Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro [120]
“I’m sorry about just now, Kath. I really am. I’m a real idiot.” Then he added: “What are you thinking, Kath?”
“I was thinking,” I said, “about back then, at Hailsham, when you used to go bonkers like that, and we couldn’t understand it. We couldn’t understand how you could ever get like that. And I was just having this idea, just a thought really. I was thinking maybe the reason you used to get like that was because at some level you always knew.”
Tommy thought about this, then shook his head. “Don’t think so, Kath. No, it was always just me. Me being an idiot. That’s all it ever was.” Then after a moment, he did a small laugh and said: “But that’s a funny idea. Maybe I did know, somewhere deep down. Something the rest of you didn’t.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nothing seemed to change much in the week or so after that trip. I didn’t expect it to stay that way though, and sure enough, by the start of October, I started noticing little differences. For one thing, though Tommy carried on with his animal pictures, he became cagey about doing them in my presence. We weren’t quite back to how it was when I’d first become his carer and all the Cottages stuff was still hanging over us. But it was like he’d thought about it and come to a decision: that he’d continue with the animals as the mood took him, but if I came in, he’d stop and put them away. I wasn’t that hurt by this. In fact, in many ways, it was a relief: those animals staring us in the face when we were together would have only made things more awkward.
But there were other changes I found less easy. I don’t mean we weren’t still having some good times up in his room. We were even having sex every now and then. But what I couldn’t help noticing was how, more and more, Tommy tended to identify himself with the other donors at the centre. If, for instance, the two of us were reminiscing about old Hailsham people, he’d sooner or later move the conversation round to one of his current donor friends who’d maybe said or done something similar to what we were recalling. There was one time in particular, when I drove into the Kingsfield after a long journey and stepped out of the car. The Square was looking a bit like that time I’d come to the centre with Ruth the day we’d gone to see the boat. It was an overcast autumn afternoon, and there was no one about except for a group of donors clustered under the overhanging roof of the recreation building. I saw Tommy was with them—he was standing with a shoulder against a post—and was listening to a donor who was sitting crouched on the entrance steps. I came towards them a little way, then stopped and waited, there in the open, under the grey sky. But Tommy, though he’d seen me, went on listening to his friend, and eventually he and all the others burst out laughing. Even then, he carried on listening and smiling. He claimed afterwards he’d signalled to me to come over, but if he had, it hadn’t been at all obvious. All I registered was him smiling vaguely in my direction, then going back to what his friend was saying. Okay, he was in the middle of something, and after a minute or so, he did come away, and the two of us went up to his room. But it was quite different to the way things would have happened before. And it wasn’t just that he’d kept me waiting out in the Square. I wouldn’t have minded that so much. It was more that I sensed for the first time that day something close to resentment on his part at having to come away with me, and once we were up in his room, the atmosphere between us wasn’t so great.
To be fair, a lot of it might have been down to me as much as him. Because as I’d stood there watching them all talking and laughing, I’d felt an unexpected little tug; because there was something about the way these donors had arranged themselves in a rough semi-circle, something about their poses, almost studiedly relaxed, whether standing or sitting, as though to announce to the