The Penultimate Chance Saloon

by Simon Brett

  He left the hospital before the end of the half-hour Dewi had allotted for him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ... and, by way of contrast,

  an advertisement for a second-hand hearse

  in a South African newspaper said it had

  fifteen thousand miles on the clock and

  a carefully maintained body.

  Andrea died ten days later. She never went home from the hospital. Nothing wrong with her will to resist the challenge. That was strong, but the cancer was stronger.

  Bill Stratton received the information in a phone-call from one of Dewi’s sons. His father, he explained, was too upset to talk to everyone. Dewi had done the immediate family, but the children were working through the other names in Andrea’s address book’. They certainly knew how to rub it in, thought Bill. The son’s accent, though not Welsh, carried the same overtone of offended righteousness as the father’s.

  Bill came up with some appropriate form of condolence to be passed on to Dewi, and asked about funeral arrangements. The son said they weren’t finally settled yet. Bill said he’d be grateful to be informed when they were. The son reluctantly agreed to pass on the information. He made it clear, however, that the family would find the event quite difficult enough without having Andrea’s ex-husband around as an additional irritant. But they would let him know.

  The phone call left Bill numb. He was not unfeeling about his ex-wife’s death, but he knew that the details of what he felt would take a long time to shake down. For the time being, numbness would have to do. He was also aware of the incongruity of his situation. If Andrea’s cancer had been diagnosed two years earlier, the crisis would have been on his watch. Bill Stratton’s wife would have been faced with a potentially terminal disease, and Bill Stratton himself would have done all the things a dutiful husband should. (In spite of what Andrea had said about him, Bill did still think of himself as having been a dutiful husband.) It would have been he who reacted with horror to the diagnosis, who waited agonisingly for the results of tests, supported her through the debilitating effects of chemotherapy, and sat by her side through the long, losing struggle for her life. And their friends would have been as supportive as they could, would have empathised with their sufferings, would have felt respect and compassion for Bill Stratton’s stoicism in the hour of ultimate challenge.

  Whereas now ... all that sympathy would be lavished on Dewi Roberts. He would be the sufferer and the saint. Which was, Bill had to concede, entirely fair. Dewi was the one who’d been there to support his wife through the ghastly leaving of this world. And it was a job that, with his medical skills and trained bedside manner, he probably did a lot better than Bill would have done.

  The ramifications of all this, however, could not fail to affect the way Andrea’s ex-husband was seen. Bill Stratton would become something close to the villain of the piece. Not only had he been such an unsatisfactory husband that Andrea had had to divorce him, but he had also shown no interest in her declining health. He had only gone to see her once in hospital, very near the end. The fact that no one had told him she was ill would be lost in the general censoriousness. Any available blame would be showered on the shiftless ex-husband rather than the sainted Dewi.

  For a man like Bill Stratton, whose main motive in life was to be liked, the prospect was unappealing.

  Also, below all the feelings of shock and guilt and pain, he could not suppress a slight feeling of injustice. He was the one who’d put in the groundwork. He’d spent nearly forty years married to Andrea ... and the relationship hadn’t been nearly as bad as she maintained. Bill had worked at the marriage. And then suddenly, in what turned out to be the last couple of years of her life, Dewi had swanned in to receive all the plaudits ... like the Americans coming in late in a war to get all the glory.

  Bill Stratton knew such thoughts were unworthy ... particularly in the circumstances ... but he could not suppress them. As well as feeling numb, he felt aggrieved.

  There were people he should ring. Sal, Carolyn and Trevor had never been that close to Andrea – there was no hurry to tell them – but Ginnie ... in spite of what Andrea had said, the two women had been very close at one point in their lives. He should dial that mobile number in Croatia.

  But not yet. Bill decided to take his numbness down to the pub, see if alcohol might release some of the confused emotions inside him.

  * * *

  The mobile in Croatia was on voicemail. He didn’t leave any details, just asked her to call him. Then he lay down to sleep off too many pints at lunchtime.

  The telephone woke him, but it wasn’t Ginnie. It was Sal. She’d heard about Andrea.

  ‘How on earth do you know everything so quickly?’

  ‘I keep my ear to the ground.’

  Bill should have expected that. Sal’s ‘ear to the ground’ had also found out about many of his sexual encounters.

  She pronounced some formal sentiments of condolence and then said, ‘But how do you feel about it, Bill?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  Which was true.

  The phone rang again almost immediately after he’d finished talking to Sal. Still not Ginnie. Dewi’s daughter this time – they were sharing out the disagreeable tasks – giving him funeral details, as requested. Three PM the following Tuesday. At a chapel in Muswell Hill. But Bill didn’t need to feel he had to attend.

  Her tone, again not Welsh but again imbued with Dewi’s righteousness, which only just stopped short of telling him not to come, made Bill all the more determined that he should be there. Even that afternoon, unbidden images of Andrea had come into his mind, many from long ago, from the time when they’d first met. All right, the marriage hadn’t worked out, but they’d been together nearly four decades. He was damned if he was going to forget her just like that, on the orders of some jumped-up little Welsh GP.

  It was early evening when Ginnie finally got through. A couple of hours later in Croatia. They’d just finished the day’s shooting. ‘I am in rather a rush, Bill. Going out for dinner.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It won’t take long. Andrea’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, darling ...’ The word extended almost infinitely.

  ‘Lung cancer. It was very quick towards the end.’

  ‘Oh, my God ...’

  ‘Look, I just wanted you to know.’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much, Bill. I’m just devastated. But you ... you poor darling ... how are you feeling?’

  The original answer was still true. ‘I honestly don’t know.’ Then he moved on quickly to what he really wanted to tell her. If Dewi’s family wanted to squeeze him out of the funeral, let them. He’d have his revenge. If he turned up to the chapel with one of the country’s most famous actresses, having maybe had a nice tête-à-tête lunch beforehand ... well, that would show them. He wasn’t just Andrea’s reject. Bill Stratton was something of a celebrity, moving in the circles of even bigger celebrities.

  He told Ginnie the time of the funeral.

  ‘Oh, darling, I’d love to be able to make it –’

  ‘Surely, for something like that, the schedule could be rearranged. I mean, you knew Andrea longer than I did.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s not that, Bill. In fact, we do have a break next week, I’m free Sunday to Thursday –’

  ‘Well, there you are – it fits in fine.’

  ‘Trouble is ... I have made plans ...! Her voice dropped to its sultriest. ‘Plans that I really can’t change. The fact is, I don’t know if you know Dickie Burns ...?’

  ‘I don’t think I do.’

  ‘Well, he’s been out here being a guest on a couple of episodes ... playing a knight just back from the Crusades ... done a lovely job, and been an absolute hoot on the set. Anyway, I don’t know if you knew that Dickie and I had a thing yonks ago?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, it’s, sort of ... not exactly started up again, but...’ She giggled with deliberate throaty ambiguity .
.. ‘No, no, we’re just having a fun time, no commitments, you know ... and Dickie’s had this wonderful romantic idea that we take advantage of the break in the shooting to have a few days on Krk.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Krk. It’s the biggest Croatian island. Anyway, Dickie knows this wonderful little quaint olde-worlde hotel there, and God, we could both do with a break and –’

  ‘A romantic break?’

  ‘Just a break, darling.’ He didn’t know whether he could believe her. The excitement in her voice was at odds with her words.

  ‘So you won’t be coming to the funeral?’

  ‘Darling, how can I ... in the circumstances?’

  ‘You did know Andrea for over forty years.’

  ‘I know, Bill. But I never liked her that much. You were always the reason why I stayed in touch. You were the one who mattered to me.’

  Somehow Bill didn’t find that news as comforting as he might have done before Dickie Burns’ name had been mentioned.

  * * *

  Sal was there at the chapel in Muswell Hill. And Carolyn. Even Trevor had turned up. Bill and Andrea had sometimes gone out as foursomes with him and the current wife. He seemed to feel the need to pay his respects, anyway.

  The one person who wasn’t there was Andrea. Not in the sense that she was dead. In the sense that no vestige of her body was actually in the chapel. There had been a cremation service in the morning, ‘just for the immediate family’. All that remained of Bill Stratton’s ex-wife was now just smoke and indissoluble solids.

  He hadn’t had his nice tête-à-tête lunch. Sal had rung, suggesting grabbing a quick bite before the funeral, ‘if he felt like it’. Trevor had offered to meet up for a couple of pints, ‘if he felt like it’. Even Carolyn – to Bill’s considerable surprise – had rung and said that rather than walking into the chapel alone, she’d be happy to join up with him, ‘if he felt like it’.

  But Bill Stratton didn’t feel like it. In the days before the funeral, images of Andrea in his mind became frequent and more confusing. He didn’t know what he wanted, except to be on his own. He wasn’t looking forward to the ceremony, but he would be there and somehow get through it. It was something he knew he should do. But he didn’t want the sympathy or banter of his friends. What he needed to do was to find out what Andrea’s death had made him feel. And that was a task he had to deal with on his own.

  The funeral service began. And just as Andrea’s physical presence had been edited out of the chapel, so had her life before she came together with Dewi Roberts been edited out of her history.

  Bill was slightly drunk; not out of control, but headachey. Ever the good time-keeper, he’d arrived at a nearby pub at one-thirty. He hadn’t wanted to put his bladder at risk during the service by taking in a lot of fluid, so he’d drunk Scotch. He’d also ordered fish and chips, but when it arrived, a slab of grey matter encased in something that looked and tasted like the cardboard centre of a toilet roll, he’d ceased to feel hungry. So all he had inside him was three double Scotches.

  Having lurked as long as possible in the small park opposite the chapel, Bill had been one of the last to enter. He’d seen Sal arrive, and Carolyn and Trevor, but again rejected the easy option of joining any one of them. As a result, he was installed at the end of a pew in the back row, ready for a quick getaway if his nerve failed.

  But his late entrance and obscure seat did not prevent Bill Stratton from being observed by the congregation. A few necks craned round before the service actually began. One or two of the faces he recognised from their days of whingeing about the NHS around the Putney kitchen table. He couldn’t hear the whispered comments that were being passed round, but he reckoned they were along the lines of ‘That’s the first husband, the man who done her wrong!

  Bill had only ever seen his ex-wife inside a church at their own wedding and the subsequent weddings of friends, but the unctuous minister conducting the service spoke of her as ‘a member of our congregation here in Muswell Hill and very dear friend to many of us present today’. Maybe he said that at every funeral, whether he’d known the victim or not, but he did seem to be familiar with Andrea and her life. Had marriage to Dewi brought her to God as well as vegetarianism?

  It was so long since Bill himself had been inside a church that he couldn’t tell whether the service was a standard one or the ritual of some obscure denomination. He should have looked at the board outside. He thought he detected an air of Welshness, if only in the gusto with which the obscure hymns were being belted out. The language of the liturgy was clunkingly modern. At times he almost recognised long-forgotten quotes from The Book of Common Prayer, awkwardly rendered into lines devoid of rhythm and cadence.

  But it was the tributes, the eulogies, that really stuck in his gullet. First, Dewi’s youngest child, a daughter – though not the one who had rung Bill – read an extract ‘from one of Andrea’s all-time favourite books, The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho’. Bill had never heard of it. He’d lived with Andrea for nearly forty years and she’d never mentioned the book. There certainly had never been a copy in any of their houses. So to call it one of her recent favourite books might have been just about acceptable; ‘all-time favourite’ was, Bill reckoned, pushing at the boundaries of truth.

  Nor did he warm to the content of what was read. New Age mush, to his mind. He’d never had any taste for allegory. Still, the reading had one positive effect. Now he’d heard a sample, there was no danger he was ever going to read the rest of The Alchemist.

  The second interlude between the slabs of service was even worse. Dewi’s older daughter and his son, the two who’d spoken to Bill on the phone, sang and played guitar – they would do – and they’d written a song ‘specially for this occasion, not to dwell on the sadness of Andrea’s death, but to celebrate the joy of her life!’ The entire congregation – with one significant exception – seemed deeply touched by this gesture, and waited with rapt attention for the music to begin.

  Bill found the song frankly insulting. Particularly the verse that went:

  She was our new mother, more or less,

  And our father’s loving wife,

  Though, sadly, she only found happiness

  In the last three years of her life.

  Not only were the lyrics offensive, but the music was dreadful, in the way that only modern Christian music can be, sort of by Cliff Richard out of Peter, Paul and Mary.

  If he’d thought the song was bad, worse was to follow, in the form of ‘memories of Andrea’ from Glyn, ‘a family friend’. Glyn started by saying that Dewi had wanted to do this part of the service, but he ‘didn’t trust himself to get through it without blubbing’. The congregation let out a communal sigh of concern for the grieving widower. What about me, Bill demanded silently, I’m a grieving widower too. Yes, I know this is the second time Dewi’s been through it, and I’m very sorry for the repellent prig, but I should get a look- in. I loved Andrea too.

  This was the first time since their split-up that he had shaped that thought, and it shocked him. But there was a sobering truth in it.

  Numbly, in pain, he listened to the address. The woman Glyn described bore no relation to the Andrea he had known. Her compassion, her caring nature, the way she had embraced Welsh culture, her selfless love for Dewi and his children ... Bill recognised none of it.

  As in the song, though, Glyn too had a sideways knock at the ex-husband. And what makes her death all the sadder,’ he concluded, ‘is that Andrea had so recently found her real self, had so recently found the happiness and fulfilment she so richly deserved. Essentially loyal, but locked for many years into a marriage that cramped her magnificent style, it was only once she and Dewi became a team that Andrea could finally express the beauty of her personality. We will all miss her dreadfully.’

  Bill Stratton now knew what it felt like to be one of Stalin’s former henchmen, airbrushed out of history.

  Another unfami
liar hymn was belted out with Welsh brio, more awkwardly-phrased prayers were said. Then the minister encouraged everyone to go back ‘to the Roberts family home for a drink and a chance to talk about the wonderful woman we have so sadly lost today, but who has gone on to a greater happiness than our mere mortal imaginations can envisage’. Suddenly the organ was playing get-out music.

  Sod any convention that the grieving family leaves the church first. Bill Stratton’s only desire was to be out of the place before he had to see anyone. He took immediate advantage of his well-chosen seat and made for the door.

  He was through the churchyard and out of the gate before he heard the clatter of high heels behind him, and a voice calling his name.

  He recognised Carolyn, and turned to face her.

  ‘Wondered if you fancied a drink...?’ she said, as she lit up a much-needed cigarette.

  ‘If you think I’m going back to join the cosiness of “the family home”, then you –’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that. Meant a pub.’

  ‘Well, I ... thank you, but I don’t think I can.’

  She was piqued. ‘Please yourself.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not that I ... I just ...’ He looked up with horror to see Dewi, his children and the minister emerging from the chapel doors. And he said something that seemed to encapsulate his whole life at that moment. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Take up smoking.’ Carolyn, her annoyance gone, took the cigarette she had just lit out of her mouth and pressed it into his.

  ‘But I don’t smoke.’

  ‘You do now.’

  Conscious of the slight greasiness of her lipstick on the filter tip, Bill drew in the warm acrid taste. It was obscurely comforting.

  There was more compassion than he’d ever seen in Carolyn’s blue eyes as she lit up another cigarette for herself and said, ‘So do you want to go and have a drink or something?’

  He did. ‘I do.’ But at the same time he didn’t. The congregation was spilling out of the church around the grieving Robertses. He had to go. ‘But no. Thank you, but I need to be alone at the moment.’