The Penultimate Chance Saloon

by Simon Brett

  Still, Ginnie was looking stunning. Her hair was short, in deference to her role as a nun in the television series, but it was cut with consummate skill. The Croatian sun had topped up and burnished her tan to a new glowing splendour, perfectly set off by the white linen trousers and minimal pink silk top she was wearing.

  ‘I never quite understand,’ said Bill, ‘why your hair has to be short if it’s covered all the time.’

  ‘Then you’ve clearly never seen the series,’ purred Ginnie. ‘Mine is very definitely a “wimple-off” role. The whole show is Sound of Music meets Prisoner Cell Block H.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have seen it.’

  ‘Quite honestly, darling, I’d rather you didn’t. Feather a dilemma for me, actually. For the show to succeed, it needs millions of viewers. All I hope is that none of them are people I know. It’s on ITV, though, so I’m in with a chance.’ She shuddered. ‘There is such a thing as actors paying their mortgages too publicly, and I’m afraid that’s the situation I’m in. Still, nobody’s doing anything mildly intelligent on television these days, and since the theatre work’s virtually dried up ...’ she shrugged her magnificently slim shoulders ‘... beggars can’t be choosers.’

  She flashed him a sudden grin. ‘Enough of my problems. Is your new career on the after-dinner circuit burgeoning?’

  ‘Seems to be going all right. Don’t know why really. I mean, I say exactly the same things every time.’

  ‘So? Bill darling, if you were an actor, no one would complain about that. When I gave my Lady Macbeth, I said exactly the same things every time. If I hadn’t, the audiences would have asked for their money back.’

  ‘Yes, but what I trot out is far from Shakespeare. I mean, they’re genuine, but they’re basically just tired old snippets of yesterday’s news.’

  ‘That’s how they may appear to you, but what you have to remember is that that’s not how the audience sees it. They’re hearing it for the first time.’

  ‘Suppose you’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right, Bill. Come on, this is not your usual perky self. Why’re you down?’

  ‘Erm ...’ He couldn’t give the real answer. That being with her, realising how much he liked her, relaxing in the company of a real woman whom he knew well, made his sexual encounters of the last months seem a bit ... well, tawdry. The lunch with Sal had planted the seed of self-disgust within him; being with Ginnie made it grow. ‘I don’t know,’ he concluded unsatisfactorily.

  ‘Something going wrong with your love life?’

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ he said, with too much vehemence.

  ‘I hope you do have a love life ...’

  ‘Well ...’

  ‘When we last had dinner, you said you were still technically faithful to Andrea.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly say –’

  ‘I do hope that’s no longer true ... for your sake. Remember all that ground you’ve got to make up.’

  ‘Well ...’

  ‘Go on, Bill.’ She leant forward, teasing, provocative. ‘Tell me the truth. You’ve been picking up women and shagging them at every one of your after-dinner speaking gigs, haven’t you?’

  It was hopeless. They all knew. There probably was a ‘billstrattonssexualencounters.com’ website. Nothing for it. He’d have to bite the bullet.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘Well, not at every one, but ...’

  Ginnie’s indrawn breath and the change in her expression told him, too late, that he’d made a big mistake. She’d just been teasing him. She hadn’t really thought he’d been picking up women and shagging them at every one of his after-dinner speaking gigs. Oh God, talk about having blown it.

  ‘Joking,’ he said hopefully. ‘Just joking.’ But he could see she didn’t believe him.

  Mercifully the waiter arrived to take their orders. Ginnie went for a Berber Sushi Salad starter, followed by the inevitable Lamb Teriyaki with Apricots Tagine. Bill, at a loss to think about anything other than the gaffe he’d just made, asked for the same.

  Any hopes he might have had of the waiter’s interruption shifting the topic of conversation were dashed, as Ginnie went on, ‘So ... how many has it been?’

  ‘How many?’ he echoed feebly. ‘How many what?’

  ‘How many women have you shagged since your divorce from Andrea?’

  ‘I don’t know ...’

  ‘You mean you don’t know because there’ve been so many you’ve lost count?’

  ‘No. I don’t know ... because... well, it’s not the kind of thing that one does count.’

  ‘Nonsense. Men always count.’

  The hazel eyes bored into him, but he wasn’t going to tell her.

  ‘So, Bill, you’ve suddenly become The Oldest Swinger in Town, have you? Joining the Rod Stewart and Peter Stringfellow Brigade?’

  He was repelled by the image. ‘No. Nothing like that. Anyway,’ he said defensively, ‘last time we had dinner together, you were encouraging me to get my sex life up and running again.’

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t encouraging you to shag everyone.’

  ‘I haven’t shagged everyone.’

  ‘Oh, goodness. You mean here and there a woman exists who has yet to receive the infinite blessing of your body?’

  ‘Ginnie, I don’t know why you’re going on about it. Can’t we talk about something else?’

  ‘Possibly. In a minute. But not before I’ve got a little more detail about what you’ve been up to for the last few months.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked glumly down at his right thumb and forefinger, which had been unconsciously rolling together rose petals. The debris of tiny broken red pellets lay on the tablecloth.

  ‘Do I take it these were all one-night stands?’

  A lugubrious nod.

  ‘Nothing that you would term a relationship?’

  Another.

  ‘And don’t you think that’s rather irresponsible behaviour?’

  That did surprise him. ‘No. None of them were of an age when they were likely to get pregnant.’

  ‘That’s not the only kind of sexual irresponsibility, Bill. Don’t you think there might have been an element of disloyalty in what you’ve been doing?’

  ‘No. For heaven’s sake, I haven’t got anyone to be disloyal to. You seem to be forgetting that Andrea and I got divorced. While I was married to her, I was completely faithful. Now the marriage is over, I can do what I like. I don’t have any responsibility to anyone.’

  ‘Not even to the women you’ve had all these one-night stands with?’

  ‘No.’ He’d never really thought of that possibility. ‘No. They weren’t under any illusions. They were just like me, only in it for a quick sexual encounter.’

  ‘God, Bill, you talk like an adolescent who’s just discovered sex.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s what I am.’ He grinned, trying to get their conversation back on to its usual level of banter. ‘As one keeps reading in the Sunday papers, “sixty is the new thirty”.’

  ‘In your case, sixty’s more like the new sixteen. Come on, tell me ...’ The hazel eyes once again impaled him like a butterfly on a pin. ‘Have you really enjoyed having this random sequence of quick screws?’

  He certainly wasn’t going to deny it. ‘Well, yes, I have. Most of them. Anyway, I was due a few. You told me so when we last met.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. Your exact words, if I recall them correctly, were, “You don’t have to marry every woman you have a relationship with.’”

  ‘But apparently you aren’t having relationships with these women. You’re just having sex with them.’

  ‘It comes to the same thing.’

  Ginnie looked at him, appalled, and slowly shook her head. ‘Surely you don’t believe that? Sex must mean something. Not just passionless promiscuity.’

  ‘What’s wrong with promiscuity?’

  ‘It’s not funny and it’s not clever.’

  ‘No, but it’s FUN.’


  Ginnie shook her head in disbelief. ‘You just don’t get it, do you, Bill?’

  ‘Don’t get what?’

  ‘You must be so full of anger against women.’

  ‘I’m not full of anger. I’m very nice to them. I give them a good time.’

  She didn’t seem even to hear that. ‘I suppose it’s your revenge for what Andrea did to you.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you start. Sal keeps saying that.’

  ‘Sal your agent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ A new thought came to Ginnie. ‘She isn’t one of your conquests, is she?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. I don’t do it with women I know’.

  Her expression made him wish that those words too had been left unsaid.

  ‘What I mean is –’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean, Bill, and I can’t deny that I’m disappointed in you.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ginnie, you’re the last person I would have expected to go all moralistic on me. And I have to say there is an element of pot and kettle here. Your emotional history has been an unblemished record of fidelity, has it? You’ve had lots of lovers.’

  ‘Yes, but they were Lovers. There was love involved. I went into each relationship thinking it was going to work out. None of them were just anonymous carnal transactions.’

  ‘You don’t know that’s what mine were.’

  ‘If you only see any of the women once, that’s very much what they sound like. One step up from using prostitutes, and with the big advantage that you don’t have to pay.’

  That stung him. Petulantly, he said, ‘Look, I’m still recovering from my divorce. I’m not ready for a long-term relationship.’

  ‘Oh, don’t come that one with me, Bill. God, you really are having a second adolescence. Most boys realise by their twenties how meaningless sex is without emotion. Most grow out of the “notches- on-the-bedpost” mentality.’

  ‘For nearly forty years of marriage I didn’t have a “notches-on- the-bedpost” mentality.’

  ‘So that justifies your having one now, does it?’

  Yes, it does. The response was instinctive, but he didn’t vocalise the words. Ginnie had hit the nail on the head with uncomfortable accuracy. She had spelled out exactly what he thought.

  Their Berber Sushi Salads arrived, but again the break didn’t deflect the implacable Ginnie. ‘I feel really sorry for you, Bill.’

  ‘Well, that’s very sweet of you, but you don’t need to. I’m perfectly happy.’

  ‘Are you, though? Listen, you’re a nice guy –’

  ‘Not from what you’ve been saying.’

  ‘Yes, you are. And you’ve got a lot to give emotionally ... which is why I’m so pissed off to hear that you’re just playing a numbers game, ticking off the lists of your conquests –’

  ‘They’re not conquests. It’s all consensual.’

  ‘Huh. They must all be the same kind of women.’

  ‘Maybe they are.’

  ‘Well, thank God I ’m not that kind of woman. I can’t imagine anything more demeaning than being just another name in a man’s point-scoring roll-call of lovers.’

  That silenced him. Not because of the criticism, but because of the implication – however ambivalent and veiled – that there might be circumstances under which she would have contemplated being his lover. The idea was so potent it took his breath away. He wished even more forcibly that their recent conversation had never started.

  Compassion had replaced anger in her voice, as Ginnie said, ‘I just feel sorry that there s no love in your life, Bill. Perhaps no love in you.’

  ‘Thats hardly my fault,’ he responded instinctively. ‘I tried nearly forty years of love, and then discovered that it wasn’t reciprocated.’

  ‘The hazel eyes looked pityingly at him. ‘God, you’re so angry.’

  ‘Well, all right, maybe I am,’ he conceded.

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, it’s your life and ... sorry, I shouldn’t have come the heavy moralist with you. It’s just ... you’re someone I care about, and so I want you to be happy.’

  He didn’t bother insisting again that he was happy. Ginnie had managed to devalue his idea of happiness. Instead, rather grumpily, he repeated, ‘I’m just not yet ready for another relationship.’

  ‘No, but you can still have some love in your life. It doesn’t need to be exclusive love, like you had for Andrea. You can have love for friends, for people you meet. You should let yourself be open to love.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not?’ he asked truculently.

  ‘I know. Serial philanderers shut off the possibility of love. Shagging lots of women is their way of immunising themselves against it.’

  ‘Hmm. Maybe.’

  ‘Come on, think. Isn’t there anyone in your life for whom you feel a bit of love?’

  There were people, but he didn’t think it tactful to mention either Sal or Carolyn to Ginnie. Instead, boldly he said, ‘I feel a bit of love for you.’

  She grinned, reached across the table and put her hand on his. ‘And I feel a bit of love for you. A bit.’ She removed her hand. ‘But rather less than I did at the beginning of the evening.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ... and, by way of contrast,

  a Bengali woman accused of marketing

  a fraudulent love potion was acquitted

  by a judge, who subsequently married her.

  Bill Stratton could not deny that he was shaken by what Ginnie Fairbrother had said. Her perspective on his recent life did make it appear slightly shabby. That, coupled with Sal’s words about people ‘sniggering’, diminished his self-image as a magnificent love-god. He was just another more-than-middle-aged man, trying to cram in as much action as possible before the final shutter fell.

  He was also intrigued as to why Ginnie had taken him to task with such vigour. Fair enough that she should disapprove of his late- flowering promiscuity, but she seemed to be taking it personally, as if it was her he’d let down, rather than her entire gender. Bill didn’t allow himself to think why she should have behaved like that. He just wanted to see her again as soon as possible, and find a way to reinstate himself in her good books. But that was not going to be easily achieved. The morning after their dinner she had flown back to Croatia, where she was scheduled for many more months of convent capers. Bill’s bridge-building with Ginnie would have to wait. But he did think a lot about what she said. Particularly about the lack of love in his life. While he had been with Andrea – even though she subsequently denied its presence – he at least had had the illusion of love surrounding him. And it was true that love had not been a component in any of his sexual encounters since the divorce.

  Men were, of course, proverbially bad at using the ‘L’ word. The commitment implied in it was so total. Telling a woman that you loved her was tantamount to signing a binding contract never to stop loving her, undertaking to protect and look after her for as long as you both shall live. Or at least that was the way Bill had always seen the situation. And he reckoned that was the reason why most men avoided all mention of love in their dealings with women. It was safer that way. But what Ginnie had said made him wonder whether his definition of love was perhaps too narrow. Ideal married love to one person was a nice idea, but how many people achieve that? Bill Stratton thought he had, but he’d been wrong.

  Ginnie had hurt him when she said there was no love in his life. Maybe there wasn’t that one exclusive love, but perhaps by a more relaxed definition ...? Well, he certainly felt something for Ginnie. That was a kind of love – he’d told her so. Perhaps he felt something similar for Sal, come to that. Even Carolyn.

  Maybe he should tell them that he loved them? Mind you, he wasn’t quite sure what response he would get. Baffled incomprehension, most likely.

  Interesting idea, though. It might, he thought, be quite easy to say ‘I love you’, once he got used to the idea. Once he’d managed to break the habit of thinking in terms of exclusi
ve love, just for one person. But when he’d done that, and when he’d actually said it to more than one person, well, maybe it’d be open season on ‘I love you.’ He could say it to anyone. The important thing, though, Bill told himself, mindful of Ginnie’s criticisms, is that it’s true. You only say it to people you love. But the number of those – and the different ways in which you love them – well, the older you get, the bigger that number might become.

  He wished he’d been more forceful when he’d told Ginnie that he loved her. But he’d been on the back foot all that evening; not really a time for being forceful.

  He supposed he could write to her or phone her. She’d made a point of telling him how well her mobile worked in Croatia. But he didn’t want to put the delicate balance of their relationship at risk. Even when she gave him an ear-bashing, being with Ginnie meant a lot to him. Saying the wrong thing or making a wrong assumption about her interest in him could spoil everything. Virginia Fairbrother was a wonderful and attractive woman, but she was way out of his league.

  A couple of days after their Moroccan/Japanese fusion experience, Bill Stratton had an after-dinner speaking engagement in a hotel in Nottingham. There was an unattached woman there who was giving all the signals of availability. They chatted in the bar afterwards. She laughed at his ‘by way of contrast’ lines and seemed in no urgency to leave. At about midnight Bill looked at his watch and said it had been a pleasure to meet her, but he must be off to bed.

  Where he went. Alone. Feeling incredibly virtuous.

  * * *

  He found over the next few weeks that his mind kept coming back to things Ginnie had said to him. He wondered about the anger. Had he really been using promiscuity as a way of getting back at Andrea? Not directly, of course, because she knew nothing about what he’d been doing, but maybe there was something in the theory. Sal, after all, had said exactly the same thing. Bill also thought about Ginnie’s description of him treating sixty as the new sixteen. He did feel as if he was going through a change in his life. Maybe, he wondered, second adolescence is a necessary stage before second childishness. And mere oblivion. His behaviour certainly couldn’t be covered by the catch-all title of ‘a mid-life crisis’. If this was his mid-life, then by the time he died he was going to have an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. But he did need a little time to reassess his situation. He was glad he’d done his stint as a serial philanderer, but that wasn’t how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. As an old goat, being sniggered at by event organisers.