Kazuo Ishiguro (3 page)

‘I don’t know about that, sir,’ I replied, this time more gently.

‘All I can say is that to the objective observer, the modern criminal is growing increasingly clever. He has grown more ambitious, more daring, and science has placed a whole new array of sophisticated tools at his disposal.’

‘I see. And without gifted chaps like you on our side, the future’s bleak, is that it?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘You might have something there. Too easy for an old chap to scoff. Perhaps you’re right, my boy. Perhaps we’ve allowed things to slide for too long. Ah.’

The silver-haired man bowed his head again as Sarah Hemmings came drifting past us. She was moving through the crowd with a haughty grace, her gaze moving from left to right in search - so it seemed to me - of someone she deemed worthy of her presence. Noting my companion, she gave him the same quick smile as before, but did not break her stride. For just a second, her gaze fell on me, but almost instantly - before I could so much as smile - she had dismissed me from her mind and was making her way towards someone she had spotted on the other side of the room.

Later that night, as Osbourne and I sat together in a taxicab speeding us back towards Kensington, I tried to find out something more concerning Sarah Hemmings. Osbourne, for all his pretending that he had found the evening a bore, was well pleased with himself, and eager to recount to me in detail the many conversations he had had with influential persons. It was not easy then to get him on to the subject of Miss Hemmings without my appearing unduly curious. Eventually, however, I did get him to say: ‘Miss Hemmings? Oh yes, her. Used to be engaged to Herriot Lewis. You know, the conductor fellow. Then he went and gave that Schubert concert at the Albert Hall last autumn. Remember that debacle?’

When I confessed my ignorance of it, Osbourne went on: “They didn’t quite throw chairs about, but I dare say they would have done if the things hadn’t been fixed to the floor.

The fellow from The Times described the performance as a “complete travesty”. Or did he say, “a violation”? Anyway, he didn’t much care for it.’

‘And Miss Hemmings…’

‘Dropped him like a hot potato. Threw the engagement ring back at him, apparently. And she’s kept a huge distance from the chap ever since.’

‘All because of this concert?’

‘Well, it was pretty ghastly, by all accounts. Caused quite a stir. Her breaking off the engagement, I mean. But what a lot of bores they were tonight, Banks. Do you suppose when we’re that age, we’ll be carrying on like that?’

During that first year after Cambridge, largely through my friendship with Osbourne, I found myself attending other smart social events on a fairly regular basis. Thinking back to that period of my life, it now strikes me as a singularly frivolous one. There were supper parties, luncheons, cocktail parties held usually in apartments around Bloomsbury and Holborn. I was determined to put behind me the awkwardness I had displayed that evening at the Charingworth, and my manner at these events grew steadily more assured. Indeed, for a time, it is reasonable to say I came to occupy a place within one of the fashionable London ‘sets’.

Miss Hemmings was not part of my particular set, but I found that whenever I mentioned her to friends, they would know of her. Moreover, I would glimpse her from time to time at functions, or else, often, in the tea-rooms of the grander hotels. In any case, in one way or another, I ended up accumulating a fair amount of information concerning her career in London society.

How curious to recall a time when such vague secondhand impressions were all I knew of her! It did not take long to establish that there were many who did not regard her with approval. Even before the business of the broken engagement to Anthony Herriot-Lewis, it seemed she had made enemies on account of what many referred to as her ‘forthrightness’.

Friends of Herriot-Lewis - whose objectivity, to be fair, could hardly be counted on by this point - described how ruthlessly she had pursued the conductor. Others accused her of manipulating Herriot-Lewis’s friends in order to get close to him. Her subsequent dropping of the conductor, after all her determined efforts, was viewed by some as puzzling, by others simply as conclusive evidence of her cynical motives. On the other hand, I came across plenty who spoke rather well of Miss Hemmings.

She was frequently described as ‘clever’, ‘fascinating’, ‘complicated’.

Women in particular defended her right to break off an engagement, whatever her reasons. Even her defenders, how ever, agreed that she was a ‘terrible snob of a new sort’; that she did not consider a person worthy of respect unless he or she possessed a celebrated name. And I must say, observing her from afar as I did that year, I came across little to counter such claims. Indeed, I sometimes got the impression she was unable properly to breathe anything other than the air surrounding the most distinguished persons. For a time she became linked with Henry Quinn, the barrister, only to distance herself again after his failure in the Charles Browning case. Then there came rumours of her growing friendship with James Beacon, who at that time was a rising young government minister. In any case, by this point, it had become abundantly clear to me what the silver-haired man had meant when he had declared there was little point in a ‘chap like me’ pursuing Miss Hemmings. Of course, I had not really understood his words at the time. Now that I did so, I found myself following Miss Hemmings’s activities with a peculiar interest that year. For all that, I did-not actually speak to her until one afternoon almost two years after I first saw her at the Charingworth Club.

I had been taking tea at the Waldorf Hotel with an acquaintance when some business had suddenly called him away. I was thus sitting there by myself on the floor of the Palm Court, indulging in the scones and jam, when I noticed Miss Hemmings, also sitting alone, up at one of the balcony tables. As I have said, this was by no means the first time I had glimpsed her at such places, but that afternoon things were different. For this was barely a month after the conclusion of the Mannering case, and I was still on something of a cloud. Certainly, that period after my first public triumph was a heady one: many new doors suddenly opened to me; invitations poured in from entirely new sources; those who previously had been no more than pleasant to me exclaimed with great enthusiasm when I entered a room. It is no wonder I lost my bearings a little.

In any case, on that afternoon at the Waldorf, I found myself rising and making my way up to the balcony. I am not sure what I expected. It is again typical of my smugness of those days that I did not stop to consider if Miss Hemmings would really be so delighted to make my acquaintance. Perhaps a flicker of doubt did cross my mind as I strolled past the pianist and approached the table where she sat reading her book. But I remember feeling rather pleased with the way my voice came out, urbane and jocular, as I said: ‘Excuse me, but I thought it time I introduced myself to you.

We have so many mutual friends. I’m Christopher Banks.’

I managed to pronounce my name with a flourish, but already by this point, my assurance had started to fade. For Miss Hemmings was looking up at me with a cold, searching gaze. And in the silence that followed, she gave a quick glance back to her book, as though it had let out a groan of complaint.

Finally she said, in a voice filled with bafflement: ‘Oh yes? How do you do?’

“The Mannering case,’ I said, foolishly. ‘You might have read about it.’

‘Yes. You investigated it.’

It was this utterance, made so matter-of-factly, which quite threw me off my balance. For she had spoken with no note whatsoever of realisation; it was simply a flat statement implying that she had been quite aware of my identity all along, and that she was still far from being enlightened as to why I was standing beside her table. Suddenly I felt the giddy elation of the past weeks evaporating. And I believe it was then, as I let out a nervous laugh, it occurred to me that the Mannering case, for all the self-evident brilliance of my investigation, for all the praise of my friends, somehow did not carry as much importance in the wider world as I had assumed.

It is quite possible we had a perfectly civil exchange before I began my retreat back down to my own table. And it seems to me today that Miss Hemmings was more than entitled to respond as she did; how absurd to have imagined something like the Mannering case would be sufficient to impress her! But I remember, once I had sat down again, feeling both angry and dejected. The thought came to me that I had not only just made an ass of myself with Miss Hemmings, but that I had perhaps been doing so continuously throughout the previous month; that my friends, for all their congratulations, had been laughing at me.

By the following day, I had come to accept that I fully deserved the jolt I had received. But this episode at the Waldorf probably did arouse in me feelings of resentment towards Miss Hemmings which I never fully shook off - and which undoubtedly contributed to yesterday evening’s unfortunate events. At the time though, I tried to see the whole incident as providential. It had, after all, brought home to me how easy it was to become distracted from one’s most cherished goals. My intention was to combat evil - in particular, evil of the insidious, furtive kind and as such had little to do with courting popularity within society circles.

I began thereafter to socialise far less and became more deeply immersed in my work. I studied notable cases from the past, and absorbed new areas of knowledge that might one day prove useful. Around this time, too, I began scrutinising the careers of various detectives who had established their names, and found I could discern a line between those reputations that rested on solid achievement, and those that derived essentially from a position within some influential set; there was, I came to see, a true and a false way for a detective to gain renown. In short, much as I had been excited by the offers of friendship extended to me following the Mannering affair, I did, after that encounter at the Waldorf, remember again the example set by my parents, and I resolved not to allow frivolous preoccupations to deflect me.

Since I am now recalling that period in my life following the Mannering case, it is perhaps worth mentioning here my unexpected reunion with Colonel Chamberlain after all those years. It is perhaps surprising, given the role he played at such a pivotal juncture in my childhood, that we had not kept in closer contact.

But for whatever reason, we had failed to do so, and when I did meet him again - a month or two after that encounter with Miss Hemmings at the Waldorf - it was quite by chance.

I was standing in a bookshop on the Charing Cross Road one rainy afternoon, examining an illustrated edition of Ivanhoe. I had been aware for some tune of someone hovering close behind me, and assuming he was wishing access to that part of the shelf, had moved aside. But then when the person continued to loiter around me, I finally turned.

I recognised the colonel immediately, for his physical features had hardly changed. However, through adult eyes, he appeared to me meeker and shabbier than the figure from my boyhood. He was standing there in a mackintosh, regarding me shyly, and only when I exclaimed: ‘Ah, Colonel!’ did he smile and hold out his hand.

‘How are you, my boy? I was sure it was you. My goodness!

How are you, my boy?’

Although tears had appeared in his eyes, his manner remained awkward, as though he were afraid I might be annoyed at this reminder of the past. I did my best to convey delight at seeing him again, and as a downpour commenced outside, we stood there exchanging conversation in the cramped bookshop.

I discovered that he was still living in Worcestershire, that he had come to London to attend a funeral and had decided ‘to make a few days of it’. When I asked where he was staying, he answered vaguely, leading me to suspect he had taken modest lodgings. Before parting, I invited him to dine with me the following evening, a suggestion he took up with enthusiasm, though he seemed taken aback when I mentioned the Dorchester.

But I continued to insist - ‘It’s the least I can do after all your past kindness.’ I had pleaded - until finally he gave in.

Looking back now, my choice of the Dorchester strikes me as the height of inconsideration. I had, after all, already surmised that the colonel was short of funds; I should have seen too how wounding it would be for him not to pay at least his half of the bill. But in those days such things never occurred to me; I was much too concerned, I suspect, about impressing the old man with the full extent of my transformation since he had last seen me.

In this latter aim, I was probably rather successful. For as it happened, I had just around that point been taken to the Dorchester on two occasions, so that on the evening I met Colonel Chamberlain there, the sommelier greeted me with a ‘nice to see you again, sir’. Then, after he had witnessed me exchanging witticisms with the maitre d’ as we started on our soup, the colonel broke into sudden laughter.

‘And to think,’ he said, ‘this is the same little squirt I had snivelling at my side on that boat!’

He gave a few more laughs, then broke off abruptly, perhaps fearing he should never have alluded to the subject. But I smiled calmly and said: 1 must have been a trial to you on that trip, Colonel.’

The old man’s face clouded for a moment. Then he said solemnly: ‘Considering the circumstances, I thought you were extremely brave, my boy. Extremely brave.’

At this stage, I recall, there was a slightly awkward silence, which was broken when we both commented on the fine flavour of our soup. At the next table, a large lady with much jewellery was laughing gaily, and the colonel glanced rather indiscreetly towards her. Then he appeared to come to a decision.

‘You know, it’s funny,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about it, before I came out tonight. That time you and I first met. I wonder if you remember, my boy. I don’t suppose you do. After all, you had so much else on your mind then.’

‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘I have the most vivid memory of the occasion.’