Never Let Me Go

  ‘Ruth’ – Rodney’s voice was steady and had a warning in it – ‘let’s forget about it and go and see Martin. He’s off this afternoon. You’ll like him, he’s a real laugh.’

  Chrissie put an arm around Ruth. ‘Come on, Ruth. Let’s do what Rodney says.’

  Ruth got to her feet and Rodney started to walk.

  ‘Well, you lot can go,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m not going.’

  Ruth turned and looked at me carefully. ‘Well, what do you know? Who’s the upset one now?’

  ‘I’m not upset. But sometimes you speak garbage, Ruth.’

  ‘Oh, look who’s upset now. Poor Kathy. She never likes straight talking.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that. I don’t want to visit a carer. We’re not supposed to and I don’t even know this guy.’

  Ruth shrugged and exchanged glances with Chrissie. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s no reason we’ve got to go round together the whole time. If little Miss here doesn’t want to join us, she doesn’t have to. Let her go off by herself.’ Then she leaned over to Chrissie and said in a stage whisper: ‘That’s always the best way when Kathy’s in a mood. Leave her alone and she’ll walk it off.’

  ‘Be back at the car by four o’clock,’ Rodney said to me. ‘Otherwise you’ll have to hitch-hike.’ Then he did a laugh. ‘Come on, Kathy, don’t get in a sulk. Come with us.’

  ‘No. You go on. I don’t feel like it.’

  Rodney shrugged and started to move off again. Ruth and Chrissie followed, but Tommy didn’t move. Only when Ruth stared at him did he say:

  ‘I’ll stay with Kath. If we’re splitting, then I’ll stay with Kath.’

  Ruth glared at him in fury, then turned and strode off. Chrissie and Rodney looked at Tommy awkwardly, then they too began walking again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tommy and I leaned on the rail and stared at the view until the others had gone out of sight.

  ‘It’s just talk,’ he said eventually. Then after a pause: ‘It’s just what people say when they’re feeling sorry for themselves. It’s just talk. The guardians never told us anything like that.’

  I started to walk – the opposite way to the others – and let Tommy fall in step beside me.

  ‘It’s not worth getting upset about,’ Tommy went on. ‘Ruth’s always doing things like that now. It’s just her letting off steam. Anyway, like we were telling her, even if it’s true, even a little bit true, I don’t see how it makes any difference. Our models, what they were like, that’s nothing to do with us, Kath. It’s just not worth getting upset about.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and deliberately bumped my shoulder into his. ‘Okay, okay.’

  I had the impression we were walking towards the town centre, though I couldn’t be sure. I was trying to think of a way to change the subject, when Tommy said first:

  ‘You know when we were in that Woolworth’s place earlier? When you were down at the back with the others? I was trying to find something. Something for you.’

  ‘A present?’ I looked at him in surprise. ‘I’m not sure Ruth would approve of that. Not unless you got her a bigger one.’

  ‘A sort of present. But I couldn’t find it. I wasn’t going to tell you, but now, well, I’ve got another chance to find it. Except you might have to help me. I’m not very good at shopping.’

  ‘Tommy, what are you talking about? You want to get me a present, but you want me to help you choose it …’

  ‘No, I know what it is. It’s just that …’ He laughed and shrugged. ‘Oh, I might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes. So I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? Except I couldn’t remember what it was any more.’

  ‘My tape? I didn’t realise you ever knew about it, Tommy.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Ruth was getting people to look for it and saying you were really upset about losing it. So I tried to find it. I never told you at the time, but I did try really hard. I thought there’d be places I could look where you couldn’t. In boys’ dorms, stuff like that. I remember looking for ages, but I couldn’t find it.’

  I glanced at him and felt my rotten mood evaporating. ‘I never knew that, Tommy. That was really sweet of you.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t help much. But I really wanted to find it for you. And when it looked in the end like it wasn’t going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I’ll go to Norfolk and I’ll find it there for her.’

  ‘The lost corner of England,’ I said, and looked around me. ‘And here we are!’

  Tommy too looked around him, and we came to a halt. We were in another side-street, not as narrow as the one with the gallery. For a moment we both kept glancing around theatrically, then giggled.

  ‘So it wasn’t such a daft idea,’ Tommy said. ‘That Woolworth’s shop earlier, it had all these tapes, so I thought they were bound to have yours. But I don’t think they did.’

  ‘You don’t think they did? Oh, Tommy, you mean you didn’t even look properly!’

  ‘I did, Kath. It’s just that, well, it’s really annoying but I couldn’t remember what it was called. All that time at Hailsham, I was opening boys’ collection chests and everything, and now I can’t remember. It was Julie Bridges or something …’

  ‘Judy Bridgewater. Songs After Dark.’

  Tommy shook his head solemnly. ‘They definitely didn’t have that.’

  I laughed and punched his arm. He looked puzzled so I said: ‘Tommy, they wouldn’t have something like that in Woolworth’s. They have the latest hits. Judy Bridgewater, she’s someone from ages ago. It just happened to turn up, at one of our Sales. It’s not going to be in Woolworth’s now, you idiot!’

  ‘Well, like I said, I don’t know about things like that. But they had so many tapes …’

  ‘They had some, Tommy. Oh, never mind. It was a sweet idea. I’m really touched. It was a great idea. This is Norfolk, after all.’

  We started walking again and Tommy said hesitantly: ‘Well, that’s why I had to tell you. I wanted to surprise you, but it’s useless. I don’t know where to look, even if I do know the name of the record. Now I’ve told you, you can help me. We can look for it together.’

  ‘Tommy, what are you talking about?’ I was trying to sound reproachful, but I couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘Well, we’ve got over an hour. This is a real chance.’

  ‘Tommy, you idiot. You really believe it, don’t you? All this lost-corner stuff.’

  ‘I don’t necessarily believe it. But we might as well look now we’re here. I mean, you’d like to find it again, wouldn’t you? What have we got to lose?’

  ‘All right. You’re a complete idiot, but all right.’

  He opened his arms out helplessly. ‘Well, Kath, where do we go? Like I say, I’m no good at shopping.’

  ‘We have to look in second-hand places,’ I said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Places full of old clothes, old books. They’ll sometimes have a box full of records and tapes.’

  ‘Okay. But where are these shops?’

  When I think of that moment now, standing with Tommy in the little side-street about to begin our search, I feel a warmth welling up through me. Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn’t a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid. Not long ago, when I was caring for Tommy, and I brought up our Norfolk trip, he told me he’d felt exactly the same. That moment when we decided to go searching for my lost tape, it was like suddenly every cloud had blown away, and we had nothing but fun and laughter before us.

  At the start, we kept going into the wrong sort of places: second-hand bookshops, or shops full of old vacuum cleaners, but no music at all. After a while Tommy decided I didn’t know any better than he did and announced he would lead the way. As it happened, by sheer luck really, he discovered straight away a street w
ith four shops of just the kind we were after, standing virtually in a row. Their front windows were full of dresses, handbags, children’s annuals, and when you went inside, a sweet stale smell. There were piles of creased paperbacks, dusty boxes full of postcards or trinkets. One shop specialised in hippie stuff, while another had war medals and photos of soldiers in the desert. But they all had somewhere a big cardboard box or two with LPs and cassette tapes. We rummaged around those shops, and in all honesty, after the first few minutes, I think Judy Bridgewater had more or less slipped from our minds. We were just enjoying looking through all those things together; drifting apart then finding ourselves side by side again, maybe competing for the same box of bric-a-brac in a dusty corner lit up by a shaft of sun.

  Then of course I found it. I’d been flicking through a row of cassette cases, my mind on other things, when suddenly there it was, under my fingers, looking just the way it had all those years ago: Judy, her cigarette, the coquettish look for the barman, the blurred palms in the background.

  I didn’t exclaim, the way I’d been doing when I’d come across other items that had mildly excited me. I stood there quite still, looking at the plastic case, unsure whether or not I was delighted. For a second, it even felt like a mistake. The tape had been the perfect excuse for all this fun, and now it had turned up, we’d have to stop. Maybe that was why, to my own surprise, I kept silent at first; why I thought about pretending never to have seen it. And now it was there in front of me, there was something vaguely embarrassing about the tape, like it was something I should have grown out of. I actually went as far as flicking the cassette on and letting its neighbour fall on it. But there was the spine, looking up at me, and in the end I called Tommy over.

  ‘Is that it?’ He seemed genuinely sceptical, perhaps because I wasn’t making more fuss. I pulled it out and held it in both hands. Then suddenly I felt a huge pleasure – and something else, something more complicated that threatened to make me burst into tears. But I got a hold of the emotion, and just gave Tommy’s arm a tug.

  ‘Yes, this is it,’ I said, and for the first time smiled excitedly. ‘Can you believe it? We’ve really found it!’

  ‘Do you think it could be the same one? I mean, the actual one. The one you lost?’

  As I turned it in my fingers, I found I could remember all the design details on the back, the titles of the tracks, everything.

  ‘For all I know, it might be,’ I said. ‘But I have to tell you, Tommy, there might be thousands of these knocking about.’

  Then it was my turn to notice Tommy wasn’t as triumphant as he might be.

  ‘Tommy, you don’t seem very pleased for me,’ I said, though in an obviously jokey voice.

  ‘I am pleased for you, Kath. It’s just that, well, I wish I’d found it.’ Then he did a small laugh and went on: ‘Back then, when you lost it, I used to think about it, in my head, what it would be like, if I found it and brought it to you. What you’d say, your face, all of that.’

  His voice was softer than usual and he kept his eyes on the plastic case in my hand. And I suddenly became very conscious of the fact that we were the only people in the shop, except for the old guy behind the counter at the front engrossed in his paperwork. We were right at the back of the shop, on a raised platform where it was darker and more secluded, like the old guy didn’t want to think about the stuff in our area and had mentally curtained it off. For several seconds, Tommy stayed in a sort of trance, for all I know playing over in his mind one of these old fantasies of giving me back my lost tape. Then suddenly he snatched the case out of my hand.

  ‘Well at least I can buy it for you,’ he said with a grin, and before I could stop him, he’d started down the floor towards the front.

  I went on browsing around the back of the shop while the old guy searched around for the tape to go with the case. I was still feeling a pang of regret that we’d found it so quickly, and it was only later, when we were back at the Cottages and I was alone in my room, that I really appreciated having the tape – and that song – back again. Even then, it was mainly a nostalgia thing, and today, if I happen to get the tape out and look at it, it brings back memories of that afternoon in Norfolk every bit as much as it does our Hailsham days.

  As we came out of the shop, I was keen to regain the carefree, almost silly mood we’d been in before. But when I made a few little jokes, Tommy was lost in his thoughts and didn’t respond.

  We began going up a steeply climbing path, and we could see – maybe a hundred yards further up – a kind of viewing area right on the cliff edge with benches facing out to sea. It would have made a nice spot in the summer for an ordinary family to sit and eat a picnic. Now, despite the chilly wind, we found ourselves walking up towards it, but when there was still some way left to go, Tommy slowed to a dawdle and said to me:

  ‘Chrissie and Rodney, they’re really obsessed with this idea. You know, the one about people having their donations deferred if they’re really in love. They’re convinced we know all about it, but no one said anything like that at Hailsham. At least, I never heard anything like that, did you, Kath? No, it’s just something going around recently among the veterans. And people like Ruth, they’ve been stoking it up.’

  I looked at him carefully, but it was hard to tell if he’d just spoken with mischievous affection or else a kind of disgust. I could see anyway there was something else on his mind, nothing to do with Ruth, so I didn’t say anything and waited. Eventually he came to a complete halt and started to poke around with his foot a squashed paper cup on the ground.

  ‘Actually, Kath,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m sure we’re right, there was no talk like that when we were at Hailsham. But there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense back then. And I’ve been thinking, if it’s true, this rumour, then it could explain quite a lot. Stuff we used to puzzle over.’

  ‘What do you mean? What sort of stuff?’

  ‘The Gallery, for instance.’ Tommy had lowered his voice and I stepped in closer, just as though we were still at Hailsham, talking in the dinner queue or beside the pond. ‘We never got to the bottom of it, what the Gallery was for. Why Madame took away all the best work. But now I think I know. Kath, you remember that time everyone was arguing about tokens? Whether they should get them or not to make up for stuff they’d had taken away by Madame? And Roy J. went in to see Miss Emily about it? Well, there was something Miss Emily said then, something she let drop, and that’s what’s been making me think.’

  Two women were passing by with dogs on leads, and although it was completely stupid, we both stopped talking until they’d gone further up the slope and out of earshot. Then I said:

  ‘What thing, Tommy? What thing Miss Emily let drop?’

  ‘When Roy J. asked her why Madame took our stuff away. Do you remember what she’s supposed to have said?’

  ‘I remember her saying it was a privilege, and we should be proud …’

  ‘But that wasn’t all.’ Tommy’s voice was now down to a whisper. ‘What she told Roy, what she let slip, which she probably didn’t mean to let slip, do you remember, Kath? She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul.’

  When he said this, I suddenly remembered a drawing Laura had done once of her intestines and laughed. But something was coming back to me.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I remember. So what are you getting at?’ ‘What I think,’ said Tommy slowly, ‘is this. Suppose it’s true, what the veterans are saying. Suppose some special arrangement has been made for Hailsham students. Suppose two people say they’re truly in love, and they want extra time to be together. Then you see, Kath, there has to be a way to judge if they’re really telling the truth. That they aren’t just saying they’re in love, just to defer their donations. You see how difficult it could be to decide? Or a couple might really believe they’re in love, but it’s
just a sex thing. Or just a crush. You see what I mean, Kath? It’ll be really hard to judge, and it’s probably impossible to get it right every time. But the point is, whoever decides, Madame or whoever it is, they need something to go on.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘So that’s why they took away our art …’

  ‘It could be. Madame’s got a gallery somewhere filled with stuff by students from when they were tiny. Suppose two people come up and say they’re in love. She can find the art they’ve done over years and years. She can see if they go. If they match. Don’t forget, Kath, what she’s got reveals our souls. She could decide for herself what’s a good match and what’s just a stupid crush.’

  I started to walk slowly again, hardly looking in front of me. Tommy fell in step, waiting for my response.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said in the end. ‘What you’re saying could certainly explain Miss Emily, what she said to Roy. And I suppose it explains too why the guardians always thought it was so important for us, to be able to paint and all of that.’

  ‘Exactly. And that’s why …’ Tommy sighed and went on with some effort. ‘That’s why Miss Lucy had to admit she’d been wrong, telling me it didn’t really matter. She’d said that because she was sorry for me at the time. But she knew deep down it did matter. The thing about being from Hailsham was that you had this special chance. And if you didn’t get stuff into Madame’s gallery, then you were as good as throwing that chance away.’

  It was after he said this that it suddenly dawned on me, with a real chill, where this was leading. I stopped and turned to him, but before I could speak, Tommy let out a laugh.

  ‘If I’ve got this right, then, well, it looks like I might have blown my chance.’

  ‘Tommy, did you ever get anything into the Gallery? When you were much younger maybe?’