Never Let Me Go (Movie Tie-In Edition) (23 page)

‘Look,’ Ruth said, ‘both of you, listen. I wanted us all to do this trip, because I wanted to say what I just said. But I also wanted it because I wanted to give you something.’ She’d been rummaging in the pockets of her anorak, and now she held out a crumpled piece of paper. ‘Tommy, you’d better take this. Look after it. Then when Kathy changes her mind, you’ll have it.’

Tommy reached forward between the seats and took the paper. ‘Thanks, Ruth,’ he said, like she’d given him a chocolate bar. Then after a few seconds, he said: ‘What is it? I don’t get it.’

‘It’s Madame’s address. It’s like you were saying to me just now. You’ve at least got to try.’

‘How d’you find it?’ Tommy asked.

‘It wasn’t easy. It took me a long time, and I ran a few risks. But I got it in the end, and I got it for you two. Now it’s up to you to find her and try.’

I’d stopped sobbing by now and started the engine. ‘That’s enough of all this,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get Tommy back. Then we need to be getting back ourselves.’

‘But you will think about it, both of you, won’t you?’

‘I just want to get back now,’ I said.

‘Tommy, you’ll keep that address safe? In case Kathy comes round.’

‘I’ll keep it,’ Tommy said. Then, much more solemnly than the last time: ‘Thanks, Ruth.’

‘We’ve seen the boat,’ I said, ‘but now we’ve got to get back. It might be over two hours back to Dover.’

I put the car on the road again, and my memory of it is that we didn’t talk much more on the way back to the Kingsfield. There was still a small group of donors huddled under the roof as we came into the Square. I turned the car before letting Tommy out. Neither of us hugged or kissed him, but as he walked away towards his fellow donors, he paused and gave us a big smile and wave.

It might seem odd, but on the journey back to Ruth’s centre, we didn’t really discuss any of what had just happened. It was partly because Ruth was exhausted – that last conversation on the roadside seemed to have drained her. But also, I think we both sensed we’d done enough serious talking for one day, and that if we tried any more of it, things would start going wrong. I’m not sure how Ruth was feeling on that drive home, but as for me, once all the strong emotions had settled, once the night began to set in and all the lights came on along the roadside, I was feeling okay. It was like something that had been hanging over me for a long time had gone, and even if things were still far from sorted, it felt like there was now at least a door open to somewhere better. I’m not saying I was elated or anything like that. Everything between the three of us seemed really delicate and I felt tense, but it wasn’t altogether a bad tension.

We didn’t even discuss Tommy beyond saying how he looked okay, and wondering how much weight he’d put on. Then we spent large stretches of the journey watching the road together in silence.

It wasn’t until a few days later I came to see what a difference that trip had made. All the guardedness, all the suspicions between me and Ruth evaporated, and we seemed to remember everything we’d once meant to each other. And that was the start of it, that era, with the summer coming on, and Ruth’s health at least on an even keel, when I’d come in the evenings with biscuits and mineral water, and we’d sit side by side at her window, watching the sun go down over the roofs, talking about Hailsham, the Cottages, anything that drifted into our minds. When I
think about Ruth now, of course, I feel sad she’s gone; but I also feel really grateful for that period we had at the end.

There was, even so, one topic we never discussed properly, and that was about what she’d said to us on the roadside that day. Just every now and then, Ruth would allude to it. She’d come out with something like:

‘Have you thought any more about becoming Tommy’s carer? You know you could arrange it, if you wanted to.’

Soon, it was this idea – of my becoming Tommy’s carer – that came to stand in for all the rest of it. I’d tell her I was thinking about it, that anyway it wasn’t so simple, even for me, to arrange such a thing. Then we’d usually let the topic drop. But I could tell it was never far from Ruth’s mind, and that’s why, that very last time I saw her, even though she wasn’t able to speak, I knew what it was she wanted to say to me.

That was three days after her second donation, when they finally let me in to see her in the small hours of the morning. She was in a room by herself, and it looked like they’d done everything they could for her. It had become obvious to me by then, from the way the doctors, the co-ordinator, the nurses were behaving, that they didn’t think she was going to make it. Now I took one glance at her in that hospital bed under the dull light and recognised the look on her face, which I’d seen on donors often enough before. It was like she was willing her eyes to see right inside herself, so she could patrol and marshal all the better the separate areas of pain in her body – the way, maybe, an anxious carer might rush between three or four ailing donors in different parts of the country. She was, strictly speaking, still conscious, but she wasn’t accessible to me as I stood there beside her metal bed. All the same, I pulled up a chair and sat with her hand in both of mine, squeezing whenever another flood of pain made her twist away from me.

I stayed beside her like that for as long as they let me, three hours, maybe longer. And as I say, for almost all of that time, she was far away inside herself. But just once, as she was twisting herself in a way that seemed scarily unnatural, and I was on the
verge of calling the nurses for more painkillers, just for a few seconds, no more, she looked straight at me and she knew exactly who I was. It was one of those little islands of lucidity donors sometimes get to in the midst of their ghastly battles, and she looked at me, just for that moment, and although she didn’t speak, I knew what her look meant. So I said to her: ‘It’s okay, I’m going to do it, Ruth. I’m going to become Tommy’s carer as soon as I can.’ I said it under my breath, because I didn’t think she’d hear the words anyway, even if I shouted them. But my hope was that with our gazes locked as they were for those few seconds, she’d read my expression exactly as I’d read hers. Then the moment was over, and she was away again. Of course, I’ll never know for sure, but I think she did understand. And even if she didn’t, what occurs to me now is that she probably knew all along, even before I did, that I’d become Tommy’s carer, and that we’d ‘give it a try’, just as she’d told us to in the car that day.

I became Tommy’s carer almost a year to the day after that trip to see the boat. It wasn’t long after Tommy’s third donation, and though he was recovering well, he was still needing a lot of time to rest, and as it turned out, that wasn’t a bad way at all for us to start this new phase together. Before long, I was getting used to the Kingsfield, growing to like it even.

Most donors at the Kingsfield get their own room after third donation, and Tommy was given one of the largest singles in the centre. Some people assumed afterwards I’d fixed it for him, but that wasn’t the case; it was just luck, and anyway, it wasn’t that great a room. I think it had been a bathroom back in the holiday camp days, because the only window had frosted glass and was really high up near the ceiling. You could only look out by standing on a chair and holding open the pane, and then you only got a view down onto the dense shrubbery. The room was L-shaped, which meant they could get in, as well as the usual bed, chair and wardrobe, a little school desk with a lift-up lid – an item that proved a real bonus, as I’ll explain.

I don’t want to give the wrong idea about that period at the Kingsfield. A lot of it was really relaxed, almost idyllic. My usual time to arrive was after lunch, and I’d come up to find Tommy stretched out on the narrow bed – always fully clothed because he didn’t want to ‘be like a patient’. I’d sit in the chair and read to him from various paperbacks I’d bring in, stuff like
The Odyssey
or
One Thousand and One Nights
. Otherwise we’d just talk, sometimes about the old days, sometimes about other things. He’d often doze off in the late afternoon, when I’d catch up on my reports over at his school desk. It was amazing really, the way the years seemed to melt away, and we were so easy with each other.

Obviously, though, not everything was like before. For a start,
Tommy and I finally started having sex. I don’t know how much Tommy had thought about us having sex before we started. He was still recovering, after all, and maybe it wasn’t the first thing on his mind. I wasn’t wanting to force it on him, but on the other hand it had occurred to me if we left it too long, just when we were starting out together again, it would just get harder and harder to make it a natural part of us. And my other thought, I suppose, was that if our plans went along the lines Ruth had wanted, and we did find ourselves going for a deferral, it might prove a real drawback if we’d never had sex. I don’t mean I thought this was necessarily something they’d ask us about. But my worry was that it would show somehow, in a kind of lack of intimacy.

So I decided to start it off one afternoon up in that room, in a way he could take or leave. He’d been lying on the bed as usual, staring at the ceiling while I read to him. When I finished, I went over, sat on the edge of the bed, and slid a hand under his T-shirt. Pretty soon I was down around his stuff, and though it took a while for him to get hard, I could tell straight away he was happy about it. That first time, we still had stitches to worry about, and anyway, after all the years of knowing each other and not having sex, it was like we needed some intermediary stage before we could get into it in a full-blown way. So after a while I just did it for him with my hands, and he just lay there not making any attempt to feel me up in return, not even making any noises, but just looking peaceful.

But even that first time, there was something there, a feeling, right there alongside our sense that this was a beginning, a gateway we were passing through. I didn’t want to acknowledge it for a long time, and even when I did, I tried to persuade myself it was something that would go away along with his various aches and pains. What I mean is, right from that first time, there was something in Tommy’s manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to say: ‘Yes, we’re doing this now and I’m glad we’re doing it now. But what a pity we left it so late.’

And in the days that followed, when we had proper sex and we
were really happy about it, even then, this same nagging feeling would always be there. I did everything to keep it away. I had us going at it all stops out, so that everything would become a delirious blur, and there’d be no room for anything else. If he was on top, I’d put my knees right up for him; whatever other position we used, I’d say anything, do anything I thought would make it better, more passionate, but it still never quite went away.

Maybe it was to do with that room, the way the sun came in through the frosted glass so that even in early summer, it felt like autumn light. Or maybe it was because the stray sounds that would occasionally reach us as we lay there were of donors milling about, going about their business around the grounds, and not of students sitting in a grassy field, arguing about novels and poetry. Or maybe it had to do with how sometimes, even after we’d done it really well and were lying in each other’s arms, bits of what we’d just done still drifting through our heads, Tommy would say something like: ‘I used to be able to do it twice in a row easy. But I can’t any more.’ Then that feeling would come right to the fore and I’d have to put my hand over his mouth, whenever he said things like that, just so we could go on lying there in peace. I’m sure Tommy felt it too, because we’d always hold each other very tight after times like that, as though that way we’d manage to keep the feeling away.

For the first few weeks after I arrived, we hardly brought up Madame or that conversation with Ruth in the car that day. But the very fact of my having become his carer served as a reminder that we weren’t there to mark time. And so too, of course, did Tommy’s animal drawings.

I’d often wondered about Tommy’s animals over the years, and even that day we’d gone to see the boat, I’d been tempted to ask him about them. Was he still drawing them? Had he kept the ones from the Cottages? But the whole history around them had made it difficult for me to ask.

Then one afternoon, maybe about a month after I’d started, I came up to his room and found him at his school desk, carefully
going over a drawing, his face nearly touching the paper. He’d called for me to come in when I’d knocked, but now he didn’t raise his head or stop what he was doing, and just a glance told me he was working on one of his imaginary creatures. I stopped in the doorway, uncertain whether I should come in, but eventually he looked up and closed his notebook – which I noticed looked identical to the black books he’d got from Keffers all those years ago. I came in then and we began talking about something else entirely, and after a while he put away his notebook without us mentioning it. But after that, I’d often come in and see it left on the desk or tossed beside his pillow.

Then one day we were up in his room with several minutes to kill before we set off for some checks, and I noticed something odd coming into his manner: something coy and deliberate which made me think he was after some sex. But then he said:

‘Kath, I just want you to tell me. Tell me honestly.’

Then the black notebook came out of his desk, and he showed me three separate sketches of a kind of frog – except with a long tail as though a part of it had stayed a tadpole. At least, that’s what it looked like when you held it away from you. Close up, each sketch was a mass of minute detail, much like the creatures I’d seen years before.

‘These two I did thinking they were made of metal,’ he said. ‘See, everything’s got shiny surfaces. But this one here, I thought I’d try making him rubbery. You see? Almost blobby. I want to do a proper version now, a really good one, but I can’t decide. Kath, be honest, what do you think?’

I can’t remember what I answered. What I do remember is the strong mix of emotions that engulfed me at that moment. I realised immediately this was Tommy’s way of putting behind us everything that had happened around his drawings back at the Cottages, and I felt relief, gratitude, sheer delight. But I was aware too why the animals had emerged again, and of all the possible layers behind Tommy’s apparently casual query. At the least, I could see, he was showing me he hadn’t forgotten, even though we’d hardly discussed anything openly; he was telling
me he wasn’t complacent, and that he was busy getting on with his part of the preparations.

But that wasn’t all I felt looking at those peculiar frogs that day. Because it was there again, only faint and in the background at first, but growing all the while, so that afterwards it was what I kept thinking about. I couldn’t help it, as I looked at those pages, the thought went through my mind, even as I tried to grab it and put it away. It came to me that Tommy’s drawings weren’t as fresh now. Okay, in many ways these frogs were a lot like what I’d seen back at the Cottages. But something was definitely gone, and they looked laboured, almost like they’d been copied. So that feeling came again, even though I tried to keep it out: that we were doing all of this too late; that there’d once been a time for it, but we’d let that go by, and there was something ridiculous, reprehensible even, about the way we were now thinking and planning.

Now I’m going over this again, it occurs to me that might have been another reason we were so slow to talk openly to each other about our plans. It was certainly the case that none of the other donors at the Kingsfield were ever heard talking about deferrals or anything like that, and we were probably vaguely embarrassed, almost like we shared a shameful secret. We might even have been scared of what might happen if word got out to the others.

But as I say, I don’t want to paint too gloomy a view of that time at the Kingsfield. For a lot of it, especially after that day he asked me about his animals, there seemed to be no more shadows left from the past, and we really settled into each other’s company. And though he never asked me again for advice about his pictures, he was happy to work on them in front of me, and we’d often spend our afternoons like that: me on the bed, maybe reading aloud; Tommy at the desk, drawing.

Perhaps we’d have been happy if things had stayed that way for a lot longer; if we could have whiled away more afternoons chatting, having sex, reading aloud and drawing. But with the summer drawing to an end, with Tommy getting stronger, and
the possibility of notice for his fourth donation growing ever more distinct, we knew we couldn’t keep putting things off indefinitely.

It had been an unusually busy period for me, and I’d not been to the Kingsfield for almost a week. I arrived in the morning that day, and I remember it was bucketing down. Tommy’s room was almost dark, and you could hear a gutter splashing away near his window. He’d been down to the main hall for breakfast with his fellow donors, but had come back up again and was now sitting on his bed, looking vacant, not doing anything. I came in exhausted – I’d not had a proper night’s sleep for ages – and just collapsed onto his narrow bed, pushing him against the wall. I lay like that for a few moments, and might easily have fallen asleep if Tommy hadn’t kept prodding my knees with a toe. Then finally I sat up beside him and said:

‘I saw Madame yesterday, Tommy. I never spoke to her or anything. But I saw her.’

He looked at me, but stayed quiet.

‘I saw her come up the street and go into her house. Ruth got it right. The right address, right door, everything.’

Then I described to him how the previous day, since I was down on the south coast anyway, I’d gone to Littlehampton in the late afternoon, and just as I’d done the last two times, walked down that long street near the seafront, past rows of terraced houses with names like ‘Wavecrest’ and ‘Sea View’, until I’d come to the public bench beside the phone box. And I’d sat down and waited – again, the way I’d done before – with my eyes fixed on the house over the street.

‘It was just like detective stuff. The previous times, I’d sat there for over half an hour each go, and nothing, absolutely nothing. But something told me I’d be lucky this time.’

I’d been so tired, I’d nearly nodded off right there on the bench. But then I’d looked up and she was there, coming down the street towards me.

‘It was really spooky,’ I said, ‘because she looked exactly the
same. Maybe her face was slightly older. But otherwise, there was no real difference. Same clothes even. That smart grey suit.’

‘It couldn’t
literally
have been the same suit.’

‘I don’t know. It looked like it was.’

‘So you didn’t try and speak to her?’

‘Of course not, stupid. Just one step at a time. She was never exactly nice to us, remember.’

I told him how she’d walked right past me on the opposite side, never glancing over to me; how for a second I thought she would also go past the door I’d been watching – that Ruth had got the wrong address. But Madame had turned sharply at the gate, covered the tiny front path in two or three steps and vanished inside.

After I’d finished, Tommy stayed quiet for some time. Then he said:

‘You sure you won’t get into trouble? Always driving out to places you’re not supposed to be?’

‘Why do you think I’m so tired? I’ve been working all kinds of hours to get everything in. But at least we’ve found her now.’

The rain kept splashing outside. Tommy turned onto his side and put his head on my shoulder.

‘Ruth did well for us,’ he said, softly. ‘She got it right.’

‘Yeah, she did well. But now it’s up to us.’

‘So what’s the plan, Kath? Have we got one?’

‘We just go there. We just go there and ask her. Next week, when I take you for the lab tests. I’ll get you signed out for the whole day. Then we can go to Littlehampton on the way back.’

Tommy gave a sigh and put his head deeper into my shoulder. Someone watching might have thought he was being unenthusiastic, but I knew what he was feeling. We’d been thinking about the deferrals, the theory about the Gallery, all of it, for so long – and now, suddenly, here we were. It was definitely a bit scary.

‘If we get this,’ he said, eventually. ‘Just suppose we do. Suppose she lets us have three years, say, just to ourselves. What do we do exactly? See what I mean, Kath? Where do we go? We can’t stay here, this is a centre.’

‘I don’t know, Tommy. Maybe she’ll tell us to go back to the
Cottages. But it’d be better somewhere else. The White Mansion, maybe. Or perhaps they’ve got some other place. Somewhere separate for people like us. We’ll just have to see what she says.’