Last Chance Saloon (14 page)

It took her a moment to realize what he was on about.

‘My step class? Oh, tough,’ she managed to lie. ‘Hard.’

‘Good.’ Thomas smacked his lips in satisfaction.

Perhaps it was her hunger, perhaps it was unexpressed anger over what Thomas had said to her on Saturday night, but it must have been something because Tara rounded on Thomas in a sudden, inexplicable fury. ‘Good?
Good?
Are you going to give me a gold star? Or grade me? What do I get? Eight out of ten? B minus? C plus? For God’s sake!’

Thomas’s eyes bulged with shock and he opened and closed his mouth without saying anything.

‘You look like a goldfish,’ she snapped. ‘I’m going to make a phone call.’

She slammed into the bedroom, flung her purchases on the floor, lit a cigarette with one hand and tapped out Fintan’s number with the other. ‘So what did the doctor say?’

‘I didn’t go,’ Fintan soothed. ‘Just after I spoke to you today, you’ll never guess what happened.’

‘What happened?’

‘The lump disappeared.’ Fintan laughed. ‘Like letting air out
of a balloon. One minute it was a kiwi fruit, the next a grape and the next a raisin!’

‘I was slightly worried, you know.’ She felt like an eejit. ‘Maybe you should have gone to the doctor anyway. At least to find out what caused it.’

‘No need,’ he countered. ‘Crisis averted. It was just a blip on the screen, and now we can all forget about it.’

‘Was it really the size of a kiwi fruit?’

‘Close enough.’

‘People don’t get big lumps on their neck just for the fun of it,’ she insisted, sucking hard on her cigarette. ‘Something is wrong and you should find out. What if it happens again?’

‘It won’t.’

‘It might.’

‘It won’t.’

‘What does Sandro think?’

‘Sandro
doesn’t
think, or at least he does so as little as possible, as well you know.’

‘Fintan, please be serious.’

‘Oh, no.’

There was a long pause. Eventually Tara was compelled to voice her worry. ‘Fintan, I have to ask you something. It’s none of my business, but I’m going to ask anyway. Have you had an HIV test recently?’

‘Tara, you’re overreacting.’

‘Look me in the eye,’ she interrupted forcefully, ‘and tell me that you’ve had an HIV test recently.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘So, you mean you
haven’t
had a test?’ Anxiety made Tara’s voice thin and high.

‘I mean we’re on the phone.’

‘You know what I’m getting at.’

‘Have
you
had an HIV test?’ Fintan surprised her by asking.

‘No, but…’

‘But what?’

She paused delicately. How could she say this?

Fintan interrupted, ‘Do you always use a condom with Thomas?’

In different circumstances Tara might have laughed as she remembered the song-and-dance Thomas had made on their first night when Tara had tried to get him to wear a condom. ‘Like eating sweets with the wrapper on,’ he’d whinged. ‘Like going paddling in your shoes and socks.’ She’d never suggested it again. Luckily she’d still been on the pill from the Alasdair days.

‘Well, no, we don’t always, but…’

‘And has Thomas had an HIV test?’

As if
, Tara thought. He’d be the last man on earth to have one. ‘No, but…’

‘Then please shut your clob,’ Fintan said, pleasantly but very firmly putting her in her place. ‘Thank you for your concern, but it was probably just a mild dose of myxomatosis. Or maybe diabetes. How are your diseases at the moment?’

But Tara, red with censure and shame, didn’t want to play.

‘Any sign of the rabies recurring?’ he asked.

She said nothing, damning her misplaced, knee-jerk concern. There was probably more chance of
her
being HIV positive than Fintan.

‘Or the malaria?’ he inquired politely.

Still she said nothing

‘I hear there’s a bad dose of anthrax going around at the moment,’ he said, ‘so wrap up warm!’

‘If you’re sure you’re okay,’ she said humbly. ‘I must have my dinner. Talk to you tomorrow.’

I’ll be away all week,’ he said. ‘Working in Brighton. See you at the weekend.’

Thomas was listening at the door. She pushed past him and banged into the kitchen. She was angry with herself, stung by Fintan, very hungry, and fresh out of any resolve to stick to her diet. ‘Is there anything to eat?’ She threw open a cupboard door and looked, with disgust, at the Weight-watchers soup, tinned tomatoes, dried pasta and cat food within. ‘It’s like a famine zone,’ she muttered. ‘A Third World kitchen. If we’re not careful the World Health Organization will start airlifting in crates of maize and flour. If we set up a donations line, we’d make a fortune.’

Thomas watched her in shock. He’d never seen her like this before. Another cupboard revealed Thomas’s stockpile of tinned steak and kidney pies.

‘You could always have one of them,’ he suggested, surprised at the nervous tremor in his voice.

‘I’d rather eat my
own
kidney,’ she retorted. ‘What time is it? Safeways is still open, I’m going out to buy food.’

‘Hang on a mo’, I’ll come with you.’

‘No, you won’t,’ she said, gathering her car keys.

‘Get plenty of vegetables,’ he called after her.

Tara turned around, walked back in and put her face very close to his. ‘Why don’t you shut it?’ she suggested, then left again, leaving him staring in confusion as she got into the car and screeched away. The worm had turned. The worm was positively gyrating.

But she was in a rule-breaking mood. Trolley or basket? Basket or trolley? How much damage was she planning on doing?

Trolley, she decided.

She blitzkrieged her way through the fruit and vegetables department, casting disdainful looks left and right. Not a single piece of fresh produce would be coming home with her tonight. Then some carrots caught her eye. Carrots are my friend, she remembered. Many was the time that raw carrots had kept the spectre of hunger at bay. But not today. Not unless they were chocolate-coated.

‘Carrots can shag off,’ she muttered.

A young man, two days off the bus from Cardiff, overheard her. It was true what his mother said: London
was
full of mad people. Great!

Tara caught him looking at her speculatively and a thought struck her. They did singles nights at some London supermarkets. Could it be that she’d stumbled upon one? She glanced shyly and found that the boy was still looking at her. She was surprised and not displeased. Vaguely, she thought about smiling at him and then decided not to bother.

Who needs a man when you can have food?

And food she would have.

Usually a trip to the supermarket took Tara a very, very long time. It was like walking through a minefield. Temptation on all sides. Every purchase was deliberated and agonized over. Assiduously, the back of each packet was examined to see how many calories and grams of fat it contained. Nothing with more
than five per cent fat was allowed into the trolley. ‘None Shall Pass!’ was her motto.

Unless Thomas wasn’t looking.

Sometimes she trailed a finger wistfully along the forbidden Indian meals or frozen pizzas, wishing things were different. But she’d long stopped going into the biscuit aisles, because the sense of loss was too great. Best to just close the door on that part of her. It had been a passionate love affair,
too
passionate, and she knew they could never be just friends. But sometimes she couldn’t help but remember the good times.

Memories can be beautiful, but still… A pink, fuzzy-bordered picture of her laughing and twirling in slow-motion, her hair flying, her arms wrapped around a packet of Jammy Dodgers. Or of her running downhill through a cornfield on a beautiful summer’s day, holding hands with a packet of orange Viscounts. Or of her giggling happily, cheek to cheek with a chocolate ginger nut. Ah, the way we were…

But this night was different. Tara bulldozed through the aisles, like an Iraqi tank invading Kuwait, hidebound by none of her usual reticence. Instead it was Access All Areas. With one sweeping gesture she tipped a large part of a shelf of crisps into her trolley. Without an atom of guilt she threw in a couple of fat-bastard sandwiches for the journey home.

But it was hard not to make a start on what she was flinging into the trolley. Eventually, hoping not too many people were looking, she broke open a bag of Monster Munch. Then another. Then a pork pie. And then she reached the biscuits.

Unable to stop herself, she picked up a packet of Boasters and looked at it.
Maybe I shouldn’t
, she thought. But an evil little voice suggested,
Says who?

She hovered on the brink, trembling with desire and possibility.
Then, with a rumbling in her ears, a tidal wave of adrenaline whooshed through her, carrying along everything in its path, and she was tearing open the packet with shaking fingers.

It was like a dogfight, the hand-to-mouth action a blur, as crumbs, chocolate chips, stray nuts and the torn wrapper went flying. She was transported, almost ecstatic, though she barely tasted anything she put in her mouth – it wasn’t there long enough for her taste-buds to get a grip on it. Strictly through-traffic only.

But, so quickly, it was all over. Sanity returned, and with it came shame. Although her acute anxiety and hunger had been sated, she felt wretched. She slunk to the checkout, horribly ashamed of the empty packaging in her trolley, mortified as the girl bipped it over the electronic reader. But if she’d tried to dispose of the evidence by hiding the wrappers, she might have been done for shoplifting. She was just the type who’d be caught.

What had she been thinking of? she wondered miserably. Had she gone mad? A whole day’s attempted starvation wiped out in a ten-minute frenzy. Look at the amount of saturated fat she’d just consumed. What about her diet? What about her good intentions? All her hard work? Hadn’t she nearly gone to a step class that day, and was all that effort to come to naught?

She found the young man staring at her again, and she no longer thought he fancied her. Then she remembered Thomas. And terror arrived.

She’d shouted at Thomas,
and
she’d broken her diet. She was not just fat, but a termagant as well. What had she done? Things were way too delicate to chance telling Thomas he looked like a goldfish. Shaking with fear and sugar-overload, Tara drove home. She had so many additives in her bloodstream
that if she’d gone apeshit with a shotgun in a public place there wasn’t a jury in the land who’d have convicted her.

Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking heavily, Beryl crouching beside him in her basket. He looked up with anxiety as Tara came in. ‘Hello,’ he said, with a sweet, nervous little smile.

‘I’m sorry I shouted at you.’ She prostrated herself, so conditioned to him having all the power that when it fell into her hands she assumed it was a mistake and returned it immediately to its rightful owner, as if it was a wallet she’d found in the street. ‘If you’re furious with me I don’t blame you. I’m extremely sorry, and you have my word that I’m starting a very strict diet tomorrow.’

With each contrite word, Thomas’s subdued air evaporated and his swaggery arrogance returned. His chest visibly expanded, and his meek, hangdog face became just a distant memory. By the time Tara told him about Fintan’s kiwi-neck, Thomas was once more sure enough of himself to say, ‘With all his carry-on, he’s lucky it’s just his neck that’s giving him grief.’

In his twenties and early thirties he’d been extremely successful in Ireland, the equivalent to a superstar. He’d set the stage ablaze in
The Playboy of the Western World
and
Juno and the Paycock
, eclipsing the rest of the cast. He’d been unpopular with other actors anyway, and after that they hated him.

For a few years he’d starred in an Irish soap, playing a philandering rake. Which was extremely handy because he was able to excuse his appalling behaviour off-screen by saying he was a method actor. Despite the capriciousness of his television character (which was only a watery imitation of the real thing) Lorcan was a huge sex-symbol. Fêted and drooled over. He met the Taoiseach and the President and it was a poor day that he didn’t receive a pair of knickers in the post. Even when the tabloids published a bitter tirade from the wife who’d supported him through the lean years and whom he’d abandoned as soon as the good times began to roll, adulation for him didn’t waver. But, for Lorcan, it wasn’t enough – nothing ever was. He felt uncomfortable about his success with the Irish. They hadn’t a clue, he suspected. OK, so they’re one of the most articulate and literate nations on earth, but he needed to be endorsed by people who really, you know,
mattered
.

So, about four years earlier, amid a media circus, he took
his leave of Ireland. ‘I’m not getting any younger,’ he joked with the journalists. Although he didn’t mean a word of it – he thought he was immortal.

Then off he went to Hollywood to show them how it was done. He reckoned it would be only a matter of days before he was lounging beside his very own azure-blue swimming-pool, drowning under scripts, beating off directors with sticks.

However, it came as a very unpleasant shock to discover that Hollywood had reached its quota of sexy Irishmen. Three was reckoned to be enough. Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne did the trick nicely, thanks very much. Apparently Scottish actors had become the current flavour of the month, with Hollywood unable to get enough of them. Briefly, Lorcan considered changing his name to Ewan.

Undaunted, he accepted the part of a gay cyber-vampire biker in an art-house movie where the walls fell over every time someone closed a door. And for which he was never paid, as the money ran out less than half-way through shooting. Hot on the heels of that success he was offered a part – the starring role, actually – in an adult film when a director noticed in a men’s room that Lorcan had the right credentials for the job.

Then he was no longer undaunted. Then he was very daunted indeed. The only azure-blue swimming-pools he’d come within an ass’s roar of were the ones he ended up cleaning for a living.

The day finally came, during his fourteenth month of ‘resting’, when he was forced to admit that things hadn’t worked out – he just couldn’t bring himself to use the word ‘failed’. He was living in a roasting hot, airless, twelve by twelve room with a ‘window effect’ – no window but a closed plastic blind hanging on a square of the bare concrete wall – in Little Tijuana. Marshmallow Cheerios had been his breakfast, lunch and
dinner for the past week. His car had been reclaimed, so that he had to ride the bus three hours across town to get to auditions. Not that there were many auditions – Lorcan was such an undesirable in Hollywood he probably wouldn’t have been able to get
arrested
.

Up until then, success had followed him, magnet-like. Realizing it had abandoned him caused excruciating agonies of terror and insecurity. His ego was so big yet so fragile that he always needed more than everyone else did just to tick over. More success, more acclaim, more money, more women. It was imperative to leave this place where he was a nobody.

He had just about enough money for his plane fare back to Europe. But there was no way he was going home to Ireland. Not after the way they’d lied to him, telling him he was a star when he clearly wasn’t. Instead he went to London, hoping to hide his humiliation in its vastness. He moved into a tiny, dingy room in Camden, where his flatmate was an affable, tubby man called Benjy who earned his living processing parking fines.

Then Lorcan desperately set about trying to recover lost ground and his sense of self by making disdainful noises about the trash being made in Hollywood. ‘The stage has always been my first love,’ he insisted in the
Guardian
. That was the
Camden Guardian
, the only paper interested in the fact that he was making a home in London. (And then only because he lived next door to their office.) ‘No, really, it has.’ Lorcan’s confidence had been badly dented in Hollywood, but he got an agent and began going to auditions in London. However, the world of acting is incredibly sensitive and can spot the merest whiff of loserism at a thousand paces. Astonishingly good-looking, almost threateningly sexy, there was nevertheless the faintest aura of the has-been about Lorcan. Some unkind people went
even further and identified it as the scent of the never-was.

No one wants to be associated with that. It might be catching. So while the casting girls were perfectly happy to sleep with Lorcan, they weren’t so keen on giving him a part in their production. Pride kept him going. That, and the fact that he was equipped for nothing else. He had no choice but to pick himself up after every knockback and try again.

So far, during the two years he’d been in London, he’d auditioned for
Hamlet
,
King Lear
,
Macbeth
and
Othello
. After ten months of rejection, he finally got a part. In
The Bill
. Imaginatively cast as an IRA bomb-maker, and the only line he got to say was, ‘Jaysus, dey’re on to us. Run, Mickey!’

Much to his disappointment this
tour de force
didn’t open any further doors and beneath his smart-arse, arrogant exterior, he was in torment. He hated not being the most admired, the most sought-after, the most in-demand. Yet all wasn’t lost – he might have been without the roles or the money or the kudos but there was no doubt that he still got the girls. It was the only area of his life that still worked, a microcosm of how he wished everything else to be.

With women, Lorcan could wield his beloved power with a free hand. Of course it wasn’t much of a
challenge
making girlies cry but it was better than nothing. It was safe and he’d always be the winner. As the months passed without another part, it became very difficult to make ends meet. In fact, ends were barely on nodding terms with each other. Bitterly, resentfully, he got a job as a waiter. He, the great Lorcan Larkin, reduced to dishing up spaghetti carbonara to peasants. How are the mighty fallen. Luckily he was sacked within the week for having an attitude problem. (The manager just couldn’t get Lorcan to understand that if someone asked for a second cup of coffee,
the correct response was ‘Certainly, sir, coming right up,’ and not ‘What did your last slave die of? Get it yourself.’)

He had no choice but to look for an alternative form of income.

He could have gone the gigolo route. There were enough rich older women in London who would keep Lorcan in a style to which he could quickly become accustomed. While he, in return, would provide sexual services. But he just couldn’t stomach it.

He had no objection to sleeping with them, but only on his terms. However, six months ago came a week where three good things happened for him. First, he got a job doing voice-overs for the Irish tourist board, which wasn’t exactly ‘smell-of-the-greasepaint-roar-of-the-crowd’ territory but it put beer in the fridge. The following day, he managed to get a housing-association flat in Chalk Farm – his own place. (Benjy was heartbroken.)

And then he met Amy.

He and Benjy were at a party when they first saw her.

Benjy took one look at her long, willowy limbs, her pure, radiant face, her tendrils of red-blonde hair, and thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. ‘Look,’ he gasped, and elbowed Lorcan.

‘I thought you were a tit-man.’ Lorcan sounded unimpressed.

‘Not really. I’m an anything-man,’ Benjy said mournfully. ‘An anything-I-can-get man.’

‘Well, may the force be with you. And remember what I’ve told you. Act shy. Be bashful.’

‘I can’t possibly go and speak to her.’ Benjy was horrified.

‘Why not? You fancy her.’

‘That’s exactly why.’

‘Go on, my son,’ Lorcan urged, giving Benjy a little push in the back.

So, with quaking legs, Benjy crossed the room and made his pitch. Lorcan leant against the wall and watched the girl through almost-closed eyes. What’s sauce for the goose was sauce for the… other goose.

All too soon, Benjy was back, red with mortification. Acting shy only worked when the man was extraordinarily handsome. Otherwise he just seemed like a geek.

‘How did you get on?’ Lorcan patronized him by asking.

‘She patted me on the head and told me I was a pet.’

‘I think we’ll both agree that that wasn’t the desired response,’ Lorcan said. ‘OK, now watch how it
should
be done. Look and learn. Because I’m a woman whisperer.’

‘What the hell’s that?’ Benjy demanded angrily, terrified that Lorcan was going to snatch Amy effortlessly from under his snub nose.

‘Like the horse whisperer, except instead of getting messed-up horses eating out of my hand, it’s messed-up women.’

‘She’s not messed-up,’ Benjy said hotly.

‘Oh, but she is. That sweet face, all that niceness, she’s just a bit too eager to please,’ Lorcan said thoughtfully.

‘Not to me, she isn’t,’ Benjy retorted bitterly.

Timing was everything. So Lorcan waited until every other man in the room had made his move. He knew she’d seen him. He was so tall it was hard to miss him, and he’d caught her glancing at him once or twice.

He didn’t march straight up to her and demand attention – a good-looking man who’s arrogant often scares the girls away. But a good-looking man who’s vulnerable is on the home stretch. So the contact he made with her was seemingly accidental,
under the guise of helping the host collect glasses and empty cans. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but do you know if this is an empty?’ Lorcan asked, his purple eyes intense with contrived vulnerability.

When she nodded, he said haltingly, ‘You know… I mean, you’ve probably heard it before… No, no, nothing, sorry. Forget I said anything.’ And he made to move away but by then he had her interest.

‘No, please, say what you were going to say,’ she said.

‘Ah, no.’ He shuffled in a triumph of gawky body language. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘You can’t just start saying something then stop.’ Her blue eyes pleaded up at him.

Lorcan looked away, swallowed, then blurted out, ‘OK. You’re probably sick hearing it, but can I just say that you’ve the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen.’ He had the handy gift of being able to blush on cue.

‘Thank you,’ Amy said, also blushing.

‘I’d better…’ he made an awkward gesture with the empty glasses, followed by a shy smile ‘… you know, put these in the kitchen.’

Ten minutes later, when Amy put a cigarette into her mouth, Lorcan belted through the crowds in a great display of clumsy haste. He fumbled for his special lighter, and clicked it under her nose. When – as planned – the lighter didn’t work, he allowed a brief spasm of horror to cross his face. Then, holding Amy’s gaze, burst out laughing. Ruefully, he lied, ‘It was working five minutes ago.’ It hadn’t worked for two years.

‘Isn’t it true,’ he sighed, ‘these things always let you down when you’re trying hardest to make an impression?’ Then he shrugged, ‘Sorry,’ and moved away, leaving Amy staring
longingly after him. A short time later, as expected, she came after him. He was home and dry. Elation tingled through him. God, he loved this! No one could touch him. He was the master, truly the master!