Kazuo Ishiguro (40 page)

Jennifer suddenly smiled and slipped her arm through mine.

‘I know what we’ll do,’ she said. ‘I have a plan. I’ve decided. I’ll find a fine decent man whom I’ll marry, and I’ll have three, no, four children. And we’ll live somewhere near here, where we can always come and look over this valley. And you can leave your stuffy little flat in London and come and live with us.

Since your lady-friends won’t have you, you can accept the post of uncle to all my future children.’

I smiled back at her. “That sounds a fine plan. Though I don’t know if your husband would so appreciate having me around his house the whole time.’

‘Oh, then we’ll rig up an old shed or something for you.’

‘Now, that does sound tempting. Keep your end of the bargain and I’ll think about it.’

‘If that’s a promise, then you’d better watch out. Because I’ll make sure it happens. Then you’ll have to come and live in your shed.’

Over this last month, as I have drifted through these grey days in London, wandering about Kensington Gardens in the company of autumn tourists and office workers out for their lunch breaks, occasionally running into an old acquaintance and perhaps going off with him for lunch or tea, I have often found myself thinking again of my conversation with Jennifer that morning. There is no denying it has cheered me. There is every reason to believe that she has now come through the dark tunnel of her life and emerged at the other end. What awaits her there remains to be seen, but she is not by nature someone who easily accepts defeat. Indeed, it is more than possible she will go on to fulfil the programme she outlined to me - only half jokingly - as we looked out over the valley that morning. And if in a few years’ time things have indeed gone according to her wishes, then it is not out of the question I will take up her suggestion to go and live with her in the country. Of course, I would not much fancy her shed, but I could always take a cottage not far away. I am grateful for Jennifer. We understand each other’s concerns instinctively, and it is exchanges like the one that frosty morning which have proved such a source of consolation for me over the years.

But then again, life in the countryside might prove too quiet, and I have become rather attached to London of late. Besides, from time to time, I am still approached by persons who remember my name from before the war and wish my advice on some matter. Only last week, in fact, when I went to dinner with the Osbournes, I was introduced to a lady who immediately seized my hand, exclaiming: ‘You mean you’re the Christopher Banks? The detective?’

It turned out she had spent much of her life in Singapore, where she had been ‘a very great friend’ of Sarah’s. ‘She used to talk of you all the time,’ she told me. ‘I really do feel I know you already.’

The Osbournes had invited several other people, but once we sat down to eat, I found myself placed beside this same lady, and inevitably our conversation drifted back to Sarah.

‘You were a good friend of hers, were you not?’ she asked at one point. ‘She always talked so admiringly of you.’

‘We were good friends, certainly. Of course, we rather lost touch once she went out to the East.’

‘She often talked of you. She had so many stories about the famous detective, kept us quite amused when we grew tired of playing bridge. She always spoke most highly of you.’

‘I’m moved to think she remembered me so well. As I say, we rather lost touch, though I did receive a letter from her once, around two years after the war. I wasn’t aware until then how she’d spent the war. She made light of the internment, but I’m sure it was no joke.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it was no joke at all. My husband and I, we could so easily have suffered the same fate. We managed to get ourselves to Australia just in time. But Sarah and M. de Villefort, they always trusted so much to fate. They were the sort of couple who went out in the evening with no plan, quite happy to see who they bumped into. A charming attitude most of the time, but not when the Japanese are on your doorstep. Did you know him also?’

‘I never had the pleasure of meeting the count. I understand he returned to Europe after Sarah’s death, but our paths have never crossed.’

‘Oh, I thought from the way she talked of you, you were good friends with them both.’

‘No. You see, I really only knew Sarah during an earlier part of her life. I beg your pardon, there’s perhaps no way for you to answer this. But did they strike you as a happy couple, Sarah and this French chap?’

‘A happy couple?’ My companion thought for a moment. ‘Of course, one can never know for sure, but quite honestly, it would be hard to believe otherwise. They did seem utterly devoted to one another. They never had much money, so that meant they could never be quite as carefree as they might have wished. But the count always seemed so, well, so romantic. You laugh, Mr Banks, but that’s just the word for it. He was so devastated by her death. It was the internment that did it, you know. Like so many others, she never fully recovered her health. I do miss her. Such a charming companion.’

Since this encounter last week, I have brought out and read again several times Sarah’s letter - the only one I ever received since our parting in Shanghai all those years ago. It is dated 18th May 1947, and has been written from a hill station in Malaya. Perhaps it was my hope that after my conversation with her friend, I would discover in those rather formal, almost blandly pleasant lines, some hitherto hidden dimension. But in fact the letter continues to yield up little more than the bare bones of her life since her departure from Shanghai. She talks of Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore as being ‘delightful’, ‘colourful’, ‘fascinating’. Her French companion is mentioned several times, but always in passing as though I already knew all there was to know about him. There is a breezy mention of the internment under the Japanese, and she pronounces her health problems ‘a bit of a bore’. She asks after me in a polite way and calls her own life in liberated Singapore ‘a pretty decent thing to be getting on with’. It is the sort of letter one might write, in a foreign land, on an impulse one afternoon to a vaguely remembered friend. Only once, towards the end, does its tone imply the intimacy we once shared.

‘I don’t mind telling you, dearest Christopher,’ she writes, ‘that at the time, I was disappointed, to say the least, at the way things transpired between us. But don’t worry, I have long ceased to be cross with you. How could I remain cross when Fate in the end chose to smile so kindly on me? Besides, it is now my belief that for you, it was the correct decision not to come with me that day. You always felt you had a mission to complete, and I dare say you would never have been able to give your heart to anyone or anything until you had done so. I can only hope that by now your tasks are behind you, and that you too have been able to find the sort of happiness and companionship which I have come lately almost to take for granted.’

There is something about these sections of her letter - and those last lines in particular - that never quite ring true. Some subtle note that runs throughout the letter - indeed, her very act of writing to me at that moment - feels at odds with her report of days filled with ‘happiness and companionship’. Was her life with her French count really what she set off to find that day she stepped out on to the jetty in Shanghai? I somehow doubt it. My feeling is that she is thinking of herself as much as of me when she talks of a sense of mission, and the futility of attempting to evade it. Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

I do not wish to appear smug; but drifting through my days here in London, I believe I can indeed own up to a certain contentment.

I enjoy my walks in the parks, I visit the galleries; and increasingly of late, I have come to take a foolish pride in sifting through old newspaper reports of my cases in the Reading Room at the British Museum. This city, in other words, has come to be my home, and I should not mind if I had to live out the rest of my days here. Nevertheless, there are those times when a sort of emptiness fills my hours, and I shall continue to give Jennifer’s invitation serious thought.

The End

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and came to Britain at the age of five. He is the author of four previous novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Primio Scanno, shortlisted for the Booker Prize), The Remains of the Day (1989, winner of the Booker Prize) and The Unconsoled (1995, winner of the Cheltenham Prize).

Kazuo Ishiguro’s work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. The Remains of the Day became an international bestseller, with over a million copies sold in the English language alone, and was adapted into an award-winning film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

In 1995 Ishiguro received an OBE for Services to Literature, and in 1998 the French decoration of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

‘An imaginative work of surpassing intelligence and taste.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Ishiguro shows immense tenderness for his characters, however absurd or deluded they may be… When We Were Orphans confirms Ishiguro as one of Britain’s most formally daring and challenging novelists.’ Guardian ‘Kazuo Ishiguro has become perhaps the most challenging, unconventional and solitary British novelist writing today.’ Evening Standard “This is perhaps Ishiguro’s most densely plotted and dramatic novel to date, but what remains with the reader is its extraordinary thematic resonance and depth.’ Esquire Kazuo Ishiguro is currently the most interesting writer about the war and its effect on ordinary lives… Ishiguro’s writing is infused with a profound sense of the effect that great historical events have on people’s lives.’ Independent on Sunday ‘When We Were Orphans is a work of startling originality and almost mystical power.’ Sunday Independent By the same author A PALE VIEW OF HILLS AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD THE REMAINS OF THE DAY THE UNCONSOLED