Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  After that night, they’d come to their current arrangement.

  ‘What did I give you?’ Fintan asked.

  Tara ripped off the paper, and displayed a lipstick within. ‘But this is no ordinary lipstick,’ she said excitedly. ‘This one really is indelible. The girl in the shop said it’d survive a nuclear attack. I think my long search is finally over.’

  ‘About time,’ said Katherine. ‘How many fakes have you been persuaded to buy?’

  ‘Too many,’ Tara said. ‘With their promises of lip-staining and colour-fastness, and the next thing there they are all over the side of my glass or on my fork, just like an ordinary lipstick. It’d make you cry!’

  Next to arrive was Liv, in an I-might-have-to-murder-you-for-it Agnès b coat. She was very label-conscious, as befitted someone who worked in the world of design, albeit as an interior decorator. Liv was Swedish. Tall, with strong limbs, dazzling teeth and waist-length, poker-straight, white-blonde hair. Men often thought they recognized her from a porn film.

  She’d arrived in Tara and Katherine’s lives five years previously when Fintan left to move in with Sandro. They’d advertised for a new flatmate but weren’t having much luck in persuading someone to take the tiny bedroom. And didn’t hold out any hope that this Swedish woman would. She was just too large. But the moment Liv had realized they were Irish – better still that they were from rural Ireland – her blue eyes lit up, she reached into her bag and handed over the deposit.

  ‘But,’ Katherine said in surprise, ‘you haven’t even asked if we have a washing machine.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Tara said, badly shaken. ‘You don’t even know how far away the off-licence is.’

  ‘No problem,’ Liv said, in her slight accent. ‘Such things are not important.’

  ‘If you’re sure…’ Tara was already wondering if Liv had any Swedish men friends living in London. Tanned, blond giants that she’d bring around and introduce.

  But a few days after Liv moved in, the reason for her enthusiasm became clear. To the alarm and consternation of Tara and Katherine, she asked if she could accompany them to Mass, or join them for the evening rosary. It turned out that Liv was searching for some kind of meaning to her life. She’d temporarily run aground on the rocks of psychotherapy, was hanging all her hopes on spiritual enlightenment, and hoped that the girls’ Catholicism might rub off on her.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Katherine gently explained, ‘but we’re lapsed Catholics.’

  ‘Lapsed!’ Tara exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Katherine looked surprised. She certainly hadn’t seen any signs of a recent renewal in Tara’s faith.

  ‘Lapsed isn’t a strong enough word!’ Tara finally elaborated. ‘Collapsed would be more like it.’

  Liv eventually got over her disappointment. And although she spent a disproportionate amount of time discussing reincarnation with the Sikh newsagent, in most other ways she was perfectly normal. She had boyfriends, hangovers, threatening letters from her credit-card company, and a wardrobe full of clothes that she bought in the 70-per-cent-off sales, then never wore.

  She shared the flat with Tara and Katherine for three and a half years until she decided to try and banish her existential ache by buying a place of her own. But she’d spent every evening of her first six months as a home-owner around at Tara’s and Katherine’s, crying and saying how lonely it was living by herself. And she’d still be at it, if Katherine and Tara hadn’t moved out of the flat and gone their separate ways.

  2

  ‘So is it just the four of us?’ Fintan sounded surprised.

  Tara nodded. ‘I’m too fragile for a wild celebration. I need to be comforted by a small group of good friends on this sad day.’

  ‘What I actually meant was, where’s Thomas?’ Fintan had a glint in his eye.

  ‘Oh, he felt like a quiet night in,’ Tara said, slightly shamefaced.

  There was a chorus of protest. ‘But it’s your birthday! He’s your boyfriend!’

  ‘He never comes out with us,’ Fintan complained. ‘The grumpy bollocks should have made an effort for your birthday.’

  ‘But I don’t mind,’ Tara insisted, earnestly. ‘And he’s taking me to the pictures tomorrow night. Give him a break. I admit he’s not the easiest man in the world, but he’s not nasty, just emotionally scarred –’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Fintan interrupted. ‘We know. His mother abandoned him when he was seven, so it’s not his fault that he’s a grumpy bollocks. But he should treat you better. You deserve the best.’

  ‘But I’m happy with my wash,’ Tara exclaimed. ‘Honest to God. Your vision of me is too… too…’ she pawed around for the right word ‘… too ambitious. You’re like those parents who want their child to be a brain surgeon when all they’re good for is being a bin-man. I love Thomas.’

  Fintan was mute with frustration. Love is blind, there was no doubt about it. In Tara’s case it was also deaf, dumb, dyslexic, had a bad hip and the beginnings of Alzheimer’s.

  ‘And Thomas loves me,’ Tara said firmly. ‘And before you start telling me I could do a lot better than him, might I remind you that I’m in the Last Chance Saloon. In my decrepit, thirty-one-year-old state, I’d probably never get another man!’

  Liv handed Tara her card and present. The card was covered in hand-painted silk and the present was a slim, sleek, cobalt-blue glass vase.

  ‘It’s gorgeous. You’re so stylish it hurts,’ Tara exclaimed, hiding her disappointment at not getting the Clarins anti-cellulite serum she’d hinted at so heavily. ‘Thanks!’

  ‘Are you ready to order?’ Darius had arrived, pen in hand.

  ‘I suppose,’ they all mumbled. ‘Someone else go first.’

  ‘OK.’ Tara smiled up from her menu. ‘I’ll have the pan-seared Mars Bar served with a Weetabix coulis, and the parsnip cappuccino.’

  Darius stared at her, unamused. She’d done this the last time too.

  ‘Sorry.’ Tara giggled. ‘It’s just that it’s a bit funny, all these mad combinations.’

  Darius continued to eyeball her stonily.

  ‘Please,’ Katherine muttered at Tara, ‘just order.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Tara cleared her throat. ‘OK, I’ll have the beef brûlé with coriander pesto, curried shoestring beetroot and a side order of chocolate mash.’

  ‘Tara!’ Katherine exploded.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ Fintan hurriedly reassured her. ‘That really is on the menu.’

  Katherine looked down. ‘Oh, so it is. Sorry. In fact, make that two.’

  After the food arrived – each plate more elaborate than the last – the conversation turned to matters concerning age. After all, it was someone’s birthday.

  ‘Despite what everyone says,’ Katherine insisted, ‘it’s not wrinkles that depress me. It’s the fact that over the past ten years my entire face has –’

  ‘Dropped,’ chorused Tara and Liv. They’d played this game many times before.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean.’ As smoothly as a relay-race runner, Tara took up the theme. ‘If you look at my passport photo that was taken nine years ago my mouth was up around my forehead, but now my eyes are totally droopy and down on my chin – Which chin? I know you’re thinking – and my temples have dropped nearly as low as my waist.’

  ‘How lucky we are to have the plastic surgery,’ Liv said passionately.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fintan said thoughtfully. ‘I think it’s wonderful to grow old gracefully, to let nature take its course. An aged face has so much character.’

  The three women looked at him sourly. Obviously he couldn’t visualize what it was like to see his looks literally falling away from him. But what were they to expect? Even though he was gay, he was still a man. Blessed with such high levels of collagen he thought he was Dorian Gray. But give him another ten years and then let’s hear his nonsense of growing old gracefully. He’ll be begging for the surgeon’s knife, they th
ought in grim satisfaction.

  ‘ “An aged face has so much character,” ’ Tara mimicked. ‘That’s good coming from the man who nearly had to move into a bigger flat to house his Clinique collection. A curator is what your bathroom needs. You could nearly open it to the public.’

  ‘Mee-yow!’ Fintan laughed. (Some phrases had survived his re-reinvention.)

  Then the conversation moved inexorably on to the ticking of their biological clocks.

  ‘I would love to have a baby,’ Liv said wistfully. ‘I hate having a womb on hold.’

  ‘No!’ Katherine chided. ‘You’re only looking for fulfilment and all you’ll get is misery.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not going to happen,’ Liv mourned. ‘Not while my boyfriend is married to someone else. And lives in Sweden.’

  ‘At least you have a boyfriend,’ Fintan said cheerfully. ‘Not like Katherine here. How long is it, Katherine, since you did the nasty?’ Katherine simply smiled mysteriously and Fintan sighed. ‘What are we to do with you? It’s not like you don’t get offers from sexy men.’

  Katherine smiled again, this time slightly more tightly.

  ‘You know, I’d love a baby,’ Fintan admitted. ‘It’s my one big regret about being a pouf.’

  ‘But you can,’ Tara cheered. ‘Find an obliging woman, do a rent-a-womb contract and away you go.’

  ‘Too true. What about one of you? Katherine?’

  ‘No,’ Katherine said shortly. ‘I’m never having children.’

  Fintan laughed at her disgusted expression. ‘The love of a good man, that’ll change your mind. What about you, Tara? Feel the old womb twang at the thought of some baby-carrying action?’

  ‘Yes, no… I don’t know, maybe,’ Tara dithered. ‘But, let’s face it, I can hardly take care of myself. Having to wash, feed and dress someone else would be the undoing of me. I’m just too immature.’

  ‘Look at what happened to poor Emma,’ Katherine agreed. Emma, an old friend, had been the goodest of good-time girls, until she had two babies in quick succession. ‘Once upon a time she was fabulous. Now she looks like an eco-warrior.’

  ‘The loss of a good woman,’ said Tara. ‘No time to wash her hair because she’s busy wiping bums. But she’s happy.’

  ‘Think of Gerri,’ Katherine reminded. Gerri was another erstwhile party-girl who’d had a baby and promptly turned into one herself. ‘She’s completely lost the ability to speak like an adult.’

  ‘But she’s potty-trained and can count to ten,’ Liv said. ‘She’s happy too.’

  ‘Then there’s Melanie,’ Katherine said, darkly. ‘Used to be so liberal. Now she’s turned into a right-wing Fascist who’d give the National Front a run for their money. That’s what having a child can do to you. She’s so busy signing petitions against suspected paedophiles that she’s forgotten who she is.’

  ‘But think what it would be like to hold your own little baby in your arms,’ Liv said, softly. ‘The joy! The happiness!’

  ‘Mush alert!’ Tara giggled. ‘She’s going all mushy. Stop her, someone.’

  ‘What did Thomas give you for your birthday, Tara?’ To stop Liv from bursting into broody tears, Katherine spoke before thinking.

  ‘A ten-shilling note?’ Fintan suggested.

  ‘Ten shillings?’ Tara scoffed. ‘Have sense. He’d never be that flash,’ she added. ‘A farthing would be more like it.’ She banged her fist on the table and, in a Yorkshire accent, announced, ‘I’m not mean, I’m just careful.’ She sounded uncannily like Thomas.

  ‘A flowerpot covered in Polyfilla, with shells stuck to it, that he’d done himself? A used biro?’ Fintan pressed.

  ‘He gave me a Thomas Holmes special.’ Tara reverted to her normal voice. ‘A jar of magnolia hand cream and a promise of liposuction when he wins the lottery.’

  ‘Isn’t he hilarious?’ Fintan said sarcastically.

  ‘Was it a new jar of hand cream?’ Katherine kept her tone expressionless. ‘Or did he steal it from the ladies’ toilets at work?’

  ‘Please!’ Tara was disgusted. ‘Of course it wasn’t new. It’s the same one he gave me last Christmas. I just threw it in the bottom of the wardrobe and he obviously found it and recycled it.’

  ‘What a meaner!’ Liv couldn’t stop herself exclaiming.

  ‘He’s not a meaner,’ Tara objected.

  Liv looked surprised. Usually Tara was the first person to say what a tightwad Thomas was, beating everyone else to it, to show how much she didn’t mind.

  ‘He’s a meanie,’ Tara finished. ‘Come on, Liv, say it.’

  ‘Thomas is a meanie,’ Liv parroted. ‘Thank you, Tara.’

  ‘Anyway, you can see his point,’ Tara said. ‘They are all moneymaking rackets – Christmas, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, all that lark. I admire him for refusing to be manipulated. And it doesn’t mean he never buys me presents. A few weeks ago, unprompted, he bought me a lovely furry hot-water bottle for my period pains.’

  ‘Too stingy to buy you Solpadeine every month, more like,’ Fintan scorned.

  ‘Ah, don’t.’ Tara half laughed. ‘You don’t see what I see.’

  ‘So what do you see?’

  ‘I know he seems very gruff, but actually he can be very sweet. Sometimes,’ she looked slightly sheepish at this, ‘he tells me lovely bedtime stories about a bear called Ernest.’

  ‘Is that a euphemism for his willy?’ Fintan asked suspiciously. ‘Does Ernest do a lot of hiding in dark caves?’

  ‘I can see I’m wasting my time here.’ Tara giggled. ‘Have you any gossip? Come on, tell us a scurrilous story about someone famous.’

  In Fintan’s job, as right-hand man to Carmella Garcia, a coke-fiend Spanish designer who’d been hailed simultaneously as a stunning genius and a mad bitch, he was privy to all sorts of startling information about the rich and famous.

  ‘OK, but first will we get another drink?’

  ‘Is the bear a Catholic?’

  A long time and several French coffees later, Katherine became uncomfortably aware that Purple Nails wanted to cash up and go home. Or, at least, cash up and go out and take lots of drugs somewhere. ‘I suppose we’d better pay,’ she said, cutting into the drunken, raucous laughter.

  ‘I’ll get this,’ Fintan offered, with the magnanimity of the pissed person. ‘I… absolutely… insist.’

  ‘No way,’ said Katherine.

  ‘You’re offending me.’ Fintan slapped his credit card on the table. ‘You’re insulting me.’

  ‘How are you going to get your overdraft down to eight figures if you keep paying for other people’s dinners?’ Katherine admonished.

  ‘She’s right,’ Tara urged, emotionally. ‘You told me you’d be arrested if you put any more on your card. That the men in uniforms will arrive with their truncheons and handcuffs…’

  ‘Great!’ Fintan and Liv exclaimed, nudging each other and sniggering.

  ‘… and they’ll take you away and we’ll never see you again. “Stop me before I spend again,” you said.’ Tara skittered his card back across the table at him.

  ‘That’s good coming from you,’ Fintan complained.

  ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’

  ‘How come I’m so skint?’ Fintan demanded. ‘I earn a decent wedge.’

  ‘But that’s why,’ Tara consoled, with drunken logic. ‘The more I earn the poorer I become. If ever I get a rise, my spending expands to absorb the new money, except it expands at a far bigger rate. Dieting makes you fat? Forget that – pay rises make you poor!’

  ‘Why can’t we be more like you, Katherine?’ Fintan wondered.

  Katherine had once confessed that when she got a pay rise, she set up a standing order to a savings account for the exact net amount of her monthly increase, working on the principle that because she’d never had it, she wouldn’t miss it. She looked up from dividing the bill. ‘But I need people like you so I can feel smug.’

  Finally, they left.

  Dari
us, the waiter, watched Katherine as she glided across the floor. She wasn’t his type, but there was something about her that intrigued him. He’d seen how much she’d had to drink, but she wasn’t stumbling across the floor, screeching and holding on to her friends, like the others were. And he was impressed by the way she’d behaved when she first arrived. He was an expert on women who nervously faked insouciance while they waited on their own, and he was fully certain that Katherine’s poised unconcern had been genuine. He searched his head for a label for her. (He wanted to be a DJ and words weren’t really his forte.) Enigmatic was the word he was searching for, had he but known it.

  ‘Where now?’ Tara asked eagerly, as they shivered outside. Though it was only early October it was chilly. ‘Anyone know of any parties?’

  ‘No, not tonight.’

  ‘Nothing at all? Usually someone can scare something up.’

  ‘We could go to Bar Mundo?’ Katherine suggested.

  Tara shook her head. ‘Because we go there on Wednesdays I associate it with work.’

  ‘The Blue Note?’

  ‘Too packed by now. We wouldn’t get a table.’

  ‘Happiness Stans?’

  ‘The music was crap the last time.’

  ‘Subterrania?’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no.’ Katherine had almost exhausted their list of regular haunts.

  ‘How about the Torture Chamber,’ Fintan offered cheerfully. ‘Lots of lovely boys there, being led around on leads.’

  ‘No, don’t you remember?’ Katherine reminded him. ‘They wouldn’t let us in the last time because we’re girls.’

  ‘Is that why?’ Liv exclaimed. ‘I thought it was because our heads weren’t shaved.’

  ‘You know, I don’t think I could be bothered going to a club,’ Tara admitted. ‘I’m not really in the mood for mayhem. I’d like to chill, sit on a comfortable seat, not have to fight to get a drink, be able to hear our conversation… Oh, God!’ She clutched herself in horror. ‘It’s happening already. Thirty-one less than a day and I’m acting old. I’ll have to go clubbing just to prove I still want to.’