Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
‘That’s exactly what I was about to say. I lost track of it a while ago.’
My eyes were on the road, so I wasn’t sure if he’d addressed me or Ruth. In any case, Ruth stopped talking and slowly turned back in her seat until she was facing the front again. She didn’t seem particularly upset, but the smile had gone, and her eyes looked far away, fixed somewhere on the sky ahead of us. But I have to be honest: at that instant I wasn’t really thinking about Ruth. My heart had done a little leap, because in a single stroke, with that little laugh of agreement, it felt as though Tommy and I had come close together again after all the years.
I found the turning we needed around twenty minutes after we’d set off from the Kingsfield. We went down a narrow curving road shrouded by hedges, and parked beside a clump of sycamores. I led the way to where the woods began, but then, faced with three distinct paths through the trees, had to stop to consult the sheet of directions I’d brought with me. While I stood there trying to decipher the person’s handwriting, I was suddenly conscious of Ruth and Tommy standing behind me, not talking, waiting almost like children to be told which way to go.
We entered the woods, and though it was pretty easy walking, I noticed Ruth’s breath coming less and less easily. Tommy, by contrast, didn’t seem to be experiencing any difficulty, though there was a hint of a limp in his gait. Then we came to a barbed wire fence, which was tilted and rusted, the wire itself yanked all over the place. When Ruth saw it, she came to an abrupt halt.
‘Oh no,’ she said, anxiously. Then she turned to me: ‘You didn’t say anything about this. You didn’t say we had to get past barbed wire!’
‘It’s not going to be difficult,’ I said. ‘We can go under it. We just have to hold it for each other.’
But Ruth looked really upset and didn’t move. And it was then, as she stood there, her shoulders rising and falling with her breathing, that Tommy seemed to become aware for the first time just how frail she was. Maybe he’d noticed before, and hadn’t wanted to take it in. But now he stared at her for a good few seconds. Then I think what happened next – though of course I can’t know for certain – was that the both of us, Tommy and I, we remembered what had happened in the car, when we’d more or less ganged up on her. And almost as an instinct, we both went to her. I took an arm, Tommy supported her elbow on the other side, and we began gently guiding her towards the fence.
I let go of Ruth only to pass through the fence myself. Then I held up the wire as high as I could, and Tommy and I both helped her through. It wasn’t so difficult for her in the end: it was more a confidence thing, and with us there for support, she seemed to lose her fear of the fence. On the other side, she actually made a go of helping me hold up the wire for Tommy. He came through without any bother, and Ruth said to him:
‘It’s only bending down like that. I’m sometimes not so clever at it.’
Tommy was looking sheepish, and I wondered if he was embarrassed by what had just happened, or if he was remembering again our ganging up on Ruth in the car. He nodded towards the trees in front of us and said:
‘I suppose it’s through that way. Is that right, Kath?’
I glanced at my sheet and began to lead the way again. Further into the trees, it grew quite dark and the ground became more and more marshy.
‘Hope we don’t get lost,’ I heard Ruth say to Tommy with a laugh, but I could see a clearing not far away. And now with time to reflect, I realised why I was so bothered by what had happened in the car. It wasn’t simply that we’d ganged up on Ruth: it was the way she’d just taken it. In the old days, it was inconceivable she’d have let something like that happen without striking back. As this point sunk in, I paused on the path, waited for Ruth and Tommy to catch up, and put my arm around Ruth’s shoulders.
This didn’t seem so soppy; it just looked like carer stuff, because by now there was something uncertain about her walk, and I wondered if I’d badly underestimated how weak she still was. Her breathing was getting quite laboured, and as we walked together, she’d now and then lurch into me. But then we were through the trees and into the clearing, and we could see the boat.
Actually, we hadn’t really stepped into a clearing: it was more that the thin woods we’d come through had ended, and now in front of us there was open marshland as far as we could see. The pale sky looked vast and you could see it reflected every so often in the patches of water breaking up the land. Not so long ago, the woods must have extended further, because you could see here and there ghostly dead trunks poking out of the soil, most of them broken off only a few feet up. And beyond the dead trunks, maybe sixty yards away, was the boat, sitting beached in the marshes under the weak sun.
‘Oh, it’s just like my friend said it was,’ Ruth said. ‘It’s really beautiful.’
We were surrounded by silence and when we started to move towards the boat, you could hear the squelch under our shoes. Before long I noticed my feet sinking beneath the tufts of grass, and called out: ‘Okay, this is as far as we can go.’
The other two, who were behind me, raised no objection, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Tommy was again holding Ruth by the arm. It was clear, though, this was just to steady her. I took long strides to the nearest dead tree trunk, where the soil was firmer, and held onto it for balance. Following my example, Tommy and Ruth made their way to another tree trunk, hollow and more emaciated than mine, a short way behind to my left. They perched on either side of it and seemed to settle. Then we gazed at the beached boat. I could now see how its paint was cracking, and how the timber frames of the little cabin were crumbling away. It had once been painted a sky blue, but now looked almost white under the sky.
‘I wonder how it got here,’ I said. I’d raised my voice to let it get to the others and had expected an echo. But the sound was surprisingly close, like I was in a carpeted room.
Then I heard Tommy say behind me: ‘Maybe this is what Hailsham looks like now. Do you think?’
‘Why would it look like this?’ Ruth sounded genuinely puzzled. ‘It wouldn’t turn into marshland just because it’s closed.’
‘I suppose not. Wasn’t thinking. But I always see Hailsham being like this now. No logic to it. In fact, this is pretty close to the picture in my head. Except there’s no boat, of course. It wouldn’t be so bad, if it’s like this now.’
‘That’s funny,’ Ruth said, ‘because I was having this dream the other morning. I was dreaming I was up in Room 14. I knew the whole place had been shut down, but there I was, in Room 14, and I was looking out of the window and everything outside was flooded. Just like a giant lake. And I could see rubbish floating by under my window, empty drinks cartons, everything. But there wasn’t any sense of panic or anything like that. It was nice and tranquil, just like it is here. I knew I wasn’t in any danger, that it was only like that because it had closed down.’
‘You know,’ Tommy said, ‘Meg B. was at our centre for a while. She’s left now, gone up north somewhere for her third donation. I never heard how she got on. Have either of you heard?’
I shook my head, and when I didn’t hear Ruth say anything, turned to look at her. At first I thought she was still staring at the boat, but then I saw her gaze was on the vapour trail of a plane in the far distance, climbing slowly into the sky. Then she said:
‘I’ll tell you something I heard. I heard about Chrissie. I heard she completed during her second donation.’
‘I heard that as well,’ said Tommy. ‘It must be right. I heard exactly the same. A shame. Only her second as well. Glad that didn’t happen to me.’
‘I think it happens much more than they ever tell us,’ Ruth said. ‘My carer over there. She probably knows that’s right. But she won’t say.’
‘There’s no big conspiracy about it,’ I said, turning back to the boat. ‘Sometimes it happens. It was really sad about Chrissie. But that’s not common. They’re really careful these days.’
‘I bet it happens much more than they
‘I ran into Rodney once,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t so long after Chrissie completed. I saw him in this clinic, up in North Wales. He was doing okay.’
‘I bet he was cut up about Chrissie though,’ said Ruth. Then to Tommy: ‘They don’t tell you the half of it, you see?’
‘Actually,’ I said, ‘he wasn’t too bad about it. He was sad, obviously. But he was okay. They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years anyway. He said he thought Chrissie wouldn’t have minded too much. And I suppose he should know.’
‘Why would he know?’ Ruth said. ‘How could he possibly know what Chrissie would have felt? What she would have wanted? It wasn’t him on that table, trying to cling onto life. How would he know?’
This flash of anger was more like the old Ruth, and made me turn to her again. Maybe it was just the glare in her eyes, but she seemed to be looking back at me with a hard, stern expression.
‘It can’t be good,’ Tommy said. ‘Completing at the second donation. Can’t be good.’
‘I can’t believe Rodney was okay about it,’ Ruth said. ‘You only spoke to him for a few minutes. How can you tell anything from that?’
‘Yeah,’ said Tommy, ‘but if like Kath says, they’d already split up …’
‘That wouldn’t make any difference,’ Ruth cut in. ‘In some ways that might have made it worse.’
‘I’ve seen a lot of people in Rodney’s position,’ I said. ‘They do come to terms with it.’
‘How would you know?’ said Ruth. ‘How could you possibly know? You’re still a carer.’
‘I get to see a lot as a carer. An awful lot.’
‘She wouldn’t know, would she, Tommy? Not what it’s really like.’
For a moment we were both looking at Tommy, but he just went on gazing at the boat. Then he said:
‘There was this guy, at my centre. Always worried he wouldn’t make it past his second. Used to say he could feel it in his bones. But it all turned out fine. He’s just come through his third now, and he’s completely all right.’ He put up a hand to shield his eyes. ‘I wasn’t much good as a carer. Never learnt to drive even. I think that’s why the notice for my first came so early. 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.’
No one spoke for a while. Then Ruth said, her voice quieter now:
‘I think I was a pretty decent carer. But five years felt about enough for me. I was like you, Tommy. I was pretty much ready when I became a donor. It felt right. After all, it’s what we’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?’
I wasn’t sure if she expected me to respond to this. She hadn’t said it in any obviously leading way, and it’s perfectly possible this was a statement she’d come out with just out of habit – it was the sort of thing you hear donors say to each other all the time. When I turned to them again, Tommy still had his hand up to shade his eyes.
‘Pity we can’t go closer to the boat,’ he said. ‘One day when it’s drier, maybe we could come back.’
‘I’m glad to have seen it,’ Ruth said, softly. ‘It’s really nice. But I think I want to go back now. This wind’s quite chilly.’
‘At least we’ve seen it now,’ Tommy said.
*
We chatted much more freely on our walk back to the car than on the way out. Ruth and Tommy were comparing notes on their centres – the food, the towels, that kind of thing – and I was always part of the conversation because they kept asking me about other centres, if this or that was normal. Ruth’s walk was much steadier now and when we came to the fence, and I held up the wire, she hardly hesitated.
We got in the car, again with Tommy in the back, and for a while there was a perfectly okay feeling between us. Maybe, looking back, there was an atmosphere of something being held back, but it’s possible I’m only thinking that now because of what happened next.
The way it began, it was a bit like a repeat of earlier. We’d got back onto the long near-empty road, and Ruth made some remark about a poster we were passing. I don’t even remember the poster now, it was just one of those huge advertising images on the roadside. She made the remark almost to herself, obviously not meaning much by it. She said something like: ‘Oh my God, look at that one. You’d think they’d at least try to come up with something new.’
But Tommy said from the back: ‘Actually I quite like that one. It’s been in the newspapers as well. I think it’s got something.’
Maybe I was wanting that feeling again, of me and Tommy being brought close together. Because although the walk to the boat had been fine in itself, I was starting to feel that apart from our first embrace, and that moment in the car earlier on, Tommy and I hadn’t really had much to do with each other. Anyway, I found myself saying:
‘Actually, I like it too. It takes a lot more effort than you’d think, making up these posters.’
‘That’s right,’ Tommy said. ‘Someone told me it takes weeks and weeks putting something like that together. Months even. People sometimes work all night on them, over and over, until they’re just right.’
‘It’s too easy,’ I said, ‘to criticise when you’re just driving by.’
‘Easiest thing in the world,’ Tommy said.
Ruth said nothing, and kept looking at the empty road in front of us. Then I said:
‘Since we’re on the subject of posters. There was one I noticed on the way out. It should be coming up again pretty soon. It’ll be on our side this time. It should come up any time now.’
‘What’s it of?’ Tommy asked.
‘You’ll see. It’ll be coming up soon.’
I glanced at Ruth beside me. There was no anger in her eyes, just a kind of wariness. There was even a sort of hope, I thought, that when the poster appeared, it would be perfectly innocuous – something that reminded us of Hailsham, something like that. I could see all of this in her face, the way it didn’t quite settle on any one expression, but hovered tentatively. All the time, her gaze remained fixed in front of her.
I slowed down the car and pulled over, bumping up onto the rough grass verge.
‘Why are we stopping, Kath?’ Tommy asked.
‘Because you can see it best from here. Any nearer, we have to look up at it too much.’
I could hear Tommy shifting behind us, trying to get a better view. Ruth didn’t move, and I wasn’t even sure she was looking at the poster at all.
‘Okay, it’s not exactly the same,’ I said after a moment. ‘But it reminded me. Open-plan office, smart smiling people.’
Ruth stayed silent, but Tommy said from the back: ‘I get it. You mean, like that place we went to that time.’
‘Not only that,’ I said. ‘It’s a lot like that ad. The one we found on the ground. You remember, Ruth?’
‘I’m not sure I do,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, come on. You remember. We found it in a magazine in some lane. Near a puddle. You were really taken by it. Don’t pretend you don’t remember.’
‘I think I do.’ Ruth’s voice was now almost a whisper. A lorry went past, making our car wobble and, for a few seconds, obscuring our view of the hoarding. Ruth bowed her head, as though she hoped the lorry had removed the image forever, and when we could see it clearly again, she didn’t raise her gaze.
‘It’s funny,’ I said, ‘remembering it all now. Remember how you used to go on about it? How you’d one day work in an office like that one?’
‘Oh yeah, that was why we went that day,’ Tommy said, like he’d only that second remembered. ‘When we went to Norfolk. We went to find your possible. Working in an office.’
‘Don’t you sometimes think,’ I said to Ruth, ‘you should have looked into it more? All right, you’d have been the first. The first one any of us would have heard of getting to do something like that. But you might have done it. Don’t
‘How could I have tried?’ Ruth’s voice was hardly audible. ‘It’s just something I once dreamt about. That’s all.’
‘But if you’d at least looked into it. How do you know? They might have let you.’
‘Yeah, Ruth,’ Tommy said. ‘Maybe you should at least have tried. After going on about it so much. I think Kath’s got a point.’
‘I didn’t go on about it, Tommy. At least, I don’t remember going on about it.’
‘But Tommy’s right. You should at least have tried. Then you could see a poster like that one, and remember that’s what you wanted once, and that you at least looked into it …’
‘How could I have looked into it?’ For the first time, Ruth’s voice had hardened, but then she let out a sigh and looked down again. Then Tommy said:
‘You kept talking like you might qualify for special treatment. And for all you know, you might have done. You should have asked at least.’
‘Okay,’ Ruth said. ‘You say I should have looked into it. How? Where would I have gone? There wasn’t a way to look into it.’
‘Tommy’s right though,’ I said. ‘If you believed yourself special, you should at least have asked. You should have gone to Madame and asked.’
As soon as I said this – as soon as I mentioned Madame – I realised I’d made a mistake. Ruth looked up at me and I saw something like triumph flash across her face. You see it in films sometimes, when one person’s pointing a gun at another person, and the one with the gun’s making the other one do all kinds of things. Then suddenly there’s a mistake, a tussle, and the gun’s with the second person. And the second person looks at the first person with a gleam, a kind of can’t-believe-my-luck expression that promises all kinds of vengeance. Well, that was how suddenly Ruth was looking at me, and though I’d said nothing about deferrals, I’d mentioned Madame, and I knew we’d stumbled into some new territory altogether.