Never Let Me Go, Chapters 4-5

I’m sure it’s at least partly to do with that, to do with preparing for the change of pace, that I’ve been getting this urge to order all these old memories.

But at another, as you’ll see, it was the start of a process that kept growing and growing over the years until it came to dominate our lives.

After that day, mention of Madame became, while not taboo exactly, pretty rare among us.

We were, I’d say, as curious as ever about her, but we all sensed that to probe any further—about what she did with our work, whether there really was a gallery—would get us into territory we weren’t ready for yet.

Tommy and I discussed the tokens controversy a few years ago, and we couldn’t at first agree when it had happened.

But by the time we were ten, we’d grown more ambivalent about it.

There’s no question Ruth was keen to keep the whole thing going.

When you come across old students from Hailsham, you always find them, sooner or later, getting nostalgic about their collections.

It began with a number of students, mainly boys, muttering that we should get tokens to compensate when Madame took something away.

They would have driven me mad, but Miss Emily always ignored them, like they were beneath her contempt.

The atmosphere around the table had become one of deep embarrassment, and curious as we were to hear more, we wanted most for the talk to get away from this dodgy territory.

The boxes were often open at the top, so you’d catch glimpses of all kinds of things, and sometimes, though they weren’t really supposed to, the men would let you move a few items about for a better look.

But on a morning after a rowdy Sale, everything was different.

She might then resume with a gentle sigh—a signal that we were going to be forgiven—or just as easily explode out of her silence with: “But I will not be coerced!

When we were remembering these long speeches, Ruth remarked how odd it was they should have been so unfathomable, since Miss Emily, in a classroom, could be as clear as anything.

All the same, you felt dreadful, just knowing you’d fallen in her estimation, and you wanted to do something straight away to redeem yourself.

I accepted the invisible rein she was holding out, and then we were off, riding up and down the fence, sometimes cantering, sometimes at a gallop.

She was probably embarrassed about it and so the whole thing had shrunk in her memory.

All we could see really was a dark fringe of trees, but I certainly wasn’t the only one of my age to feel their presence day and night.

But then the older students would tell us that was exactly what the guardians had told them when they were younger, and that we’d be told the ghastly truth soon enough, just as they were.

Most of our “evidence” came from witnessing the conspirators at work.

Then about two days after this snub in Room 20, I was coming down the stairs of the main house when I found Moira B. just behind me.

It must have been the lunch break because as we stepped into the courtyard there were about twenty students loitering around chatting in little groups.

If you knew everything we’d found out, you wouldn’t dare say anything so daft!”

That morning Ruth had got a chair behind a desk, and I was sitting up on its lid, with two or three others of our group perched or leaning in nearby.

This might sound a pretty innocuous sort of response, but actually it was like she’d suddenly got up and hit me, and for the next few moments I felt hot and chilly at the same time.

Provided I was right about the pencil case coming from a Sale, all I had to do was bluff.

A spontaneous hug, a secret letter, a gift?

And suddenly my behaviour seemed to me utterly baffling.

I think I said something pathetic like: “It’s all right, I didn’t see anything much,” which hung stupidly in the air.