Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  But despite his own tubbiness, his initial frantic devotion to Tara had waned as her size had waxed. ‘Aw, Tara,’ he grumbled, as he surveyed the red dress from all angles. ‘You look like you’ve a bun in the oven. When I first met you, you were right sexy.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ She laughed.

  ‘You bludeh were, but if I saw you now, I’d have nowt to do with you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you,’ she said lightly. ‘I’d have nowt to do with myself if I’d any choice.’

  ‘Six months gone,’ he said, nodding at her stomach. ‘That’s what you look like.’

  ‘Seven, more like,’ she suggested, with a rueful grin.

  But when he didn’t chuckle, she upped the ante by suggesting, ‘Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we found out that I was with child. What would we do?’

  She was hoping to jolly him out of his black mood. She usually managed to. She certainly wasn’t expecting him to say, ‘We?’ as if he’d never heard the word before in his life.

  ‘We?’ he said again, even more surprised. ‘What would we do?’

  ‘Yes, we.’ Laughingly she rolled her eyes at his denseness. ‘You know, the two people responsible.’

  Thomas retorted, with a dismissive snort, ‘I’d have nowt to do with it.’

  ‘Sleepless nights, dirty nappies.’ She winced playfully. ‘Who’d blame you? The poor child would probably die of neglect.’

  And that, she hoped, would be the end of that. But the conversation wouldn’t lie down and play dead because Thomas repeated, in the same confrontational tone, ‘I’d have nowt to do with it.’

  She knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself asking, in a voice much diminished, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean what I said. I’d have nowt to do with it.’

  Tara was assailed with a creeping sense of dread. The whole thing was only meant to be a joke, but Thomas wasn’t laughing.

  Let it alone, her head urged her. Let it lie. Don’t open any doors you can’t close. He’s not serious. And if he is, you don’t want to know. ‘You mean, you wouldn’t…’ She stopped, just before she said the words ‘Marry me?’ She’d scared Alasdair away with that concept and she’d sworn she wouldn’t make the same mistake with Thomas. Instead she said, ‘You mean, you wouldn’t stand by me?’ And belatedly managed a very brittle, unconvincing smile.

  Thomas sat down on the couch and stared at her. Tara was very, very sorry that she’d ever opened her mouth. She had a horrible sensation of déjà vu, and an awful presentiment of what was coming.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, flatly.

  Tara’s heart plummeted through her body, carried on a waterfall of cold fear. ‘Surely you’d stay with me and make a go of things?’ she asked, desperately. Her voice sounded muffled, as if her ears were blocked.

  Again he stared at her. ‘I don’t think I’d want to,’ he said, as if he’d just undergone a revelation.

  It’s not surprising, she breathlessly reminded herself. How can he believe in families? After what happened to his parents.

  This was scant comfort.

  ‘But you love me,’ she protested.

  ‘Aye, but…’

  ‘Would you give me money for the baby?’ Tara croaked, feeling as panicky as if there really was a baby.

  ‘Tara, you earn twice as much as me,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘I suppose,’ she admitted, ashamed.

  Silence fell, a taut thread of tension stretched between them.

  Horrible questions clamoured in Tara’s head. What did all this mean? What kind of future had they?

  ‘But, if you wouldn’t –’ Tara started and abruptly stopped. Why lever the lid off a can of worms? ‘This discussion is mad, because I’m not pregnant,’ she exclaimed, forcing a grin, as she frantically worked on patching up the rip. Quick, quick, before he noticed. Quick, quick, before she noticed. ‘Fat, certainly, but not pregnant. There’s nothing to worry about!’

  Thomas was looking at her differently. In confusion, almost. As if questions were occurring to him, too. He opened his mouth to say something.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Tara blurted, in an attempt to stop him. ‘We’ll be late for the film.’

  He wavered on the brink, his breath drawn to speak. But between the breath and the utterance, the lethal light in his eyes died. ‘OK,’ he said, putting his arm around her. ‘Let’s go.’

  No more was said about it. But after the pictures, instead of going out to a party or club as they often would, they came home instead, and watched telly, smoked and drank a bottle of wine in silence. When the wine was finished, Tara went to the kitchen and had a huge, secret gin and tonic. Then another, and another. She drank enough to fell an elephant, but couldn’t get happy.

  Later that night, as Thomas snored beside her, she made drunken plans. Though she wasn’t going to examine it, she knew she’d been given some sort of warning tonight. She simply must try harder to make this tormented, scarred man of hers happy.

  It was within her power to do so. He’d been mad about her at the start. Mad about her. God, how she yearned to return to those wonderful days when he smiled all the time and told her what a cracking bird she was. When they had sex around the clock. When he said she had the best figure of any girl he knew. When she felt adored and cherished and powerful.

  She couldn’t say when they’d slipped into their current baddish patch. But it was only temporary. Good times were just around the corner. All she had to do was try a little harder.

  She gritted her teeth as she swore blind that she really was going to lose weight. And because her extravagance annoyed him she was going to stop spending money. She would buy lots of sexy underwear. Cheap sexy underwear, obviously, if she was going to stop spending money. She’d become a complete raunchbag, and tackle him to the floor as soon as he came in from work, and have sex in the hall. She’d cook lovely meals for him. And nothing for herself.

  She stared into the darkness, racking her brain, as she tried to think of something really special to do for Thomas. What was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her? Actually, as far as Tara was concerned, the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her was when she was nine years old. She’d begged her mother to buy her a denim skirt and waistcoat like the one she’d seen in Jackie, but perpetually skint Fidelma Butler couldn’t afford to. However, what she did instead was go to Ennis on the bus and buy a pattern and enough brushed denim to hand-make the skirt and waistcoat. Which she did exactly to Tara’s specifications, right down to where she explained, ‘There’s got to be two lines of orange stitching around the edge, Ma. And you’ve got to be able to see it.’ And even though Fidelma was mortified by the idea of sewing a hem that was visible to the naked eye, she bit the bullet and went right ahead and did it, because that was what Tara wanted. That was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her, Tara decided. Even when her father looked over his newspaper and sneered, ‘You can dress a goat in silk, but it’s still a goat,’ nothing could have ruined her joy in her new outfit.

  All the same, she couldn’t imagine Thomas being terribly thrilled at the suggestion that Tara hand-make a brushed denim skirt and waistcoat for him. But the idea of making something to clothe him appealed to her, and suddenly it was very clear what she would do. She was going to… going to… going to… knit him a jumper!

  10

  The following morning Tara woke very early. Something was wrong. Hangover time. I’m too old for this, she thought, as she swallowed a handful of painkillers. I can’t hack it any more. Yet even though the pain lifted, faint sensations of impending doom draped themselves around her, like will-o’-the-wisps, and followed her from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen.

  Despite her night-time vow to go on a diet, Tara was viciously hungry. It was how hangovers affected her. They made some people so sick they couldn’t face food all day. But they made her feel as though she’d never eaten anything ever before in her whole life. A stomach-growling,
head-lightening hunger that was almost primal. She craved carbohydrates. At the thought of toast, she felt a rush of adrenaline that almost lifted her off the floor.

  Surreptitiously, she closed the kitchen door so that Thomas wouldn’t smell what she was doing, and put on two slices of toast. Frantic with impatience, she stared at the toaster, willing it to work faster. Hurry up, she passionately urged, put your back into it. If she didn’t get something to eat right now, this exact moment she’d make a start on her own foot. But all there was in the cupboards was dried pasta, tinned tomatoes and cat food. Thomas had long since purged the kitchen of biscuits and crisps in a self-sacrificing attempt to remove temptation from Tara’s way.

  Her toast popped up and her hands shook as she covered one slice with cheese, the other with jam. While she crammed them into her, she put on two more slices. Then two more. An orgy of toast and she was in heaven. Toast with peanut butter, toast with cheese, toast with jam, toast with Marmite.

  Covered in crumbs, she practically inhaled each slice whole, as she leant against the kitchen door, listening for Thomas.

  A face appeared at the kitchen window and she jumped guiltily out of her skin. Until she realized it was Beryl, her green eyes contemptuous and condemnatory in her black little face. Tara stuck two fingers up at her, then turned her head from the window and back to her toast. Until she went to put on two more pieces and found there was no bread left.

  Oh, God! She’d finished the sliced pan! Thomas would notice, he’d wonder where it had all gone. She had a moment of panicky fear before she calmed down. What’s the problem? she asked herself. You’re being silly. You can simply go out and buy another, under the guise of buying the Sunday papers. If the Pakistani grocery wasn’t open yet – although she’d never known it not to be, day or night, as they slaved to make a living – then she’d go to the twenty-four-hour garage. She quietly got dressed, desperate not to wake Thomas, then went out into the damp misty morning, watched suspiciously by Beryl. She wouldn’t put it past that bloody cat to tell on her.

  The grocery shop wasn’t open so Tara went to the garage and bought bread and newspapers. She also found herself buying three doughnuts – a chocolate one and two custard ones, how she loved custard – which she ate on the deliberately slow walk back, disposing of the wrapping in a dustbin in someone else’s front garden. Vigorously brushing telltale crumbs away, running her tongue around her teeth to dispose of any lingering evidence, she braced herself for a return to the flat.

  Thomas still wasn’t up, which meant she was free to eat more if she wanted. But the frenzy had passed. I’m only eating like this because of my hangover, Tara soothed herself, lighting a cigarette. I’ll be starting the diet proper tomorrow, but I’m going to try hard for the rest of today also. She sat at the kitchen table, smoking and trying to read the paper. Wasn’t it dreadful to wake up too early on a cold, damp Sunday morning in October? she asked herself. She supposed she could go back to bed with the paper, but she was afraid of waking Thomas. With that she finally let herself see what was in the sack of doom on her back. It was what he’d said to her last night.

  Instantly she felt another pang, of something like hunger trying to fight its way through the food and emerging as nausea.

  With a firmness born of terrible fear, she spoke common sense to herself. So what if he didn’t want her to get pregnant? She didn’t want to get pregnant either – the mere thought! She and Thomas had had a meaningless, hypothetical discussion. Big banana.

  This was nothing like the Alasdair situation. She was living with Thomas. And it was he, not she, who’d suggested she move in with him. Proof positive that he loved her – even if she’d suspected his eyes had lit up with pound signs rather than the light of love.

  She’d played it so safe for the past two years, never putting pressure on Thomas, never even mentioning marriage, that things couldn’t fall apart, the way they had with Alasdair. If she continued to play the waiting game as well as she already had, it would all come right in the end. There was no need for her to be worried, he loved her and this one would work. Lightning didn’t strike twice.

  She rang her mother because she wanted to talk to someone who loved her, but instead she got her father.

  ‘Your mother isn’t in,’ he said, grumpy as ever.

  ‘Where is she at this hour of the morning?’ Tara asked.

  ‘Where do you think, you pagan?’ he replied.

  Still desperate for comfort, she rang Katherine. No fear she’d be at Mass. ‘Sorry,’ she apologized. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Katherine. ‘I’ve to go to work anyway.’

  ‘On a Sunday? You advertising whizz-kids.’

  ‘End-of-year accounts, it wouldn’t usually happen.’

  ‘I feel terrible,’ Tara said.

  ‘Vitamin C and a bracing walk.’

  ‘I’m eating Disprin like they’re Smarties, in fact I wish they were Smarties. But anyway, I’m not talking about my hangover, mammoth though it is.’

  ‘What is it, so?’

  ‘Not now, I don’t want to make you late for work. Just tell me one thing. Lightning never strikes twice, does it?’

  ‘You know it does,’ Katherine reminded her. But gently, sensing this was important. ‘Remember, the thatch on Billy Queally’s roof was set on fire during one storm, then two years later he was electrocuted and thrown across the kitchen when he put on the toaster during another.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it literally,’ Tara said miserably. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Katherine comforted. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘It mightn’t be anything,’ Tara said heavily.

  ‘Come over tonight when I get home from work.

  ’ ‘Thanks, you’re a sweetheart.’

  Katherine had guessed what it was about. She’d never thought Thomas would last longer than a couple of weeks so she’d been poised for Tara and him to end for nearly two years.

  She hadn’t been keen on Thomas right from the very first night. Of course, she was delighted that Tara had met a new bloke – witnessing her pain after Alasdair had finally given her the slip had been excruciating. Not to mention that, with the best will in the world, sharing a flat with someone who’s recently had their heart broken becomes a small bit tedious after the first three months of hysteria and bizarre behaviour.

  But some instinct had screamed at her that Thomas wasn’t Tara’s Mr Right, or even Mr Keep The Wolf From The Door.

  ‘Looks like she’s made a new friend,’ Fintan had murmured to Katherine, as Tara and Thomas ate the faces off each other in Dolly’s kitchen, oblivious to everyone around them.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ Katherine said noncommittally.

  ‘What is it?’ Fintan asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s his brown jeans.’

  ‘Brown is the new black.’

  ‘But they’re horrible. And look! His shirt is brown too.’

  ‘Don’t be brownist,’ Fintan advised. ‘And he’s probably a dead nice person.’

  But later on, when Thomas came home with Tara, Katherine and Liv, he wouldn’t contribute to the taxi-fare. ‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘If I weren’t here, you’d have to pay what you always pay. It’s daft if you profit from me being here. I speak as I find.’

  Katherine burst out laughing. Maybe Thomas was OK, after all. ‘ “I speak as I find?” That’s a good one.’ In a poor Yorkshire accent she’d continued, ‘ “Better wi’ nowt tekken out. Where there’s muck there’s brass. Tetley’s make teafolk make tea. I’m made up for our kid. You don’t get owt for nowt.” I love those Northern sayings. Any more?’

  Suddenly she realized that Tara, Thomas and Liv had gone very still. At the exact moment that Tara hissed, ‘Katherine! Close your fat yap,’ Katherine realized that Thomas hadn’t been joking.

  In grim silence Tara paid the taxi-man. And as Katherine watched Thomas swagger into the flat, and be led straight to Tara’s bedro
om, she thought she’d explode with injustice.

  ‘I speak as I find,’ was Thomas’s favourite phrase. And what he found was rarely to his liking.

  And then he spoke about it.

  The day after Tara first met him, when they were all strewn about the living room, Katherine decided it was time to do some tidying, though she knew there would be objections.

  ‘I’ve something to get off my chest,’ she began.

  ‘You call that a chest,’ Thomas interrupted.

  Tara screamed with laughter, so much so that even Thomas began to look alarmed. And when Katherine recovered from her shock and tried to object, he interrupted loudly, ‘But it’s TRUE, in’t it?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Katherine said coolly. ‘It’s very bad manners –’

  ‘BUT IT’S TRUE, IN’T IT?’ he said again, louder. ‘You haven’t got tits. It’s a fact and I’m not going to lie to you.’

  ‘No one asked you to say anything at all,’ Katherine said.

  ‘You can’t tek the truth, can you?’ He shrugged. ‘You’re too bludeh soft. I speak –’

  ‘– as you find,’ Katherine finished. ‘I know.’

  In a matter of days, Thomas had managed to insult all of Tara’s friends. He called Liv a giantess, and as soon as she’d looked it up in the dictionary she was very upset. When he was formally introduced to Fintan, the way he hesitated about shaking hands, and the speed with which he wiped his palm on his jeans straight afterwards, made it abundantly clear that he didn’t approve of homosexuals.

  However, when he turned his plain-speaking on Tara, in a subtle attempt to change the balance of power back in his favour, the others really took against him. But by then Tara was in too deep. Thomas had rescued her when she’d thought she was facing into forty-five years of spinsterdom. She’d become addicted to his devotion, and if he had any criticism of her, she’d do her best to address it.