The Penultimate Chance Saloon

by Simon Brett

  Maybe in future he should be on the look-out for more than sex. Possibly even for love.

  * * *

  When he next had lunch with Sal, he told her that he loved her. Their meeting had started rather oddly, because Bill knew there was something different about his agent, but he couldn’t quite identify what it was. A disproportionately long time elapsed before he realised it was her smile. Ever since he’d known her, she’d had the yellowed teeth of a continually re-offending smoker; now suddenly he was faced with two rows of gleaming whiteness.

  He didn’t quite know what to say. It was a bit like seeing a bald man the first day he wears his toupee. Presumably he knows that he had no hair the previous day, and he knows that his colleagues know. New acquaintances might possibly be impressed and fail to notice that nothing on his head moves, but what is the recommended behaviour for old friends? Is the correct form to say nothing and pretend you haven’t noticed? Or is it more polite to extend your hearty congratulations to him on the fact that he has suddenly got a large Shredded Wheat on his head? Sal’s sudden orthodontic makeover presented Bill with a similar social dilemma.

  But he needn’t have worried. She wanted to talk about her new teeth. In fact, there was no way she was going to be stopped from talking about them.

  ‘Porcelain veneers,’ she said. Aren’t they wonderful?’

  ‘Yes. You look splendid.’

  ‘Cost an absolute fortune.’

  ‘I bet. All those fifteen per cents of my earnings.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Thank God I’ve got other clients. You only paid for that tiny little one at the back. Anyway, it’s part of the new me.’

  ‘Another “new me”? You’re some kind of new you every time I see you.’

  ‘Oh yes, in the past,’ she conceded, ‘I have gone for all kinds of self-help books, you know, trying to change my personality. But

  I’ve given up on that. Now I’m going to change the shell, and let the personality develop inside it.’

  ‘By “the shell”, you mean your exterior appearance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What, so you’re going to wear more make-up?’

  ‘I don’t think that’d be possible.’

  ‘Ah.’ Light dawned. ‘You mean you’re going to change your body?’

  ‘Exactly. The teeth are only the start. I’m having a consultation with a cosmetic surgeon tomorrow. Soon you won’t recognise the new me.’

  ‘Don’t make too many changes,’ he said. ‘I really like the old you.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s what’s wrong with it. It’s old. Soon I’ll be totally transformed.’

  ‘Well, do be careful.’ Then he added, boldly, ‘I love the old you.’

  She didn’t seem to notice this avowal. If that’s what it was. Certainly Bill had never used the word ‘love’ to Sal before. Without even registering the novelty, she started on at him about how he ought to get his teeth fixed too.

  ‘You are in the public eye, you know. You’ve always got to look your best. It’s a cut-throat business you’re in. A lot of younger, better- maintained men out there, snapping at your heels.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t need cosmetic dentistry. My teeth are part of me. They’ve got a lot of character.’

  ‘You could say the same of Stonehenge.’ She looked disparagingly across at his uneven bite. ‘And, actually, the similarities don’t stop there.’

  Bill didn’t really like this talk about his teeth. They had always been sensitive, and he had always been sensitive about them. He had had a lot of trouble with them over the years, though now they were so full of fillings there wasn’t much left that could go wrong with them. They probably could do with porcelain veneers, but he reckoned, having got this far into his life without them, the unadorned original teeth would probably see him out. And when he had been regularly reading the news, ‘his crooked smile’ had been referred to frequently. He’d even once had the accolade of his facial expression being mimicked by an impressionist in a television sketch show. Still, thinking about his teeth always upset him. Maybe because of their similarity to tiny tombstones, they made him aware of his own mortality.

  Fortunately the conversation did at last move away from matters orthodontic. Sal was in very good form, seemingly liberated by the decision to lay off her mind and concentrate on improving her body. She was funny and relaxed, and they went for a second bottle of the dusty red Yakut. As they parted outside the Turkish restaurant, they went into a more effusive clinch than usual. Bill could feel the outline of her body against his. Clumsily kissing her hair, he mumbled, ‘I do love you, you know.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she murmured.

  Then, with a tipsy giggle, she tottered off on unfeasibly high heels back towards her office.

  * * *

  Sitting on the tube back to Pimlico, Bill Stratton glowed. Maybe there was love in his life, after all. He’d never really thought about fancying Sal, until that moment when she pressed her body against his.

  So there was something between him and Sal ... and definitely something between him and Ginnie. It was rather nice, the idea of being a little in love with more than one person. Suddenly he felt a huge surge of well-being, possibly buoyed up by having sunk a whole bottle of the Yakut. He felt the capacity to love every woman in the world. They were so gorgeous. The curves of their breasts and legs, the infinite variety of their skin tones, the way their hair sprang and curled and shimmered from their heads. At Green Park a woman of incredible beauty boarded the tube and stood opposite him. Probably under thirty, she had short blonde hair and honey-dappled skin. A short skirt and sleeveless top showed her perfect contours. Long, long legs, slender muscular arms, an immaculate cleavage.

  The well-being within Bill Stratton surged again. She was so beautiful. He was instantly in love with her. And he wanted to tell her so, to let her know how much she was appreciated. Surely any woman would want to know that a man found her beautiful? Since they spend so much time and artifice trying to achieve that effect, they must want to be informed when they have succeeded. Bill decided he would tell the woman she was beautiful. He might even say that he loved her. The unsolicited opinion of a man of taste – that’d really give a lift to her day.

  The tube was slowing down for Victoria and she started moving towards the door. That was why she hadn’t bothered to sit down, she was only travelling the one stop. She was going to walk right past Bill, and when she did, he would stand up and tell her she was beautiful. And possibly that he loved her.

  He timed it beautifully. He stood up when she was directly in front of him, and he opened his mouth to speak. But then he saw the expression which had taken over her beautiful face. The expression which only he could have inspired. Contempt and distaste, with an undercurrent of fear. Someone so beautiful got men coming on to her all the time. She loathed it.

  Bill wanted to explain. That he wasn’t a threat to her, he just appreciated her aesthetically. That he really wasn’t coming on to her. That ...

  It was over in a matter of seconds. No one else in the carriage saw the look of loathing that had passed from her to him. She was gone, the doors closed and the tube sighed on towards Pimlico. Bill Stratton slumped back in his seat and saw in the window opposite, in ghostly reflection – rather like an X-ray image – exactly what the young blonde woman had seen. A white-haired, wrinkled figure with irregular teeth. An old goat. A dirty old man.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ...and, by way of contrast,

  a new Christian society for teenagers has

  been founded in Ohio. It is called the

  Affirmative Response Group,

  and its slogan is ‘Say No To Everything.

  Leigh was different from the other women, though the circumstances in which Bill met her were pretty similar. An after-dinner gig in London for some charity. Not that his own involvement was in any way charitable. Sal had sorted out a contract for his usual fee and his usual hotel room. So far as she was
concerned – and so far, after brief initial qualms, as Bill was concerned – a booking was a booking. A charity could always try approaching a speaker direct and ask if he’d give his services for nothing. But if they went through Sal Juster Associates, they were by definition entering into a commercial transaction. (Many charity events – and particularly Charity Balls – actually lose money, because the initial outlay has been so huge that no amount of ticket sales or donations on the night are going to cover it. Enthusiastic people on charity committees rarely have much understanding of event finances. Still, that wasn’t Bill Stratton’s problem.)

  He couldn’t remember what that night’s particular charity was; something to do with a heart scanner or a new hospital wing for sick babies. He took a perverse pleasure in not knowing the details. Being of a medical nature, it was one of the few such events at which Andrea might have joined him ... had they, of course, still been married. Except, of course, had they still been married, he wouldn’t have embarked on his career in after-dinner speaking, so he wouldn’t actually have been invited to .... Such speculation was pointless.

  Anyway, rather than Andrea, he met Leigh. She was tiny and vivacious, with that combination of very black hair, lightly freckled skin and pale blue eyes that ought to be Irish, though in her case apparently wasn’t. She wore a trouser suit that looked black until the light caught it and made it shimmer with dark green.

  The first thing that distinguished her from his other women was that she had not come to the function alone. Seated next to Bill on the top table at the dinner, she introduced him to a broad bald man with glasses on her right, who seemed to have been melted down and poured into a rigid dinner suit. Bill couldn’t remember the man’s exact name, but it was in the Keith/Derek/Alan range. Anyway, throughout the dinner, Keith/Derek/Alan seemed surplus to Leigh’s requirements. She spent the whole meal listening to Bill, laughing appropriately at his well-remembered ‘by way of contrast’ lines. She laughed too as the BWOC routine was wheeled out during the actual speech, but when he sat down to his customary flurry of applause, she said, ‘You don’t give much of yourself away, do you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Lots of second-hand funny lines, nothing about the real Bill Stratton.’

  ‘All the punters want is a laugh. They haven’t come here to hear about the real Bill Stratton. Which is just as well, because the real Bill Stratton is not particularly interesting.’

  ‘Difficult to know, since you won’t reveal anything about him. I would have thought ...’

  Her words trickled away at an admonitory look from the event’s chairman, who was about to start the evening’s Auction of Promises.

  In a much lower voice, she murmured, ‘Let’s go and have a drink at the bar.’

  ‘Well ...’ Although he didn’t have any role that evening as auctioneer, award-presenter or raffle-ticket-picker, slipping away straight after his speech was on the margins of bad form. And slipping away with a woman might cause more sniggering in Sal’s post-mortem with the organisers.

  But what the hell! Leigh was very attractive and ... what the hell?

  The bar was empty, except for a lethargic young man who hadn’t been expecting anyone until the proceedings in the dining room had finished, but still served them with reasonably good grace. Leigh opted for a malt whisky and Bill went along with the same.

  ‘So why is the real Bill Stratton boring?’ she asked, once they were ensconced in a plushly upholstered alcove.

  ‘Well, I’m just ... you heard what the guy who introduced me said. I’ve had a fairly easy ride in career terms – and in a career that has a disproportionately high public profile – but that doesn’t make me interesting.’

  ‘The guy who introduced you just chronicled the list of television companies who’d employed you and the different times at which you had read the news.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing more to say.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything about the kind of person you are.’ ‘That’s not his job. No one’s here’s interested in that stuff.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So come on then ... let’s get the basics. Are you married?’

  ‘Divorced.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Coming up for a year.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘On good terms with ex-wife?’

  ‘Not adversarial. Hardly ever see her. She remarried.’

  ‘Was her new husband the cause of the break-up?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he was. Though, from what Andrea says about the situation ...’ No, no, no need to confide that stuff. Not important.

  ‘Actually, there was a very good “by way of contrast” line about a divorced woman in Caracas who –’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more of those “by way of contrast” lines. I want to hear about you.’

  And she did. To his amazement, Bill found himself telling her more than he’d told almost anyone. Andrea obviously knew greater detail, but she had received the information in a trickle effect through many years of marriage. He had never talked about himself for such a sustained period. He kept trying to divert the conversation on to Leigh and her life. He reciprocated her questions about marriages, divorces and children, but the answers didn’t come. Leigh wasn’t deliberately evasive; she just always asked for some other detail about his life that he couldn’t resist responding to.

  The Auction of Promises and subsequent money-sponging events came to an end, and the other guests drifted through into the bar, but Bill was hardly aware of them. He was caught up in Leigh’s interrogation and in the translucent beam of her pale blue eyes.

  At one point, a rather anxious-looking Keith/Derek/Alan broke into the aura of their conversation. ‘Leigh, I was thinking maybe it was time to be going –’

  ‘Fine.’

  She gave no signs of moving. Keith/Derek/Alan stood loitering like a man outside a sex shop. ‘Well, erm ...’ he said after a time. ‘Are you coming with me?’

  ‘No.’ It wasn’t said with any edge or vindictiveness, just as a statement of fact.

  ‘Ah.’ The idea took a while to percolate through into Keith/ Derek/Alan’s understanding. ‘Right. Well, I’ll be off then.’ He made two bold steps towards the door, then reassumed his loitering posture. ‘So I’ll call you, shall I?’

  ‘Wouldn’t bother.’

  Though this was spoken as charmingly as Leigh’s previous response, this time Keith/Derek/Alan was quicker to get the message. With a vainglorious ‘Cheerio then’, he strode off through the bar.

  ‘A long-term relationship?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Couple of months. Never going to go the distance. He was boring. Should have recognised it earlier. Not enough time left to waste on non-starters.’

  ‘How do you recognise a “non-starter”?’ He was fishing, trying to gauge her reaction to him.

  ‘That’s the problem. When you start out, you don’t know they’re going to be non-starters ... otherwise you wouldn’t have started out, would you?’

  He nodded, assimilating the logic of her words. ‘So have you ever met anyone who wasn’t a non-starter?’

  ‘Given the fact that I am unmarried and not currently in a long-term relationship, the answer has to be no.’

  That was more information than she’d given him all evening. Not currently in a long-term relationship. But maybe, five minutes before, she had been in a long-term relationship with Keith/Derek/ Alan? Did two months count as long-term?

  ‘But presumably you’re still looking for Mr. Right?’

  ‘Mr Right was a concept I grew out of in my teens. The most I aspire to is Mr Right For The Time Being. And what I usually end up with is Mr Right For This Brief Moment ... shortly to be re-identified as Mr Totally And Utterly Wrong.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Still, one of the very few benefits I’ve found in getting old is that I have lowered expectations and I
’m quicker to cut and run. If something doesn’t work, I no longer feel any obligation to hang around and make it work. And I wish a lot of women had caught on to that idea a good deal earlier in their lives. I wish I had, come to that. God, the time I’ve wasted trying to turn men into something for which they never had the basic aptitude. But now I recognise the great truth, summed up by some country and western singer: “Shoes don’t stretch and men don’t change.’”

  ‘Does that mean you’re anti-men, Leigh?’

  ‘No, I still like them. I just don’t expect much of them. That way, I am less often disappointed.’

  ‘But you still go out with men?’

  ‘Oh yes. But if there’s no empathy there ... or if the sex isn’t any good ... then I only do it the once.’

  ‘Just like a man.’

  ‘Yeah. Just like a man.’

  The crowd of guests, their wallets emptied by an evening of charity, was beginning to thin. A few glanced towards the cocooned couple in the alcove. More sniggering to Sal on the phone, Bill thought mildly. Still, let’s hope we can give them something to snigger about.

  ‘They’ll be closing the bar soon,’ he said casually. ‘Maybe we should continue our conversation up in my room?’

  The pale blue eyes looked at him sceptically. ‘So that you can make a clumsy pass at me?’

  ‘No, no, I promise. I don’t make clumsy passes. If we were both up in the bedroom ... and if we discussed sex ... and if we agreed we both wanted to ... well ...’ He shrugged, in a manner that he hoped was eloquent.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, after a silence. ‘That sounds like a reasonably good system.’

  ‘Well, it makes things kind of mutual, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Consensual.’

  ‘What a good word that is, Bill. Life-saver for men, isn’t it? Makes them feel better about coming on to women.’