WHY HIM? WHY NOW? On Monday morning, waiting at the bus stop, I tried to work it out. It was a tricky one. Who can understand the workings of fate, after all? Far greater minds than mine had tried, and failed, to arrive at a conclusion. There he was, a gift from the gods – handsome, elegant and talented. I was fine, perfectly fine on my own, but I needed to keep Mummy happy, keep her calm so she would leave me in peace. A boyfriend – a husband? – might just do the trick. It wasn’t that I needed anyone. I was, as previously stated, perfectly fine.
Having perused at length the available photographic evidence over the course of the weekend, I had concluded that there was something particularly mesmerizing about his eyes. My own are a similar shade, although they’re nowhere near as beautiful, of course, containing no such shimmering copper depths. Looking at all those photographs, I was reminded of someone. It was only a half memory, like a face under ice or blurred by smoke, indistinct. Eyes just like mine, eyes set in a little face, wide and vulnerable, full of tears.
Ridiculous, Eleanor. It was disappointing that I had allowed myself, even for a moment, to indulge in sentimentality. Plenty of people in the world had light brown eyes like mine, after all – that was a scientific fact. It was statistically inevitable that some of them would have made eye contact with me during the course of a routine social interaction.
Something else was troubling me, though. All the studies show that people tend to take a partner who is roughly as attractive as they are; like attracts like, that is the norm.
I was under no illusions. In terms of looks, he was a ten and I am … I don’t know what I am. Not a ten, certainly. Of course, I hoped he would see beyond superficialities, look a bit deeper, but that said, I knew that his profession would require him to have a partner who was at least presentable. The music business, show business, is all about image, and he couldn’t be seen with a woman whose appearance would be perceived
by simpletons as inappropriate. I was well aware of that. I’d have to try my best to look the part.
He’d posted some new photos online, two head shots, close profiles, right and left. He was perfect in both, and they were identical – objectively, literally, he did not have a bad side. Of course, a defining characteristic of beauty is symmetry, that’s another thing all the studies agree on. I wondered what gene pool had created such handsome progeny. Did he have brothers or sisters, perhaps? If we ever got together, I might even be able to meet them. I didn’t know much about parents in general, or siblings in particular, having had quite an … unconventional upbringing myself.
I feel sorry for beautiful people. Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral. That must be difficult. Always having to prove that there’s more to you, wanting people to see beneath the surface, to be loved for yourself, and not your stunning body, sparkling eyes or thick, lustrous hair.
In most professions, getting older means getting better at your job, earning respect because of your seniority and experience. If your job depends on your looks, the opposite is true – how depressing. Suffering other people’s unkindness must be difficult too; all those bitter, less attractive people, jealous and resentful of your beauty. That’s incredibly unfair of them. After all, beautiful people didn’t ask to be born that way. It’s as unfair to dislike someone because they’re attractive as it is to dislike someone because of a deformity.
It doesn’t bother me at all when people react to my face, to the ridged, white contours of scar tissue that slither across my right cheek, starting at my temple and running all the way down to my chin. I am stared at, whispered about; I turn heads. It was reassuring to think that he would understand, being something of a head-turner himself, albeit for very different reasons.
I eschewed the Telegraph today in favour of alternative reading matter. I had spent an obscene amount of money on a small selection of women’s magazines, flimsy and lurid ones, thick, glossy ones, all of them promising a range of wonders, simple but life-enhancing changes. I had never purchased such items before, although I had, of course, leafed through a few in hospital waiting rooms and other institutional settings. I noted that, disappointingly, none of them had a cryptic crossword;
indeed, one contained a ‘soapstar word search’ that would insult the intelligence of a seven-year-old. I could have bought three bottles of wine or a litre of premium-brand vodka for the price of that little pile. Nevertheless, after careful consideration, I’d worked out that they were the most reliable and accessible source of the information that I needed.
These magazines could tell me which clothes and shoes to wear, how to have my hair styled in order to fit in. They could show me the right kind of makeup to buy and how to apply it. This way, I would disappear into everywoman acceptability. I would not be stared at. The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.
Mummy has always told me that I am ugly, freakish, vile. She’s done so from my earliest years, even before I acquired my scars. So I felt very happy about making these changes. Excited. I was a blank canvas.
At home that evening, I looked into the mirror above the washbasin while I washed my damaged hands. There I was: Eleanor Oliphant. Long, straight, light brown hair that runs all the way down to my waist, pale skin, my face a scarred palimpsest of fire. A nose that’s too small and eyes that are too big. Ears: unexceptional. Around average height, approximately average weight. I aspire to average … I’ve been the focus of far too much attention in my time. Pass me over, move along please, nothing to see here.
I don’t often look in the mirror, as a rule. This has absolutely nothing to do with my scars. It is because of the unsettling gene mix that looks back at me. I see far too much of Mummy’s face there. I cannot distinguish any of my father’s features, because I have never met him and, to the best of my knowledge, no photographic records exist. Mummy almost never mentioned him, and on the rare occasions when he came up, she referred to him only as ‘the gametes donor’. Once I’d looked up this term in her New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (from the Greek
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, ‘husband’ – did this juvenile etymological adventuring spark my love of classics?), I spent several years wondering about this strange set of circumstances. Even at that tender age, I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and dedicated in their quest to be mothers. I simply could not believe, given the evidence and my own experience, that Mummy had ever been such a woman,
could ever have wished for a child so intensely. As it transpired, I was right.
Finally, I summoned the courage to enquire directly as to the circumstances of my creation, and to seek any available information about the mythical donor of spermatozoa, my father. As any child would in such circumstances – possibly even more so, in my particular circumstances – I had been harbouring a small but intense fantasy about the character and appearance of my absent parent. She laughed and laughed.
‘Donor? Did I really say that? It was simply a metaphor, darling,’ she said.
Another word I’d have to look up.
‘I was actually trying to spare your feelings. It was more of a … compulsory donation, shall we say. I had no choice in the matter. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’
I said that I did, but I was fibbing.
‘Where does he live, Mummy?’ I asked, feeling brave. ‘What does he look like, what does he do?’
‘I can’t remember what he looked like,’ she said, her tone dismissive, bored. ‘He smelled like high game and liquefied Roquefort, if that’s any help.’ I must have looked puzzled. She leaned forward, showed me her teeth. ‘That’s rotting flesh and stinking, mouldy cheese to you, darling.’ She paused, regained her equanimity.
‘I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, Eleanor,’ she said. ‘If he’s alive, he’s probably very rich by dubious, unethical means. If he’s dead – and I sincerely hope that he is – then I imagine he’s languishing in the outer ring of the seventh circle of Hell, immersed in a river of boiling blood and fire, taunted by centaurs.’
I realized at that point that it probably wasn’t worth asking if she had kept any photos.
