OF COURSE, I ALREADYÂ knew that we lived not far from one another, but it had not occurred to me that our lives might intersect in any unplanned way. Sometimes this place feels more like a village than a city, really. So we shared a love of Tesco. Unsurprising. I wondered where else our existences overlapped. Perhaps we frequented the same post office, for example, or had our prescriptions dispensed by the same pharmacist? I reflected again on the importance of being ready, at any time, for an encounter, of looking my best and having something appropriate to say. I was going to need more than one outfit.
Sammy’s homecoming party tonight was at seven, and Raymond had offered to meet me beforehand near Laura’s house. At first, I thought that he was being surprisingly and uncharacteristically thoughtful, but then I realized that he simply didn’t want to arrive alone. Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that there’s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself. That’s the thing: it’s best just to take care of yourself. You can’t protect other people, however hard you try. You try, and you fail, and your world collapses around you, burns down to ashes.
That said, I did sometimes wonder what it would be like to have someone – a cousin, say, or a sibling – to call on in times of need, or even just to spend unplanned time with. Someone who knows you, cares about you, who wants the best for you. A houseplant, however attractive and robust, doesn’t quite cut the mustard, unfortunately. Pointless even to speculate, though. I had no one, and it was futile to wish it were otherwise. After all, it was no more than I deserved. And, really, I was fine, fine, fine. Was I not here, after all, out in the world, and going to a party? Dressed in my finery and awaiting an acquaintance? Look out, Saturday night, here comes Eleanor Oliphant! I allowed myself a little smile.
In the end, my mood soured somewhat, as I had to wait twenty-five minutes for Raymond. I find lateness exceptionally rude; it’s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person’s. Raymond eventually clambered out of a minicab at quarter past seven, just when I was on the verge of leaving.
‘Hiya, Eleanor!’ he said, full of good cheer. He was clutching a clinking carrier bag and a bunch of cheap carnations. Laura had specifically told us not to bring anything. Why had he ignored her polite request?
‘Raymond, the invitation was for 7 p.m.,’ I said. ‘We arranged to meet here at 6.50 p.m., and we are now inexcusably late on account of your tardiness. It’s very disrespectful to our hostess!’ I could not bear to look at him. Inexplicably, he laughed.
‘Chill, Eleanor,’ he said. I mean, really. Chill!
‘No one ever goes to a party on time. It’s ruder to do that than to be fifteen minutes late, believe me.’ He looked me up and down. ‘You look nice,’ he said. ‘Different …’
I did not appreciate this crass attempt to change the subject. ‘Shall we go?’ I said, quite curtly. He ambled along beside me, smoking as usual.
‘Eleanor,’ he said, ‘honestly, don’t stress about it. When people say seven o’clock, they mean, like, seven thirty, earliest. We’ll probably be the first people there!’
I was thrown by this.
‘But why?’ I said. ‘Why on earth would you state one time whilst meaning something completely different, and how are people supposed to know?’
Raymond extinguished his cigarette and dropped it into the gutter. He put his head on one side, considering.
‘I don’t know how you know, now I come to think of it,’ he said. ‘You just do.’ He thought some more. ‘It’s like, you know when you invite people over, and you say come at eight, it’s always a nightmare if some
… if a person actually arrives at eight, because you’re not ready, you haven’t had time to tidy up, take the rubbish out or whatever? It feels quite … passive aggressive, almost, if someone actually arrives on time or – oh God – early?’
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘If I were to invite people to attend at eight, then I’d be ready for them at eight. It’s sloppy time management otherwise.’
Raymond shrugged. He had made no effort whatsoever to dress smartly for the party, sporting his usual uniform of training shoes (green ones) and a T-shirt. This one said Carcetti for Mayor. Unfathomable. He was wearing a denim jacket, paler than his denim trousers. I hadn’t considered that a suit could be fashioned from denim, but there it was.
Laura’s house was at the end of a neat cul de sac of small, modern houses. There were several cars in the driveway. We approached the front door and I noticed that she had red geraniums in window boxes. I find geraniums somewhat unsettling; that rich, sticky scent when you brush against them, a brackish, vegetable smell that’s the opposite of floral.
Raymond rang the doorbell – the chime played the opening chords to Beethoven’s Third Symphony. A very small boy, his face smeared with, one hoped, chocolate, answered and stared at us. I stared back at him. Raymond stepped forward.
‘All right, mate?’ he said. ‘We’re here to see your granddad.’
The boy continued staring at us, somewhat unenthusiastically. ‘I’m wearing new shoes,’ he stated, apropos of nothing. At that moment, Laura appeared behind him in the hallway.
‘Auntie Laura,’ he said, not turning round, and sounding distinctly unimpressed, ‘it’s more people for the party.’
‘I see that, Tyler,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go and find your brother, see if you can blow up some more balloons for us?’ He nodded and ran off, his little feet thumping on the stairs.
‘Come in,’ she said, smiling at Raymond. ‘Dad’ll be pleased to see you.’ She didn’t smile at me, which is the normal state of affairs in most encounters I have with other people.
We entered, Raymond wiping his feet elaborately on the doormat. I copied him. It was truly an unforeseen day when I would look to Raymond for social guidance.
He handed over the flowers and the clinking bag, and Laura looked pleased. I realized that, despite her entreaty at the hospital, I ought to have brought something to hand over, too. I was going to explain that she had told us not to, and I had simply done her the courtesy of respecting
her wishes, but before I could speak, Raymond blurted out, ‘These are from Eleanor and me.’
She peered into the carrier bag – I fervently hoped it wasn’t Haribo and Pringles again – and thanked us both. I nodded in acknowledgement. She showed us into the living room, where Sammy and his family were seated. Banal pop music was playing softly, and a low table was covered with little bowls of beige snacks. Laura was wearing a dress, wrapped around her like black bandages, and teetered in heels with a two-inch platform. Her blonde hair was – I grappled for the correct terms – both tall and fat, and tumbled well past her shoulders in glossy waves. Even Bobbi Brown might have thought the amount of makeup she was wearing de trop. Raymond’s mouth hung slightly open, just wide enough to post a letter through, and he seemed somewhat dazed. Laura appeared
entirely indifferent to his response.
‘Raymond! Eleanor!’ Sammy shouted, waving from deep within an enormous velvet armchair. ‘Laura, get them both a drink, would you? We’re on the Prosecco,’ he said, confidentially.
‘No more for you, Dad,’ his elder son said. ‘Not with those painkillers.’
‘Och, come on, son – you only live once!’ Sammy said brightly. ‘After all, there’s worse ways to go, eh, Eleanor?’
I nodded. He was, of course, absolutely right. I should know.
Laura appeared with two flutes of urine-coloured fizzy liquid – much to my surprise, I drank mine down in three gulps. It was dry and biscuity, and extremely delicious. I wondered if it was expensive, and whether it might in due course come to replace vodka as my bevarage of choice. Laura noticed, and topped up my glass.
‘You’re like me – I only drink bubbles,’ she said approvingly. I looked around.
‘You have a very beautiful home,’ I said. She nodded.
‘It’s taken me a couple of years to get everything the way I like it, but I’m happy with it now,’ she said.
I was struck by how coordinated everything was, how clean and gleaming. There were textures everywhere – feathers and flock, velvet, silk – and jewel colours.
‘It’s like an eyrie where a beautiful bird would nest,’ I said. ‘A quetzal, or an imperial eagle.’
She appeared to be struggling for an appropriate response, strangely.
Surely a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed?
After a silence, not too uncomfortable because of the fizzy bubble drink, she asked me about work, and I explained what I did, and how I knew Raymond. We looked over at him – he was perched on the arm of Sammy’s chair, laughing at something one of her brothers had said.
‘You could do worse, you know,’ she said, with a sly smile. ‘I mean, if you tidied him up a bit, decent haircut …’
It took me a moment to grasp what she meant.
‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘you completely misunderstand. I already have someone. He’s handsome and sophisticated and talented – a cultured, educated man.’ Laura smiled.
‘Aren’t you the lucky one! How did you two meet, then?’
‘Well, we haven’t, as yet,’ I explained, ‘but it’s only a matter of time.’
She threw her head back and laughed, a deep throaty sound that seemed wrong coming from such a slight, feminine woman.
‘You’re hilarious, Eleanor,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to come round for drinks some time. And if you ever decide to cut your hair, bear me in mind, yeah? I’ll give you mates’ rates.’
I thought about this. I had been slacking somewhat with my makeover list, after the frankly disconcerting wax experience at the salon and the unremarkable changes that had been wrought on my nails. I supposed I ought to press on with it. Normally, I wasn’t at all interested in my hair and I hadn’t had it cut since I was thirteen years old. It ran down to my waist, straight and light brown – just hair, nothing more, nothing less. I barely noticed it, in truth. I knew, though, that for the singer to fall in love with me, I’d need to make much more of an effort.
‘This is, in fact, serendipitous timing, Laura,’ I said, drinking more of the delicious bubbles – my glass seemed miraculously to have refilled itself. ‘I had been planning something of a reinvention. Might next week be suitable for you to effect a change of hairstyle?’
She picked up her phone from a console table and tapped away. ‘How’s Tuesday at three?’ she said.
We were allocated twenty-five days of annual leave, and I had used three – a recovery day after painful root canal work, one of my biannual daytime social work visits, and an extra day I’d added onto a Bank Holiday weekend in order to allow me to finish a particularly lengthy but thrilling volume on the history of Ancient Rome without interruption.
‘Tuesday would be splendid,’ I said.
She shimmered off towards the kitchen, and reappeared with a tray of malodorous, warm snacks which she passed around the room. The space had filled up with people, and the overall volume level was very loud. I stood for several minutes examining the bibelots and objets which she had artfully placed around the room. More from boredom than necessity, I went to use the bathroom, a tiny cloakroom under the stairs which was also shiny and warm, gleaming white and scented, improbably, with figs – the smell, I eventually realized, emanating from a lit candle in a glass jar on the shelf below the mirror. Candles in a bathroom! I suspected that Laura was something of a sybarite.
I walked into the room at the end of the hall, which was, as I had correctly guessed, the kitchen. This room was also full of people and noise, but I could make out black marble worktops, gloss cream cabinets and lots of chrome. Her home was so … shiny. She was shiny too, her skin, her hair, her shoes, her teeth. I hadn’t even realized before; I am matte, dull and scuffed.
Feeling the need to escape the noise and heat for a moment, I opened the back door and stepped out onto a patio. The garden was small and contained little in the way of botanical life, being mostly paved with concrete slabs or covered in slippery decking. Dusk was falling, but the sky felt small here, and I felt penned in by a high fence which ran on all three sides. I breathed in, deeply, hoping for cool night air. Instead, my nasal passages were assaulted by tar, nicotine and other poisons.
‘Nice night, eh?’ said Raymond, loitering unnoticed in the shadows and, just for a change, puffing on a cigarette. I nodded.
‘I came out for some fresh air,’ he said, without a hint of irony. ‘I shouldn’t drink fizz, it knocks me for six.’ I realized that I was somewhat discombobulated myself.
‘I think I’m ready to go home now,’ I said, a little unsteady on my feet. It was, however, a lovely feeling.
‘Come and sit down for a minute,’ Raymond said, steering me towards a pair of wooden armchairs. I was glad to do so, as my new boots rendered my balance somewhat precarious at the best of times. Raymond lit another cigarette – he seemed to be becoming a chain smoker.
‘They’re a nice family, aren’t they?’ he said.
‘Laura is going to cut my hair,’ I blurted out. I’ve no idea why. ‘Is she now?’ He smiled.
‘You like her,’ I stated, nodding sagely. I was a woman of the world, after all.
He laughed.
‘She’s gorgeous, Eleanor, but she’s really not my type.’ His cigarette end glowed red in the semidarkness.
‘What is your type?’ I asked, finding to my surprise that I was actually interested.
‘I don’t know. Someone less … high maintenance, I guess. Someone
… wait a minute.’
I was more than content to sit still while he walked off, returning minutes later with a bottle of wine and two garishly decorated paper cups sporting cartoon rodents on skateboards.
‘Rastamouse,’ I read aloud, slowly. ‘What on earth is this?’
‘Give it here,’ Raymond said, and poured us both a … cup. We tapped our vessels together. There was no clink.
‘I thought I’d found the perfect person for me,’ he said, staring at the back of the garden. ‘Didn’t work out, though.’
‘Why not?’ I said, although I could, in fact, think of many reasons why someone might not want to be with Raymond.
‘Thing is, I’m still not entirely sure. I wish I did know – it would make things easier …’
I nodded – it seemed like the appropriate thing to do.
‘Helen said it wasn’t me, it was her.’ He laughed, not an amused laugh, though. ‘I can’t believe she came out with that old chestnut. After three years … you’d think she’d have known before then that it wasn’t working for her. I don’t know what changed. I didn’t change … I don’t think I did, anyway …’
‘People can be … unfathomable,’ I said, stumbling slightly over the word. ‘I often find that I don’t understand why they do and say things.’
He nodded.
‘We had a lovely wee flat, went on some great holidays. I was … I was actually thinking about asking her to marry me. Christ …’ He stared at the paving stones and I tried and failed to picture Raymond in a morning suit, top hat and cravat, let alone a kilt.
‘It’s fine,’ he said, after a while. ‘It’s quite a laugh, sharing with the guys, and I’ve got this new job. Things are OK. It’s just … I dunno. She said I was too nice. What exactly am I meant to do with that? I mean … become more of a bastard? Should I have hit her, or cheated on her?’
I realized he wasn’t really talking to me; it was like in a play, when a character just talks out loud for no apparent reason. I knew the answer to his question, however.
‘No, Raymond,’ I said. ‘You would never have done either of those things.’ I finished my cup of wine and poured some more. ‘I lived with a man called Declan for a couple of years. He used to punch me in the kidneys, slap me – he fractured twelve bones, all in all. He stayed out some nights and then came home and told me about the women he’d been with. It was my fault, all my fault. But still, I know he shouldn’t have done that. I know it now, anyway.’
Raymond stared at me. ‘Jesus, Eleanor. When was this?’
‘Several years ago,’ I said. ‘While I was still at university. He saw me in the Botanic Gardens one day, just came up and started talking to me. I know it sounds ridiculous, looking back. By the end of the week, he’d moved in.’
‘Was he a student too?’ Raymond said.
‘No, he said reading books was a waste of time, boring. He didn’t work, either; couldn’t find a job that suited him, he said. It’s not easy to find a job that suits you, I suppose, is it?’
Raymond was looking at me with a strange expression on his face. ‘Declan wanted to help me learn how to be a better person,’ I said.
Raymond lit yet another cigarette.
‘How did it end?’ he said, not looking at me, blowing smoke up into the air in a long stream, like a very unterrifying dragon.
‘Well,’ I told him, ‘he broke my arm again, and when I went to hospital, they somehow guessed that it hadn’t happened the way I’d said. He’d told me to tell them that I’d had a fall, but they didn’t believe me.’ I took another large sip. ‘Anyway, a nice nurse came and spoke to me, and explained that people who truly love you don’t hurt you, and that it wasn’t right to stay with someone who did. The way she explained it, it all made sense. I should have been able to work it out for myself, really. I asked him to leave when I got home and, when he wouldn’t, I called the police, like she’d suggested. And that was that. Oh, and I changed the locks.’
He said nothing, and stared with intense concentration at his shoes. Without looking at me, he put out his hand and touched my arm, patted it very tentatively, as one would a horse or a dog (if one were frightened of horses or dogs). He shook his head gently, for a long time, but seemed
unable to articulate a response. No matter; I didn’t require one. The whole thing was ancient history now. I was happy being alone. Eleanor Oliphant, sole survivor – that’s me.
‘I’m going to go home now, Raymond,’ I said, standing up quickly. ‘I’m going to get a taxi.’
‘Good idea,’ he said, finishing his drink. He took out his phone. ‘But you’re not going to wander the streets on your own and try to hail one, not at this time of night. I’ll call you one – look, I’ve got an app!’ He showed me his phone, beaming.
‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’ I said, peering at the screen. He ignored me and checked the message. ‘It’ll be here in five minutes,’ he said.
He waited with me in the hall until the cab arrived, then walked me to the vehicle and held the door open for me. I saw him peering in at the driver, a middle-aged woman who looked tired and bored, as I climbed into the back seat.
‘Are you coming too?’ I said, wondering why he was hesitating on the kerb. He checked his watch, ruffled his hair and looked from the house to the taxi and back again.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll hang around here for a bit. See what happens.’
I turned to watch him as the car moved off. He staggered slightly as he walked up the path, and I saw Laura framed in the doorway, two glasses in her hands, one of them offered out to him.
