Expected Guests
By Eleanor Grant
*
It is mornings like these, ones where the windows bang shut or cannot open wide enough, where the dog nips at her feet to be let out of doors, that she feels the postman might finally pay her a visit.
Sometimes, she will get a sense of the pre-emptive. She will lie with the blinds half-closed, the moon hung low in the sky like someone has dropped it by mistake and let it roll into a corner, forgotten. She will find herself awake without the artificiality of an alarm, allow the sun to travel the length of her bare legs, and rest on the spread of her back if she is face down to a pillow. She will open the cupboard doors in the kitchen and pull out a set of cutlery, a plate from the top shelf, the special kind with the floral pattern on the rim that seems to make each mouthful taste better. She will sweep her hair up and out of her face as if to see better and steal a glance at the door, watchful eyes peering through the front window. She will wait to hear a sweep of post hit the striped doormat over the chink of knife and fork on her plate, for the dog to come bounding towards it in surprise, but she will watch the long hand of the clock on the wall wave goodbye to the hour past before she admits defeat. She will wait for the dog to trip-trap through the space beneath her chair and look up at her with expectant eyes, tail a steady thump against the floorboards. By ten past she will realise all hope is lost, and any kind of promise that the day might have held is left hanging in the silence by the door, the naked mat by its feet. She will wait for a knock that never comes, a guest that never arrives, and watch the morning move towards the warm slump of afternoon without a single inkling to suggest that she lives here, in this house.
It is never expected, but nevertheless, it is always longed for.
His consistency is what is unnerving. Every other neighbour of hers – the Mr and Mrs to the side, the older and newly-made Ms to the back, a Mr with the occasional Miss who makes an early-morning departure across the road – receives their post at nine o’clock sharp Monday to Friday. He works counterclockwise, littering the length of the street with newspapers, newsletters, pamphlets for political parties, and bills with increasingly threatening notices (Final warning! See inside). His cart trundles behind him, a rolling red crate full of surprises. Little dogs yap when he rings the doorbell, bigger ones growl, snatching at the hand that shoots through the letterbox. He brings treats for the few who haven’t taken the liberty of clamping down on his fingers, running a hand through the soft curls by their bellies. Some cats scamper up the bay trees that line the street when they see him coming, others stretch out on the front porch, pointing the way ahead with an indifferent paw. Mothers materialise in dressing gowns to receive packages sealed in brown tape, babies resting on hips, smaller children tugging on their sleeves with entitled pouts. They offer hurried lipstick-less kisses for husbands on their way out of the house with roughly shaven jaws, toothpaste stains on ironed shirts, the smell of aftershave following them to the car. Breakfast menus are different at every door – the first cigarette of the day stood by the garden fence with coffee in hand at one house, a full-blown fry-up weighing down the table at another. All of them appear in blue, green and red doorways with the last forkful of gratitude scraped from their plates. Thanks a lot. Cheers! See you later. His visits, the length of which can nearly be measured by the time it takes for the father next door to finish the school run, are so embedded in the everyday that the neighbours often find themselves asking Did anything come for me while I was out? knowing it almost certainly did. They expect him again the next day, or perhaps the day after that, to give another half-hearted signature, to accept another parcel, to stand tall on the doorstep and make light conversation.
She does not.
At first, she thought it might be because she was a new arrival to the street. It was a dramatic move, granted, one that took her cross-country with the backseat of her car piled so high with things that seeing out of the rear-view mirror was near impossible. Settling into the house was difficult, inducing the kind of anxiety that had her tearing the skin by her thumbs to shreds, pulling at hangnails that ought to be left well enough alone. There had been nights where she had deliberated long and hard over her decision and then, for fear she would move somewhere else entirely if she continued any longer, abandoned all attempt and turned over on her side. But she was resolute, this time would be different. Permanent. After all, there was nothing wrong with the last place she had tried to call home. The last word had just never sat right.
So she set about making this one her own, for whatever reason. In the newspaper clipping she had seen the house advertised in, there was nothing particularly striking about it. It was compact, purpose built, designed for a family of three. Perhaps the only feature of note was the front lawn which was remarkably well-kept, borders packed with purple buddleia and lavender bushes, the kind that butterflies and bumblebees liked to make use of in the warmer months. The last owner, she was told, was much older and suffered from joint pain as a result of so many years spent crouched down in the earth with a trowel in hand. The thought of maintenance, and dirt packed beneath her nails, was an overwhelming one but it was a task she thought she might be up to. She even went out to a local market and bought a multitude of flowers, mostly sweet peas, which sat on the garden bench waiting to be planted. What she failed to realise, however, was that it was late October and that stranded sweet peas in plastic pots are no match for coughing fits of rain and wind. But somehow, when she found the mounds of soil and petals strewn across the lawn on one particularly foul morning, it didn’t even matter. Her intentions were good, and it felt a fitting tribute to the previous owner and a mark of her own on a house that she wasn’t quite sure of.
She waited a few weeks for the new paint smell to wear off, for the joiner to pull down the remnants of the last owner’s handiwork, for the plasterer to smooth over the gaping holes that the joiner had left. A new lick of colour on the walls, a fresh set of tiles in the bathroom, a few chosen photos on the walls that she deemed appropriate reminders of her life before then. Clean sheets on the double bed, a woven basket and cushion for the dog in the kitchen. She slept better, answered the phone in a voice that sounded familiar and felt her mouth form something of a smile more often than not. This new house, under her name, her ownership, was all her own. All she needed now was proof of it.
And so she waited. The first time she saw him was one of the earliest morning walks she had taken with the dog, huffing in the cold with rounded shoulders. It was the beginning of November, and the sky was still covered in a splattering of stars as if to congratulate itself on its misery. The night before had been dreadful, lashings of rain hitting the windows in all directions. The dog had cried from the early hours, pacing the landing until she appeared with the lead to take him outside. The two were stopped by the last house on the street, his leg cocked on a comically shaped shrub, when the postman appeared, red cart in hand, just as first light began to creep above the horizon. His presence on the street which had been occupied by her and the dog just moments before was shocking to her. The cap he wore – and the dark blue, stripped back uniform – made it impossible for her to make out a prominent feature, mark one out as unique. She watched as he made his way up each set of steps and back, lifting brass knockers and pressing down on doorbells. Without realising it, she had become fixed on the spot, the dog pulling so hard on the lead that his collar looked as though it might slip above his scruff and off his body entirely. She was stuck, waiting for the postman to notice the unfamiliar car parked on the street, to take his place between the buddleia on either side of the door and reach inside his cart with something just for her. A letter from far away, a package from a caring relative she knew she still had. Something that would put her name to the walls she resided within, confirm everything she already knew, that this house was hers and hers alone. Heart struck by something implacable, with a hand wound tight around the dog’s lead, she fixed her eyes on that figure, imploring him to look up, acknowledge her presence on the street. Meet her desperate stare with some semblance of recognition. Oh, it’s you.
She dropped the lead and the dog yapped, revelling in his newfound freedom. All the adrenaline that had previously coursed through her reached a flat line, pooling in the bottom of her shoes, and spilling over onto the pavement.
But without as much as a passing glance thrown back at the door, the postman turned the corner.
*
In the days which followed her first sighting, dark afternoons where the dog came in despondent, drenched from the rain with filthy earth-stained paws, she tried to convince herself that his diversion was a mistake. She thought it might be that the post was only delivered on certain days of the week, and only at specific times. The proud red post-box on the corner of the street told her that if she posted something, it would be picked up before nine and sent out for delivery, so she took it at its word. Perhaps the postman was unaware that somebody new had taken up residence, or perhaps nothing had arrived for her just yet. It was not impossible. She knew very well how easily things could be lost in translation, in the process of getting from one place to another.
But the next morning, when she stood by that very same shrub, at the very same time, hands balled into fists in the depths of her coat pockets, she witnessed the very same scene of disregard play out before her eyes. As the autumn chill turned to winter frost, she watched him tread from doorstep to doorstep, each footstep carefully placed. She looked out from every window in her house, as if her being in a different room would force him to make an about-turn, prompt a letter to appear in the depths of his cart. No such luck. There were mornings when she was so desperate to snatch a glimpse of him and his cart that she hovered by the back door, heart hammering beneath her robe as he engaged in pleasantries with Mrs So and So next door (Dire morning! Isn’t it just?). Days where she overslept – normally Saturday mornings, the kind spent nursing the headache instigated by Friday evenings – sent her rushing down the stairs in a panic when she realised how she had forgotten herself, that she had missed the incessant chatter which permeated her open window. His absence on these occasions was somehow less painful than his presence. She tried not to make a habit of it, but she found that waking up with a dry mouth and an ache spread far behind her eyes was worth it. Knowing he had already come and gone, that she would not have to dither and play pretend, was something of a comfort to her.
She began to resent her neighbours, most of whom she had hardly even spoken to, let alone come close to calling a friend. She knew nobody she was surrounded by thought anything of the visitor they received every morning, one who she so desperately wished to interact with. No other person on the street strained their ears in the same way she did, listened for the door with a grip so tight they might break the porcelain cup they held between their hands. Once they turned their backs, closed the door, and twisted the key in the lock, that was it for another day, and she envied them for it.
As the weeks went by, time appeared to catch on her doorstep, to trip upwards and be sent sprawling across the threshold and into the interior of the house. She watched him walk past her house with his glaring red cart more times than she cared to remember, without ever seeing his face, without ever meeting his eyes. What bothered her most was not that he seemed to actively avoid her house; he acted as though it was not there at all. It was as if its foundations were not rooted below ground, as if her light fixtures were somehow not connected to the same looming pylons as the rest of the street. Never once did he glance back at the door, double take with a clutching motion and scramble in his cart, asking himself how he could possibly have been so stupid, so careless. There were nights where, on the edge of sleep, she tried to picture what the inside of the post office might look like, crammed full of letters and boxes with her name stamped, embossed, and handwritten on them. It was an amusing image, one which, bizarrely, put her at ease. She imagined there would be too much mail to ever fit into his cart, and that someone else in an obscenely red van might have to complete the task instead.
But there were also nights, much mistier, moonlit nights, where she found herself lingering on the unknown. Turning towards the window, blinds undulating in the draught, she thought it strange how she had never looked upon his face, never met his eyes. She wondered what colour they might be, whether they were the kind of blue that had a warmth to them or dark and hard with something he could not speak of. Sat at the table propped up on her elbows, it was that morning she realised if he ever was to visit, it would not be enough for him to look up and at her through the front window, the unused peephole, or the rectangular letterbox. He would have to look through her.