Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro Read Free Book Online

her in a good mood and keep her that way. So when I come in and say, ‘Hello darling,’ and hug her, she’ll just reply, ‘Oh hello, darling, welcome home, how was everything,’ and hug me back. Then we can carry on as before. Before all this horrible stuff began. That’s your mission. Quite simple really.”
    “I’m happy to do anything I can,” I said. “But look, Charlie, are you sure she’s in the mood to entertain visitors? You’re obviously going through some sort of crisis. She must be as upset as you are. Quite honestly, I don’t understand why you asked me here right now.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t understand? I’ve asked you because you’re my oldest friend. Yes, all right, I’ve got a lot of friends. But when it comes down to it, when I thought hard about it, I realised you’re the only one who’d do.”
    I have to admit I was rather moved by this. All the same, I could see there was something not quite right here, something he wasn’t telling me.
    “I can understand you inviting me to stay if you were both going to be here,” I said. “I can see how that would work. You’re not talking to each other, you invite a guest as a diversion, you both put on your best behaviour, things start to thaw. But it’s not going to work in this case, because you’re not going to be here.”
    “Just do it for me, Ray. I think it might work. Emily’s always cheered up by you.”
    “Cheered up by me? You know, Charlie, I want to help. But it’s possible you’ve got this a bit wrong. Because I get the impression, quite frankly, Emily isn’t cheered up by me at all, even at the best of times. The last few visits here, she was … well, distinctly impatient with me.”
    “Look, Ray, just trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
    EMILY WAS AT THE FLAT when we returned. I have to admit, I was taken aback at how much she’d aged. It wasn’t just that she’d got significantly heavier since my last visit: her face, once so effortlessly graceful, was now distinctly bull-doggy, with a displeased set to the mouth. She was sitting on the living-room sofa reading the
Financial Times
, and got up rather glumly as I came in.
    “Nice to see you, Raymond,” she said, kissing me quickly on the cheek, then sitting down again. The whole way she did this made me want to blurt out a profuse apology for intruding at such a bad time. But before I could say anything, she thumped the space beside her on the sofa, saying: “Now, Raymond, sit down here and answer my questions. I want to know all about what you’ve been up to.”
    I sat down and she began to interrogate me, much as Charlie had done in the restaurant. Charlie, meanwhile, was packing for his journey, drifting in and out of the room in search of various items. I noticed they didn’t look at each other, but neither did they seem so uncomfortable being in the same room, despite what he’d claimed. And although they never spoke directly to each other, Charlie kept joining in the conversation in an odd, once-removed manner. For instance, when I was explaining to Emily why it was so difficult to find a flat-mate to share my rent burden, Charlie shouted from the kitchen:
    “The place he’s in, it’s just not geared up for two people! It’s for one person, and one person with a bit more money than he’ll ever have!”
    Emily made no response to this, but must have absorbed the information, because she then went on: “Raymond, you should never have chosen an apartment like that.”
    This sort of thing continued for at least the next twenty minutes, Charlie making his contributions from the stairs or as he passed through to the kitchen, usually by shouting out some statement that referred to me in the third person. At one point, Emily suddenly said:
    “Oh, honestly Raymond. You let yourself be exploited left, right and centre by that ghastly language school, you let your landlord rip you off silly, and what do you do? Get in tow with some airhead girl