The Remains of the Day - By Kazuo Ishiguro Page 0,63

exchange we had that night in Miss Kenton’s parlour over cocoa was fairly typical of the sort of conversation we tended to have on the topic of Lisa.

‘No doubt, Mr Stevens,’ she said to me, ‘you will be extremely disappointed to hear Lisa has still not made any real mistake worth speaking of.’

‘I’m not disappointed at all, Miss Kenton. I’m very pleased for you and for all of us. I will admit, you have had some modest success regarding the girl thus far.’

‘Modest success! And look at that smile on your face, Mr Stevens. It always appears when I mention Lisa. That tells an interesting story in itself. A very interesting story indeed.’

‘Oh, really, Miss Kenton. And may I ask what exactly?’

‘It is very interesting, Mr Stevens. Very interesting you should have been so pessimistic about her. Because Lisa is a pretty girl, no doubt about it. And I’ve noticed you have a curious aversion to pretty girls being on the staff.’

‘You know perfectly well you are talking nonsense, Miss Kenton.’

‘Ah, but I’ve noticed it, Mr Stevens. You do not like pretty girls to be on the staff. Might it be that our Mr Stevens fears distraction? Can it be that our Mr Stevens is flesh and blood after all and cannot fully trust himself?’

‘Really, Miss Kenton. If I thought there was one modicum of sense in what you are saying I might bother to engage with you in this discussion. As it is, I think I shall simply place my thoughts elsewhere while you chatter away.’

‘Ah, but then why is that guilty smile still on your face, Mr Stevens?’

‘It is not a guilty smile at all, Miss Kenton. I am slightly amused by your astonishing capacity to talk nonsense, that is all.’

‘It is a guilty little smile you have on, Mr Stevens. And I’ve noticed how you can hardly bear to look at Lisa. Now it is beginning to become very clear why you objected so strongly to her.’

‘My objections were extremely solid, Miss Kenton, as you very well know. The girl was completely unsuitable when she first came to us.’

Now of course, you must understand we would never have carried on in such a vein within the hearing of staff members. But just around that time, our cocoa evenings, while maintaining their essentially professional character, often tended to allow room for a little harmless talk of this sort – which did much, one should say, to relieve the many tensions produced by a hard day.

Lisa had been with us for some eight or nine months – and I had largely forgotten her existence by this point – when she vanished from the house together with the second footman. Now, of course, such things are simply part and parcel of life for any butler of a large household. They are intensely irritating, but one learns to accept them. In fact, as far as these sorts of ‘moonlight’ departures were concerned, this was among the more civilized. Aside from a little food, the couple had taken nothing that belonged to the house, and furthermore, both parties had left letters. The second footman, whose name I no longer recall, left a short note addressed to me, saying something like: ‘Please do not judge us too harshly. We are in love and are going to be married.’ Lisa had written a much longer note addressed to ‘the Housekeeper’, and it was this letter Miss Kenton brought into my pantry on the morning following their disappearance. There were, as I recall, many misspelt, ill-formed sentences about how much in love the couple were, how wonderful the second footman was, and how marvellous the future was that awaited them both. One line, as I recall it, read something to the effect of: ‘We don’t have money but who cares we have love and who wants anything else we’ve got one another that’s all anyone can ever want.’ Despite the letter being three pages long, there was no mention of any gratitude towards Miss Kenton for the great care she had given the girl, nor was there any note of regret at letting all of us down.

Miss Kenton was noticeably upset. All the while I was running my eye over the young woman’s letter, she sat there at the table before me, looking down at her hands. In fact – and this strikes one as rather curious – I cannot really recall seeing her more bereft than on that morning. When I put the letter