- •In those days, I don’t think what the boys did amongst themselves never let me go
- •It was well into October by then, but the sun was out that day and I decided I could just about make out I’d gone strolling aimlessly down there and happened to come across Tommy.
- •Very nice there.”
- •I did, though, talk to Tommy about it a couple of years later.
- •I was holding something called Twenty Classic Dance Tunes.
- •I think in the end we must have absorbed quite a lot of information, because I remember, around that age, a marked
- •It wasn’t such a bad gash, and though he was sent to Crow Face to have it seen to, he was back almost straight away kazuo ishiguro
- •I could hear Tommy complaining that Crow Face hadn’t warned him of anything of that sort, but Christopher shrugged and said: “She thought you knew, of course. Everyone knows.” never let me go
- •I realise this may sound like I was getting obsessive, but I remember I also spent a lot of time re-reading passages from kazuo ishiguro
- •I shrugged, as though to say: “So what?” And that’s all there was to it. But afterwards I found myself thinking a lot about it.
- •I waited but Tommy gave no response, and again I felt something like panic coming over me. I leaned forward and said:
- •I never got to assess what kind of impact my talk with Tommy had had, because it was the very next day the news broke. It was midway through the morning and we’d been in kazuo ishiguro
- •It wasn’t obvious, but the longer we kept looking, the more it seemed he had something. The woman was around fifty, and had kept her figure pretty well. Her hair was darker than Ruth’s—
- •I laughed and punched his arm. He looked puzzled so I said:
- •Imaginary animals? What’s up with you?” But I didn’t. I just looked at him cautiously and kept saying: “That sounds really good, Tommy.”
- •I’d come down the path in a dreamy mood, reading off names on the stones, when I saw not only Ruth, but Tommy, on the bench under the willow.
- •It was just the way she said it, suddenly so false even an onlooker, if there’d been one, would have seen through it. I sighed with irritation and said:
- •I shrugged. “I’ve thought about it. But I’m not sure it’s such a great idea.”
- •In front of us there was open marshland as far as we could see.
- •I know it’s not supposed to work that way, but I reckon that’s what it was. Didn’t mind really. I’m a pretty good donor, but I was a lousy carer.”
- •I was so thrown by this, all I could find to say was a rather limp: “Forgive you for what?”
- •I was leaning on the steering wheel, so couldn’t see Tommy at all. He made a kind of puzzled humming sound, but didn’t say anything.
- •I’d stopped sobbing by now and started the engine. “That’s enough of all this,” I said. “We’ve got to get Tommy back. Then we need to be getting back ourselves.”
- •It was never far from Ruth’s mind, and that’s why, that very last time I saw her, even though she wasn’t able to speak, I knew what it was she wanted to say to me.
- •I stayed beside her like that for as long as they let me, three hours, maybe longer. And as I say, for almost all of that time, she never let me go
- •It had been an unusually busy period for
- •It’s just a bit of countryside.”
- •If she’d asked this in a certain way, like the whole idea was completely crazy, then I’m sure I’d have felt pretty devastated.
- •I didn’t know what to say, so just replied: “No, no.”
- •I thought she was going to leave it at that, so I asked: “Miss Emily, if it’s all right, we’d like to know about it, about what happened with Miss Lucy.”
- •In many ways we fooled you. I suppose you could even call it that.
- •I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was because I knew the visit would have to finish pretty soon; maybe I was getting curious to know how exactly Miss Emily and Madame felt never let me go
- •I’ve heard it once or twice since then. On the radio, on the television. And it’s taken me back to that little girl, dancing by herself.”
- •I’d spoken to Madame, but I could sense Tommy shifting next to me, and was aware of the texture of his clothes, of everything about him. Then Madame said:
- •In the few seconds after he said this, I realised I wasn’t surprised by it at all; that in some funny way I’d been waiting for it. But I was angry all the same and didn’t say anything.
- •It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives.
- •I remember the few weeks that came after that—the last few weeks before the new carer took over—as being never let me go
It’s just a bit of countryside.”
“No, the pond’s behind you.” Tommy seemed surprisingly irritated. “You must be able to remember. If you’re round the back with the pond behind you, and you’re looking over towards the North Playing Field . . .”
We went silent again because we could hear voices somewhere in the house. It sounded like a man’s voice, maybe coming from upstairs. Then we heard what was definitely Madame’s voice coming down the stairs, saying: “Yes, you’re quite right. Quite right.”
We waited for Madame to come in, but her footsteps went past the door and to the back of the house. It flashed through my mind she was going to prepare tea and scones and bring it all in on KAZUO ISHIGURO
a trolley, but then I decided that was rubbish, that she’d just as likely forgotten about us, and now she’d suddenly remember, come in and tell us to leave. Then a gruff male voice called something from upstairs, so muffled it might have been two floors up. Madame’s footsteps came back into the hallway, then she called up: “I’ve told you what to do. Just do as I explained.” Tommy and I waited several more minutes. Then the wall at the back of the room began to move. I saw almost immediately it wasn’t really a wall, but a pair of sliding doors which you could use to section off the front half of what was otherwise one long room. Madame had rolled back the doors just part of the way, and she was now standing there staring at us. I tried to see past her, but it was just darkness. I thought maybe she was waiting for us to explain why we were there, but in the end, she said:
“You told me you were Kathy H. and Tommy D. Am I correct? And you were at Hailsham how long ago?” I told her, but there was no way of telling if she remembered us or not. She just went on standing there at the threshold, as though hesitating to come in. But now Tommy spoke again:
“We don’t want to keep you long. But there’s something we have to talk to you about.”
NEVER LET ME GO
“So you say. Well then. You’d better make yourselves comfortable.”
She reached out and put her hands on the backs of two matching armchairs just in front of her. There was something odd about her manner, like she hadn’t really invited us to sit down. I felt that if we did as she was suggesting and sat on those chairs, she’d just go on standing behind us, not even taking her hands away from the backs. But when we made a move towards her, she too came forwards, and—perhaps I imagined it—tucked her shoulders in tightly as she passed between us. When we turned to sit down, she was over by the windows, in front of the heavy velvet curtains, holding us in a glare, like we were in a class and she was a teacher. At least, that’s the way it looked to me at that moment. Tommy, afterwards, said he thought she was about to burst into song, and that those curtains behind her would open, and instead of the street and the flat grassy expanse leading to the seafront, there’d be this big stage set, like the ones we’d had at Hailsham, with even a chorus line to back her up. It was funny, when he said that afterwards, and I could see her again then, hands clasped, elbows out, sure enough like she was getting ready to sing. But I doubt if Tommy was really thinking anything like that at the time. I remember noticing how tense he’d got, and worrying KAZUO ISHIGURO
he’d blurt out something completely daft. That was why, when she asked us, not unkindly, what it was we wanted, I stepped in quickly.
It probably came out pretty muddled at first, but after a while, as I became more confident she’d hear me out, I calmed down and got a lot clearer. I’d been turning over in my mind for weeks and weeks just what I’d say to her. I’d gone over it during those long car journeys, and while sitting at quiet tables in service-station cafés. It had seemed so difficult then, and I’d eventually resorted to a plan: I’d memorised word for word a few key lines, then drawn a mental map of how I’d go from one point to the next. But now she was there in front of me, most of what I’d prepared seemed either unnecessary or completely wrong. The strange thing was—and Tommy agreed when we discussed it afterwards—
although at Hailsham she’d been like this hostile stranger from the outside, now that we were facing her again, even though she hadn’t said or done anything to suggest any warmth towards us, Madame now appeared to me like an intimate, someone much closer to us than anyone new we’d met over the recent years.
That’s why suddenly all the things I’d been preparing in my head just went, and I spoke to her honestly and simply, almost as I might have done years ago to a guardian. I told her what we’d NEVER LET ME GO
heard, the rumours about Hailsham students and deferrals; how we realised the rumours might not be accurate, and that we weren’t banking on anything.
“And even if it is true,” I said, “we know you must get tired of it, all these couples coming to you, claiming to be in love.
Tommy and me, we never would have come and bothered you if we weren’t really sure.”
“Sure?” It was the first time she’d spoken for ages and we both jolted back a bit in surprise. “You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? So you are in love. Deeply in love. Is that what you’re saying to me?”
Her voice sounded almost sarcastic, but then I saw, with a kind of shock, little tears in her eyes as she looked from one to the other of us.
“You believe this? That you’re deeply in love? And therefore you’ve come to me for this . . . this deferral? Why? Why did you come to me?”