Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro Page A

were equals, and the class had laughed, and I’d felt good about it. But a couple of days later, I was going down the corridor and Mr. Travis was coming the other way, talking with
her
, and as I came by she stopped me and gave me a complete bollocking about late homework or something. The point is she’d done this just to let Mr. Travis know I was a “troublemaker;” that if he’d thought for one moment I was one of the boys worthy of his respect, he was making a big mistake. Maybe it was because she was old, I don’t know, but the other teachers never seemed to see through her. They all took whatever she said as gospel.
    When Hag Fraser came in that day, it was obvious she remembered me, but she didn’t smile or call me by name. She bought a cup of tea and a packet of Custard Creams, then took them outside to the terrace. I thought that was that. But then a while later, she came in again, put her empty cup and saucer down on the counter and said: “Since you won’t clear the table, I’ve brought these in myself.” She gave me a look that went on a second or two longer than was normal—her old if-only-I-could-swat-you look—then left.
    All my hatred for the old dragon came back, and by the time Maggie came down a few minutes later, I was completely fuming. She saw it straight away and asked what was wrong. There were a few customers out on the terrace, but no one inside, so I started shouting, calling Hag Fraser every filthy name she deserved. Maggie got me to calm down, then said:
    “Well, she’s not anybody’s teacher any more. She’s just a sad old lady whose husband’s gone and left her.”
    “Not surprised.”
    “But you have to feel a bit sorry for her. Just when she thought she could enjoy her retirement, she’s left for a younger woman. And now she has to run that bed-and-breakfast by herself and people say the place is falling apart.”
    This all cheered me up no end. I forgot about Hag Fraser soon after that, because a group came in and I had to make a lot of tuna salads. But a few days later when I was chatting to Geoff in the kitchen, I got a few more details from him; like how her husband of forty-odd years had gone off with his secretary; and how their hotel had got off to a reasonable start, but now all the gossip was of guests demanding their money back, or checking out within hours of arrival. I saw the place myself once when I was helping Maggie with the cash-and-carry and we drove past. Hag Fraser’s hotel was right there on the Elgar Route, a fairly substantial granite house with an outsize sign saying “Malvern Lodge.”
    But I don’t want to go on about Hag Fraser too much. I’m not obsessed with her or with her hotel. I’m only putting this all here now because of what happened later, once Tilo and Sonja came in.
    Geoff had gone into Great Malvern that day, so it was just me and Maggie holding the fort. The main lunch rush was over, but at the point when the Krauts came in, we still had plenty going on. I’d clocked them in my mind as “the Krauts” the moment I heard their accents. I wasn’t being racist. If you have to stand behind a counter and remember who didn’t want beetroot, who wanted extra bread, who gets what put on which bill, you’ve no choice but to turn all the customers into characters, give them names, pick out physical peculiarities. Donkey Face had a ploughman’s and two coffees. Tuna mayo baguettes for Winston Churchill and his wife. That’s how I was doing it. So Tilo and Sonja were “the Krauts.”
    It was very hot that afternoon, but most of the customers—being English—still wanted to sit outside on the terrace, some of them even avoiding the parasols so they could go bright red in the sun. But the Krauts decided to sit indoors in the shade. They had on loose, camel-coloured trousers, trainers and T-shirts, but somehow looked smart, the way people from the continent often do. I supposed they were in their forties, maybe early fifties—I