Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely - Gail Honeyman Page 0,65
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.