The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro [101]
Of course, the man had been speaking figuratively, but it is rather interesting to see his words borne out so immediately at the literal level. I would suppose he had been sitting here next to me for some minutes without my noticing him, so absorbed had I become with my recollections of meeting Miss Kenton two days ago. In fact, I do not think I registered his presence on the bench at all until he declared out loud:
‘Sea air does you a lot of good.’
I looked up and saw a heavily built man, probably in his late sixties, wearing a rather tired tweed jacket, his shirt open at the neck. He was gazing out over the water, perhaps at some seagulls in the far distance, and so it was not at all clear that he had been talking to me. But since no one else responded, and since I could see no other obvious persons close by who might do so, I eventually said:
‘Yes, I’m sure it does.’
‘The doctor says it does you good. So I come up here as much as the weather will let me.’
The man went on to tell me about his various ailments, only very occasionally turning his eyes away from the sunset in order to give me a nod or a grin. I really only started to pay any attention at all when he happened to mention that until his retirement three years ago, he had been a butler of a nearby house. On inquiring further, I ascertained that the house had been a very small one in which he had been the only full-time employee. When I asked him if he had ever worked with a proper staff under him, perhaps before the war, he replied:
‘Oh, in those days, I was just a footman. I wouldn’t have had the know-how to be a butler in those days. You’d be surprised what it involved when you had those big houses you had then.’
At this point, I thought it appropriate to reveal my identity, and although I am not sure ‘Darlington Hall’ meant anything to him, my companion seemed suitably impressed.
‘And here I was trying to explain it all to you,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Good job you told me when you did before I made a right fool of myself. Just shows you never know who you’re addressing when you start talking to a stranger. So you had a big staff, I suppose. Before the war, I mean.’
He was a cheerful fellow and seemed genuinely interested, so I confess I did spend a little time telling him about Darlington Hall in former days. In the main, I tried to convey to him some of the ‘know-how’, as he put it, involved in overseeing large events of the sort we used often to have. Indeed, I believe I even revealed to him several of my professional ‘secrets’ designed to bring that extra bit out of staff, as well as the various ‘sleights-of-hand’ – the equivalent of a conjuror’s – by which a butler could cause a thing to occur at just the right time and place without guests even glimpsing the often large and complicated manoeuvre behind the operation. As I say, my companion seemed genuinely interested, but after a time I felt I had revealed enough and so concluded by saying:
‘Of course, things are quite different today under my present employer. An American gentleman.’
‘American, eh? Well, they’re the only ones can afford it now. So you stayed on with the house. Part of the package.’ He turned and gave me a grin.
‘Yes,’ I said, laughing a little. ‘As you say, part of the package.’
The man turned his gaze back to the sea again, took a deep breath and sighed contentedly. We then proceeded to sit there together quietly for several moments.
‘The fact is, of course,’ I said after a while, ‘I gave my best to Lord Darlington. I gave him the very best I had to give, and now – well – I find I do not have a great deal more left to give.’
The man said nothing, but nodded, so I went on:
‘Since my new employer Mr Farraday arrived, I’ve tried very hard, very hard indeed, to provide the sort of service I would like him to have. I’ve tried and tried, but whatever I do I find I am far from reaching the standards I once set myself. More and more errors are appearing in my work. Quite trivial