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 backseat.
“Are you coming too?” I said, wondering why he was hesitating on the curb. 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.
18
Raymond sent me an electronic mail message at work the next week—it was very odd, seeing his name in my in-box. As I’d expected, he was semiliterate.
Hi E, hope all good with u. Got a wee favor to ask. Sammy’s son Keith has invited me to his 40th this Saturday (ended up staying late at that party BTW, it was a rite laugh). Fancy being my plus one? It’s at the golf club, there’s a buffet? No worries if not—let me no. R
A buffet. In a golf club. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. And two parties in a month! More parties than I had been to in two decades. I hit reply:
Dear Raymond,
I should be delighted to accompany you to the birthday celebration.
Kind regards,
Eleanor Oliphant (Ms.)
Moments later, I received a response:
Twenty-first-century communication. I fear for our nation’s standards of literacy.
I had arranged to have the afternoon off that day for my appointment at the hairdressers, but ate my lunch in the staff room first as usual, with the Telegraph crossword, a tuna and sweet corn bloomer, salt and vinegar crisps and orange juice, with bits. I must thank the musician, in due course, for introducing me to the pleasure of bits. After this delicious repast, and with a small grin of triumph at the thought of my colleagues having to remain behind at their desks for the rest of the afternoon, I took a bus into town.
Heliotrope was in a smart street in the city center, on the ground floor of a Victorian sandstone building. It was certainly not the sort of place I’d usually frequent—loud music, aggressively fashionable staff and far too many mirrors. I imagined this might be where the musician went for a haircut, and that made me feel slightly better about it. Perhaps one day we’d be sitting side by side in those black leather chairs, holding hands under the hair dryers.
I waited for the receptionist to finish her phone call, and stepped away from the huge vase of white and pink lilies on the counter. Their smell snagged in the back of my throat, like fur or feathers. I gagged; it wasn’t something meant for humans.
I’d forgotten how noisy hairdressers’ salons were, the constant hum of dryers and inane chat, and positioned myself in the window seat, having donned a black nylon kimono which, I was alarmed to see, was already sprinkled with short hair clippings snipped from a previous client. I quickly brushed them off.
Laura arrived, looking just as glamorous as before, and led me toward a seat in front of a terrifying row of mirrors.
“Did you have a good time on Saturday?” she said, fussing around with a stool until she was seated behind me at the same height. She didn’t look at me directly, but into the mirror, where she addressed my reflection; I found myself doing the same. It was strangely relaxing.
“I did,” I said. “It was a splendid evening.”
“Dad’s doing my nut in already, staying in the spare room,” she said, smiling, “and I’ve got another two weeks of it. I don’t know how I’ll cope.” I nodded.
“Parents can certainly be challenging, in my experience,” I said. We exchanged a sympathetic glance.
“Now then, what are we doing for you today?” she said, unfastening the rubber band at the bottom of my braid and fanning it out. I stared at my reflection. My hair was mousy brown, parted in the center, straight and not particularly thick. Human hair, doing what human hair does: growing on my head.
“Something different,” I said. “What would you suggest?”
“How brave are you prepared to be, Eleanor?” Laura asked. This was the correct question. I am brave. I am brave, courageous, Eleanor Oliphant.
“Do whatever you want,” I said. She looked delighted.
“Color too?”
I considered this.
“Would it be a normal human hair color? I don’t think I’d like pink or blue or anything like that.”
“I’ll give you a shoulder-length, lightly layered choppy bob, with caramel and honey pieces woven through and a long sweeping fringe,” she said. “How does that sound?”
“It sounds like an incomprehensible pile of gibberish,” I said. She laughed at my reflection, and then stopped, perhaps because I wasn’t laughing.
“Trust me, Eleanor,” she said earnestly. “It’ll be beautiful.”
“Beautiful is not a word normally associated with my appearance,” I said, highly skeptical. She patted my arm.
“Just you wait,” she said gently. “MILEY!” she screeched, almost causing me to fall from my chair. “Come and help me mix up some color!”
A short, chubby girl with bad skin and beautiful eyes came trotting up. Laura gave a prescription involving percentages and codes which might as well have been for gunpowder.
“Tea? Coffee? Magazine?” Laura said. I could scarcely believe it when I found myself, five minutes later, sipping a cappuccino and perusing the latest edition of OK! magazine. Look at me, I thought.
“Ready?” Laura asked. Her hand, warm and soft, brushed against the back of my neck as she took the hank and heft of my hair and twisted it into a rope behind me. The slow noise of the scissors slicing through it was like the sound of embers shifting in a fire: tinkly, dangerous. It was over in a moment. Laura held the hair aloft, a triumphant Delilah.
“I’ll cut it properly after the color’s done,” she said. “We just need a level playing field at this stage.” Because I was sitting motionless, it didn’t feel any different. She dropped the hair on the floor where it lay like a dead animal. A skinny boy, who looked like he’d rather be doing almost anything else, was sweeping up very, very slowly, and nudged my hair creature into his dustpan with a long-handled brush. I watched his progress round the salon in the mirror. What happened to all the hair afterward? The thought of a day’s or a week’s worth bundled into a bin bag, the smell of it and the soft, marshmallowy pillowing of it inside, made me feel slightly queasy.
Laura approached wheeling a trolley, then proceeded to daub various thick pastes onto selected strands of my hair, alternating between bowls. After each section of gunk was applied, she folded the painted hair into squares of tinfoil. It was a fascinating procedure. After thirty minutes, she left me sitting with a foil head and a red face, then returned pushing a hot lamp on a stand, which she placed behind me.
“Twenty minutes and you’ll be done,” she said.
She brought me more magazines, but the pleasure had waned—I had quickly tired of celebrity gossip, and it seemed that the salon didn’t take Which? or BBC History, much to my disappointment. A thought kept nudging me, and I ignored it. Me, brushing someone else’s hair? Yes. Someone smaller than me, sitting on a chair while I stood behind and combed out the tangles, trying my best to be gentle. She hated the snags and tugs. Thoughts of this type—vague, mysterious, unsettling—were precisely the sort that vodka was good for obliterating, but unfortunately I’d only been offered a choice of tea or coffee. I wondered why hair salons didn’t provide anything stronger. A change of style can be stressful, after all, and it’s hard to relax in such a noisy, bright environment. It would probably encourage customers to give bigger tips too. Tipsy equals tips, I thought, and laughed silently.
When the buzzer sounded on the heat lamp, the color-mixing gi
rl came over and led me to the “backwash,” which was, by any other name, a sink. I allowed the tinfoil to be unwrapped from my hair. She ran warm water through it, and then shampooed it clean. Her fingers were firm and deft, and I marveled at the generosity of those humans who performed intimate services for others. I hadn’t had anyone else wash my hair since as far back as I could remember. I suppose Mummy must have washed it for me when I was an infant, but it was hard to imagine her performing any tender ministrations of this type.
After the shampoo was rinsed away, the girl performed a “shiatsu head massage.” I have never known such bliss. She kneaded my scalp with firm tenderness and precision, and I felt the hairs stand up on my forearms, then a bolt of electricity run down my spine. It ended about nine hours before I would have liked it to.
“You had a lot of tension in your scalp,” she said sagaciously, while she rinsed out the conditioning cream. I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it’s something to do with death or illness, though—I know that now).
Back in the same chair, my shorter, colored hair combed out, Laura returned with her sharp scissors.
“You can’t see the color properly when it’s wet,” she said. “Just you wait!”
In the end, the cutting only took ten minutes or so. I admired her dexterity and the confidence with which she undertook the task. The drying took much longer, with considerable and elaborate hairbrush action. I read my magazine, electing, at her prompting, not to look up until the styling was finished. The dryer was switched off, chemicals were sprayed, lengths and angles were examined and a few additional snips undertaken here and there. I heard Laura’s laugh of delight.
“Look, Eleanor!” she said.
I raised my head from Marie Claire’s in-depth report into female genital mutilation. My reflection showed a much younger woman, a confident woman with glossy hair that brushed her shoulders and a fringe that swept across her face and sat just over her scarred cheek. Me? I turned to the right and then to the left. I looked in the hand mirror Laura was holding behind my head so that I could see the back, smooth and sleek. I swallowed hard.
“You’ve made me shiny, Laura,” I said. I tried to stop it, but a little tear ran down the side of my nose. I wiped it away with the back of my hand before it could dampen the ends of my new hair. “Thank you for making me shiny.”
19
Bob had called me in for a meeting. He stared at me when I went into his office. I wondered why.
“Your hair!” he said, eventually, as though guessing the answer to a question. I hadn’t found it easy to style this morning, but I thought I’d made a fair attempt. I put my hands to my head.
“What’s wrong with it?” I said.
“Nothing’s wrong with it. It looks . . . it looks nice,” he said, smiling and nodding. There was a moment’s awkwardness. Neither of us was used to Bob commenting on my appearance.
“I had it cut,” I said, “obviously.”
He nodded.
“Sit down, Eleanor.” I looked around. To say Bob’s office was untidy was rather to understate the degree of chaos in which it was always to be found. I lifted a pile of brochures from the chair which faced his desk and placed them on the floor. He leaned forward. Bob has aged very badly during the time that I’ve known him; his hair has almost all fallen out and he has put on quite a lot of weight. He looks rather like a dissolute baby.
“You’ve worked here for a long time, Eleanor,” he said. I nodded; that was factually correct. “Did you know that Loretta is going off on leave for the foreseeable?” I shook my head. I am not interested in the petty tittle-tattle of quotidian office life. Unless it’s gossip about a certain singer, of course.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” I said. “I always doubted her grasp of the basic principles of value-added tax,” I shrugged, “so perhaps it’s for the best.”
“Her husband’s got testicular cancer, Eleanor,” he said. “She wants to look after him.”
I thought about this for a moment.
“That must be very difficult for them both,” I said. “But, if detected early enough, the survival and recovery rates for cancer of the testes are good. If you’re male and you are unfortunate enough to get any sort of cancer, that’s probably the best type to have.”
He fiddled with one of his fancy black pens. “So,” he said. “I’m going to be needing a new office manager, for the next few months at least.” I nodded. “Would you be interested, Eleanor? It’d mean a bit more money, a bit more responsibility. I think you’re ready for it, though.”
I considered this.
“How much more money?” I asked. He wrote a sum on a Post-it note, tore it from the pad and passed it across to me. I gasped. “In addition to my current salary?”
I had visions of taking taxis to work rather than getting the bus, of upgrading to Tesco Finest everything, and of drinking the kind of vodka that comes in chunky opaque bottles.
“No, Eleanor,” he said. “That amount would be your new salary.”
“Ah,” I said.
If that were the case, then I would need to consider the risk/reward ratio carefully. Would the increase in salary compensate adequately for the increased amount of tedious administration work I’d be required to undertake, the augmented levels of responsibility for the successful functioning of the office and, worse still, for the significantly increased degree of interaction that I’d need to undertake with my colleagues?
“May I take a few days to consider it, Bob?” I said.
He nodded. “Of course, Eleanor. I expected you to say that.”
I looked at my hands.
“You’re a good worker, Eleanor,” he said. “How long has it been now—eight years?”
“Nine,” I said.
“Nine years, and you’ve never had a day off sick, never used all your annual leave. That’s dedication, you know. It’s not easy to find these days.”
“It’s not dedication,” I said. “I simply have a very robust constitution and no one to go on holiday with.”
He looked away and I stood up, ready to leave.
He cleared his throat. “Oh, one other thing, Eleanor. Because Loretta’s so busy preparing all the handover stuff . . . could I ask you to help out with something?”
“Ask away, Bob,” I said.
“The office Christmas lunch—do you think you could organize it this year?” he said. “She won’t have time before she finishes up, and I’ve already had people in my office whingeing that if we don’t book somewhere now . . .”
“. . . they’ll end up in Wetherspoons,” I said, nodding. “Yes, I’m familiar with the issues, Bob. If you wish it, I’d certainly be willing to organize the lunch. Do I have carte blanche with regard to venue, menu and theme?”
Bob nodded, already busy at his computer again.
“Sure,” he said. “The company will chip in a tenner per head—after that, it’s up to you guys to choose where to go and how much extra you want to pay.”
“Thank you, Bob,” I said. “I won’t let you down.”
He wasn’t listening, engrossed with whatever was on his screen. My head was buzzing. Two major decisions to make. Another party to go to. And handsome, talented Johnnie Lomond, chanteur extraordinaire and potential life partner on the horizon. Life was very intense.
When I sat back down at my computer, I stared at the screen for some time, not actually reading the words. I felt slightly sick at the thought of all the dilemmas I faced, to the extent that, although it was almost lunchtime, I had no desire to buy and eat my Meal Deal. It might be helpful to talk to someone about it all, I realized. I remembered that from the past. Apparently, talking was good; it helped to keep anxieties in perspective. People had kept saying that. Talk to someone, do you want to talk about it, tell me how you feel, anything you want t
o share with the group, Eleanor? You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Miss Oliphant, can you tell us in your own words what you recall of the events that took place that evening?
I felt a tiny trickle of sweat run down my back, and a fluttering in my chest like a trapped bird. The computer made that annoying ping which indicates the arrival of an electronic message. I clicked on it without thinking. How I despise these Pavlovian responses in myself!
Hi E, you still on for Saturday? Meet you at the station and we can get the train out to Keith’s party—8ish? R
He had attached a graphic: a photograph of a famous politician’s face, next to a head shot of a dog that looked exactly like him. I snorted—the resemblance was uncanny. Underneath he’d written Wednesday morning LOLs, whatever that meant.
Impulsively I typed straight back:
Good morning, Raymond. The canine/ministerial graphic was most amusing. Would you happen to be free for lunch at 12:30 by any chance? Regards, Eleanor
There was no reply for almost fifteen minutes, and I began to regret my impulsive decision. I hadn’t ever invited anyone to join me for lunch before. I conducted my usual online checks for any updates from the musician—there was nothing new on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, sadly. It made me feel anxious when he went quiet. I suspected it meant he was either very sad, or, perhaps more worryingly, that he was very happy. A new girlfriend?
I felt queasy, and was thinking that perhaps I wouldn’t go for the full Meal Deal today, just an antioxidant smoothie and a small bag of wasabi peanuts, when another message arrived.
Soz—had to deal with a helpdesk call. Told him to switch it off and switch it back on again LOL. Yeh, lunch would be good. See you out front in 5? R.
I hit reply.
That would be fine. Thank you.
Daringly, I didn’t put my name, because I realized he’d know it was from me.