MUMMY GOT IN TOUCH again on Wednesday as usual, the interval between our conversations all too brief.
‘What ho!’ she said. ‘Me again! Anything new to share with Mummy?’
In the absence of any other salient news since Monday, I told her about Keith’s birthday party.
‘Quite the social butterfly these days, aren’t you, Eleanor?’ she said, her voice unpleasantly sweet.
I said nothing; it’s usually the safest course of action.
‘What did you wear? I bet you looked ridiculous. For the love of God, please tell me you didn’t attempt to dance, daughter mine.’ She somehow intuited the answer from my tense silence.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Dancing’s for the beautiful people, Eleanor. The thought of you, lumbering about like a walrus …’ She laughed long and hard. ‘Oh, thank you, thanks very much, darling. That’s made my night, it really has.’ She laughed again. ‘Eleanor, dancing!’
‘How are you, Mummy?’ I said quietly.
‘Fine, darling, just fine. It’s chilli night tonight, always a treat. We’re going to watch a film later. The wonder of Wednesdays!’ Her tone was breezy, cheerful – it had a borderline manic quality that I recognized.
‘I got promoted, Mummy,’ I said, unable to keep a little flash of pride from my voice. She snorted.
‘Promoted! How incredibly impressive, darling. What does that mean – an extra five pounds a month?’
I said nothing.
‘Still,’ she said, her voice dripping with patronizing sweetness, ‘good for you, darling. I mean it, really; well done.’ I looked at the floor, felt tears come.
She spoke to someone else, a semi-snarl; ‘Naw, ah fucking didnae! Ah said S*x and the City 2! Aye, I did! I thought we were taking a vote. Eh?
Again? Oh, for fuck’s …’ She spoke directly to me again.
‘My fellow residents have elected to watch The Shawshank Redemption yet again, if you can believe it; it’s only been, oooh, twenty consecutive Wednesdays now …
‘Listen – don’t go getting sidetracked from your project with all this new job and birthday party nonsense. There’s a task in hand, and you need to remain focused on it. Faint heart never won fair chap, you know. Imagine if you were to provide me with a handsome, appropriate son-in- law, Eleanor. That would be normal, darling, wouldn’t it? We’d be a normal family then.’
She laughed, and I did too – the concept was just too bizarre to contemplate.
‘I was cursed with daughters,’ she said sadly, ‘and yet I always wanted a son. A son-in-law will do at a push – so long as he’s suitable. You know: polite, thoughtful, considerate, well-behaved. He is all of those things, isn’t he, this project of yours, Eleanor? A well-dressed man? Well-spoken? You know I’ve always tried to impress upon you how appropriate it is to talk properly and look the part.’
‘He seems very nice, Mummy,’ I said. ‘Very suitable. Handsome and talented and successful. Glamorous!’ I said, warming to my theme. Obviously, I knew next to nothing about him, so I was embellishing the scant information I’d gleaned about Johnnie Lomond from my research. It was quite fun.
Her tone was dismissive, with an undercurrent of menace. The default tone.
‘Oh God, I’m bored now. I’m bored of this conversation, and I’m bored of waiting for you to complete this project. Off you trot, Eleanor. For heaven’s sake, please don’t trouble yourself by being proactive and pushing forward with it. Oh no, heaven forfend. Please – continue to do nothing. Go and sit in your empty little flat and watch television on your own, just like you do Every. Single. Night.’
I heard her shout, ‘I’m coming! Dinnae start without me!’ The click of a lighter, an intake of breath.
‘Must dash, Eleanor. Toodle-oo!’ Dead air.
I sat down and watched television alone, like I do Every. Single.
Night.
I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change. I never thought, in my strangest imaginings, that I would find my job anything other than eight hours of drudgery. It was a source of astonishment to me that, on many days of the week now, I’d check my watch and see that hours had gone by without my noticing. The office manager role involved numerous new tasks that I had to learn and perfect. None of them was beyond the wit of man, obviously, but some were reasonably complex, and I was surprised at how enthusiastically my brain responded to the new challenges placed before it. My colleagues had appeared somewhat underwhelmed upon hearing the news that I would be managing them, but, thus far at least, there had been no sign of mutiny or insubordination. I kept myself to myself, as always, and allowed them to get on with their jobs (or what passed for doing their jobs, insofar as they never actually did very much, and tended to make a mess of the few tasks they actually attempted). For the time being, at least, the status quo prevailed, and they were, so far, no more ineffectual than they’d been prior to my installation.
The new role meant interacting with Bob more frequently, and I discovered that he was actually quite an amusing interlocutor. He shared a lot of details about the day-to-day running of the business with me, and was delightfully indiscreet about clients. Clients, I soon learned, could be very demanding; I still had limited direct contact with them, which suited me just fine.
From what I could gather, they would routinely be completely unable to articulate their requirements, at which point, in desperation, the designers would create some artwork for them based on the few vague hints they had managed to elicit. After many hours of work, involving a full team of staff, the work would be submitted to the client for approval. At that point, the client would say, ‘No. That’s exactly what I don’t want.’
There would be several tortuous iterations of this process before the client finally declared his- or herself satisfied with the end results. Inevitably, Bob said, the artwork that was signed off at the end of the process was virtually identical to the first piece of work submitted, which the client had immediately dismissed as unsuitable. It was no wonder, I thought, that he kept the staffroom well stocked with beer, wine and
chocolate, and that the art team availed themselves of it quite so frequently.
I’d started planning the Christmas lunch too. I had only vague ideas at the moment, but, like our clients, I was very clear as to what I didn’t want. No chain restaurants or hotels, no turkey, no Santa; nowhere that said ‘corporate entertainment’ or ‘office party’ on their website. It would take time to track down the perfect venue and plan the perfect event, but I had months yet.
Raymond and I continued to meet for lunch, roughly once per week. It was always on a different day, which annoyed me, but he was a man who was extremely resistant to routine (something that shouldn’t have surprised me). One day, he emailed me less than twenty-four hours after we’d met, to invite me for lunch again the very next day. I could almost believe that someone might enjoy, or at least tolerate, my company over the duration of a brief luncheon, but it stretched credibility to think that it could happen twice in one week.
Dear R, I’d be delighted to meet you for lunch again, but am somewhat perplexed due to the proximity to our previous meeting. Is everything in order? Regards, E
He replied thus:
Got something I need to tell you. See you at 1230 R
We were so habituated to our lunchtime meetings that he did not even need to specify the venue.
When I arrived, he wasn’t there, so I perused a newspaper that was lying on the chair next to me. Strangely, I’d come to like this shabby place; the staff, whilst off-putting in appearance, were uniformly pleasant and friendly, and now more than one of them was able to say ‘The usual, is it?’ to me, and then bring my coffee and cheese scone without my having to request it. It’s very vain and superficial of me, I know, but it made me feel like someone in an American situation comedy, being a ‘regular’, having a ‘usual’. The next step would have been effortlessly witty badinage, but unfortunately we were still some way away from that. One of the staff – Mikey – came over with a glass of water.
‘Do you want yours now, or are you waiting for Raymond?’ he said.
I told him I was expecting Raymond imminently, and Mikey began wiping down the table next to me.
‘How’s tricks, anyway?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It feels like we’re getting towards the last days of summer.’ This was something I had been thinking as I walked to the café, feeling gentle rays on my face, seeing a few red and gold leaves amongst the green. Mikey nodded.
‘I’m finishing up here at the end of the month,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘That’s a pity.’ Mikey was kind and gentle, and always brought truffles with the coffees, without being asked or seeking additional payment.
‘Have you found a new position somewhere else?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, perching on a chair beside me. ‘Hazel’s really poorly again.’ Hazel, I knew, was his girlfriend, and they lived nearby with their bichon frise and their baby, Lois.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Mikey,’ I said. He nodded.
‘They thought they’d got rid of it all the last time, but it’s come back, spread to the lymph nodes and the liver. I just wanted to, you know …’
‘You wanted to spend the time she has left with Hazel and Lois, rather than serving cheese scones to strange women,’ I said, and, gratifyingly, he laughed.
‘That’s about the size of it,’ he said. I braced myself, then put my hand on his arm. I was going to say something, but then I couldn’t think what was the right thing to say, so I just kept silent, and looked at him, hoping he’d intuit what I meant – that I was desperately sorry, that I admired him for caring so much about Hazel and Lois and looking after them, that I understood, perhaps more than most, about loss, about how difficult things must be, and would continue to be. However much you loved someone, it wasn’t always enough. Love alone couldn’t keep them safe …
‘Thanks, Eleanor,’ he said gently. He thanked me! Raymond arrived and threw himself into his seat.
‘All right, mate?’ he asked Mikey. ‘How’s Hazel doing?’
‘Not bad, Raymond, not bad. I’ll get you a menu.’ After he’d left, I leaned forward. ‘You knew already about Hazel?’ I said. He nodded.
‘It’s shite, isn’t it? She’s not even thirty, and wee Lois isn’t two yet.’
He shook his head. Neither of us spoke – there really wasn’t anything else to say. Once we had ordered, Raymond cleared his throat.
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Eleanor. It’s more bad news – sorry.’ I sat back in my chair, and looked up at the ceiling, readying myself.
‘Go on,’ I said. There’s very little in life that I couldn’t imagine, or brace myself for. Nothing could be worse than what I’ve already experienced – that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s a literal statement of fact. I suppose it’s actually a source of strength, in a strange way.
‘It’s Sammy,’ he said.
I hadn’t been expecting that.
‘He passed away at the weekend, Eleanor. A massive coronary. It was quick, at least.’ I nodded. It was both a surprise and not a surprise.
‘What happened?’ I said. Raymond started eating, telling me the details between – and during – mouthfuls. I’m not sure what it would take to put that man off his food. The Ebola virus, perhaps.
‘He was at Laura’s,’ he said, ‘just watching the telly. No warning, nothing.’
‘Was she there at the time?’ I asked. Please God, let her have been spared that. Trying to live on afterwards, trying to manage the guilt and the pain and the horror of it all … I would not wish that on another human being. I would happily assume her burden if I could. I’d barely notice it, I’m sure, on top of my own.
‘She was upstairs, getting ready to go out,’ he said. ‘Got a hell of a shock when she came down and found him on the sofa like that.’
So it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t have saved him, even if she’d tried. It was fine – well, as fine as death could be. I considered the facts further.
‘He was alone at the time death occurred, then,’ I said, intrigued. ‘Do the police suspect foul play?’
He choked on his halloumi burger and I had to pass him a glass of water.
‘For fuck’s sake, Eleanor!’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘it was just something that popped into my mind.’ ‘Aye, well, sometimes best not to say the first thing that pops into your
mind out loud, eh?’ he said quietly, not looking at me.
I felt terrible. I felt terrible for Sammy and for his family, I felt terrible for upsetting Raymond without meaning to, I felt terrible for the waiter and his girlfriend and their poor little baby. All this death, all this suffering, happening to nice people, good people who’d done nothing to deserve it, and no one able to stop it … Tears came, and the more I tried to fight them, the more they came. The lump in my throat was burning, burning like fire, no please, not fire …
Raymond had slid around to the seat beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. He spoke in a soft, low voice.
‘Ah please, Eleanor, don’t cry. I’m really sorry … I didn’t mean to snap at you, I really didn’t … please, Eleanor …’
The strange thing – something I’d never expected – was that it actually made you feel better when someone put their arm around you, held you close. Why? Was it some mammalian thing, this need for human contact? He was warm and solid. I could smell his deodorant, and the detergent he used to wash his clothes – over both scents there lay a faint patina of cigarettes. A Raymond smell. I leaned in closer.
Eventually, I managed to regain control of my emotions, and the embarrassing tears abated. I sniffed, and he returned to his own side of the table, rummaged in his jacket pocket and passed me a packet of tissues. I smiled at him, took one and blew my nose. I was aware that I was making a most unladylike honking sound, but what else could I do?
‘Sorry,’ I said.
He gave me a feeble smile.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s really hard, isn’t it?’
I took a moment to process everything that he’d told me. ‘How’s Laura? What about Keith and Gary?’
‘They’re in bits, as you’d expect.’
‘I’m going to attend the funeral,’ I said, decisively.
‘Me too,’ he said. He slurped on his cola. ‘He was a funny old bloke, wasn’t he?’
I smiled, swallowed down the lump in my throat. ‘He was nice,’ I said. ‘You could tell that straight away, even when he was unconscious on the pavement.’
Raymond nodded. He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. ‘At least he had a few weeks with his family after the accident, eh? Good weeks – his wee party, Keith’s fortieth. He got a chance to spend time with all the people he loved.’
I nodded. ‘Can I ask you something, Raymond?’ I said. He looked at me.
‘What’s the etiquette for funerals? Are mourners still required to wear black, and are hats de rigueur?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea … just wear whatever you want, I guess. Sammy’s not the kind of guy who’d be bothered about that sort of thing, is he?’
I pondered this. ‘I’ll wear black,’ I said, ‘to be on the safe side. No hat, though.’
‘No, I’m not wearing a hat either,’ said Raymond, and we actually laughed. We laughed far longer than his feeble witticism merited, just because it felt good.
We didn’t speak on the walk back to the office. The weak sun was in our faces, and I held mine up to it for a moment, like a cat. Raymond was scuffing through the light carpet of fallen leaves, his red training shoes flashing through all the bronze. A grey squirrel bounded in fluid semicircles across our path, and there was that almost autumnal smell in the air, apples and wool. We didn’t even speak when we got inside. Raymond took both my hands in his and squeezed them, just for a second, and then released them at my sides. He went upstairs and I walked around the corner to my office.
I felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me. There was already an email waiting for me by the time I sat down at my desk.
C U Friday Rx
Was a response required? I suspected it was, so I just sent this:
X
