Last Chance Café

by Liz Byrski

  Lexie lets go of him and looks around her, around the neat, well-organised kitchen, and beyond it through to the garden. ‘I like it here,’ she says. ‘It’s a lovely house and best of all it’s got you in it. And besides, everything you said is true. Impecunious student, needs help with assignments, needs someone to cook dinner and pour me glasses of wine while I struggle with essays. And I’ve got an exhibition to organise, and a campaign to run.’

  ‘So you’re here because you’re overworked and financially needy?’

  ‘Guess so,’ she says. ‘Oh yes, and there’s the other bit.’

  ‘What bit?’

  ‘The bit about how I love you and miss you, and how I finally feel safe enough to take the plunge.’

  ‘Well I’m glad you managed to squeeze that bit in. This wouldn’t have anything to do with Dot, would it?’ he asks, turning to switch on the kettle and pull two mugs from the cupboard.

  Lexie sits at the table watching as he makes the tea. ‘Only in a roundabout sort of way,’ she says. And sitting there she knows it is right, the right time, the right place and definitely the right person.

  ‘I think I was convinced already but the night you found out – and that business about Dad – well that night I realised how easily I might have lost you. And it mattered that you understood how it would have been for Dot and why she and your father kept the secret – you were able to see beyond yourself. So I thought I’d better grab you while I’ve got the chance.’

  Patrick pours water on the tea bags and carries the cups to the table.

  ‘I may have got you under false pretences then,’ he says, ‘because it wasn’t that hard. I knew I was adopted but I grew up feeling loved, really quite unconditionally. And then finding out Dot was my mother was pretty weird, but it was also totally brilliant.’

  Lexie gives him a long hard look. ‘Are you really saying that you never had a moment of feeling hurt or angry that she gave you up?’

  ‘Of course I did, but I kept trying to remember the circumstances, although I did feel somewhat less than generous during those few days when she wouldn’t talk to me. Anyway,’ he laughs, ‘as I told her the other day, it’s a relief, really – she wouldn’t have had a fraction of the patience Mum had, she’s a lousy cook and I would have had to do my own ironing. But I wish I’d known while Mum and Dad were alive. Aunty Win thinks Mum may have known, that either she guessed or he told her. But we’re never going to know the answer to that one.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Lexie says, pouring milk into her tea. ‘Well thank goodness Vinka’s okay with it all.’

  Patrick laughs. ‘She is but I suspect that she’s also feeling a bit possessive.’

  ‘Dot moving in on her favourite nephew?’

  ‘Her only nephew. Anyway, what have you decided to do about your place?’

  ‘All settled,’ Lexie says. ‘Phyl and Emma are moving to the new house in two weeks and Em’s promised to stay until Phyl’s comfortable and after that she’s going to rent my place, and I’ll be able to pay my way here. I’ll look for some part-time work when I’ve survived the first semester.’

  ‘You can be a kept woman,’ Patrick says. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘I know, and it’s lovely of you. But I need my independence. Besides, you have the most terrifying mother and aunt in the world, and they might think I was taking advantage of you. Not sure I can cope if they start to gang up on me.’

  ‘Nobody told me I’d have to take my clothes off,’ Dot says, clutching her arms around her. ‘If they had I wouldn’t have agreed. I don’t mind being in this exhibition but I’m not doing it if it’s like that Calendar Girls thing. I’m no Helen Mirren, you know …’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Emma says. ‘We just want your head, neck and the top of your bare shoulders. You’ll look lovely, Dot. Look – here’s Mum’s picture. Doesn’t she look terrific?’

  ‘Mmm, she does actually,’ Dot says, relaxing a little as she studies the picture of Margot, neck and shoulders bare above the soft cream wrap.

  ‘Yes, and this is Phyl’s and here’s Alyssa’s Nan – all the same you see. We’ve done a couple of each – can’t decide yet whether to use the black and white or the sepia. With yours we’ll have thirty portraits of women between sixty-five and ninety. Don’t you think that wrap, draped just below the shoulders, is very flattering?’

  ‘Well, yes, it is rather, I suppose,’ Dot says, somewhat mollified. ‘Although my shoulders haven’t seen the light of day for a very long time.’

  ‘So, if you just slip your t-shirt off and slide your bra straps down …’

  ‘Bra straps?’ Dot says, laughing loudly. ‘I haven’t worn a bra for decades, Emma, never had much to put in one and what there was is long gone.’

  ‘So that’s easy, isn’t it then?’ Emma says. ‘I’ll leave you to it and when you’re ready come on through and Andrea will take the pictures.’

  Dot peers out of the window to where Margot is inspecting those of her plants that have survived the still unbroken weeks of drought. Sighing with resignation she closes the blind and takes off her t-shirt and stands naked to the waist in front of the mirror. Hideous, she thinks, a scrawny old chook. She turns her head to the left and right and leans closer in to the mirror. Neck like a turkey, shoulders like a coathanger. Dot has always hated the way she looks; despite the things she has spoken out about all her life and most recently a few weeks ago, about not judging women on the way they look, she has always judged herself very harshly. She has managed to convey the impression that she doesn’t care how she looks, but in truth her appearance has always been an artful construction: the dyed hair, the basic black always worn with something else of a vibrant colour, a skirt, trousers, a vivid scarf or shawl, bright beads or bangles.

  ‘You need a signature look, Dorothy,’ a fashion writer had told her early in her career. ‘You’re not beautiful and you’re rather small and skinny. You don’t want to look insignificant. We need to do something with you, something that will help you stand out, make an impression. Black, I think, and we need to do something about that mousy hair. It’s so terribly dull.’

  A week later Dot’s hair was cut into a sleek bob and dyed a rich burgundy, and her wardrobe contained a selection of black clothes and various contrasting scarves, wraps, bangles and beads. And while lengths and styles have changed with the mood of fashion, the look remains the same. But now, in the mirror, she looks weird: pale, vulnerable and old – older than she is. Thinness does that to you, she thinks, how unfair. She picks up the cream wrap and drapes it around herself like the stoles she wore in the fifties and sixties, loose and falling into soft folds. It’s a remarkable improvement, and she twists around, looking at herself with some satisfaction; she is not going to look quite so awful in the photograph after all. There is a tap at the door.

  ‘Nearly ready?’ Margot asks, coming in. ‘You’re the last, you know, everyone else has been done. It’s taken them four weeks. You look great, Dot. I, on the other hand, look like a suet pudding.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, yours is lovely,’ Dot says. ‘Emma showed me. It’s made me feel more confident about my own.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Margot says, and she drops down onto the edge of the bed and kicks off her shoes. ‘That’s us, isn’t it – women! We’re never satisfied with the way we look.’

  Dot hitches the wrap a little higher and joins her on the bed. ‘I’ve always envied you being so voluptuous, Margot; you don’t know how lucky you are.’

  ‘Huh? You’re joking. Voluptuous means gorgeous sexy curves; I’ve always been a shapeless sort of blur. There have been many times, Dot, when your slim and willowy frame has been a severe test of our friendship.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible to be willowy if you’re as short as me,’ Dot says. ‘But listen to us, still so self-critical, still worried about our bodies, about how we look.’

  ‘Will you be much longer?’ Emma asks from the other side of the door. ‘Andrea has a five-thirty ap
pointment on the other side of town.’

  ‘She’s very nice,’ Margot says, dropping her voice. ‘Andrea, I mean. She made me feel fine about being photographed.’

  ‘Just coming!’ Dot calls out. ‘Is my hair okay, Margot?’

  Margot picks up a brush from the dressing table. ‘There’s a bit sticking up at the back,’ she says, tidying it. ‘Go on then, off you go. We can sit and have a drink when the girls have gone.’

  Margot stands at the back of the room watching as the photographer positions Dot, talking to her reassuringly, and Emma twitches the wrap to achieve more flattering folds.

  ‘And try to stay still, please, Dot,’ Emma says, stepping back. ‘Just move when Andrea tells you, or I may have to chain you to the chair. After all, that’s sort of your comfort zone, isn’t it – chains?’

  And Dot lifts her head and laughs and the camera flashes, again and again, and as Dot turns her head, moves side on, looks up or down as instructed, Margot watches her many faces, all the faces she has come to know throughout the decades of their strange, sometimes fractured, often close and lasting friendship. Andrea stops for a minute and murmurs something to Emma, who moves over to Dot and crouches by the chair to adjust the wrap again, and encourages Dot to rest her elbow on the arm of the chair and her chin on her hand. As she does so, Dot reaches out and takes Emma’s hand and Margot sees that she squeezes it and Emma responds, smiling down at her with apparent affection before she ducks out of view.

  ‘It’s been an odd time, hasn’t it?’ Margot says sometime later when Emma and the photographer have left. She tips a packet of pistachios into a dish and puts rice crackers alongside some avocado dip.

  ‘Mmm … nice!’ Dot says, taking a couple of pistachios and flipping them out of their shells. ‘What sort of odd, d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, a lot’s happened since you got back from India, since your shopping centre stunt.’

  ‘I suppose so. Not that I think that had much to do with any of it.’

  ‘But it all began that weekend, everything else rolled on from there. It was the start of something, lots of things, that weekend.’

  ‘I guess it was,’ Dot says. ‘I never really thought about it, but you obviously have and I can see what you’re doing.’

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘You’re building a narrative from it, Margot, wondering what you can do with it, wondering which tiny fraction of one of the many things that have happened in the last year or so might be the start or the middle or the end of a story.’

  Margot laughs and opens the fridge. ‘Perhaps I am,’ she says, taking out a bottle. ‘You’re a wily old thing, Dot.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dot says proudly, ‘I am, aren’t I! Oooh good! Champagne … Moët no less! Are we … could we be … ?’

  ‘Celebrating? Yes,’ Margot says, ‘we’re celebrating …’

  ‘What? What is it – have your heard something? Is it the book?’

  ‘It is,’ Margot says, a huge grin spreading across her face. ‘I signed a contract for the book this morning. It’ll come out next March.’ She strips the gold foil from the bottle, pops the cork and pours the champagne into flutes as Dot bombards her with questions.

  ‘Bring the bottle and let’s go outside,’ Margot says. ‘I’ll bring the tray.’

  ‘We should be having a party,’ Dot says.

  ‘We are, just you and I.’

  ‘But it should be everyone. Do they know?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Margot says, setting the tray on the verandah table. ‘I wanted you to be the first to know. I wanted to celebrate this with you because apart from Laurence you’re my oldest friend. And because I want to celebrate Patrick with you, to tell you I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you all those years ago when you needed me, but I’m glad I’m here now to enjoy this time with you.’

  She hands Dot a glass and sits down, gazing out over the garden, hoping again for the promised rain, not looking at Dot but feeling her presence; not the strange, tangled, restless presence of the past, but a new grounded presence – something entirely and uncharacteristically peaceful. She feels it in herself too, has felt it coming since she began writing, and now today it is complete. People who know what they are doing have read what she has written; they have called it haunting, eloquent and sensual, said it moved them and made them think. What more could she hope for?

  Dot raises her glass. ‘Congratulations, Margot. I’m thrilled for you, but not in the least surprised, and this is just the beginning. By the time it’s published you’ll be the same age as Mary Wesley was – a first novel at seventy – what an achievement.’

  Margot smiles and raises her glass. ‘And here’s to you, Dot. Now that you’re a mother and have serious maternal responsibilities, I hope it means there won’t be any more sudden disappearances, when no one knows where you are or when you’re coming back.’

  Dot laughs. ‘Okay, I get the message. Isn’t it strange – my son, your daughter? Who could have imagined it?’

  ‘I think it’s worked out rather well,’ Margot says, sipping her champagne.

  ‘Do you think … well do you think they might get married?’

  Margot turns to her, laughing. ‘Well between them they have two three-piece suites, and Patrick measures up for the handsome prince, but since when have you been so interested in anyone getting married?’

  ‘Oh well!’ Dot says. ‘Maybe I’m getting romantic in my old age. So, do you think they might?’

  ‘Good lord, I hope not,’ Margot says, laughing so much she splashes champagne on her skirt. ‘I wouldn’t wish you as a motherin-law on anyone, certainly not my own daughter.’

  And they sit there, laughing, the two of them, talking and laughing until they cry, until their sides ache, and their faces ache, and until the sun sets and the first few warm, fat drops of rain splash noisily down onto the roof.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  It takes a whole team of people to turn a manuscript into a book and I do know how fortunate I am to work with people who understand and respect my work. My special thanks to my publisher, Cate Paterson, for her wisdom and friendship; to editor Emma Rafferty for her thoughtful and creative contributions which always make me wonder why I haven’t thought of them myself; to Jo Jarrah for her forensic but sensitive attention to detail and to Jeannine Fowler, brilliant publicist and queen of the road. Thank you, too, to the whole team at Pan Macmillan for your commitment to design, production, marketing and sales – who get the finished product to people who want to read it.

  Special thanks to the fabulous Danielle O’Leary for the inspiration of the raspberry cakes.

  The following books were very helpful to me in writing Last Chance Café:

  Walter, Natasha. Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, Virago, London, 2010.

  McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism, Sage, London, 2009.