Kazuo Ishiguro (17 page)

I knew as soon as I turned through our gateway - though there was nothing obvious to tell me so - that I was too late, that the thing had finished long ago. I found the front door bolted. I ran to the back door, which opened for me, and ran through the house shouting for some reason not for my mother, but for Mei Li - perhaps even at that stage, I did not wish to acknowledge the implications of shouting for my mother.

The house appeared to be empty. Then as I was standing bewildered in the entrance hall, I heard a giggling sound. It had come from the library, and as I turned and went towards it, I saw through the half-open door Mei Li sitting at my work table.

She was sitting very upright and as I appeared in the doorway, she looked at me and made another giggling sound, as if she were enjoying a private joke and trying to suppress her laughter.

It dawned on me then that Mei Li was weeping, and I knew, as I had known throughout that punishing run home, that my mother was gone. And a cold fury rose within me towards Mei Li, who for all the fear and respect she had commanded from me over the years, I now realised was an impostor: someone not in the least capable of controlling this bewildering world that was unfolding all around me; a pathetic little woman who had built herself up in my eyes entirely on false pretences, who counted for nothing when the great forces clashed and battled.

I stood in the doorway and stared at her with the utmost contempt.

It is now late - a good hour has passed since I set down that last sentence - and yet here I am, still at my desk. I suppose I have been turning over these recollections, some of which I had not brought to the fore of my mind for many years. But I have also been looking ahead, to the day when I eventually return to Shanghai; to all the things Akira and I will do there together. Of course, the city will have undergone many changes. But then I know Akira would like nothing more than to take me around, showing off all his great knowledge of the city’s more intimate reaches. He will know just the right places to eat, to drink, to take a walk; the best establishments where we might go after a hard day, to sit and talk late into the night, swapping stories about all that has happened to us since our last meeting.

But I must now get some sleep. There is much work to be done in the morning, and I must catch up on the time lost this afternoon going about London with Sarah on the upper deck of that bus.

London, 12th April 1937

Yesterday, by the time young Jennifer returned from her shopping trip with Miss Givens, the light in my study was already murky. This tall narrow house, bought with my inheritance following my aunt’s death, overlooks a square which, while moderately prestigious, catches less sun than any of its neighbours.

I watched her from the study window, down in the square, going back and forth from the taxicab, lining up shopping bags against the railings, while Miss Givens searched in her purse for the fare. When eventually they came in, I could hear them quarrelling, and though I shouted a greeting from the landing, decided not to go down. Their quarrel seemed trivial - something about what they had and had not bought - but at that moment I was still excited by the morning’s letter - and the conclusions to which it had led me - and I did not want my triumphant mood broken.

By the time I came downstairs, they had long ceased their argument, and I found Jennifer roaming around the drawing room with a blindfold over her eyes, hands outstretched before her.

‘Hello, Jenny.’ I said, as though spotting nothing unusual about her. ‘Did you get all you needed for the new term?’

She was drifting dangerously towards the display cabinet, but I resisted the temptation to call out. She stopped just in time, felt with her hands and giggled.

‘Oh, Uncle Christopher! Why didn’t you warn me?’

‘Warn you? About what?’

‘I’ve gone blind! Can’t you tell? I’m blind! Look!’

‘Ah yes. So you are.’

I left her groping around the furniture and went through to the kitchen, where Miss Givens was unpacking a bag on to the table. She greeted me politely, but made sure I noticed her glance towards the remains of my lunch abandoned at the far end of the table. Since the departure last week of Polly, our maid, Miss Givens has despised any implication that she should even temporarily undertake such duties.

‘Miss Givens.’ I said to her, ‘there’s something I must discuss with you.’ Then looking over my shoulder, I lowered my voice: ‘It’s something that has an important bearing on Jennifer.’

‘Of course, Mr Banks.’

‘In fact. Miss Givens, I wonder if we might step into the conservatory.

As I say, it’s a matter of some significance.’

But just at this moment a crashing noise came from the drawing room. Miss Givens, brushing past me, shouted from the doorway: ‘Jennifer, stop that! I told you this would happen!’

‘But I’m blind,’ came the reply. ‘I can’t help it.’

Miss Givens, remembering I had been addressing her, seemed caught in two minds. In the end, she came back and said quietly: ‘Excuse me, Mr Banks. You were saying?’

‘Actually, Miss Givens, I think we’ll be able to speak more freely this evening after Jennifer has gone to bed.’

‘Very well. I shall come and see you then.’

If Miss Givens had any forebodings about what I wished to discuss, she did not at that stage show it. She gave me one of her unrevealing smiles, before going through to her charge in the drawing room.

It is now almost three years ago that I first heard of Jennifer. I had been invited to a supper party by my old schoolfriend, Osbourne, whom I had not seen for a little while. He was still living in those days on the Gloucester Road, and I met for the first time that night the young woman who has since become his wife. Among his other guests that evening was Lady Beaton, the widow of the well-known philanthropist. Perhaps because the guests were all strangers to me - they spent much of the evening telling jokes about people I knew nothing about - I found myself talking rather a lot to Lady Beaton, so much so that I feared at times I was becoming a burden to her. In any case, it was just after the soup had been served that she began to tell me about a sad case she had recently come across in her capacity as treasurer of a charity concerned with the welfare of orphans. A couple had been drowned in a boating accident in Cornwall two years earlier, and their only child, a girl now of ten, was at present living out in Canada with her grandmother. This old lady was evidently in poor health, rarely went out or received callers.

‘When I was over in Toronto last month,’ Lady Beaton told me, ‘I decided to call on them myself. The poor little thing was miserable, she so misses England. And as for the old lady, she can barely look after herself, never mind a young girl.’

‘Will your organisation be able to help her?’

‘I’ll do my best for her. But we have so many cases, you see.

And strictly speaking, she isn’t a priority. After all, she does have a roof over her head and her parents have left her reasonably well provided for. The big thing about this sort of work is not to get too personal about it. But having met the poor girl, one can’t help but get involved. She has such a spirit about her, quite unusual, even though she was clearly so unhappy.’

It is possible she told me a few further things about Jennifer as we continued with the meal. I remember listening politely, but saying little. It was only much later, out in the hall, as the guests were leaving, and Osbourne was appealing to us all to stay a little longer, that I took Lady Beaton to one side.

‘I hope you don’t think this inappropriate,’ I said. ‘But this girl you were telling me of earlier. This Jennifer. I’d like to do something to help. In fact, Lady Beaton, I’d be quite prepared to take her in.’

Perhaps I should not hold it against her that her first reaction was to recoil with a look of suspicion. At least, that is how it appeared to me. Eventually she said: “That’s very good of you, Mr Banks. I will, if I may, get in touch with you about the matter.’

‘I’m quite serious, Lady Beaton. I recently came into an inheritance, so I’ll be quite able to provide for her.’

‘I’m sure that’s so, Mr Banks. Well, let us speak further about it.’ With that, she turned to some other guests to exchange boisterous farewells.

But Lady Beaton did indeed get in touch with me less than a week later. Possibly she had been making enquiries about my character; perhaps it was simply that she had had time to think things over; in any case, her attitude had quite changed. Over lunch at the Cafe Royal, and during our subsequent meetings, she could not have been warmer towards me, and Jennifer duly arrived at my new house just four months after the dinner at Osbourne’s apartment.

She was accompanied by a Canadian nurse named Miss Hunter, who departed again a week later, cheerfully kissing the girl on the cheek and reminding her to write to her grandmother.

Jennifer considered carefully the choice of three bedrooms I offered her, and decided on the smallest, because, she said, the little wooden ledge running along one wall would be perfect for her ‘collection’. This, I soon discovered, comprised some carefully selected sea-shells, nuts, dried leaves, pebbles and a few other such items she had gathered over the years. She positioned the objects carefully along the ledge and called me in one day to inspect.

‘I’ve given each a name,’ she explained. ‘I realise that’s a silly sort of thing to do, but I do so love them. One day, Uncle Christopher, when I’m not so busy, I’ll tell you all about each of them. Please will you tell Polly to be extra careful when she cleans along here.’

Lady Beaton came to assist me in conducting the interviews for a nanny, but it was Jennifer herself, eavesdropping on proceedings from the next room, who proved the most decisive influence. She would emerge after each candidate had left to deliver a damning verdict. ‘A complete horror,’ she pronounced of one woman. “That’s obvious nonsense about her last charge dying of pneumonia. She poisoned her.’ Of another, she said: ‘We can’t possibly have her. Far too nervous.’

Miss Givens struck me during her interview as dull and rather cold, but for some reason it was she who immediately won Jennifer’s approval, and it must be said, in the two and a half years since then she has amply justified Jennifer’s belief in her.

Almost everyone to whom I introduced Jennifer remarked on how self-possessed she appeared for one who had experienced such tragedy. Indeed, she did have a remarkably assured manner, and in particular a capacity to make light of setbacks which might have brought other girls her age to tears. A good example of this was her reaction concerning her trunk.

She had for some weeks after her arrival made repeated references to her trunk that would arrive by sea from Canada. I remember, for instance, her describing to me once in some detail a wooden merry-go-round someone had made for her that was coming in the trunk. On another occasion, when I had complimented her on a particular costume she and Miss Givens had brought back from Selfridge’s, she had looked at me solemnly and said: ‘And I have a hair-band to match it perfectly. It’s coming in my trunk.’

However, I received one day a letter from the shipping company apologising for the loss of the trunk at sea and offering compensation. When I told Jennifer of this, she first simply stared. Then she gave a light laugh and said: ‘Well in that case, Miss Givens and I will just have to go on an enormous spending spree.’

When after two or three days she had still shown no sign of distress over her loss, I felt inclined to have a talk with her, and one morning after breakfast, spotting her wandering about in the garden, went out to join her.

It was a crisp, sunny morning. My garden is not large, even by city standards - a green rectangle overlooked by any number of our neighbours - but it is well laid out and has, despite everything, a pleasing sense of sanctuary. When I stepped down on to the lawn, Jennifer was drifting about the garden with a toy horse in her hand, dreamily walking it along the tops of the hedges and bushes. I remember being rather concerned the toy might be harmed by the dew and was on the verge of pointing this out to her. But in the end, as I came up, I said simply: ‘That was rotten luck about your things. You’ve taken it awfully well, but it must have been a terrible shock.’

‘Oh…’ She went on moving her horse carelessly. ‘It was a bit of a bore. But I can always get more things with the compensation money. Miss Givens said we could go shopping on Tuesday.’

‘AH the same. Look, I think you’re awfully brave. But there’s no need, you know, to put up a show, if you see what I mean. If you want to let your guard down a bit, you should do so. I’m not going to let on to anyone, and neither, I’m sure, is Miss Givens.’

It’s all right. I’m not upset. After all, they were just things. When you’ve lost your mother and your father, you can’t care so much about things, can you?’ With that, she gave her little laugh.

This is one of the few instances I can now recall of her mentioning her parents. I laughed too, and saying: ‘I suppose not,’ started to walk back to the house. But then I turned to her again and said: ‘You know, Jenny, I’m not sure that’s true. You might say a thing like that to a lot of people and they’d believe you. But you see, I know it’s not true. When I came from Shanghai, the things that came in my trunk, those things, they were important to me.

They remain so.’

‘Will you show them to me?’

‘Show them to you? Well, most of it wouldn’t mean anything to you.’

‘But I love Chinese things. I’d like to see them.’

‘Most of it isn’t Chinese as such,’ I said. ‘Well, what I’m trying to say is that for me, my trunk was special. If it had got lost, I’d have been upset.’

She shrugged and put her horse up to her cheek. ‘I was upset.

But I’m not any more. You have to look forward in life.’

‘Yes. Whoever told you that is quite right in a way. All right, as you will. Forget your trunk for now. But remember…’ I trailed off, not knowing what I had intended to say.

‘What?’

‘Oh nothing. Just remember, if there’s anything you want to tell me, or anything that’s troubling you, I’m always here.’