Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro [74]
“My tape? I didn’t realise you ever knew about it, Tommy.”
“Oh yeah. Ruth was getting people to look for it and saying you were really upset about losing it. So I tried to find it. I never told you at the time, but I did try really hard. I thought there’d be places I could look where you couldn’t. In boys’ dorms, stuff like that. I remember looking for ages, but I couldn’t find it.”
I glanced at him and felt my rotten mood evaporating. “I never knew that, Tommy. That was really sweet of you.”
“Well, it didn’t help much. But I really wanted to find it for you. And when it looked in the end like it wasn’t going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I’ll go to Norfolk and I’ll find it there for her.”
“The lost corner of England,” I said, and looked around me. “And here we are!”
Tommy too looked around him, and we came to a halt. We were in another side-street, not as narrow as the one with the gallery. For a moment we both kept glancing around theatrically, then giggled.
“So it wasn’t such a daft idea,” Tommy said. “That Woolworth’s shop earlier, it had all these tapes, so I thought they were bound to have yours. But I don’t think they did.”
“You don’t think they did? Oh, Tommy, you mean you didn’t even look properly!”
“I did, Kath. It’s just that, well, it’s really annoying but I couldn’t remember what it was called. All that time at Hailsham, I was opening boys’ collection chests and everything, and now I can’t remember. It was Julie Bridges or something . . .”
“Judy Bridgewater. Songs After Dark.”
Tommy shook his head solemnly. “They definitely didn’t have that.”
I laughed and punched his arm. He looked puzzled so I said: “Tommy, they wouldn’t have something like that in Woolworth’s. They have the latest hits. Judy Bridgewater, she’s someone from ages ago. It just happened to turn up, at one of our Sales. It’s not going to be in Woolworth’s now, you idiot!”
“Well, like I said, I don’t know about things like that. But they had so many tapes . . .”
“They had some, Tommy. Oh, never mind. It was a sweet idea. I’m really touched. It was a great idea. This is Norfolk, after all.”
We started walking again and Tommy said hesitantly: “Well, that’s why I had to tell you. I wanted to surprise you, but it’s useless. I don’t know where to look, even if I do know the name of the record. Now I’ve told you, you can help me. We can look for it together.”
“Tommy, what are you talking about?” I was trying to sound reproachful, but I couldn’t help laughing.
“Well, we’ve got over an hour. This is a real chance.”
“Tommy, you idiot. You really believe it, don’t you? All this lost-corner stuff.”
“I don’t necessarily believe it. But we might as well look now we’re here. I mean, you’d like to find it again, wouldn’t you? What have we got to lose?”
“All right. You’re a complete idiot, but all right.”
He opened his arms out helplessly. “Well, Kath, where do we go? Like I say, I’m no good at shopping.”
“We have to look in second-hand places,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “Places full of old clothes, old books. They’ll sometimes have a box full of records and tapes.”
“Okay. But where are these shops?”
When I think of that moment now, standing with Tommy in the little side-street about to begin our search, I feel a warmth welling up through me. Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn’t a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid. Not long ago, when I was caring for Tommy, and I brought up our Norfolk trip, he told me he’d felt exactly the same. That moment when we decided to go searching for my lost tape, it was like suddenly every cloud had blown away, and we had nothing but fun and laughter before us.
At the start, we kept going into the wrong sort of places: second-hand bookshops, or shops full of old vacuum cleaners, but no music at all. After a while Tommy decided I didn’t know any better than he did and announced he would lead the way. As it happened, by sheer