“Fine,” I said. He was about to press play when I stopped him. “Raymond,” I said, “shouldn’t you be with Laura?” He looked quite taken aback.
“I saw you today,” I said, “and at Keith’s golf club birthday party.”
His face was impassive.
“She’s with her family right now, that’s how it should be,” he said, shrugging. I sensed he did not wish to speak about it further, and so I simply nodded.
“Ready?” he asked.
The film was black and white, and it was about a fat, clever man and a thin, stupid man who’d joined the Foreign Legion. They were patently unsuited to it. At one point, Raymond laughed so much that he sprayed wine all over his duvet. I choked on a sharing crisp not long afterward and he had to pause the film and thump me on the back to dislodge it. I was very disappointed when it ended, and also to see that we had eaten all the crisps and drunk most of the wine, although Raymond had had far more than me—I couldn’t drink wine as quickly as vodka or Magners drink, it seemed.
He walked unsteadily to the kitchen and returned with a big packet of peanuts.
“Fuck,” he said, “bowl.” He came back with a receptacle, into which he attempted to decant the peanuts. His aim was poor, and he began to pour them all over the coffee table. I started to laugh—it was just like Stan and Ollie—and then we were both laughing. He turned off the TV and put on some music, via another mysterious remote-controlled device. I didn’t recognize it, but it was pleasant; soft and undemanding. He chomped on a handful of peanuts.
“Eleanor,” he said, nut crumbs falling from his mouth, “can I ask you something?”
“You may certainly ask,” I said. I hoped he would swallow again before he spoke.
He looked closely at me. “What happened to your face? You don’t”—he leaned forward quickly, touched my arm over the blanket—“you definitely don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just being a nosy bastard!”
I smiled at him, and took a gulp of wine.
“I don’t mind telling you, Raymond,” I said, finding, to my surprise, that it was true—I actually wanted to tell him, now that he’d asked. He wasn’t asking out of prurience or bored curiosity—he was genuinely interested, I could tell. You generally can.
“It was in a fire,” I said, “when I was ten. A house fire.”
“Christ!” he said. “That must have been terrible.” There was a long pause, and I could almost see questions crystallizing, as though letters were emanating from his brain and forming words in the air.
“Faulty wiring? Chip pan?”
“It was started deliberately,” I said, declining to explain further.
“Fucking hell, Eleanor!” he said. “Arson?”
I sipped more velvety wine, said nothing.
“So what happened after that?” he said.
“Well,” I told him, “I mentioned before that I never knew my father. I was taken into care after the fire. Foster placements, children’s homes, back to being fostered again—I moved every eighteen months or so, I guess. I got a place at university—I was seventeen—and the council housed me in a flat. The flat I still live in.”
He looked so sad that it was making me sad too.
“Raymond,” I said, “it’s really not that unusual a story. Plenty of people grow up in far, far more challenging circumstances; it’s simply a fact of life.”
“Doesn’t make it right, though,” he said.
“I always had a bed to sleep in, food to eat, clothes and shoes to wear. I was always supervised by an adult. There are millions of children in the world who can’t say the same, unfortunately. I’m a very lucky person, when you think about it.”
He looked like he was going to cry—it must be all the wine. It does make people overly emotional, so they say. I could feel the unasked question hovering between us like a ghost. Don’t ask, don’t ask, I thought, wishing as hard as I could, crossing my fingers under the blanket.
“What about your mum, Eleanor? What happened to her?” I gulped the rest of my wine down as fast as I could.
“I’d prefer not to discuss Mummy, if that’s all right, Raymond.”
He looked surprised, and—a familiar response, this—slightly disappointed. To his credit, he didn’t pursue the topic.
“Whatever you want, Eleanor. You can talk to me anytime, you know that, don’t you?”
I nodded; I found, to my surprise, that I did.
“I mean it, Eleanor,” he said, the wine making him more earnest than usual. “We’re pals now, right?”
“Right,” I said, beaming. My first pal! Granted, he was a poorly turned out computer repairman with a range of unfortunate social habits, but still—pals! It had certainly taken me a long, long time to acquire one; I was well aware that people of my age usually had at least one or two friends. I hadn’t tried to shun them, and neither had I sought them out; it had just always been so difficult to meet like-minded people. After the fire, I never managed to find anyone who could fit the spaces that had been created inside me. I can’t complain; it was entirely my own fault, after all. And anyway, I’d moved around so much during my childhood that it was hard to keep in touch with people, even if I’d wanted to. So many foster placements, all those new schools. At university, I’d fallen in love with classics, happily devoting myself to my work. Missing a few nights out at the Union to get top marks and generous praise from my tutors had felt like a fair exchange. And, of course, for a few years, there had been Declan. He didn’t like me to socialize without him. Or, indeed, with him.
After graduating, I’d gone straight to working at Bob’s firm, and heaven knew there were no like-minded people there. Once you get used to being on your own, it becomes normal. It certainly had become so for me.
Why, now, did Raymond want to be my friend? Perhaps he was lonely too. Perhaps he felt sorry for me. Perhaps—incredible, this, but, I supposed, possible—he actually found me likable. Who knew? I turned toward him, wanting to ask why, wanting to tell him how glad I was to have finally found a friend, but his head had fallen onto his chest and his mouth was slightly open. He sprang back to life quickly, though.
“Wasn’t sleeping,” he said, “just . . . resting my eyes for a minute. It’s been a hell of a day.”
“It has,” I said, and I meant it. I slipped my kitten heels on and asked if he could call me a taxi. I was horrified to see that it was almost nine. I peered anxiously between the curtains. It was dark now. It would be safe in the taxi, though. The drivers were all checked by the police, weren’t they?
Raymond walked me down to the front of the building and opened the cab door.
“Safe home, Eleanor,” he said. “Have a good weekend. See you Monday, yeah?”
“See you Monday, Raymond,” I said, and I waved until the taxi turned the corner and I could no longer see him at the window.
24
@johnnieLrocks
Farewell Pilgrim Pioneers gig alert! Ending on a bang not a whimper. Details to follow.
#dontmissit #gigofthecentury #ditchingthedeadwood
This time, it was going to be perfect. I’d seen his tweet, and then, only hours later, my eyes locked onto the small poster in the window of the independent record shop near the office. His handsome face stopped me dead in my tracks. Two weeks’ time. A Tuesday night. Perfect. The hand of fate once again, moving us like chess pieces. I had the king in my sight.
Remembering my error from The Cuttings, I memorized the name of the venue and, as soon as I got home, booked two tickets via their website, the second one as backup in case I lost the first. Perhaps Raymond could use it, come with me; although, on reflection, perhaps not. I wouldn’t want him cramping my style. Purchasing two tickets turned out to be unnecessary, however, as it was only after the transaction was completed that I noticed the tickets were to be collected in person on the nigh
t. No matter.
After dinner and the Archers, I sat down with a pencil and a notepad and made a list of all the things I’d need to do in order to prepare. The most important thing, after securing the tickets, was to conduct a reconnaissance visit to the venue, to make sure everything would go smoothly on the night and avoid any unpleasant surprises. Here, at least, I felt Raymond could be of some assistance. We could go together to a different gig, perhaps tomorrow or the following day, and this would afford me the opportunity to scope out the setting for my forthcoming encounter with destiny.
After checking that tickets were still available for a gig scheduled for tomorrow evening, I sent an electronic message:
Dear Raymond, would you like to come to Rank Dan’s with me tomorrow night? E
He replied straightaway.
Who’s on?
What on earth did it matter? Surely Raymond could have googled this, if it was of such importance to him? I replied:
Agents of Insanity
Several minutes went by.
WTF Eleanor—didn’t know you were into that stuff? Not really my thing, TBH, but I’ll come along with you—it’s ages since I’ve been to a gig. Have you got tix?
Why, oh why, could he not type in full and proper English sentences?
Yes. Meet you there at 7pm. E
After five minutes had passed, I received the following:
Cool c u then
I had almost become inured to his illiterate way of communicating by the end of this exchange. It’s both good and bad, how humans can learn to tolerate pretty much anything, if they have to.
The following night, Raymond arrived late, as usual. He looked ridiculous—a black sweatshirt with a hood, and a denim jacket over the top. The sweatshirt had a skull on the front.
“Thought I’d try and look the part,” he said, beaming, as he stood beside me in the doorway.
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. We went in, and I collected the tickets I’d purchased online. The bar was poorly lit and, as implied by the name, utterly filthy. Loutish, unkempt people of both genders sat around in Stygian gloom, and the music from the stereo system was both unfeasibly loud and unspeakably terrible.
We went downstairs to the venue. It was already almost full. As I’d stood waiting for Raymond in the doorway, I’d noticed a procession of ridiculous-looking young people entering the premises—this, it transpired, was where they were going. We were surrounded by black—black clothes, black hair, spiked and shaved and sculpted. Black make-up on both men and women, applied in a way that Bobbi Brown would not have endorsed. There were a lot of spikes everywhere too—hair, jewelry, even on backpacks. Almost no one wore normal shoes. All Hallows’ Eve, I thought. Raymond returned from the bar with a plastic pint of beer for himself and, without having asked, something paler for me.
“Cider?” I shouted, over the din. “But, Raymond. I don’t drink cider!”
“What do you think Magners is, you daft bint?” he said, nudging me gently with his elbow.
I sipped reluctantly—it wasn’t as nice as Magners, but it would do. It was too loud to converse, so I scanned the room. The stage was small and raised only a meter or so from the floor. When I came back here, assuming Johnnie Lomond would be standing front and center, he’d be able to see me easily, even if I were forced to position myself halfway back in the crowd. Cupid does, presumably, need a tiny nudge sometimes.
The audience started making a collective animal noise and surged forward. We stayed where we were—the musicians were now on-stage and had begun to play. I put my hands to my ears, unable to believe what I was hearing. Without exaggeration, it could only be described as the cacophonous din of hell. What on earth was wrong with these people? The “singer” alternated between screaming and growling.
I couldn’t bear it a moment longer and ran upstairs, rushing outside into the street, panting and shaking my head like a dog in an attempt to rid my ears of the sound. Raymond followed shortly afterward.
“What’s wrong, Eleanor?” he said, looking concerned. “Are you OK?”
I wiped the tears from my face.
“That wasn’t music, that was . . . oh, I don’t know. The horror, Raymond! The horror!”
Raymond started to laugh, proper belly laughs (for which he was very well equipped), until he was actually bent over and struggling to breathe.
“Oh, Eleanor,” he said, wheezing. “I knew you weren’t a fan of grindcore! What the fuck were you thinking?” He started giggling again.
“I just wanted to see the venue, listen to a band,” I said. “That such sounds could exist—it’s beyond human imagining.”
Raymond had recovered himself.
“Aye, well—what is it that they say?—try everything once, except incest and morris dancing. Maybe we should add death metal to the list, eh?”
I shook my head.
“I have literally no idea what you are talking about—none of those words make any sense,” I said. I took several deep breaths, until I felt almost calm again.
“Let us retire to an inn or public house, Raymond—a quiet one—and please, allow me to buy you some beer in recompense for this wasted evening.”
“Oh, it wasn’t wasted, Eleanor,” he said, shaking his head. “Your face! This is one of the best nights out I’ve had in ages.”
He started to laugh again, and, much to my surprise, I found myself joining in. It was amusing that I had so comprehensively misunderstood the genre of music being performed. I had a lot to learn about music, I realized, and it would be important to do so in order to interact appropriately with the musician.
“Have you heard of Johnnie Lomond and the Pilgrim Pioneers?” I asked him. He shook his head. “Why?” he said. I took out my phone and navigated to the singer’s web page. Raymond scrolled down for a few moments, reading the text, then popped in his earphones and listened for a minute or two.
“Sounds shit,” he said dismissively, handing me back my phone. This from a man in a skull sweatshirt!
“Really?” I said.
“He’s got a standard-issue beard, an expensive guitar he doesn’t know how to play and a fake American accent. Trying to make out he’s from the South . . . aye, right, South Lanarkshire,” Raymond said, blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth with a smirk. I wasn’t sufficiently well informed to be able to agree or disagree, so I kept quiet. Either way, I needed to know at least a few salient facts about popular music, and, recent aberrant opinions aside, I suspected that Raymond was my best source.
“Do you know much about music, then?” I asked, as we walked toward a pub which Raymond assured me was quiet—“A proper old man’s pub,” he said, whatever that was.
“Eh, aye, I guess,” he said.
“Wonderful,” I said. “Now please: tell me everything.”
25
It was the day of the concert. Everything was ready. I looked the part. I felt the part. I would speed up time if I could, to get to tonight more quickly. I’d found a way to help me move forward at last. A way to replace a loss with a gain.
The musician. It was luck that he’d come along at precisely the right time. It was fate that, after tonight, my Eleanor pieces would finally start to fit together.
How exquisite the anticipation—a pain, a churning pain inside me. I did not know how to assuage it—I felt, instinctively, that vodka would not work. I would simply have to bear it until we met, and that was the nature of this peculiar, blissful burden. Only a little longer to wait now, a matter of hours. Tonight, I was going to meet the man whose love would change my life.
I was ready to rise from the ashes and be reborn.
Bad Days
26
I am naked, lying on the floor, looking at the underside of the table. The pale wood is unvarnished, and there is a faded stamp bearing the imprint “Made in Taiwan.” So
me important items are lined up on the tabletop—I can’t see them, but I can sense them above me. This hideous table, blue melamine top, rickety legs, the varnish scraped off in places by decades of careless use. How many kitchens has this table been in, before it found its way to me?
I imagine a hierarchy of happiness; first purchased in the 1970s, a couple would sit here, dining on meals cooked from brand-new recipe books, eating and drinking from wedding china like proper grown-ups. They’d move to the suburbs after a couple of years; the table, too small to accommodate their growing family, passes on to a cousin newly graduated and furnishing his first flat on a budget. After a few years, he moves in with his partner and rents the place out. For a decade, tenants eat here, a whole procession of them, young people mainly, sad and happy, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, lovers. They’d serve fast food here to fill a gap, or five stylish courses to seduce, carbohydrates before a run and chocolate pudding for broken hearts. Eventually, the cousin sells up and the house clearance people take the table away. It languishes in a warehouse, spiders spinning silk inside its unfashionable rounded corners, bluebottles laying eggs in the rough splinters. It’s given to another charity. They gave it to me, unloved, unwanted, irreparably damaged. Also the table.
The things are all laid out. Painkillers (twelve packets of twenty-four tablets, prescribed and carefully hoarded); bread knife (hardly used, shark’s teeth ready to bite); drain cleaner (“cuts through all blockages, even hair and grease”—also flesh and internal organs). This table, this table where I have never sat with another person and shared a bottle of wine. This kitchen, where I have never cooked for anyone but myself. Lying here on the floor, corpse-like, I can feel spiky crumbs sticking to the bare backs of my arms, my buttocks, my thighs, my heels. It is cold. I wish I were a corpse. Not long, not long now.