Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro [62]
Mind you, none of us pushed it too far. I don’t remember anyone saying they were going to be a movie star or anything like that. The talk was more likely to be about becoming a postman or working on a farm. Quite a few students wanted to be drivers of one sort or other, and often, when the conversation went this way, some veterans would begin comparing particular scenic routes they’d travelled, favourite roadside cafés, difficult roundabouts, that sort of thing. Today, of course, I’d be able to talk the lot of them under the table on those topics. Back then, though, I used to just listen, not saying a thing, drinking in their talk. Sometimes, if it was late, I’d close my eyes and nestle against the arm of a sofa—or of a boy, if it was during one of those brief phases I was officially “with” someone—and drift in and out of sleep, letting images of the roads move through my head.
Anyway, to get back to my point, when this sort of talk was going on, it was often Ruth who took it further than anybody—especially when there were veterans around. She’d been talking about offices right from the start of the winter, but when it really took on life, when it became her “dream future,” was after that morning she and I walked into the village.
It was during a bitterly cold spell, and our boxy gas heaters had been giving us trouble. We’d spend ages trying to get them to light, clicking away with no result, and we’d had to give up on more and more—and along with them, the rooms they were supposed to heat. Keffers refused to deal with it, claiming it was our responsibility, but in the end, when things were getting really cold, he’d handed us an envelope with money and a note of some igniter fuel we had to buy. So Ruth and I had volunteered to walk to the village to get it, and that’s why we were going down the lane that frosty morning. We’d reached a spot where the hedges were high on both sides, and the ground was covered in frozen cowpats, when Ruth suddenly stopped a few steps behind me.
It took me a moment to realise, so that by the time I turned back to her she was breathing over her fingers and looking down, engrossed by something beside her feet. I thought maybe it was some poor creature dead in the frost, but when I came up, I saw it was a colour magazine—not one of “Steve’s magazines,” but one of those bright cheerful things that come free with newspapers. It had fallen open at this glossy double page advert, and though the paper had gone soggy and there was mud at one corner, you could see it well enough. It showed this beautifully modern open-plan office with three or four people who worked in it having some kind of joke with each other. The place looked sparkling and so did the people. Ruth was staring at this picture and, when she noticed me beside her, said: “Now that would be a proper place to work.”
Then she got self-conscious—maybe even cross that I’d caught her like that—and set off again much faster than before.
But a few evenings later, when several of us were sitting around a fire in the farmhouse, Ruth began telling us about the sort of office she’d ideally work in, and I immediately recognised it. She went into all the details—the plants, the gleaming equipment, the chairs with their swivels and castors—and it was so vivid everyone let her talk uninterrupted for ages. I was watching her closely, but it never seemed to occur to her I might make the connection—maybe she’d even forgotten herself where the image had come from. She even talked at one point about how the