Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  ‘Why don’t I just tell her I don’t know?’ Katherine suggested.

  ‘No.’ Tara was adamant. ‘The shock might kill her. She needs fixed points in her world right now. Finding out you’re not a bumlick would be too much for her.’

  Liv came striding up the corridor, her hair streaming behind her. She looked at the anxious huddle and faltered. ‘The result of the biopsy already?’

  ‘No, not that bad. But bad enough. JaneAnn needs a Catholic church for Sunday Mass.’

  Liv looked puzzled, ‘But what’s wrong with St Dominic’s? On Maiden Road – just around the corner from you?’

  Tara and Katherine were stunned. How did Liv know? ‘You weirdo,’ Tara complained. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you go sometimes.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But you’re not a Catholic.’

  ‘So what? In my search for happiness I also frequent synagogues, mosques, Quaker meeting houses, Hindu temples, the Samaritans’ head office, psychiatrists’ couches and Harvey Nichols. And I’ve always been given a warm welcome. Except maybe in Harvey Nichols,’ she added.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to know the names of any of the priests?’ Katherine chanced her luck.

  ‘Of course. Father Gilligan. Tell him I said hi. I must go to the ladies’. See you in a minute.’

  When Liv arrived back, all the chairs around the bed were gone. Milo stood up. ‘Have my seat.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’

  While Milo demurred, JaneAnn suggested, ‘Sit on Milo’s knee, then.’

  Liv went tomato-red with embarrassment. ‘I’m too large.’

  Milo seemed amused by this. ‘I’m large too. Plenty of room here,’ and slapped his bedungareed knee.

  ‘Really, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Go on,’ Fintan urged weakly.

  ‘Do,’ Tara and Katherine chorused. ‘Do, Liv, do.’

  So, with a scorching face, Liv gingerly placed herself on Milo’s knee, while everyone nudged each other.

  JaneAnn was later heard to mutter, ‘When God closes one door he opens another. I’ll see some good comes out of this visit if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Even the most hardened atheists among them – and there was stiff competition – found themselves praying on Friday as the deadline approached.

  Fintan had been told to expect the results at about four o’clock. So from two onwards all eyes were trained on the door. Whenever a person in a white coat walked in, there was a tiny but perceptible collective jump. Conversation was poor.

  Finally, at ten to four, as their endurance stretched to snapping point, Dr Singh approached the bed. He seemed to recoil slightly when he saw the white-faced throng. ‘If I could have a word with my patient?’

  ‘No, I want them to stay,’ Fintan insisted weakly.

  Dr Singh assented. ‘I’m afraid I’ve bad news,’ he said.

  Katherine’s heart thudded in her chest. She couldn’t look at the others.

  ‘We won’t have the results today. The lab has been too busy,’ Dr Singh continued. ‘You’re going to have to wait until Monday.’

  38

  ‘I reckon she’s looking for another job,’ Bruce said.

  ‘Nah, mate,’ Myles contradicted. ‘I reckon she’s ill.’

  ‘She don’t look ill,’ Bruce pointed out.

  ‘She don’t look too chipper neither,’ Jason replied.

  Furious speculation abounded about Katherine’s absences from work, because in her three years at Breen Helmsford she’d never even taken a day off sick before. Darren claimed to have seen her crying on the phone on Monday morning, but this information was discounted because it was so unlikely. Besides, it wouldn’t have been the first time Darren had told an outrageous lie.

  Then word filtered down via Fred Franklin that on Tuesday morning she’d told ‘Call me Johnny’ that she’d be taking some time off because of a ‘personal matter’. When this news reached the rank and file, great mirth broke out. ‘Do what? A personal matter? Leave it out.’ Myles guffawed. ‘The girl’s a machine!’

  ‘Maybe her dishwasher broke down,’ Bruce suggested. ‘That’d probably qualify as a tragedy for Icequeen.’

  On Friday lunchtime in the Frog and Fawn, Joe’s team batted possibilities back and forth.

  ‘She might be getting married,’ Bruce theorized. ‘Girls take shedloads of time off to organize that.’

  ‘Maybe she’s had a breast enlargement,’ Jason suggested, hopefully. ‘You have to rest lots after one of them.’

  ‘Could be she’s getting divorced,’ Myles said. ‘She looks a bit creamed, like she’s having a hard time.’

  Bruce agreed. ‘Normal times the girl looks like she lives in a bleeding dry-cleaner’s, but this week her clobber’s been wrinkled to fuck.’

  ‘Hard to iron with new tits,’ Jason reminded them. ‘They’d sting for a while.’

  ‘She looks like she’s not getting much sleep,’ Bruce said.

  ‘That’s ’cos she has to lie on her back until her new tits are better,’ Jason said.

  Myles rounded on him in wild irritation. ‘What are you going on about? Do her tits look any bigger? Well?’

  ‘Suppose not,’ Jason admitted sulkily.

  ‘What do you think is up with her?’ Myles asked Joe, who’d sat in grim silence throughout the speculation.

  He shrugged, and said shortly, ‘No idea.’

  Myles exchanged a what-the-hell’s-up-with-him? look with Bruce and Jason. Joe Roth was off his usual sunny form.

  ‘Me and Joe saw her with a bloke yesterday lunchtime,’ Bruce surprised the others by saying. ‘Some poncy pop-star.’

  ‘You what! Now you tell us.’ Myles and Jason were agog. ‘This changes everything. Who is he?’

  ‘Don’t know his name,’ Bruce admitted. ‘But I think he might have been one of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Big bloke, wearing wanky dungarees, designer ones, natch. Looked like he’d been pulled through a hedge backwards.’

  ‘Definitely a pop-star,’ Myles conceded. ‘What happened to the days when our singers took pride in their appearance?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, Icequeen and Dexy were very cosy-looking,’ Bruce said. ‘Which backs up my theory that she’s getting married.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Myles was astonished. ‘Could be true. No accounting for taste.’ He glanced nervously at Joe.

  Darren burst into the Frog and Fawn, agitatedly waving a piece of paper about. ‘Look at this,’ he ordered. ‘Icequeen’s paid my expenses.’

  ‘So what? It’s her job.’

  ‘But I included three copies of the bill from the Oxo Tower. Two of them were messy photocopies – I only put them in to wind her up. And she’s done a cheque for the whole lot!’

  ‘You lying toerag,’ Myles scorned. ‘I suppose she was crying again while she did it.’

  ‘On Alan Shearer’s life, she was crying Monday morning, and she has paid the photocopies.’ Darren was wounded. ‘I admit I never had a threesome with Martini and Flora, but I’m telling the truth this time.’

  ‘But Icequeen’s impossible to con,’ Jason said.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Darren said. ‘But, stand on me, the girl is losing it. Take a look.’

  The proof was passed before all the Doubting Thomas eyes. It was undeniable.

  ‘Maybe she’s having a nervous breakdown,’ Myles said, awestruck.

  ‘It’s the silicone,’ Jason concluded. ‘Turning her brain as soft as her new breasts. Mmmmm, my ideal bird!’

  ‘Bloody good news for us!’ Bruce pointed out.

  Immediately there was a flurry of activity as everyone searched in their wallets for receipts to swizz Katherine with. Everyone except Joe.

  39

  ‘What do you mean you can’t?’ Thomas whined at Tara.

  ‘I mean I can’t,’ she explained. ‘They need looking after, and it’s not fair to land Katherine with all the responsibility.’

  ‘They’ve had you all week. It’s Saturday night and
you’re coming out with me and Eddie and his new bird, and that’s the end of the matter.’

  ‘Thomas, I can’t abandon the O’Gradys.’

  ‘What about me?’ Thomas stuck his bottom lip out in a sulky-little-boy pout. ‘When do I get to see you?’

  Tara wavered. She and Thomas had been getting on so badly lately that she was relieved by his insistence on being with her. ‘I really feel I have a responsibility to look after the O’Gradys,’ she tried again. But when Thomas’s face darkened with the anger of rejection, Tara gave in. ‘Oh, all right. But you’re a disgrace,’ she complained, indulgently.

  He strutted, and gave her a swaggery smile. ‘I am what I am. Tek me or leave me.’ Instantly he was sure of himself again and, though she could never explain why, Tara found his bossy ways very sexy.

  Thomas masterminded what Tara wore, hoping to hold his own against Eddie and his sexy new girlfriend – ‘Wear your short black skirt, aye, the right short one, your highest shoes and that V-neck top. And hold in your stomach.’

  Tara paid particular attention to her hair, make-up and accessories but a bucket of blue hair mascara wouldn’t have diverted Thomas from noticing her size. As he surveyed the finished product with bitter dissatisfaction, he complained, ‘You’ve got fatter since last weekend. This is what happens when you don’t go to the gym.’ She hadn’t managed to do any exercise all week because her routine had been shot to hell with hospital visits. ‘And I bet you haven’t been sticking to your diet, either,’ Thomas accused.

  He was right. There was too much food around Fintan’s bed for a woman with no willpower. Everyone brought him chocolate, buns, crisps, popcorn, sweets and grapes as they tried to fatten the sickness away. JaneAnn had more faith in a daily infusion of ham sandwiches than in a daily infusion of medication. But Fintan barely looked at the goodies that surrounded him, and no one else had any appetite either. Except for Tara who couldn’t stop eating. Agitatedly, incessantly, her hand crammed food into her mouth, attempting to fill the hole burnt by her corrosive anxiety.

  All the same, she’d hoped that Thomas would make allowances because of her ordeal, that he might issue a special dispensation to knock off her diet until life was back to normal. But fat – what other kind? – chance. ‘It’s been a difficult time, Thomas,’ she tried.

  ‘Where is all this going to end, Tara?’ Thomas demanded, in exasperation. ‘In Evans, that’s where. I’m trying to help you and, to be honest, you’re being very ungrateful.’

  ‘I’m sorry and I am grateful.’

  ‘Do you think I enjoy having to police you like this?’ Thomas asked.

  Yes, actually, Tara thought. And immediately regretted it. He was difficult – sometimes even brutal – but she had to keep reminding herself that it was for her good.

  Beryl stalked into the room and Thomas turned to her. ‘Who’s a good girl?’ he crooned. ‘Oh, who’s a pretty girl?’

  If only he’d be as nice to me, Tara thought, wistfully. One day she’d pull it off. If she could just manage to stop eating. ‘Will I ring a taxi?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘Aren’t you going to drive us?’

  ‘No, Thomas. What if I want to have a few drinks?’

  ‘A few drinks? But what about this?’ Thomas put his hand on Tara’s belly and pinched lots more than an inch.

  ‘Just for once, Thomas,’ she wheedled, miserably. ‘I’ve had such a horrible week…’

  ‘Just this once, then,’ he conceded, adding, ‘seeing as your mate might be dying.’

  Astonished by his savagery, Tara suddenly realized she was sick, sick, sick of Thomas and his crude, roughshod ways. Of his relentless, gratuitous cruelty. Of never winning arguments. Of being insulted and hurt. All in the name of the great absolver, honesty.

  ‘Doesn’t it upset you?’ Her voice shook with rage and grief. ‘A young man, the same age as you, being so ill, possibly going to die?’

  With a surprised, slightly gormless face, Thomas said, ‘No, it doesn’t get to me.’

  Tara looked at him steadily, hoping to shame him.

  ‘I don’t know him well enough,’ he admitted, awkwardly, unsettled by her intensity. ‘Maybe if he was me mate, I’d be different.’

  She continued to look at him. Waiting.

  ‘He’s not me mate,’ he protested. But without his customary crassness.

  ‘But you understand what I’m going through?’

  Something appeared in his eyes. Not exactly compassion, just a reluctant acknowledgement that it was hard for her. It was as close as they’d been in a long time and it would have to do. He shrugged, uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry I can’t pretend to be choked up about him. I’m only being…’

  ‘I know,’ Tara finished, with a trace of contempt, ‘honest.’

  He flicked her an uncertain look. She was in a funny mood! Just because her mate was ill. She’d want to see what it was like when your mam abandoned you!

  Before they left, Tara watched Thomas put his little brown change purse into his pocket, and she was shocked at how cringy it suddenly seemed to her.

  ‘Lend us twenty quid, Tara,’ he coaxed.

  Eddie’s new girlfriend Dawn was a skinny, sexy young thing with long, brown sinewy legs and dark, darting eyes. Tara felt like a fourteen-stone marshmallow by comparison. Anxiously she watched Thomas look from Dawn to herself and back again. Taking notes, making comparisons, finding Tara lacking. She found him staring at her bottom, spilled on either side of her like a cushion, and panic tightened her chest and sent her temperature soaring. Her earlier burst of contempt had disappeared and she was truly terrified of losing him.

  She got plastered that night, so plastered that she felt better. At the club they ended up going to, she danced drunkenly with Dawn and had skittish, overblown fun. She decided she liked Dawn.

  Later, as Tara and Thomas came home in the taxi, Thomas was drunk and affectionate, holding her hand and stroking her hair.

  ‘Why do you love me?’ Tara asked playfully.

  ‘Who says I love you?’ he challenged, but with a sidelong, crinkle-eyed smile that, in her drunken, hopeful state, Tara took to mean that of course he did.

  ‘Well, why are you with me, then?’

  ‘Cos you give me money, of course.’

  He laughed, and she swallowed away the sting. This was nice – they were bantering, making gentle fun with each other, the way lovers did. ‘OK,’ she smiled, playing the game, ‘you’re with me because I give you money, so what does that make you?

  ‘A kept man,’ she elaborated, opening her eyes wide with mock horror. ‘A prostitute, even! So I must be a pimp.’

  But he didn’t smile or reply with a light-hearted insult. His face went hard and thoughtful. No more repartee. Oh, God, she thought, why did it always go wrong, why did it always turn nasty? The warm, cosy mood of togetherness went into freefall.

  I don’t want to do this any more, Tara thought wearily. After the terrible week, she had no more coping skills left. She was fresh out of endurance, excuses and hope.

  40

  ‘What kind of Mass does this Father Gilligan do?’ JaneAnn asked.

  Katherine went very still. What was the right answer? ‘A nice one,’ she chanced.

  ‘A long one?’

  Was long desirable? Probably. ‘Ages. Hours.’

  ‘Good.’ JaneAnn gave a firm nod of her little head.

  The doorbell rang and it was Sandro, in his best suit.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Katherine asked in surprise.

  ‘I’m going to eleven o’clock Mass with JaneAnn.’

  Katherine burst out laughing, then stopped abruptly when she saw JaneAnn behind her.

  ‘I’m surprised at you, Katherine Casey, making fun of a young man’s faith.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Katherine said, humbly.

  Sandro recoiled when he saw that Katherine’s normally pristine, tasteful flat had deteriorated even further since the previous evening. It was as if a bomb had exploded. C
lothes, shoes, suitcases and bed-linen everywhere. Socks were draped on top of the television, a teacup was upended in a pot plant, the previous night’s wine and whiskey bottles were thrown on the floor, and though the sofa-bed had been folded back into a couch, a huge corner of sheet lolled out of it like a tongue from a slack mouth. From the kitchen came clattering, sizzling and the smell of food being fried. It’s as if twenty students live here,’ he breathed, surveying the chaos, searching for an orange traffic cone.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Katherine laughed darkly.

  ‘But you are always such a Miss Prissy-knickers,’ he protested.

  ‘What’s the point?’ She lifted her arms, then let them flop to her sides. ‘If I tidy, it’s a shambles again five minutes later.’

  ‘You are feeling all right?’ He watched her closely.

  ‘Fine!’ she declared, shrilly. ‘Great. Except, you know,’ she continued, her voice getting thinner and shriller, ‘once in a while it’d be nice to be able to get into my bathroom. There’s always someone in it. And I don’t really mind that JaneAnn used my loofah-mitt to scrub the kitchen floor, or that Timothy cleaned my non-stick frying-pan by scraping off all the black so that it’s not non-stick any more. But what kind of upset me this morning when I finally got into my bathroom was that someone – I think it was Milo – used all my Kerastase leave-in conditioner.’

  ‘Why do you think it was him?’

  ‘Just look at his hair,’ Katherine screeched. ‘See how bloody shiny it is!’ Her face was a ball of red and she glared at Sandro, daring him to try and talk her down. ‘I’m sorry,’ she wailed, and burst out crying. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ She shuddered with tears. ‘I’m such a selfish brat. How can these things matter when Fintan’s so sick?’

  The bell rang again. This time it was Liv, soberly dressed.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Katherine laughed through her tears, ‘you’re going to eleven o’clock Mass with JaneAnn?’