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

with a drink problem and not even a job to support it. It’s like you’re deliberately trying to annoy anyone who still gives a shit about you!”
    “He can’t expect many of that tribe to survive!” Charlie boomed from the hall. I could hear he had his suitcase out there now. “It’s all very well behaving like an adolescent ten years after you’ve ceased to be one. But to carry on like this when you’re nearly fifty!”
    “I’m only forty-seven …”
    “What do you mean, you’re
only
forty-seven?” Emily’s voice was unnecessarily loud given I was sitting right next to her.
“Only
forty-seven. This ‘only,’ this is what’s destroying your life, Raymond. Only, only, only. Only doing my best. Only forty-seven. Soon you’ll be only
sixty-seven
and only going round in bloody circles trying to find a bloody roof to keep over your head!”
    “He needs to get his bloody arse together!” Charlie yelled down the staircase. “Fucking well pull his socks up till they’re touching his fucking balls!”
    “Raymond, don’t you ever stop and ask yourself who you are?” Emily asked. “When you think of all your potential, aren’t you ashamed? Look at how you lead your life! It’s … it’s simply infuriating! One gets so exasperated!”
    Charlie appeared in the doorway in his raincoat, and for a moment they were shouting different things at me simultaneously. Then Charlie broke off, announced he was leaving—as though in disgust at me—and vanished.
    His departure brought Emily’s diatribe to a halt, and I took the opportunity to get to my feet, saying: “Excuse me, I’ll just go and give Charlie a hand with his luggage.”
    “Why do I need help with my luggage?” Charlie said from the hall. “I’ve only got the one bag.”
    But he let me follow him down into the street and left me with the suitcase while he went to the edge of the kerb to hail a cab. There didn’t seem to be any to hand, and he leaned out worriedly, an arm half-raised.
    I went up to him and said: “Charlie, I don’t think it’s going to work.”
    “What’s not going to work?”
    “Emily absolutely hates me. That’s her after seeing me for a few minutes. What’s she going to be like after three days? Why on earth do you think you’ll come back to harmony and light?”
    Even as I was saying this, something was dawning on me and I fell silent. Noticing the change, Charlie turned and looked at me carefully.
    “I think,” I said, eventually, “I have an idea why it had to be me and no one else.”
    “Ah ha. Can it be Ray sees the light?”
    “Yes, maybe I do.”
    “But what does it matter? It remains the same, exactly the same, what I’m asking you to do.” Now there were tears in his eyes again. “Do you remember, Ray, the way Emily always used to say she believed in me? She said it for years and years. I believe in you, Charlie, you can go all the way, you’re really talented. Right up until three, four years ago, she was still saying it. Do you know how trying that got? I was doing all right. I
am
doing all right. Perfectly okay. But she thought I was destined for … God knows, president of the fucking world, God knows! I’m just an ordinary bloke who’s doing all right. But she doesn’t see that. That’s at the heart of it, at the heart of everything that’s gone wrong.”
    He began to walk slowly along the pavement, very preoccupied. I hurried back to get his suitcase and began pulling it along on its rollers. The street was still fairly crowded, so it was a struggle to keep up with him without crashing the bag into other pedestrians. But Charlie kept walking at a steady pace, oblivious to my difficulties.
    “She thinks I’ve let myself down,” he was saying. “But I haven’t. I’m doing perfectly okay. Endless horizons are all very well when you’re young. But get to our age, you’ve got to … you’ve got to get some perspective. That’s what kept going round in my head whenever she got