Kazuo Ishiguro (8 page)

But accompanying her from place to place as I did, I came to take for granted, for instance, the admiring glances of strangers as we strolled through the Public Gardens, or the preferential treatment from the waiters at the Italian Cafe in Nanking Road where we would go for cakes on Saturday mornings. Whenever I look now at my photographs of her -1 have seven in all, in the album that accompanied me here from Shanghai - she strikes me as a beauty in an older, Victorian tradition. Today, she might perhaps be regarded as ‘handsome’; certainly, she is not ‘pretty’. I cannot imagine her, for instance, ever having had the repertoire of coquettish little shrugs and tosses of the head that we expect of our young women today. In the photographs - all of them taken before my birth, four in Shanghai, two in Hong Kong, one in Switzerland - she is certainly elegant, stiff backed, perhaps even haughty, but not without the gentleness around her eyes I remember well. In any case, the point I am making is that it was quite natural for me to suspect, initially at least, that Akira’s odd attitude towards my mother derived, like so many other things, from her beauty. But when I thought the thing over more carefully, I recall settling on a more likely explanation: namely, that Akira had been unusually impressed by what he had witnessed the morning the company’s health inspector visited our house.

It was an accepted feature of our lives to be visited from time to time by an official from Morganbrook and Byatt, some man who would spend an hour or so wandering about the house, noting things in his notebook, mumbling the occasional question. I remember my mother once telling me that when I was very young, I liked to play at ‘being’ a Byatt’s health inspector, and that she often had to dissuade me from spending prolonged periods studying our lavatory arrangements with a pencil in my hand. This may well have been so, but as far as I can recall, these visits were mostly entirely eventless, and for years I did not think anything of them. I can see now, though, that these inspections, checking as they did not only on hygiene matters, but also for signs of disease or parasites among household members, were potentially very embarrassing, and no doubt the individuals selected by the company to conduct them tended to be those with a gift for tact and delicacy. Certainly, I remember a series of meek, shuffling men - usually English, though occasionally French - who were always carefully deferential not just to my mother, but also to Mei Li - a point which always went down well with me. But the inspector who turned up on that morning -1 must then have been eight - was not at all typical.

Today, I can remember in particular two things about him: that he had a drooping moustache, and that there was a brown mark - perhaps a tea stain - at the back of his hat disappearing into its band. I was playing alone at the front of the house, on the round island of lawn encircled by our carriage track. I remember it being overcast that day. I had been absorbed in my game when the man appeared at the gate and came walking towards the house. As he passed me, he muttered: ‘Hello, young man. Mother in?’ then carried on without waiting for my reply. It was as I was staring at his back view that I noticed the stain on his hat.

What I remember next must have occurred around an hour later. By that time Akira had arrived and we were busy up in my playroom. It was the sound of their voices - not raised exactly, but filled with a growing tension - that caused us both to look up from our game, then eventually, to move stealthily out on to the landing and crouch beside the heavy oak cabinet outside the playroom door.

Our house had a rather grand staircase, and from our vantage point beside the oak cabinet, we could see the gleaming banister rail following the curve of the stairs down to the spacious entrance hall. There, my mother and the inspector were standing facing each other, both very stiff and straight, near the centre of the floor, so that they looked rather like two opposing chess pieces left on the board. The inspector, I noticed, was clutching to his chest his hat with the stain. For her part, my mother had her hands clasped just below her bosom, the way she did before she burst into song on those evenings Mrs Lewis, the American curate’s wife, came to play the piano.

The altercation that followed, though of no apparent significance in itself, I believe came to mean something special to my mother, representing perhaps a key moment of moral triumph. I remember she would refer to it regularly as I grew older, as though it were something she wished me to take to my heart; and I remember often listening to her recount the whole story to visitors, usually concluding with a little laugh and the observation that the inspector had been removed from his post shortly after the encounter. Consequently, I cannot be sure today how much of my memory of that morning derives from what I actually witnessed from the landing, and to what extent it has merged over time with my mother’s accounts of the episode. In any case, my impression is that as Akira and I peered round the edge of the oak cabinet, the inspector was saying something like: ‘I have every respect for your sentiments, Mrs Banks. Nevertheless, out here, one can’t be too careful. And the company does have a responsibility for all employees’ welfare, even the more seasoned, such as yourself and Mr Banks.’

‘I am sorry, Mr Wright,’ my mother responded, ‘but your objections have yet to make themselves clear to me. These servants you talk of have given excellent service over the years. I can vouch utterly for their standards of hygiene. And you have yourself admitted they show no signs of any contagious illness.’

‘Nevertheless, madam, they are from Shantung. And the company is obliged to counsel all our employees against taking natives of that province into their houses. A stricture, may I say, derived from bitter experience.’

‘Can you be serious? You wish me to drive out these friends of ours - yes, we’ve long considered them friends! - for no other reason than that they hail from Shantung?’

At this, the inspector’s manner grew rather pompous. He proceeded to explain to my mother that the company’s objections to servants from Shantung were based on doubts about not just their hygiene and health, but also their honesty. And with so many items of value in the house belonging to the company - the inspector gestured around him - he was obliged to reiterate most strongly his recommendation. When my mother broke in again to ask on what basis such astonishing generalisations had been made, the inspector gave a weary sigh, then said: ‘In a word, madam, opium. Opium addiction in Shantung has now advanced to such deplorable levels that entire villages are to be found enslaved to the pipe. Hence, Mrs Banks, the low standards of hygiene, the high incidence of contagion. And inevitably, those who come from Shantung to work in Shanghai, even if essentially of an honest disposition, tend sooner or later to resort to thieving, for the sake of their parents, brothers, cousins, uncles, what have you, all of whose cravings must somehow be pacified… Good gracious, madam! I’m simply trying to make my point…’

Not only was it the inspector who recoiled at this point; beside me, Akira gave a sharp intake of breath, and when I glanced at him he was staring down at my mother openmouthed.

It is this picture of him at that moment which led me later to believe his subsequent awestruck view of my mother originated from that morning.

But if the inspector and Akira both started at something my mother did at that point, I did not myself see anything out of the ordinary. To me, she appeared to do no more than brace herself a little in preparation for what she was about to assert. But then, I suppose I was well used to her ways; possibly to those less familiar with them, certain of my mother’s customary looks and postures in such situations might indeed have come over as somewhat alarming.

This is not to say that I was not fully alert to the explosion that was to follow. In fact, from the instant the inspector had uttered the word ‘opium’, I had known that the unfortunate man was done for.

He had come to an abrupt halt, no doubt expecting to be cut off. But I recall my mother letting hang a trembling silence throughout which her glare never moved off the inspector before finally asking in a quiet voice that nevertheless threatened to brim over with fury: ‘You presume, sir, to talk to me, on behalf of this of all firms, about opium?’

There followed a tirade of controlled ferocity in which she put to the inspector the case with which I was by then already familiar and which I was to hear outlined again many more times: that the British in general, and the company of Morganbrook and Byatt especially, by importing Indian opium into China in such massive quantities had brought untold misery and degradation to a whole nation. As she spoke, my mother’s voice often grew taut, but never quite lost its measured quality.

Finally, still fixing her foe with her glare, she asked him: ‘Are you not ashamed, sir? As a Christian, as an Englishman, as a man with scruples? Are you not ashamed to be in the service of such a company? Tell me, how is your conscience able to rest while you owe your existence to such ungodly wealth?’

Had he had the temerity to do so, the inspector might have pointed out the inappropriateness of my mother’s admonishing him in such terms, of such words issuing from the wife of a fellow company employee, residing in a company house. But by this point he had realised he was out beyond his depth, and muttering a few stock phrases to preserve his dignity, retreated from the house.

In those days, it was still a surprise to me when any adult displayed - as had the inspector - ignorance of my mother’s campaigns against opium. Throughout much of my growing up, I held the belief that my mother was known and admired far and wide as the principal enemy of the Great Opium Dragon of China. The opium phenomenon, I should say, was not something adults in Shanghai made much effort to hide from children, but of course, when I was very young, I understood little concerning the matter. I was accustomed to seeing each day, from the carriage that took me to school, the Chinese men in doorways along Nanking Road, sprawled in the morning sun, and for some time, whenever I heard of my mother’s campaigns, I imagined her to be assisting this specific group of men.

Later though, as I grew older, I had more opportunities to glimpse something of the complexity surrounding the issue. I was, for instance, required to present myself at my mother’s luncheons.

These would take place at our house, usually during the week when my father was at the office. Typically, four or five ladies would arrive and be led into the conservatory, where a table would have been laid amidst the creepers and palms. I would assist by passing around cups, saucers and plates, and wait for the moment I knew would come: that is, when my mother asked her guests how, when they ‘searched their hearts and consciences’, they viewed their companies’ policies. At this point the pleasant chatter would cease and the ladies would listen silently as my mother went on to express her own deep unhappiness with ‘our company’s actions’, which she regarded as ‘un-Christian and un-British’. As I remember it, these luncheons always became quiet and awkward from this stage on, until the moment, not so long afterwards, when the ladies would utter their frosty farewells and drift out to the waiting carriages and motor cars. But I knew from what my mother told me that she did ‘win through’ to a number of these company wives, and the converts were then invited to her meetings.

These latter were much more serious affairs and I was not permitted to attend them. They would take place in the dining room behind closed doors, and if by chance I was still in the house while a meeting was in progress, I would be required to tip-toe around silently. Occasionally I would be introduced to a personage my mother held in special esteem - a clergyman, say, or a diplomatist - but by and large Mei Li was instructed to have me well out of the way before the first guests arrived. Of course, Uncle Philip was one of those always present, and I often endeavoured to be visible as the participants departed so as to catch his eye. If he spotted me, then invariably he would come over with a smile and we would have a little talk. Sometimes, if he had no pressing engagement, I would take him aside to show him the drawings I had done that week, or else we might go and sit together for a while out on the back terrace.

Once everyone had left, the atmosphere in the house would undergo a complete change. My mother’s mood would invariably lighten, as though the meeting had swept away every one of her cares. I would hear her singing to herself as she went around the house putting things back in order, and as soon as I did so, I would hurry out into the garden to wait. For I knew that once she had finished tidying, she would come out to find me, and whatever time was left before lunch she would devote entirely to me.

Once I was older, it was during these periods, just after a meeting, that my mother and I went for our walks in Jessfield Park. But when I was six or seven, we tended to stay at home and play a board game, or sometimes even with my toy soldiers.

I can still remember a certain routine we developed around this time. In those days, there had been a swing on our lawn not far from the terrace. My mother would emerge from the house, still singing, step on to the grass and sit on the swing.

I would be waiting up on my mound at the back of the garden, and come running up to her, pretending to be furious.

‘Get off, Mother! You’ll break it!’ I would jump up and down before the swing, waving my arms about. ‘You’re much too big! You’ll break it!’

And my mother, pretending she could neither see nor hear me, would swing herself higher and higher, all the time continuing to sing at the top of her voice some song like: ‘Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer Do.’ When all my pleading had failed, I would - the logic of this now eludes me - attempt a succession of headstands on the grass in front of her. Her singing would then become punctuated by gales of laughter, until eventually she would come down from the swing, and we would go off to play with whatever I had prepared for us. Even today, I cannot think about my mother’s meetings without remembering those eagerly anticipated moments that would always follow.