The Penultimate Chance Saloon (3 page)

Bill was very happy with this arrangement, which guaranteed him the continuing company of an undoubtedly attractive woman. Had he not been married, Virginia Fairbrother would have been way out of his league. But the coincidence of her having his wife as a childhood friend gave Bill Stratton unembarrassed access to this exotic creature. Their relationship had always encompassed a level of flirtatiousness, which Andrea, knowing how entirely safe she was, mildly encouraged.

Ginnie had also proved useful to Bill on a professional level. There were occasionally receptions or award ceremonies which Andrea couldn't make, because she had some pressing hospital commitment (though, knowing what he did after the break-up, Bill wondered whether some of these had been fictitious). And if Ginnie also happened to be free, she would often accompany him to these events. They enjoyed each others company, they could share giggles at the display of egos around them, and generally have a good relaxed time.

Given Virginia Fairbrother's blossoming fame and Bill Stratton's own mild celebrity', their presence together sometimes prompted the tabloids to speculations of steamy romance. Neither of them minded the insinuations – they did their images no harm – but both thought the fact that they were made was hilarious.

Despite their empathy, Bill had still always thought of Ginnie as Andrea's friend. He was therefore surprised when, as the tsunami of the divorce was receding, on one of the first nights he spent in his new flat, he received a telephone call from Virginia Fairbrother.

‘I've no idea where you are,' said the voice-over which had sold everything from anti-ageing cream to annuities, ‘but I thought there was a strong chance you'd still have the same mobile number.'

‘As you see, you were right. Really good to hear you, Ginnie.'

‘So how're you enjoying your resurrection as a single man?'

‘Quite honestly, I haven't had time to think about it. There's been so much practical stuff to do. Selling the big house, getting this place ...'

‘Which is where?'

‘Pimlico. Two-bedroomed, according to the estate agent, but the whole lot would fit into the kitchen in Putney.'

‘Still, very sensible to move closer to the centre.'

‘You think so?'

‘Definitely.'

‘Good.'

The conversation was becalmed for a moment. Bill knew they had soon to get on to the subject of Andrea – not to mention Dewi – but he was in no hurry. He wanted to prolong the glow engendered by Ginnie ringing him.

But it was she who broke the impasse. ‘I think we should meet for dinner, Bill.'

He thought that was an excellent idea.

* * *

Inevitably, it was a new place. Someone like Virginia Fairbrother was a barometer of aspiring London restaurants. She knew where to be seen, and knew how important her being seen in the same place twice might be to the venture's success. Although she'd never been there before, the well-muscled greeter recognised her, took her to the appointed table and made no demurral when she asked for somewhere less central.

The decor was all cream plastic and stainless steel tubing – laboratory chic. The asymmetrical white crockery and thin cutlery maintained the image of kidney bowls and scalpels.

‘I wouldn't give this one very long,' said Ginnie, as she settled into a screened plastic booth, which might have been designed for the production of specimens.

‘No,' Bill agreed, half expecting privacy curtains to be wheeled across the opening. ‘Still, I suppose its survival will depend on what the food's like.'

Ginnie shook her head firmly. ‘With a couple of totally brilliant exceptions, most London food is of a good enough average standard these days. No, what matters to a place like this is what it looks like, and ...' she cast her discriminating eye around the room ‘... who comes.'

She gave a little wave to a former soap star who'd unwillingly died of cancer three months previously, and a footballer whose career as a pundit had been curtailed by his total inability to stop himself from swearing onscreen.

‘No, I wouldn't think it'll be long,' she confirmed.

‘Well, you're here, Ginnie. That must give the place a lift.'

She reached across the table and gave his hand an appreciative rub. ‘Sweet of you to say so, darling, but I don't think I'm quite the level they need. Afraid my wrinkles are starting to join together and shape up into a sell-by date.'

Bill Stratton went to great lengths to assure Virginia Fairbrother how inaccurate her self-assessment was, and he meant it. When Andrea had first introduced him to her, Ginnie had been tall and thin, with striking red hair. She was still tall and thin, with striking red hair, though presumably – Bill wasn't really up on such female secrets – the redness was now expertly assisted. That evening it was worn in relaxed curls, pulled back off her face with that artlessness which can only be achieved through extremely expensive artifice. The face itself, always sharp-featured, had not relaxed into fat; rather the years had tightened and burnished it like a much-polished bronze. Her skin glowed from a recent week's filming in the Mediterranean, and Virginia Fairbrother was far too skilled an operator for there to be any indication where the make-up stopped and the tan started.

And yes, there were wrinkles, a fine tracery of lines which tightened and proliferated when she grimaced or smiled (and, being an actress, she grimaced and smiled a lot). But Bill Stratton's eyes found nothing ugly in the wrinkles; they defied blandness and infused character into the famous face.

Of course, Ginnie knew how to dress too. The hair and tan were set off by chunky matt brass jewellery: earrings, a choker and an incomplete circle on her thin wrist. The dress, shin-length to show enough tanned leg, was in some ruched cotton material the colour of dried blood.

Virginia Fairbrother looked stunning. But then she'd devoted her entire life to looking stunning.

They ordered gin and tonics and consulted the menu. At least the medical theme wasn't carried through there: no entries for Dialysis of Devilled Kidney or Roast Hip Replacement of Lamb. Ginnie – and Bill, following her example – made their selections quickly and gave the order to a waiter with an unfeasibly small bottom.

‘No,' said Ginnie, looking round the ward, ‘I don't think this place'll last long.' She raised her glass. ‘Cheers.' They clinked. ‘So ... how does it feel, Bill?'

‘How does what feel?'

‘Being single. Being free. Having the world as your oyster.'

He let out a sardonic laugh. ‘Ginnie, I'm pushing sixty.'

‘So what?' She leant close, engulfing him in a perfume far too expensive to have a name. ‘Breathe this in the hearing of a tabloid journalist and I will personally castrate you, but ... I'm pushing sixty too.'

He was taken aback. ‘Pushing sixty-two?'

Virginia Fairbrother's mouth tightened into a little ring of disapproval. ‘No. Pushing sixty
as well.
“Too” in the sense of “as well”.'

‘Ah. Right.'

‘Come on, I can't pretend with you. You know I was Andrea's contemporary at school.'

‘True.'

‘Anyway, what is this, Bill? I don't think of you as a depressive.'

‘No, I'm certainly not.'

‘You always seem to have had a reasonably sunny outlook on life.'

‘Yes, I think I have.'

‘You certainly needed it, married to Andrea.'

A moment of disloyalty. Ginnie would never have said that while they'd still been together. Bill noted the lapse, but didn't pick up on it. Time enough to find out how much more disloyalty Ginnie might be capable of. But the moment gave him a little frisson. It opened up the possibility of criticising Andrea.

But for the time being, though, he concentrated on his age. ‘I just feel, being sixty –'

‘You're not sixty yet.'

‘Near as makes no difference. So I've had my career – that's over ...'

‘Not entirely.'

‘Again, near as makes no difference. I've had my marriage – that's over. I need to rethink.'

‘Emotionally?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Do you need to rethink what your emotional needs are ... in your new circumstances?'

‘All right. Yes, I suppose I do.'

‘Then you also have to think about what kind of woman will fulfil those needs.'

‘Ginnie, I have just come through a ... I was going to say “long and painful divorce”, but I know, compared to some people, I've got off relatively lightly. But it still has been quite traumatic, and the last thing I need at the moment is to remarry.'

‘Who's talking about remarrying? You don't have to marry every woman you have a relationship with.'

‘No, I know I don't, but ...'

‘You sound almost as if you think you do.'

Bill Stratton assessed this claim and found, to his great discomfort, that it wasn't far from the truth. In the late sixties he'd thought you had to marry someone with whom you wanted to have a relationship. Hence his wedding to Andrea. And, though he now knew the idea was as outdated as his concept of the menopause, he couldn't deny that, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, its vestigial presence remained.

‘Andrea told me,' Ginnie went on, characteristically direct, ‘that you were completely faithful to her throughout your marriage.'

‘So?' He didn't want to commit himself to a confirmation of that yet. Wait and see the direction in which the conversation was moving.

But Ginnie's next words suggested she didn't need confirmation. ‘I was always surprised you didn't have affairs, Bill.'

‘Why should I have done?'

‘Because you're an attractive man, and clearly everything wasn't right with your marriage.'

‘I didn't realise there was anything wrong with my marriage until Andrea told me there was.'

‘Oh, come on. I know for a fact that you hadn't made love for eighteen months before you split up.'

He couldn't deny the fact, but he wondered how she knew, and he also wondered which other of his bedroom secrets Ginnie was privy to. He felt one of his gender's recurrent anxieties: what do women talk about when we're not there?

‘Surely you must have resented the lack of sex?'

‘Yes,' he conceded.

‘Then why on earth did you put up with it?'

Bill wasn't about to give a straight answer to that. If he hadn't been able to talk to his own wife – ex-wife, now – about the menopause, he certainly wasn't going to talk to another woman about it. But even as he had the thought, he realised that Ginnie must know about the subject. Must by then have gone through her own menopause – quietly, or uncomfortably, or melodramatically. Once again he was aware of the unbridgeable gulf between the male and the female experience.

‘Well,' he fudged. ‘Andrea didn't seem keen ...'

‘She didn't seem keen on making love to you because she was screwing like a rabbit with ... whatever his name is ... Huey, Dewey or Louie?'

‘Dewi,' Bill corrected, pronouncing the name to rhyme with ‘Bowie', in the approved Welsh manner.

‘I think you've got a lot of ground to make up,' Ginnie announced firmly.

‘On what?' asked Bill, genuinely puzzled.

‘Sex, you fool.'

‘Ah.'

Fortunately perhaps, further immediate discussion was halted by the arrival of their starters. Everything was wilted or drizzled in a marginally old-fashioned way. Ginnie poked at hers. ‘No, I don't think I will be coming back here again.'

The waiter with the unfeasibly small bottom handed over to a waiter with a slightly more feasible bottom, who performed an elaborately choreographed wine-bottle-opening routine. By the time that was concluded, Bill hoped the conversation would have moved on. But Ginnie was determined not to let it.

‘When did you actually marry Andrea?' she asked. ‘I know I was there, but I've forgotten the exact date.'

‘11
^th
December, 1967.'

‘And had you had much sexual experience before that?'

Bill poked his scalpel at something wilted in his white kidney bowl. ‘Not much,' he mumbled.

‘And you really were never unfaithful to her while you were married?'

He shook his head, aware of his colour rising.

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. It's just ... well, if you're married, you should be faithful, shouldn't you?'

‘Yes, you
should
,' Ginnie conceded, ‘but we're only
human.
'

Bill shrugged, again hoping that the conversation would move on.

It still didn't. ‘Don't you think you missed something, Bill?'

‘What?'

‘Experience? Variety? I mean, by getting married so young?'

‘I don't know. It felt right at the time. Andrea and I thought that's what we should do.'

‘Back to “should” again. “Should” seems to have been a dominant impulse in your life.'

‘Maybe.'

‘So you missed “The Summer of Love”...' She managed to imbue the words with a throaty nostalgia, a memory of much-enjoyed excesses.

‘Yes. Apparently there was a sexual revolution going on, but Andrea and I got nowhere near the barricades.' He couldn't completely exclude a tinge of wistfulness from his voice.

Then, as he often did when he wanted to change the course of a conversation, he remembered a line from his professional past. ‘Actually, there was a rather good “by way of contrast” snippet about the sexual revolution. A man in Sidcup –'

But Ginnie was not to be diverted. ‘I don't want to hear about that. I want to discuss what we're going to do about your sex life.'

‘Nothing to discuss. I don't have one.'

Facetiousness wasn't going to deflect her either. ‘That, Bill darling, is exactly what we want to discuss.'