Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

‘Yes, of course!’ I said and, on impulse, leaned across and shook her hand. ‘Your question was both reasonable and appropriate. My response, however, was not. I’m at a loss to explain it. Please accept my apologies if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable.’

She looked relieved. ‘Thank God for that, hen,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting tears in my kitchen today!’

‘Aye, it’s usually your cooking that makes me cry, Ma,’ Raymond said, and she laughed quietly. I cleared my throat.

‘Your question took me unawares, Mrs Gibbons,’ I said. ‘I never knew my father, and I know nothing about him, not even his name. Mummy is currently … let’s just say she’s hors de combat.’ I received blank looks from both of them – I was clearly not amongst Francophones. ‘I don’t ever see her, she’s … inaccessible,’ I explained. ‘We communicate once a week, but …’

‘Of course – that would make anyone sad, love, of course it would,’ she said, nodding sympathetically. ‘Everyone needs their mum now and again, doesn’t matter how old they are.’

‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘if anything, weekly contact is too much for me. Mummy and I – we’re … well, it’s complicated …’

Mrs Gibbons nodded sympathetically, wanting me to continue. I, on the other hand, knew that it was time to stop. An ice-cream van went past in the street, the chimes playing ‘Yankee Doodle’, pitched a few painful hertz below the correct notes. I recalled the words, feathers in caps and macaroni, from some deep and completely useless vault of memories.

Raymond clapped his hands together in fake bonhomie.

‘Right then, time’s marching on. Mum, go and sit down – your programme’s about to start. Eleanor, could you maybe give me a hand and bring in the washing?’

I was glad to help, glad to be moving away from Mummy-related conversation. There were various chores Mrs Gibbons needed assistance with – Raymond had elected to change the cats’ litter trays and empty the bins, so I’d certainly drawn the long straw with the laundry.

Outside, the early evening sun was weak and pale. There was a row of gardens to the right and the left, stretching off in both directions. I placed the laundry basket on the ground and took the peg bag (on which, in looping cursive, someone had helpfully stitched ‘Pegs’) and hung it on the line. The washing was dry and smelled of summer. I heard the syncopated thud of a football being kicked against a wall, and girls chanting as a skipping rope skimmed the ground. The distant chimes of the ice-cream van were now almost inaudible. Someone’s back door slammed, and a man’s voice shouted a furious reprimand at – one hoped – a dog. There was birdsong, a descant over the sounds of a television drifting through an open window. Everything felt safe, everything felt normal. How different Raymond’s life had been from mine – a proper family, a mother and a father and a sister, nestled amongst other proper families. How different it was still; every Sunday, here, this.

Back indoors, I helped Raymond swap the sheets on his mother’s bed for the clean ones I’d brought in from the line. Her bedroom was very pink and smelled of talcum powder. It was clean and nondescript – not like a hotel room, more like a bed and breakfast, I imagined. Save for a fat paperback and a packet of extra strong mints on the bedside table, there was nothing personal in the room, no clue to the owner’s personality. It struck me that, in the nicest possible way, she didn’t really have a personality; she was a mother, a kind, loving woman, about whom no one would ever say, ‘She was crazy, that Betty!’ or, ‘You’ll never guess what Betty’s done now!’ or, ‘After reviewing psychiatric reports, Betty was refused bail on grounds that she posed an extreme risk to the general public.’ She was, quite simply, a nice lady who’d raised a family and now lived quietly with her cats and grew vegetables. This was both nothing and everything.

‘Does your sister help out with your mother, Raymond?’ I asked. He was grappling with the duvet and I took it from him. There is a knack to such things. Raymond is a man without the knack. He put on the pillowcases (flowers, ruffles) instead.

‘Nah,’ he said, concentrating. ‘She’s got two kids, and they’re a bit of a handful. Mark works offshore, so she’s a single parent for weeks at a time, really. It’s not easy. It’ll be better when the kids are at school, she says.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Do you – do you enjoy being an uncle, then?’ Uncle Raymond: a somewhat unlikely role model, I felt. He shrugged.

‘Yeah, they’re good fun. There’s not much to it, to be honest; I just bung them some cash at Christmas and birthdays, take them to the park a couple of times a month. Job done.’

I would never be an aunt, of course. Probably just as well.

‘You had a lucky escape with Mum and the photo albums this time, Eleanor,’ Raymond said. ‘She’ll bore the pants off you next time about the grandkids, just you wait and see.’