Raymond was late, arriving in eight rather than the promised five minutes, but I decided not to make anything of it on this one occasion. He suggested we go to a café he liked around the corner.
It wasn’t the sort of place I would normally frequent, being rather bohemian and shabby-looking, with mismatched furniture and a lot of cushions and throws. What was the likelihood of them being laundered on any sort of regular basis? I wondered. Minimal at best. I shuddered at the thought of all those microbes; the warmth of the café and the dense fibers of the cushions would be a perfect breeding ground for dust mites and perhaps even lice. I sat at a table with ordinary wooden chairs and no soft furnishings.
Raymond seemed to know the waiter, who greeted him by name when he brought the menus. The staff seemed to be the same sort of person as him: unkempt, scruffy, badly dressed, both the men and the women.
“The falafel’s usually good,” he said, “or the soup—” pointing to the Specials board.
“Cream of cauliflower and cumin,” I said, reading aloud. “Oh no. No, I really don’t think so.”
I was still in gastric turmoil after my meeting with Bob, and so I simply ordered a frothy coffee and a cheese scone. Whatever Raymond was eating smelled disgusting, like gently reheated vomit. He ate noisily with his mouth partially open, so that I had to look away. It made it easier to broach the subject of Bob’s offer and the task he had entrusted me with.
“May I ask you something, Raymond?” I said. He slurped his cola and nodded. I looked away again. The man who had served us was lounging at the counter, nodding his head in time with the music. It was a cacophonous din, with too many guitars and not enough melody. It was, I thought, the sound of madness, the kind of music that lunatics hear in their heads just before they slice the heads off foxes and throw them into their neighbor’s back garden.
“I’ve been offered a promotion, to the position of office manager,” I said. “Do you think I should accept?”
He stopped chomping and took another slurp of his drink.
“That’s brilliant, Eleanor,” he said, smiling. “What’s stopping you?”
I had a nibble of my scone—it was unexpectedly delicious, much nicer than the ones you get in Tesco. I never thought I’d find myself thinking that about anything.
“Well,” I said, “on the plus side, I would get paid more money. Not a huge amount more, but still . . . enough to allow me to upgrade on certain items. On the other hand, it would entail more work and more responsibility. And the office is largely staffed by shirkers and idiots, Raymond. Managing them and their workloads would be quite a challenge, I can assure you.”
He snorted with laughter, then coughed—it appeared that his cola had gone down the wrong way.
“I see your point,” he said. “What it boils down to is, is the extra money worth the extra hassle?”
“Quite,” I said, “you’ve summarized my dilemma very neatly.”
He paused, chomped some more.
“What’s your game plan, Eleanor?” he asked.
I had no idea what he meant, which must have been evident from my facial expression.
“What I mean is, do you plan to stay in office administration long term? If you do, it could be good—a new title and salary. When you come to take the next step, you’ll be in a much better position.”
“What do you mean, ‘next step’?” I said. The man was incapable of speaking in plain English.
“When you apply for another job, with another company, I mean,” he explained, waving his fork around. I shrank back, fearful that some microspots of spittle might reach me.
“Well, you don’t want to work at By Design forever, do you?” he said. “You’re, what, twenty-six, twenty-seven?”
“I recently turned thirty Raymond,” I said, surprisingly pleased.
“Really?” he said. “Well, you’re not planning to spend the rest of your life doing Bob’s books, are you?”
I shrugged; I genuinely hadn’t given it a moment’s thought.
“I suppose so,” I said. “What else would I do?”
“Eleanor!” he said, shocked for some reason. “You’re bright, you’re conscientious, you’re . . . very well organized,” he said. “There are lots of other jobs you could do.”
“Really?” I said, dubious.
“Sure!” he said, nodding vigorously. “I mean, you’re numerate, right? You’re well spoken. Do you know any other languages?”
I nodded. “I have a very good grasp of Latin, actually,” I said.
He pursed his whiskery little mouth. “Hmm,” he said, gesturing to the waiter, who came over and cleared our table. He returned with two coffees and an unrequested saucer of chocolate truffles.
“Enjoy, guys!” he said, placing the dish with a flourish.
I shook my head, not believing that anyone would actually say such a thing.
Raymond returned to his theme.
“There are lots of places that would be looking to hire an experienced office manager, Eleanor,” he said. “Not just graphic design—it could be a GP practice, or an IT company or, well . . . loads of places!” He shoved a truffle in his mouth. “Do you want to stay in Glasgow? You could move to Edinburgh, or London or . . . well, the world’s your oyster really, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” I said. Again, it had never crossed my mind to move cities, live somewhere else. Bath, with its fabulous Roman remains, York, London . . . it was all a bit too much.
“It occurs to me that there are many things in life that I’ve never considered doing, Raymond. I suppose I hadn’t realized that I had any control over them. That sounds ridiculous, I know,” I said.
He looked very serious, and leaned forward.
“Eleanor, it can’t have been easy for you. You don’t have any brothers or sisters, your dad’s never been around and you said that you have quite a . . . difficult relationship with your mum?”
I nodded.
“Are you seeing anyone at the moment?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
He looked expectant; bizarrely, he seemed to require a more detailed response than this. I sighed, shook my head. I spoke as slowly and clearly as I could.
“I’m seeing you right now, Raymond. You’re sitting right in front of me.”
He snorted with laughter.
“You know fine well what I mean, Eleanor.” It became apparent that I didn’t.
“Have you got a boyfriend?” he said, patiently.
I hesitated. “No. Well . . . there is someone. But no, I suppose the factually correct answer at this point in time is no, for the time being, at least.”
“So you have a lot to deal with on your own,” he said, not as a question but as a statement of fact. “You shouldn’t give yourself a hard time for not having a ten-year career plan.”
“Do you have a ten-year career plan?” I asked. It seemed unlikely.
“Nah,” he said, smiling. “Does anybody? Anybody normal, I mean?”
I shrugged. “I’m not really sure I know any normal people,” I said.
“None taken, Eleanor,” he said, laughing.
I pondered this, then realized what he meant.
“I didn’t mean any offense, Raymond,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be daft,” he said, gesturing for the bill. “So, when do you have to decide about the job? I think you should take it, for what it’s worth,” he said. “Nothing ventured, eh? Plus, I’m sure you’d make a great office manager.”
I looked at him closely, waiting for a follow-up remark or a snide comment, but, much to my surprise, neither was forthcoming. He took out his wallet and paid the bill. I protested vehemently but he flat-out refused to allow me to contribute my share.
“You only had a coffee and a scone,” he said. “You can buy me lunch when you get your first off
ice manager’s paycheck!” He smiled.
I thanked him. No one had ever bought me lunch before. It was a very pleasant feeling, to have someone incur expenditure on my behalf, voluntarily, expecting nothing in return.
The hour was up just as we got back to the office building, and so we said a brief good-bye before returning to our respective desks. This was the first day in nine years that I’d eaten lunch with a companion, and that I hadn’t done the crossword. Strangely, I felt no concern about the crossword whatsoever. Perhaps I’d do it this evening instead. Perhaps I’d simply recycle the newspaper without even attempting it. As Raymond had pointed out, the world was full of infinite possibility. I opened my e-mail and typed him a message.
Dear R, thank you very much for lunch. Kind regards, E
I supposed it made sense, in a way, shortening the names. It was obvious who was addressing whom, after all. He replied quickly:
No worries, good luck with your decision. See you Saturday! R
Life felt like it was moving very fast indeed at the moment, a whirlwind of possibilities. I hadn’t even thought about the musician this afternoon. I logged on to my computer and started researching venues for the Christmas lunch. This was going to be quite the event, I decided. It would be unlike any other Christmas lunch. It would be important to eschew cliché and precedent. I would do something different, something that would surprise and delight my co-workers, subvert their expectations. It wouldn’t be easy. One thing I knew for certain was this: Bob’s ten-pound budget would be the basis of the event, and no one would need to contribute further. I still resented all the monetary payments I’d been forced to make over the years to have a terrible time in a terrible place with terrible people on the last Friday before the twenty-fifth of December.
After all, how hard could it be? Raymond had really been most encouraging over lunch. If I could perform scansion on the Aeneid, if I could build a macro in an Excel spreadsheet, if I could spend the last nine birthdays and Christmases and New Year’s Eves alone, then I’m sure I could manage to organize a delightful festive lunch for thirty people on a budget of ten pounds per capita.
20
Saturday morning passed in a blur of household chores. I’d started wearing rubber gloves to protect my hands, and, although unsightly, they were helping. The ugliness didn’t matter—after all, there was no one to see me.
Gathering up the detritus of the previous evening, I noticed that I had failed to consume all of my vodka allocation; the best part of a half bottle of Smirnoff was extant. Mindful of my gauche faux pas at Laura’s party, I put it in a Tesco carrier bag to present to Keith tonight. I pondered what else I should take for him. Flowers seemed wrong; they’re a love token, after all. I looked in the fridge, and popped a packet of cheese slices into the bag. All men like cheese.
I arrived five minutes early at the train station nearest to the party venue. Mirabile dictu, Raymond was already there! He waved at me and I waved back. We set off toward the golf club. Raymond walked quickly, and I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to keep pace with him in my new boots. I noticed him glance at me, and then he slowed his steps to match mine. I realized that such small gestures—the way his mother had made me a cup of tea after our meal without asking, remembering that I didn’t take sugar, the way Laura had placed two little biscuits on the saucer when she brought me coffee in the salon—such things could mean so much. I wondered how it would feel to perform such simple deeds for other people. I couldn’t remember. I had done such things in the past, tried to be kind, tried to take care, I knew that I had, but that was before. I tried, and I had failed, and all was lost to me afterward. I had no one to blame but myself.
It was quiet out in the suburbs; the views were open, with no tenements or high-rise blocks to obscure the distant hills. The light was soft and gentle—summer was drifitng ever onward and the evening seemed delicate, fragile. We walked in silence, the kind that you didn’t feel the need to fill.
I was almost sad when we arrived at the squat, white clubhouse. It was halfway to dark by then, with both a moon and a sun sitting high in a sky that was sugar almond pink and shot with gold. The birds were singing valiantly against the coming night, swooping over the greens in long, drunken loops. The air was grassy, with a hint of flowers and earth, and the warm, sweet outbreath of the day sighed gently into our hair and over our skin. I felt like asking Raymond whether we should keep walking, walk over the rolling greens, keep walking till the birds fell silent in their bowers and we could see only by starlight. It almost felt like he might suggest it himself.
The front door to the clubhouse burst open and three children came running out, laughing at the tops of their voices, one wielding a plastic sword.
“Here we are, then,” said Raymond, softly.
It was an odd venue for a social gathering. The corridors were lined with notice boards, all pinned with impenetrable messages about Ladders and Tee Times. A wooden panel at the end of the entrance hall bore a long list of men’s names in golden letters, starting in 1924 and ending, this year, somewhat improbably, with a Dr. Terry Berry. The décor was a discomfiting mix of institutional (a look with which I’m very familiar) and outdated family home—nasty patterned curtains, hard-wearing floors, dusty dried flower arrangements.
When we walked into the function suite, we were met with a wall of sound; a mobile discotheque had been set up and the floor was already packed with dancers, ages ranging from five to eighty, all illuminated randomly by some unimpressive colored lights. The dancers seemed to be pretending to ride a horse in time to the music. I looked up at Raymond, very much out of my depth.
“Christ,” he said, “I need a drink.”
I followed him gratefully to the bar. The prices were gratifyingly low, and I drank my Magners quite fast, comfortable in the knowledge that I’d brought enough money for several more, although Raymond had, despite my protests, purchased this one. We found a table as far away from the source of the noise as possible.
“Family dos,” Raymond said, shaking his head. “It’s bad enough when it’s your own family; when it’s someone else’s . . .”
I looked around. I had no prior experience of such events, and the main thing that struck me was disparity; age range, social class and the sartorial choices made by the guests.
“You can choose your friends . . .” Raymond said, toasting me with his pint glass.
“But you can’t choose your family!” I replied, delighted to be in a position to complete the well-known phrase. It was only a quick crossword clue, not a cryptic one, but still.
“This is exactly like my dad’s fiftieth, Mum’s sixtieth, my sister’s wedding,” Raymond said. “A shite DJ, overexcited kids high on sugar, people who haven’t seen each other for years catching up and pretending they like each other. Bet you anything there’ll be a buffet with vol-au-vents, and a fight in the car park at closing time.”
I was intrigued.
“But surely it must be fun?” I said. “Catching up with family? All those people, pleased to see you, interested in your life?” He looked at me carefully.
“D’you know what, Eleanor? It is. I’m just being a grumpy bastard—sorry.” He finished his pint. “Same again?” he said. I nodded, and then remembered.
“No, no, it’s my turn,” I said. “Will you have the same again?”
He smiled.
“That’d be great. Thanks, Eleanor.”
I picked up my shopper and made my way to the bar. I caught Sammy’s eye en route—he was sitting in an armchair surrounded by friends and family members, as usual. I went over.
“Eleanor, love!” he said. “How are you? Great party, eh?”
I nodded.
“I can’t believe my wee boy’s forty. It seems like yesterday he was off to school for his first day. You should see the photo—he’s got no front teeth, the wee scamp! And look at him now.”
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He pointed across the room to where Keith was standing with his wife, their arms round one another’s waists, laughing at something an older man was saying.
“That’s all you ever want for your kids: for them to be happy. I just wish my Jean was here to see it . . .”
I pondered this. Was that what people wanted for their children, for them to be happy? It certainly sounded plausible. I asked Sammy if I could purchase a drink for him, although he did, to my inexpert eye, already seem somewhat intoxicated.
“You’re fine, hen,” he said, “I’ve already got these waiting for me!”
The table was covered with short glasses of amber liquid. I said I’d see him again later and went to the bar.
There was quite a queue, but I was enjoying the atmosphere. Blessed relief—the DJ was taking a break, and I could see him over in the corner, swigging from a can and talking morosely into his mobile telephone. There was a background hum of noise, male and female voices and a lot of laughter. The children seemed to have multiplied, and had gravitated toward one another in order to form a merry band of mischief makers. It was clear that the adults were all occupied with the party, so they could run and whoop and chase each other with unsupervised abandon. I smiled at them, envied them slightly.
All of the people in the room seemed to take so much for granted: that they would be invited to social events, that they would have friends and family to talk to, that they would fall in love, be loved in return, perhaps create a family of their own. How would I celebrate my own fortieth birthday? I wondered. I hoped I would have people in my life to mark the occasion with me when the time came. Perhaps the musician, the light of my new life? One thing was certain, however: I would not, under any circumstances, be celebrating in a golf club.
When I returned to our table, it was empty. I put Raymond’s pint down and sipped my Magners. I supposed he’d found someone more interesting to talk to. I sat and watched the dancing—the DJ was back behind the decks, and had selected a cacophonous racket from a silver box of records, something about a man after midnight. I allowed my mind to wander. I’ve found this to be a very effective way of passing the time; you take a situation or a person and start to imagine nice things that might happen. You can make anything happen, anything at all, inside a daydream.