The Penultimate Chance Saloon by Simon Brett Read Free Book Online Page B

what you should be doing, you’ve already done most of it.’
    â€˜Someone once said that experience is a comb that life gives you when you’ve lost your hair.’
    â€˜Well, he bloody hit the nail on the head, Bill, that bloke ... whoever he was.’ Trevor cast a mournful eye at his friend. ‘Mind you, you’re doing all right in that respect. You’ve still got some hair.’
    â€˜White, though.’
    â€˜If I’d got as much hair as you have, you wouldn’t find me being picky about the colour. Anyway, if it bothers you, you could dye it.
    â€˜It doesn’t bother me that much. Anyway, I don’t want to go around with copper-beech-coloured hair.’
    â€˜Hmm?’
    â€˜That’s what always happens. Think of the men you know who’ve got dyed hair. Why is that while women’s hair colouring can range through every subtone of the natural palette – not to mention the unnatural one – men’s dyed hair always ends up the colour of copper beech?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’ Trevor shook his head, apparently unwilling to pursue this interesting philosophical question. He took a long swallow from his pint, and looked dolefully around the bar. ‘Alcohol speeds things up,’ he said.
    â€˜Sorry? You’ve lost me.’
    â€˜What I was talking about earlier. We all need things that speed time up. Alcohol serves that purpose. Life’s being a real drag, you can’t believe how slowly the minute hand’s moving ... then you have a few drinks, and – bang – that’s a whole evening disappeared. Five hours have gone without you noticing them.’
    â€˜Are you saying that’s a good thing, Trevor?’
    â€˜Too bloody right I am. Think of the alternative.’
    â€˜Which is ...?’
    â€˜Every minute has taken a full bloody minute to go by. Sixty bloody seconds every time. Not even a fifty-nine second minute. You have to go the distance on every bloody one of them.’
    â€˜Why is that so terrible?’
    â€˜Because it’s real. Full frontal reality. Not good for you. Humankind, it has been observed by one wiser than me, cannot bear very much reality. I know I can’t.’
    â€˜But why not?’
    â€˜Because the real world is so bloody depressing.’ Trevor raised his pint mug and peered through it. ‘That’s why I can only survive by looking through beer-tinted glasses.’
    Early in every conversation with Trevor there came a reminder that he was a depressive. Bill, who’d never experienced the condition, could sympathise, but not empathise. And secretly he reckoned his friend got a lot of mileage out of his depression. The drinking was justified on the grounds that he was a depressive; so was his appalling lack of responsibility in the matter of women. No bad behaviour was the fault of Trevor Rainsford; it was always the fault of whatever malign deity had made Trevor Rainsford a depressive.
    As ever, the mention of his depression seemed to lift it a bit. He raised his glass again, this time to Bill. ‘Congratulations.’
    â€˜On what?’
    â€˜On being unmarried.’
    â€˜I don’t think I’m un married.’
    â€˜Then what are you?’
    â€˜Well ...’
    â€˜Are you married?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Then you’re unmarried. By definition.’
    This didn’t seem right, but Bill couldn’t fault the logic.
    â€˜And a good thing too,’ Trevor went on.
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜That you got away from Andrea.’
    â€˜But why?’
    â€˜Because you were so unsuited to each other. Everyone could see that.’
    Everyone except me, thought Bill. He was getting a little miffed about the way everyone was getting at his marriage. Ginnie ... Carolyn ... now Trevor ... not to mention Andrea herself. Was he the only person in the wide world who thought they’d had a vaguely workable marriage? Apparently