Never Let Me Go, Chapters 10-13

We didn’t know then that all these places had only the most tenuous links with Hailsham.

There was an old farmhouse, and around it, barns, outhouses, stables all converted for us to live in.

There were other buildings, usually the outlying ones, that were virtually falling down, which we couldn’t use for much, but for which we felt in some vague way responsible—mainly on account of Keffers.

Of course, in practice, especially during the first months, we rarely stepped beyond the confines of the Cottages.

That summer we arrived, we were constantly seeing veterans packing their bags and rucksacks and going off for two or three days at a time with what seemed to us scary nonchalance.

Even Ruth looked daunted that sunny day the minibus dropped us in front of the farmhouse, circled round the little pond and disappeared up the slope.

If someone mentions the Cottages today, I think of easy-going days drifting in and out of each other’s rooms, the languid way the afternoon would fold into evening then into night.

But then again, when I think about it, there’s a sense in which that picture of us on that first day, huddled together in front of the farmhouse, isn’t so incongruous after all.

There was this particular thing Susie did whenever Greg set off on one of his speeches about Proust or whoever: she’d smile at the rest of us, roll her eyes, and mouth very emphatically, but only just audibly: “Gawd help us.”

There was a character—a large woman who lived next door to the main characters—who did exactly what Susie did, so when her husband went off on a big spiel, the audience would be waiting for her to roll her eyes and say “Gawd help us” so they could burst out with this huge laugh.

If you knew two students had had sex, you didn’t immediately start speculating about whether they’d become a proper couple.

We’d brought up our mugs of tea, and we were sitting in my room, side by side on the mattress, our heads slightly stooped because of the rafters.

And Ruth had been at her best: encouraging, funny, tactful, wise.

The veterans were never slow coming out with funny anecdotes about characters they’d met on trips to the White Mansion or to Poplar Farm; but they hardly ever mentioned students who, right up until just before we’d arrived, must have been their intimate friends.

But it’s perhaps stretching it to claim students who’d left were an actual taboo.

The veterans usually laughed when one showed up and flicked through it quickly in a blasé way before throwing it aside, so we did the same.

We did, though, see the funny side of it even then, so that when someone pointed and said: “Oh look, one of Steve’s magazines,” they did it with a bit of irony.

For one thing, the grumbling he usually kept up suddenly stopped and this silence alone gave him an alarming aura.

He’ll just have to collect them all up again, next time he decides on a purge.”

He did another laugh, but then when I glanced up, I saw he was watching me with a serious expression.

Though most of us had first come across the idea of “possibles” back at Hailsham, we’d sensed we weren’t supposed to discuss it, and so we hadn’t—though for sure, it had both intrigued and disturbed us.

The basic idea behind the possibles theory was simple, and didn’t provoke much dispute.

Beyond these basics, though, there wasn’t much consensus.

Our models were an irrelevance, a technical necessity for bringing us into the world, nothing more than that.

He went around with his hair tied back in a ponytail, like a rock musician from the seventies, and talked a lot about things like reincarnation.

In any discussion, you knew he’d back up Chrissie’s angle, and if Chrissie ever said anything mildly amusing, he’d be chortling and shaking his head like he couldn’t believe how funny it was.

Sometimes, if it was late, I’d close my eyes and nestle against the arm of a sofa—or of a boy, if it was during one of those brief phases I was officially “with” someone—and drift in and out of sleep, letting images of the roads move through my head.

There was a silence, then I heard Ruth let out an exasperated sigh.

I could see them bringing it up, at first very tentatively, shrugging, putting it to one side, bringing it up again, never able quite to leave it alone.

But I’d heard enough to get the gist of it; and I knew it had specifically to do with us Hailsham students.