Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro [81]
As spring came on, there seemed to be more and more veterans leaving to start their training, and though they left without fuss in the usual way, the increased numbers made them impossible to ignore. I’m not sure what our feelings were, witnessing these departures. I suppose to some extent we envied the people leaving. It did feel like they were headed for a bigger, more exciting world. But of course, without a doubt, their going made us increasingly uneasy.
Then, I think it was around April, Alice F. became the first of our Hailsham bunch to leave, and not long after that Gordon C. did too. They’d both asked to start their training, and went off with cheerful smiles, but after that, for our lot anyway, the atmosphere at the Cottages changed forever.
Many veterans, too, seemed affected by the flurry of departures, and maybe as a direct result, there was a fresh spate of rumours of the sort Chrissie and Rodney had spoken about in Norfolk. Talk went around of students, somewhere else in the country, getting deferrals because they’d shown they were in love—and now, just sometimes, the talk was of students with no connections to Hailsham. Here again, the five of us who’d been to Norfolk backed away from these topics: even Chrissie and Rodney, who’d once been at the centre of just this sort of talk, now looked awkwardly away when these rumours got going.
The “Norfolk effect” even got to me and Tommy. I’d been assuming, once we were back, we’d be taking little opportunities, whenever we were alone, to exchange more thoughts on his theory about the Gallery. But for some reason—and it wasn’t any more him than me—this never really happened. The one exception, I suppose, was that time in the goosehouse, the morning when he showed me his imaginary animals.
THE BARN WE CALLED THE GOOSEHOUSE was on the outer fringes of the Cottages, and because the roof leaked badly and the door was permanently off its hinges, it wasn’t used for anything much other than as a place for couples to sneak off to in the warmer months. By then I’d taken to going for long solitary walks, and I think I was setting out on one of these, and had just gone past the goosehouse, when I heard Tommy calling me. I turned to see him in his bare feet, perched awkwardly on a bit of dry ground surrounded by huge puddles, one hand on the side of the barn to keep his balance.
“What happened to your Wellies, Tommy?” I asked. Aside from his bare feet, he was dressed in his usual thick jumper and jeans.
“I was, you know, drawing . . .” He laughed, and held up a little black notebook similar to the ones Keffers always went around with. It was by then over two months since the Norfolk trip, but I realised as soon as I saw the notebook what this was about. But I waited for him to say:
“If you like, Kath, I’ll show you.”
He led the way into the goosehouse, hopping over the jaggy ground. I’d expected it to be dark inside, but the sunlight was pouring through the skylights. Pushed against one wall were various bits of furniture heaved out over the past year or so—broken tables, old fridges, that kind of thing. Tommy appeared to have dragged into the middle of the floor a two-seater settee with stuffing poking out of its black plastic, and I guessed he’d been sitting in it doing his drawing when I’d gone past. Just nearby, his Wellingtons were lying fallen on their sides, his football socks peeking out of the tops.
Tommy jumped back onto the settee, nursing his big toe. “Sorry my feet poo a bit. I took everything off without realising. I think I’ve cut myself now. Kath, do you want to see these? Ruth looked at them last week, so I’ve been meaning to show you ever since. No one’s seen them apart from Ruth. Have a look, Kath.”
That was when I first saw his animals. When he