Last Chance Saloon

by Marian Keyes

  ‘Hello,’ Katherine said. ‘Oh, hello, Mrs O’Grady. Really? Are you sure? No, I knew nothing about it. No, really I didn’t. I swear to God I didn’t. I understand, ye – I underst – of course, I understa – But wait a minute. Maybe you’d better find out if it’s true before you start threatening to kill people.’

  Katherine handed the phone to Fintan. ‘It’s your mother. Do you know anything about Milo selling his farm and moving to London for good?’

  Tara climbed out of bed and the first thing she did was tick the calendar that Katherine had given her. Ten. The tenth night in a row that she’d managed to stay away from Thomas. Ten never-ending, sleep-free nights, her circadian rhythms shot to hell by displacement, the large quantities of alcohol she was ingesting to anaesthetize the pain and fear of her yawningly empty future.

  Her initial bravado when she’d marched out on Thomas had dissolved before she’d even arrived at Katherine’s. She’d almost turned the car around and driven back. But she knew that because of the extensive way she’d humiliated him, she’d burnt her bridges good and proper. Everyone told her that she’d get over him, but she knew her life was finished. She thought back to those heady, carefree days during her late twenties when she still had time. Of course, when Alasdair had dumped her, she’d thought it was all over for her. But this time, more than two years down the line, it really was all over.

  She didn’t have the same bounce-back resilience that she used to have. She’d had her last chance and blown it.

  The thought of going back to Thomas was dangerously seductive. Now that they were sundered, he didn’t seem so bad. His tetchiness didn’t look like a high price to pay for companionship. Though they’d had their squabbles, they knew each other very well. There was a huge comfort in that bickery intimacy. Better someone to disagree with than no one at all. Also, when she could bear to be honest, she admitted that though she missed Thomas, she also missed the validation of being one half of a couple. Alone, she felt naked and failed.

  Yet, despite her loneliness, she had flashes of a deep-down conviction that to go back to Thomas would be wrong. Not unless he’d changed fundamentally. And she was desperate to avoid a repeat of the way she’d humiliated herself with Alasdair. Please, God, don’t let me ring Thomas, she prayed, a thousand times a day. Please, God, give me strength. Please, God, make him ring me. Make him tell me he’s a changed man.

  Katherine was in the kitchen making coffee for herself and Joe. ‘Hi,’ she twinkled. She’d been getting almost no sleep but was wide, wide awake. Super-alert, apart from the odd lapse into languid dreaminess.

  She looked different. Everyone noticed it. The other day at work, when a tight little bottom had wriggled past his glass office, Fred Franklin had nudged Myles and said, ‘Nice arse. If you can get it.’

  Then Fred had frozen. ‘Whose arse is it? Don’t tell me it’s Icequeen’s? Oh, bloody hell, it is! How could I be polite about that?’

  Back in the kitchen Tara managed a tight smile at Katherine.

  ‘Tara,’ Katherine said, slowly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This.’ Katherine put her finger inside Tara’s waistband and pulled. A big gap appeared.

  ‘Oh.’ Tara gazed down in amazement.

  ‘Are you eating anything!’

  ‘This always happens. You split up with your fella, you can’t eat a thing, you get lovely and skinny and you meet another man. It’s Mother Nature’s consolation prize.’ Tara smiled faintly.

  ‘But, Tara, you must eat.’

  ‘I couldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘Don’t give in to it,’ Katherine said stoutly. ‘He wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘He wasn’t all bad,’ Tara said. ‘He was nice sometimes.’

  ‘Give me one example.’

  Tara thought for a second. ‘He always filled out my forms for me. Like my car insurance and tax. He knew how much I hated doing it.’

  ‘It was the least he could do, seeing as you drove him everywhere. Give me another.’

  ‘He was gentlemanly. Opened doors for me, pulled out chairs.’

  ‘Old-fashioned sexist.’

  Tara sighed heavily. ‘OK, he’s great with his hands. When my silver chain got all tangled up he spent hours unknotting it without breaking it. I’d never have had the patience.’

  Katherine harrumphed, not quite sure how to sneer at Thomas for his handymanism.

  ‘And we smoked together, we tried to give up together, we failed together.’ Tara sighed wistfully. ‘He used to light my cigarettes, I used to light his. It was very companionable, and I never ran out of fags because he had some when I didn’t.’

  ‘You mean he let you have them for free?’

  ‘Obviously I had to pay.’ Tara attempted a wan smile. ‘But it still meant that I wasn’t ever deprived of them.’

  ‘Cheer up, you’re well shot of him. Let’s face it, it was hardly the world’s greatest love affair,’ Katherine scorned.

  She was right, Tara considered. It was neither tragic nor romantic enough. But it had been her love affair. ‘Look,’ Tara bowed her head, ‘I know he was a bully and I know he was a meanie and I agree with you that I’m probably better off without him. But when people get a gangrenous limb amputated, it still itches, you know.’

  Katherine was pleased that Tara had compared Thomas to a gangrenous limb. Obviously it was a terrible slight on a gangrenous limb, but it was progress.

  ‘Thanks for last night, by the way,’ Tara muttered.

  ‘It’s OK. Er, sorry I ripped the jumper.’

  ‘You were right to. I was only fooling myself.’

  The previous evening, to Katherine’s horror, Tara had taken out the jumper that she’d been knitting for Thomas and said, ‘I might as well finish it and give it to him. It’s a shame to waste it.’

  ‘No!’ Katherine had jumped up, grabbed the needles, yanked the half-knitted sleeve from them and torn frantically at the wool, unravelling line after line of stitches. ‘It’s only an excuse to see him. Like the money he owes you, and the shower curtain you left behind and the fact that you forgot to kick Beryl before you left. No, Tara, no!’

  Tara’s face was luminous with amazement. ‘OK,’ she whispered.

  Katherine stomped back to sit beside Joe and muttered, ‘Sorry you had to witness that.’

  ‘I’m scared!’ He quailed, and everyone laughed, dispersing the tension.

  God, Tara thought, he was lovely! And so obliging. Tara suspected that the reason Katherine and Joe were spending so much time at Katherine’s instead of being holed up à deux in Joe’s flat was to keep an eye on Tara. Katherine had even moved the phone from the front room to the bedroom and confiscated Tara’s mobile. ‘I can’t stop you ringing him during the day,’ she’d said, ‘but at least you won’t be able to when you come home plastered.’

  And Joe and Katherine had blocked Tara’s progress one night when she tried to leave for a drunken midnight drive. ‘I don’t want to call in to Thomas,’ Tara explained angrily. ‘I just want to drive by’

  ‘The only circumstance that I’ll let you drive by Thomas’s is if it’s a drive-by shooting,’ Katherine replied. ‘Now, back to bed!’

  Tara dragged herself out of bed and ticked the calendar. Twenty days. Nearly three weeks. And after three weeks it would be almost a month.

  So far she’d managed not to ring him. But it was a superhuman achievement, brought about by Herculean struggle. Every day seemed like a thousand-mile march, potholed with constant opportunities to pick up the phone. At times she literally sweated from the effort of not ringing him.

  At weekends, without the distraction of work, the torment was magnified a hundredfold.

  As the initial agonizing wrench receded she’d come to see that it wasn’t just Thomas she missed, it was everything he’d represented: acceptance, endorsement, someone to consult on plans, a person to report to. She was deeply grateful for her friends, but without the unquestioned alliance of routine that existed betw
een lovers, she ricocheted about like a free radical.

  There had never been any great thrill in telling Thomas that she’d be home late. It was only now that there was no one to give a damn if she didn’t come home at all that it had taken on desirability. And even though she and Thomas had never really gone on a proper holiday, all she could hope for now was that some couple – perhaps Milo and Liv or Katherine and Joe – would take pity on her and let her tag along. Knowing how unworthy such feelings were didn’t lessen them. She just ended up feeling guilty as well as lonely.

  So nostalgic was she for her old life that she even missed the awful, brown, burrow-like flat. Despite it being in Thomas’s name, it had been her home. And now she was squashed like a refugee into a small bedroom in someone else’s flat, afraid of being a nuisance and unable to relax. Worrying about spending too much time in the bathroom, thinking she had no right to say what she wanted to watch on telly, feeling guilty for using too much electricity and edgily aware that any mess had to be cleared up immediately.

  Constant fantasies of Thomas arriving and pleading passionately with her to return buffered her. But apart from the one phone call where he’d asked if they could still be friends there had been no contact from him. In her more honest moments, Tara knew there wouldn’t ever be. He had a macho closed-offness where it was shameful to admit to weakness or need. Even if he was dying without her, he wouldn’t act on it.

  Parallel to the teeth-gritted endurance of a life without Thomas was life-sapping worry about Fintan. He’d had three bouts of chemo now and still hadn’t responded. His blood tests showed nothing had changed and you only had to look at him to see that his kiwi-neck was still as large as life.

  The oncologists insisted that these things took time, that he had to get worse before he got better, but Tara remained on edge and retained an inordinate interest in any alternative remedy she heard about.

  ‘Twenty days today!’ Katherine and Joe burst into wild applause when Tara walked into the kitchen.

  Tara flinched. ‘It’s Monday morning. How can you be so cheerful?’

  ‘Time for your morning whinge,’ Katherine glowed at her.

  ‘Thank you. Today’s grievance is that I hate having no one to go and see The Horse Whisperer with.’

  ‘But Thomas wouldn’t have gone with you, anyway.’

  ‘Permit me my rose-tinted view of my past, please,’ Tara asked, with dignity.

  ‘We don’t want to see The Horse Whisperer,’ Katherine said.

  ‘What night are we not going to see it on?’ Joe dazzled Katherine with an abundant smile.

  There was a time lapse where they beamed goofily at each other, before she managed to reply, ‘Next Tuesday’

  ‘You don’t need to see it,’ Tara pointed out. ‘You’ve got enough romance in your lives. Right, I’m off to work.’

  ‘Enjoy your twenty-first Thomas-free day!’

  ‘I’ll be home late.’ She paused in the hope that someone might insist they wanted her to come home early but when they didn’t she continued, ‘I’m going to the gym, then I’m going out.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Anyone I can find – Ravi, a Big Issue seller, whoever. Textbook, I know, all this pubbing and clubbing and drinking my head off.’

  ‘But at least you’ve broken with tradition by not having had at least one one-night stand,’ Katherine sympathized.

  ‘With a person you wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole if you hadn’t just broken up with someone,’ Joe added, with an I’ve-been-there smile.

  ‘Give it time. I haven’t sung yet.’

  When Tara shut the front door behind her she was struck – it happened a lot – by how wrong it all was. Why was she opening and closing someone else’s front door when she had a perfectly good front door of her own only a few miles away?

  It was out there somewhere. She stood in the street, aware of all the houses and flats and shops and offices that stretched between her and her real home, her real life.

  I want to go home.

  Well, you can’t, she told herself. Miserably, she girded her loins and trudged to her car.

  ‘Morning, Tara,’ Ravi brayed, when she walked into the office. ‘Great news. I read in ES there’s a new lipstick out by Max Factor. It doesn’t claim to be indelible, but it says it’s self-renewing, which – I don’t know about you but I think that’s as good as. I feel a trip to Boots coming on!’

  ‘Really?’ Tara was pleased. ‘Tell me what it said, Ravi.’

  ‘Apparently you put it on and whenever you’re worried that it’s faded or whatever the word is, you simply press your lips together…’ Ravi demonstrated by mashing his against each other ‘… and bosh! Fresh as the moment you put it on.’

  Tara’s phone rang. It was Liv on the line. ‘What’s wrong?’ Tara demanded. ‘Is it JaneAnn?’

  Liv sighed. ‘That woman is like a revenging angel. But it’s not her. Have you any drugs?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Hash.’

  ‘Not immediately to hand. What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s for Fintan. He still feels dreadful from the chemo two days ago and someone told him that hash takes away the nausea. But I’ve no idea how to get some – I work in interiors! Cocaine is the only narcotic I am ever offered.’

  65

  ‘Got you some great red Leb, man,’ Tara waved a tiny brown slab and drawled her dealer-spiel for Fintan. ‘Or it might be Moroccan black, actually. I wouldn’t know the difference. The drama myself and Ravi had trying to track it down. A friend of a friend of a friend of his has a sister who has a boyfriend who has a colleague who met us in a pool hall in Hammersmith and sold us the gear. Man,’ she added. ‘Hey, what’s the lovely smell? Cake?’

  Fintan ushered her into the kitchen, where a baking tray with one remaining bun on it sat on the worktop.

  ‘Hash brownies,’ Fintan explained. ‘Sorry, Tara. Sandro managed to score a twenty-spot of blem this afternoon. Could have saved you and Ravi the bother. Man,’ he also added.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about us, it was great fun, I haven’t done anything like that in ages. So have the brownies helped with the pukiness?’

  ‘I’ve only just scoffed them. But I hope to Christ they do the trick. It’s so boring constantly feeling like throwing up.’

  ‘Fingers crossed! So what’ll we do tonight?’ Tara asked. ‘It’d be so tempting to get stoned out of our minds, then stagger up to the twenty-four-hour garage and try to buy their entire stock of Maltesers –’

  ‘– but not be able to speak because we’re in hysterics at nothing.’

  ‘Of course we must remember the gear is purely medicinal, we mustn’t abuse it. It’d be nice to get a little bit stoned, though. It’s been years.’

  ‘Only problem is,’ Fintan said, ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Going out? Where?’

  ‘Sandro’s Christmas party.’

  ‘Already? On the first of December?’

  ‘The only night they could get a table at Nobu. Would you believe it’s fully booked until the fourth of January?’

  ‘But are you strong enough to go?’

  ‘Where there’s a willy there’s a way.’ He laughed. ‘I want to have fun. Eat, drink and be merry.’

  ‘Are you sure? After all, you’re not well…’

  ‘Oh, there’s the bell, my taxi must be here.’ Fintan began to gather himself up, and Tara noticed something that tightened her throat.

  ‘Is it a fancy-dress Christmas party?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why have you a walking stick?’

  ‘Oh, that. In all the excitement over the drugs and the sick stomach, I forgot to tell you.’

  ‘Forgot to tell me what?’

  ‘The last lot of chemo played havoc with the nerve endings in my feet.’

  ‘What kind of havoc?’ she asked, fear yawning inside her. This got worse and worse.

  ‘They feel kind of tingly and it hurts to put too
much weight on them, so a stick helps.’ He laughed at her face. ‘Oh, don’t look so upset, it’s only temporary, Tara. When I’m finished the chemo, it’ll eventually get better. Now, is my wig on straight?’

  She watched him, a skinny creature in a Tina Turner wig doing a knock-kneed hobble to the door and thought, He’s only a year older than me. ‘Will I visit tomorrow night?’ she asked, following in his wake as he switched off the lights.

  ‘No. I’m going clubbing with twenty-seven of my closest friends, but you’re welcome to join us.’

  ‘You’re going clubbing?’

  ‘That’s right, Tara. Clubbing,’ Fintan’s voice had a tight little edge. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light, and all that. So I’m doing like the man said and I’m raging.’

  Tara’s heart thumped into the back of her throat as she realized that Fintan wasn’t quite as Zen as she’d thought. ‘You’re angry?’

  ‘Not exactly angry. At least, not at this precise moment. But if I’m stuck in the Last Chance Saloon I’m going to make the most of it.’

  She couldn’t say anything, muzzled by an odd mixture of shame and admiration.

  ‘I’ll go out fighting,’ he promised. ‘Or at least dancing. While there’s breath in my body and Sister Sledge on the turntable, life goes on.’

  66

  ‘Work.’ Tara sighed, as she staggered in, reeking of smoke and alcohol. ‘I’m wrecked from it.’

  ‘Busy time of year?’ Katherine asked, sympathetically.

  ‘Don’t talk to me!’ Tara declared. ‘We had the project dinner last night, the team lunch yesterday, the office lunch the day before, our floor’s drinks today, the department lunch tomorrow, Marketing’s mulled wine do tomorrow afternoon and then the entire company party the night after. Bloody Christmas, I’m destroyed from it! My liver is begging for mercy.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Katherine agreed.

  However, in Breen Helmsford, the difference between the crazed partying of the festive season and the crazed partying of the rest of the year was hardly visible to the naked eye.