For the next few minutes, Miss Emily went on reminiscing about different events from those days, mentioning a lot of people whose names meant nothing to us. In fact, for a moment, it was almost like we were listening to her again at one of her morning assemblies as she drifted off on tangents none of us could follow. She seemed to enjoy herself, though, and a gentle smile settled around her eyes. Then suddenly she came out of it and said in a new tone:
‘But we never quite lost touch with reality, did we, Marie-Claude? Not like our colleagues at the Saunders Trust. Even during the best of times, we always knew what a difficult battle we were engaged in. And sure enough, the Morningdale business came along, then one or two other things, and before we knew it all our hard work had come undone.’
‘But what I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘is why people would want students treated so badly in the first place.’
‘From your perspective today, Kathy, your bemusement is perfectly reasonable. But you must try and see it historically. After the war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the other so rapidly, there wasn’t time to take stock, to ask the sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This was what the world noticed the most, wanted the most. And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum. Yes, there were arguments. But by the time people became concerned about … about students, by the time they came to consider just how you were reared, whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process. How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days? There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren’t really like us. That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter. And that was how things stood until our little movement came along. But do you see what we were up against? We were virtually attempting to square the circle. Here was the world, requiring students to donate. While that remained the case, there would always be a barrier against seeing you as properly human. Well, we fought that battle for many years, and what we won for you, at least, were many improvements, though of course, you were only a select few. But then came the Morningdale scandal, then other things, and before we knew it, the climate had quite changed. No one wanted to be seen supporting us any more, and our little movement, Hailsham, Glenmorgan, the Saunders Trust, we were all of us swept away.’
‘What was this Morningdale scandal you keep mentioning, Miss Emily?’ I asked. ‘You’ll have to tell us, because we don’t know about it.’
‘Well, I suppose there’s no reason why you should. It was never such a large matter in the wider world. It concerned a scientist called James Morningdale, quite talented in his way. He carried on his work in a remote part of Scotland, where I suppose he thought he’d attract less attention. What he wanted was to offer people the possibility of having children with enhanced characteristics. Superior intelligence, superior athleticism, that sort of thing. Of course, there’d been others with similar ambitions, but this Morningdale fellow, he’d taken his research much further than anyone before him, far beyond legal boundaries. Well, he was discovered, they put an end to his work and that seemed to be that. Except, of course, it wasn’t, not for us. As I say, it never became an enormous matter. But it did create a certain atmosphere, you see. It reminded people, reminded them of a fear they’d always had. It’s one thing to create students, such as yourselves, for the donation programme. But a generation of created children who’d take their place in society? Children demonstrably superior to the rest of us? Oh no. That frightened people. They recoiled from that.’
‘But Miss Emily,’ I said, ‘what did any of that have to do with us? Why did Hailsham have to close because of something like that?’
‘We didn’t see an obvious connection either, Kathy. Not at first. And I often think now, we were culpable not to do so. Had we been more alert, less absorbed with ourselves, if we’d worked very hard at that stage when the news about Morningdale first broke, we might have been able to avert it. Oh, Marie-Claude disagrees. She thinks it would have happened no matter what we did, and she might have a point. After all, it wasn’t just Morningdale. There were other things at that time. That awful television series, for instance. All these things contributed, contributed to the turning of the tide. But I suppose when it comes down to it, the central flaw was this. Our little movement, we were always too fragile, always too dependent on the whims of our supporters. So long as the climate was in our favour, so long as a corporation or a politician could see a benefit in supporting us, then we were able to keep afloat. But it had always been a struggle, and after Morningdale, after the climate changed, we had no chance. The world didn’t want to be reminded how the donation programme really worked. They didn’t want to think about you students, or about the conditions you were brought up in. In other words, my dears, they wanted you back in the shadows. Back in the shadows where you’d been before the likes of Marie-Claude and myself ever came along. And all those influential people who’d once been so keen to help us, well of course, they all vanished. We lost our sponsors, one after the other, in a matter of just over a year. We kept going for as long as we could, we went on for two years more than Glenmorgan. But in the end, as you know, we were obliged to close, and today there’s hardly a trace left of the work we did. You won’t find anything like Hailsham anywhere in the country now. All you’ll find, as ever, are those vast government “homes”, and even if they’re somewhat better than they once were, let me tell you, my dears, you’d not sleep for days if you saw what still goes on in some of those places. And as for Marie-Claude and me, here we are, we’ve retreated to this house, and upstairs we have a mountain of your work. That’s what we have to remind us of what we did. And a mountain of debt too, though that’s not nearly so welcome. And the memories, I suppose, of all of you. And the knowledge that we’ve given you better lives than you would have had otherwise.’
‘Don’t try and ask them to thank you,’ Madame’s voice said from behind us. ‘Why should they be grateful? They came here looking for something much more. What we gave them, all the years, all the fighting we did on their behalf, what do they know of that? They think it’s God-given. Until they came here, they knew nothing of it. All they feel now is disappointment, because we haven’t given them everything possible.’
Nobody spoke for a while. Then there was a noise outside and the doorbell rang again. Madame came out of the darkness and went out into the hall.
‘This time it must be the men,’ Miss Emily said. ‘I shall have to get ready. But you can stay a little longer. The men have to bring the thing down two flights of stairs. Marie-Claude will see they don’t damage it.’
Tommy and I couldn’t quite believe that was the end of it. We neither of us stood up, and anyway, there was no sign of anyone helping Miss Emily out of her wheelchair. I wondered for a moment if she was going to try and get up by herself, but she remained still, leaning forward as before, listening intently. Then Tommy said:
‘So there’s definitely nothing. No deferral, nothing like that.’
‘Tommy,’ I murmured, and glared at him. But Miss Emily said gently:
‘No, Tommy. There’s nothing like that. Your life must now run the course that’s been set for it.’
‘So, what you’re saying, Miss,’ Tommy said, ‘is that everything we did, all the lessons, everything. It was all about what you just told us? There was nothing more to it than that?’
&n
bsp; ‘I can see,’ Miss Emily said, ‘that it might look as though you were simply pawns in a game. It can certainly be looked at like that. But think of it. You were lucky pawns. There was a certain climate and now it’s gone. You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in this world. People’s opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other. It just so happens you grew up at a certain point in this process.’
‘It might be just some trend that came and went,’ I said. ‘But for us, it’s our life.’
‘Yes, that’s true. But think of it. You were better off than many who came before you. And who knows what those who come after you will have to face. I’m sorry, students, but I must leave you now. George! George!’
There had been a lot of noise out in the hallway, and perhaps this had stopped George from hearing, because there was no response. Tommy asked suddenly:
‘Is that why Miss Lucy left?’
For a while I thought Miss Emily, whose attention was on what was going on in the hallway, hadn’t heard him. She leaned back in her wheelchair and began moving it gradually towards the door. There were so many little coffee tables and chairs there didn’t seem a way through. I was about to get up and clear a path, when she stopped suddenly.
‘Lucy Wainright,’ she said. ‘Ah yes. We had a little trouble with her.’ She paused, then adjusted her wheelchair back to face Tommy. ‘Yes, we had a little trouble with her. A disagreement. But to answer your question, Tommy. The disagreement with Lucy Wainright wasn’t to do with what I’ve just been telling you. Not directly, anyway. No, that was more, shall we say, an internal matter.’
I thought she was going to leave it at that, so I asked: ‘Miss Emily, if it’s all right, we’d like to know about it, about what happened with Miss Lucy.’
Miss Emily raised her eyebrows. ‘Lucy Wainright? She was important to you? Forgive me, dear students, I’m forgetting again. Lucy wasn’t with us for long, so for us she’s just a peripheral figure in our memory of Hailsham. And not an altogether happy one. But I appreciate, if you were there during just those years …’ She laughed to herself and seemed to be remembering something. In the hall, Madame was telling the men off really loudly, but Miss Emily now seemed to have lost interest. She was going through her memories with a look of concentration. Finally she said: ‘She was a nice enough girl, Lucy Wainright. But after she’d been with us for a while, she began to have these ideas. She thought you students had to be made more aware. More aware of what lay ahead of you, who you were, what you were for. She believed you should be given as full a picture as possible. That to do anything less would be somehow to cheat you. We considered her view and concluded she was mistaken.’
‘Why?’ Tommy asked. ‘Why did you think that?’
‘Why? She meant well, I’m sure of that. I can see you were fond of her. She had the makings of an excellent guardian. But what she was wanting to do, it was too theoretical. We had run Hailsham for many years, we had a sense of what could work, what was best for the students in the long run, beyond Hailsham. Lucy Wainright was idealistic, nothing wrong with that. But she had no grasp of practicalities. You see, we were able to give you something, something which even now no one will ever take from you, and we were able to do that principally by sheltering you. Hailsham would not have been Hailsham if we hadn’t. Very well, sometimes that meant we kept things from you, lied to you. Yes, in many ways we fooled you. I suppose you could even call it that. But we sheltered you during those years, and we gave you your childhoods. Lucy was well-meaning enough. But if she’d had her way, your happiness at Hailsham would have been shattered. Look at you both now! I’m so proud to see you both. You built your lives on what we gave you. You wouldn’t be who you are today if we’d not protected you. You wouldn’t have become absorbed in your lessons, you wouldn’t have lost yourselves in your art and your writing. Why should you have done, knowing what lay in store for each of you? You would have told us it was all pointless, and how could we have argued with you? So she had to go.’
We could hear Madame now shouting at the men. She hadn’t lost her temper exactly, but her voice was frighteningly stern, and the men’s voices, which until this point had been arguing with her, fell silent.
‘Perhaps it’s just as well I’ve remained in here with you,’ Miss Emily said. ‘Marie-Claude does this sort of thing so much more efficiently.’
I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe it was because I knew the visit would have to finish pretty soon; maybe I was getting curious to know how exactly Miss Emily and Madame felt about each other. Anyway, I said to her, lowering my voice and nodding towards the doorway:
‘Madame never liked us. She’s always been afraid of us. In the way people are afraid of spiders and things.’
I waited to see if Miss Emily would get angry, no longer caring much if she did. Sure enough, she turned to me sharply, as if I’d thrown a ball of paper at her, and her eyes flashed in a way that reminded me of her Hailsham days. But her voice was even and soft when she replied:
‘Marie-Claude has given everything for you. She has worked and worked and worked. Make no mistake about it, my child, Marie-Claude is on your side and will always be on your side. Is she afraid of you? We’re all afraid of you. I myself had to fight back my dread of you all almost every day I was at Hailsham. There were times I’d look down at you all from my study window and I’d feel such revulsion …’ She stopped, then something in her eyes flashed again. ‘But I was determined not to let such feelings stop me doing what was right. I fought those feelings and I won. Now, if you’d be so good as to help me out of here, George should be waiting with my crutches.’
With us at each elbow, she walked carefully into the hall, where a large man in a nursing uniform started with alarm and quickly produced a pair of crutches.
The front door was open to the street and I was surprised to see there was still daylight left. Madame’s voice was coming from outside, talking more calmly now to the men. It felt like time for Tommy and me to slip away, but the George man was helping Miss Emily with her coat, while she stood steadily between her crutches; there was no way we could get past, so we just waited. I suppose, too, we were waiting to say goodbye to Miss Emily; maybe, after everything else, we wanted to thank her, I’m not sure. But she was now preoccupied with her cabinet. She began to make some urgent point to the men outside, then left with George, not looking back at us.
Tommy and I stayed in the hall for a while longer, not sure what to do. When we did eventually wander outside, I noticed the lamps had come on all the way down the long street, even though the sky wasn’t yet dark. A white van was starting up its engine. Right behind was a big old Volvo with Miss Emily in the passenger seat. Madame was crouching by the window, nodding to something Miss Emily was saying, while George closed up the boot and moved round to the driver’s door. Then the white van moved off, and Miss Emily’s car followed.
Madame watched the departing vehicles for a long time. Then she turned as though to go back into the house, and seeing us there on the pavement, stopped abruptly, almost shrinking back.
‘We’re going now,’ I said. ‘Thank you for talking to us. Please say goodbye to Miss Emily for us.’
I could see her studying me in the fading light. Then she said:
‘Kathy H. I remember you. Yes, I remember.’ She fell silent, but went on looking at me.
‘I think I know what you’re thinking about,’ I said, in the end. ‘I think I can guess.’
‘Very well.’ Her voice was dreamy and her gaze had slightly lost focus. ‘Very well. You are a mind-reader. Tell me.’
‘There was a time you saw me once, one afternoon, in the dormitories. There was no one else around, and I was playing this tape, this music. I was sort of dancing with my eyes closed and you saw me.’
‘That’s very good. A mind-reader. You should be on the stage. I only recognised you just now. But yes, I remember that occasion. I still think about it from time to time.’
‘That’s funny. So do I.’
‘I see.’
We could have ended the conversation there. We could have said goodbye and left. But she stepped closer to us, looking into my face all the time.
‘You were much younger then,’ she said. ‘But yes, it’s you.’
‘You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,’ I said. ‘But it’s always puzzled me. May I ask you?’
‘You read my mind. But I cannot read yours.’
‘Well, you were … upset that day. You were watching me, and when I realised, and I opened my eyes, you were watching me and I think you were crying. In fact, I know you were. You were watching me and crying. Why was that?’
Madame’s expression didn’t change and she kept staring into my face. ‘I was weeping,’ she said eventually, very quietly, as though afraid the neighbours were listening, ‘because when I came in, I heard your music. I thought some foolish student had left the music on. But when I came into your dormitory, I saw you, by yourself, a little girl, dancing. As you say, eyes closed, far away, a look of yearning. You were dancing so very sympathetically. And the music, the song. There was something in the words. It was full of sadness.’
‘The song,’ I said, ‘it was called “Never Let Me Go”.’ Then I sang a couple of lines quietly under my breath for her. ‘Never let me go. Oh, baby, baby. Never let me go …’
She nodded as though in agreement. ‘Yes, it was that song. I’ve heard it once or twice since then. On the radio, on the television. And it’s taken me back to that little girl, dancing by herself.’
‘You say you’re not a mind-reader,’ I said. ‘But maybe you were that day. Maybe that’s why you started to cry when you saw me. Because whatever the song was really about, in my head, when I was dancing, I had my own version. You see, I imagined it was about this woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies. But then she’d had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she’s going baby, baby, never let me go. That’s not what the song’s about at all, but that’s what I had in my head that time. Maybe you read my mind, and that’s why you found it so sad. I didn’t think it was so sad at the time, but now, when I think back, it does feel a bit sad.’