Nocturnes_ Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro [36]
My sister gave me a weary look and shook her head. I just laughed and said:
“You’ve got to admit, that woman and Hag Fraser really deserve one another. It was just too good an opportunity to miss.”
“It’s all very well for you to amuse yourself like that,” Maggie said, pushing past me to the kitchen. “I have to live here.”
“So what? Look, you’ll never see those Krauts again. And if Hag Fraser finds out we’ve been recommending her place to passing tourists, she’s hardly going to complain, is she?”
Maggie shook her head, but there was more of a smile about it this time.
THE CAFE GOT QUIETER after that, then Geoff came back, so I went off upstairs, feeling I’d done more than my share for the time being. Up in my room, I sat at the bay window with my guitar and for a while got engrossed in a song I was halfway through writing. But then—and it seemed like no time—I could hear the afternoon tea rush starting downstairs. If it got really mad, like it usually did, Maggie was bound to ask me to come down—which really wouldn’t be fair, given how much I’d done already. So I decided the best thing would be for me to slip out to the hills and continue my work there.
I left the back way without encountering anyone, and immediately felt glad to be out in the open. It was pretty warm though, especially carrying a guitar case, and I was glad of the breeze.
I was heading for a particular spot I’d discovered the previous week. To get there you climbed a steep path behind the house, then walked a few minutes along a more gradual incline till you came to this bench. It’s one I’d chosen carefully, not just because of the fantastic view, but because it wasn’t at one of those junctions in the paths where people with exhausted children come staggering up and sit next to you. On the other hand it wasn’t completely isolated, and every now and then, a walker would pass by, saying “Hi!” in the way they do, maybe adding some quip about my guitar, all without breaking stride. I didn’t mind this at all. It was kind of like having an audience and not having one, and it gave my imagination just that little edge it needed.
I’d been there on my bench for maybe half an hour when I became aware that some walkers, who’d just gone past with the usual short greeting, had now stopped several yards away and were watching me. This did rather annoy me, and I said, a little sarcastically:
“It’s okay. You don’t have to toss me any money.”
This was answered by a big hearty laugh which I recognised, and I looked up to see the Krauts coming back towards the bench.
The possibility flashed through my mind that they’d gone to Hag Fraser’s, realised I’d pulled a fast one on them, and were now coming to get even with me. But then I saw that not only the guy, but the woman too, was smiling cheerfully. They retraced their steps till they were standing in front of me, and since by this time the sun was falling, they appeared for a moment as two silhouettes, the big afternoon sky behind them. Then they came closer and I could see they were both gazing at my guitar—which I’d continued to play—with a look of happy amazement, the way people gaze at a baby. Even more astonishing, the woman was tapping her foot to my beat. I got self-conscious and stopped.
“Hey, carry on!” the woman said. “It’s really good what you play there.”
“Yes,” the husband said, “wonderful! We heard it from a distance.” He pointed. “We were right up there, on that ridge, and I said to Sonja, I can hear music.”
“Singing too,” the woman said. “I said to Tilo, listen, there is singing somewhere. And I was right, yes? You were singing also a moment ago.”
I couldn’t quite accept that this smiling woman was the same one who’d given us such a hard time at lunch, and I looked at them again carefully, in case this was a different couple altogether. But they were in the same clothes, and though the man’s ABBA-style