucky I did because I would have been a lousy, selfish mother. Instead he got a mother who loved and raised him to be a fine, wise and responsible man. I expect nothing more than his anger and contempt, and that’s what is so unbearable.’

  Vinka laughs loudly, tossing her head back as she does so. ‘Dot, my friend, you know so little about what really matters. Sometimes I wonder how is it that you can be so naive? You know what I think, Dot? I think you are afraid of love. And now you have a chance, your last chance. You want to take it or throw it away?’

  ‘Patrick was afraid it was you,’ Margot says, leaning against the bench top in Laurence’s kitchen. ‘He saw your signature and was nearly out of his mind about it apparently.’

  Laurence looks up, concerned. ‘Well naturally, he and Lexie … what a disaster that would have been.’

  ‘So you knew? All these years you’ve known that Dot had a baby and adopted it out? I suppose it was that time she just took off without saying anything and then showed up here in Melbourne a couple of years later. I always wondered why she didn’t tell anyone she was going or where she was, but now it seems she did tell someone.’

  Laurence, who had been making an onion tart when Margot turned up at the door, stirs some cream into the beaten eggs. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘She told me. She told me because she needed someone to know. It was a sort of anchor for her, I suppose.’ He pours the eggs and cream over the soft browned onions on their pastry base.

  ‘You didn’t tell me. We were married, we had Lexie. You never said a word.’

  ‘Dot didn’t want anyone to know she was pregnant. She wanted to disappear, have the baby adopted, and to feel that if or when she came back no one would know. She asked me not to tell anyone – ever.’

  ‘And that included me?’

  ‘It did. Are you staying for lunch?’

  ‘I need to know, Laurence, I need you to be honest with me.’

  ‘About what?’

  Margot sighs. ‘I always wondered about you and Dot. You’d had this full-on super hot relationship and then I came along, and I think for a time you were sleeping with both of us. And then I got pregnant and we got married …’ She stops, looks away and picks up the pepper mill which he has returned to the bench top.

  Laurence turns to put the tart in the oven. ‘What are you asking me, Margot? Did I sleep with Dot after you and I were together? A few times, yes. After we got married? No, never. And anyway, does it really matter after all this time, after everything else that happened?’

  She takes another enormous breath, pushes the pepper mill aside and leans forward, crossed arms resting on the bench top.

  ‘It sort of does matter, because the time we were married was special, it stayed special for me even after you’d left. And when I got used to the fact that you’d gone because you had to, because it had always been wrong for you, it was important for me to remember it as a time when we were happy, when we were good for each other. I don’t want that tarnished in my memory, particularly not tarnished by Dot, who is my friend. It seems odd that she told you she was pregnant – why didn’t she tell me? It’s the sort of thing women tell their women friends, not their cast-off lovers.’

  ‘You’d just had a miscarriage, remember? Dot couldn’t face your knowing that she was going to give her baby up for adoption.’

  Margot nods and she’s silent for a moment, running her finger through the scattering of crushed pepper that has escaped from the mill. ‘Yes, I see, I can understand that.’

  ‘She told me for practical reasons and because she trusted me. She took off and I didn’t hear anything for months, and then she phoned me the week the baby was due. She was living in a dingy little bedsit in a decaying old house in Byron Bay and she was scared witless and very lonely. She’d somehow arranged this private adoption, lord knows how, but you know Dot, she excelled at living on the edge in those days. I suppose she did it through the midwife, just sidelined the authorities. I thought it seemed a bit dodgy but she was adamant about it. So she had the baby at home and the midwife called the adopting father, who came to collect him a couple of days later.’

  ‘And you were there?’

  Laurence nods slowly, noticing the tightness around Margot’s mouth. ‘She needed someone with her. She said I was the only person she really trusted apart from you and she couldn’t ask you. I told you I had to replace someone at a conference at the last minute and I went up there for a week. I lied about that, I’m sorry, Margot, but at the time it seemed the right thing to do. I couldn’t tell you about Dot and I didn’t want to leave her on her own.’

  ‘So you were there when he was born?’

  ‘Yes. Not in the room of course, hiding in the kitchen. Then she asked me to leave when the man who was adopting the baby was due. She said she’d be embarrassed if I was there. So I witnessed her signature and went off into town. I phoned you and killed a couple of hours in the pub reading a newspaper, then I went back.’

  ‘How was Dot?’

  ‘Devastated. She almost changed her mind but then she kept saying, “No, it’s no good, I’d be a terrible mother.” Later she was saying “it’s better this way”, but I could see that wasn’t really what she felt.’

  ‘It’s weird, isn’t it, them? Dot and Patrick, knowing each other for over a year now, and yet not knowing. So who is Patrick’s father? Is it someone we know?’

  Laurence shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. All she told me at the time was that she’d known him for a while, met him in the Push, so I suppose it’s possible that we might know him.’

  ‘Did she tell him about the baby?’

  He shrugs. ‘Well, he was married, she told me that much, so I guess not.’

  They stand looking at each other across the bench top.

  ‘I’ll stay for lunch,’ Margot says.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘If Lexie and Patrick decide to get married, Dot will be part of our family.’

  ‘But she always has been, really, hasn’t she,’ Laurence says, ‘in her own uniquely disconnected, non-familial way? She’s a bit like one of those eccentric aunts that turn up in early twentieth century novels, create chaos and then disappear again. She’ll have gone to ground now, I suppose.’

  ‘I think so. I’ve tried calling her several times, so has Patrick, but she’s not answering.’

  Laurence peers through the glass door of the oven and checks the tart. ‘She hasn’t mentioned it for years, you know, but we were sitting here one evening recently and I actually asked her if she had any regrets about it. She never gives much away of course, but she did say …’ He hesitates. ‘What was it now? Something about living in the last chance café, looking back and realising she could have done things differently. Stuff about how you see things another way when you’re getting old. Anyway, this really is a last chance when she least expected it. Let’s hope she sees it as an opportunity rather than a disaster.’

/>   TWENTY-NINE

  Phyllida stands a little way back from the window of Donald’s study from where she can see anyone coming in through the front gate – not that there is anyone to see just yet. He’s late of course, but she’d known he would be. Emma had delivered the message. ‘Aunty Phyl has decided to sell the house and she’d like to talk to you,’ she’d said. And of course he’d agreed like a shot and said he’d pop over about two. But now he’s making her wait because he thinks she’ll be tense and anxious and so he’ll be able to bully her. Well she is tense and anxious, but not in the way he wants. She’s just concerned about getting it right, making sure she takes him through everything in the way they’ve planned. She’s rehearsed it dozens of times, and although at this moment she can’t recall a word of it, something tells her that when he arrives she’ll know what to do.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Emma whispers, popping her head around the door. ‘Dad says not to worry, he thinks Trevor’s just playing power games.’

  ‘I think so too,’ Phyllida says. ‘I’ll be fine, Em.’

  Yes I will, she thinks, turning back to the window, and she knows too that she’ll be fine beyond today, beyond finding a new home, beyond the fallout from this tawdry situation of Donald’s creation. She remembers standing here often while Donald lay unconscious in the hospital, wondering what would happen if he died and, of course, if he lived. Was she going to spend the rest of her life caring for a demanding invalid or a man diminished beyond recognition? He was clearly never going to be the Donald she knew, and whichever way it went her life had been about to change quite dramatically and not for the better. His death had left her with no sense of a life beyond that moment. And yet here she is, surveying a range of possibilities about how to live; she’s thrown herself into the campaign, she’s joined a book club, she feels she really has been some help to Emma and, perhaps most surprising of all, she has made a friend of Dot.

  There is a movement by the gate; a hand reaches over and slides the bolt and Trevor steps inside and closes the gate behind him. He stands for a moment, hands in his pockets, studying the front of the house, doubtless revising his offer downwards, Phyllida thinks. Then he straightens his shoulders and walks purposefully towards the front door. She lets him wait for a while before opening the door, and once inside he barely glances at her, casting instead an appraising glance around the spacious hallway.

  ‘Best if we talk in Donald’s study,’ Phyllida says, leading the way. Everything about Trevor is cocky and confident, the strut and the swagger, the barely concealed smugness of his expression, the way his eyes roam across the landscape of what he already assumes will soon be his.

  ‘I was expecting to hear from you, I knew you’d see sense. Mind you, Phyl, I did warn you that property prices would fall, and now they’re right down there in the dunny. You should’ve taken my offer then.’

  Phyllida indicates a chair alongside the desk and walks behind it to sit in Donald’s chair. Trevor’s neck, she notices, is fiery red, and the collar of his shirt is too tight, making his face look fatter, more pink and shiny than ever. He runs a finger between his neck and the collar and she hopes this is a sign of nerves, although it seems unlikely.

  ‘You didn’t actually make an offer,’ she says. ‘You simply offered an opinion on the state of the market and what I should do. You said you’d be helping me out by taking the place off my hands.’

  ‘And as I remember, you were a little bit uppity at the time. Grief, I suppose. A woman alone is very vulnerable and you ladies don’t like to admit it, do you?’

  ‘Indeed we don’t,’ she says, struggling to keep her anger under control. ‘And you know, Trevor, I have to admit that the fact that for weeks you were throwing spadefuls of dog shit over my wall didn’t help.’

  The shock on his face is genuine and Phyllida sees that he has completely forgotten about his efforts to intimidate her. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says, colour flushing up from his bulging neck to his face.

  ‘Really? Well you do have a short memory,’ she says, more confident now that she senses his discomfort. ‘Have you also forgotten that my niece and I were throwing it back?’

  Trevor fidgets awkwardly around in his chair and fails to respond.

  ‘Well,’ Phyllida says, ‘you obviously do remember the conversation about the house and, as you said, time moves on, so what do you think about it now?’

  ‘Irrelevant now. Things aren’t what they were and who knows when the market will recover?’

  ‘Of course you’re right. But you know us ladies, Trevor. We don’t know a lot about the property market, so can you tell me what you think it might be worth to you now?’

  Trevor inhales deeply and then exhales noisily, puffing out his cheeks. It’s obvious that his brief moment of lost composure has passed, and he stands up, looks up at the ceiling, out through the door into the hall, and through the front and side windows. Pursing his lips he screws up his eyes and tilts his head from side to side. ‘Well, I’d need to have a proper look around of course, only been in a few times, haven’t seen all the rooms, and I’d need a building inspection –’

  ‘Naturally,’ Phyllida interrupts, ‘but if all is as you think it is?’

  Trevor squints again and names a price which is two hundred thousand dollars lower than the lowest of the three valuations she had obtained from real estate agents.

  ‘I see,’ she says, ‘that’s interesting, very interesting.’

  ‘I knew you’d see sense. You don’t want to be saddled with this great place all on your own, do you?’

  ‘No indeed I don’t, Trevor, and that’s why I’ve sold it. Very easily in fact, only the second day after I placed it on the market, sold it for several hundred thousand more than the sum you mentioned. No, Trevor, it wasn’t the house I wanted to talk to you about. Not at all.’

  Trevor’s colour begins to rise. ‘Sold it? But your niece said you wanted to talk to me about selling the house.’

  ‘I think you’ll find she said that I had decided to sell it and that I’d like to talk to you. Not that I wanted to talk to you about the house.’ Trevor’s face is now a worrying shade of purple, and Phyllida wonders fleetingly what she will do if he has a heart attack. ‘No, it wasn’t about the house at all. I’ve been going through Donald’s things, you see, and I found this.’ She picks up Tony Stiles’s hospital file. ‘You’re familiar with the case of course?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Really? That’s odd, because Donald kept a sort of journal, certainly a lot of notes about how you and that nurse – Miss Burstall, wasn’t it? – or perhaps I mean you on behalf of Miss Burstall, threatened to take the matter to the newspapers and expose him unless he paid you rather a lot of money. And yes, look, here’s an email from you to Donald, telling him to make up his mind or he’ll find himself on the front page of the Sunday paper.’

  She waves the email printout at him and there is a fraction of a second in which it is clear that Trevor is considering his options before going on the attack. He stands up and leans forward now across the desk, his face uncomfortably close to her own, and it is all Phyllida can do to hold her position and not recoil from him.

  ‘He deserved to pay, he was responsible.’

  ‘You may be right about that,’ Phyllida says, ‘but unfortunately there was no enquiry and Miss Burstall resigned.’

  ‘She knew she’d be screwed, that’s why. Screwed by Donald and his mate. It ruined her career having to leave like that. Someone needed to take care of her. It was Donald’s fault. I wanted to get some sort of justice for her.’

  ‘Rather expensive justice,’ Phyllida says. ‘And I understand that far from having her career ruined, Miss Burstall is now a senior theatre nurse in a hospital in South Australia, and amazingly, Trevor, after all your efforts on her behalf, the money doesn’t seem to have made its way to her.’

  ‘Now you look here –’

  Phyllida gets to her feet now. �
��No, Trevor, you look here. You not only got money out of Donald, ostensibly for Miss Burstall, but you kept on extracting money from him and putting it into your own pocket. Why Donald ever thought you’d give up after he paid you off the first time I can’t imagine, but in some ways he could be quite naive. If he hadn’t been naive he might have realised that Miss Burstall never saw a penny of it. You just kept bleeding him, didn’t you, Trevor? He kept records, you see, every time you demanded money he made a note of it, and linked it to withdrawals on the bank statements.’

  Trevor is quiet now but Phyllida can feel his fury crashing towards her in great waves, but he holds back, clearly determined not to let her see how rattled he is. ‘Donald was an arrogant blustering fool with delusions of grandeur. He got what was coming to him. He knew he’d be finished if the media got hold of it.’

  ‘So you blackmailed him?’ Phyllida says, tense now. ‘You admit it?’

  Trevor leans back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him. ‘He was a pushover. And yes, I took him to the cleaners. I don’t like that word blackmail – I simply told him pay up, Don, or you’re gonna find yourself in deep shit. And every time I tapped him on the shoulder he paid up like a lamb.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Desperate to protect his reputation, and you wouldn’t want to see that reputation sullied on the front pages either, would you, Phyl? So I think we can come to an arrangement …’

  ‘Frankly, Trevor,’ Phyllida says, ‘I don’t give a stuff about that reputation now. You can tell whomever you like – I certainly have.’

  The door to the study opens now and two men walk in.