Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Page B

aside from the sandpit incident, I don’t remember having anything to do with her until the Juniors a couple of years later, when we were seven, going on eight.
    The South Playing Field was the one used most by the Juniors and it was there, in the corner by the poplars, that Ruth came up to me one lunchtime, looked me up and down, then asked:
    “Do you want to ride my horse?”
    I was in the midst of playing with two or three others at that point, but it was clear Ruth was addressing only me. This absolutely delighted me, but I made a show of weighing her up before giving a reply.
    “Well, what’s your horse’s name?”
    Ruth came a step closer. “My best
       horse,” she said, “is Thunder. I can’t let you ride on him. He’s much too dangerous. But you can ride Bramble, as long as you don’t use your crop on him. Or if you like, you could have any of the others.” She reeled off several more names I don’t now remember. Then she asked: “Have you got any horses of your own?”
    I looked at her and thought carefully before replying: “No. I don’t have any horses.”
    “Not even one?”
    “No.”
    “All right.
    
     You can ride Bramble, and if you like him, you can have him to keep. But you’re not to use your crop on him. And you’ve got to come now.”
    My friends had, in any case, turned away and were carrying on with what they’d been doing. So I gave a shrug and went off with Ruth.
    The field was filled with playing children, some a lot bigger than us, but Ruth led the way through them very purposefully, always a pace or two in front. When we were almost at the wire mesh boundary with the garden, she turned and said:
    “Okay, we’ll ride them here. You take Bramble.”
    I accepted the invisible rein she was holding out, and then we were off, riding up and down the fence, sometimes cantering, sometimes at a gallop. I’d been correct in my decision to tell Ruth I didn’t have any horses of my own, because after a while with Bramble, she let me try her various other horses one by one, shouting all sorts of instructions about how to handle each animal’s foibles.
    “I told you! You’ve got to really lean back on Daffodil! Much more than that! She doesn’t like it unless you’re right back!”
    I must have done well enough, because eventually she let me have a go on Thunder, her favourite. I don’t know how long we spent with her horses that day: it felt a substantial time, and I think we both lost ourselves completely in our game. But then suddenly, for no reason I could see, Ruth brought it all to an end, claiming I was deliberately tiring out her horses, and that I’d have to put each of them back in its stable. She pointed to a section of the fence, and I began leading the horses to it, while Ruth seemed to get crosser and crosser with me, saying I was doing everything wrong. Then she asked:
    “Do you like Miss Geraldine?”
    It might have been the first time I’d actually thought about whether I liked a guardian. In the end I said: “Of course I like her.”
    “But do you really
       like her? Like she’s special? Like she’s your favourite?”
    “Yes, I do. She’s my favourite.”
    Ruth went on looking at me for a long time. Then finally she said: “All right. In that case, I’ll let you be one of her secret guards.”
    We started to walk back towards the main house then and I waited for her to explain what she meant, but she didn’t. I found out though over the next several days.
     

Never Let Me Go
    Chapter Five
     
    I’m not sure for how long the “secret guard” business carried on. When Ruth and I discussed it while I was caring for her down in Dover, she claimed it had been just a matter of two or three weeks—but that was almost certainly wrong. She was probably embarrassed about it and so the whole thing had shrunk in her memory. My guess is that it went on for about nine months, a year even, around when we were seven, going on eight.
    I was never sure if Ruth had