Darling, hold me, hold me, hold me
And never, never, never let me go.
Darling, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me
And never, never, never let me go.
Lock my heart, throw away the key
Fill my love with ecstasy.
Bind my heart with your warm embrace
And tell me no one would ever take my place.
Darling, tell me, tell me, tell me
You'll never, never, never,
Never, never, never...
I’ve been
thinking about this song since I read the book in May/June, and it feels important
to me that the lyrics above are not actually the lyrics reported by Kathy H. in the book
itself. When she first narrates the story of the tape – really narrates it, not
just mentions it or says that she will come back to it later – she says:
“What was so
special about this song? Well, the thing was, I didn’t used to listen properly
to the words; I just waited for that bit that went: “Baby, baby, never let me
go…” And what I’d imagined was a woman who’d been told she couldn’t have
babies, who’d really, really wanted them all her life…” (70).
She realizes (and
acknowledges that she realizes all the while) that her dreamed-up scenario of
this woman eventually having a baby and then clutching to to her chest as she
sings this song to it could not be true, that it “didn’t fit with the rest of
the lyrics.” Yet she continues: “the song was about what I said, and I used to
listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance” (70).
I waited until I
finished the book to listen to the Judy Bridgewater song. It’s jazzy with pumps
of brass instruments swelling rhythmically behind the vibrating vocals of
Bridgewater as she wails the lyrics above. The backing vocals sound like those
of people other than Bridgewater as they exclaim “Never!” or “Oooo!” in a
reliable beat behind her. Yet, not once do any of the vocalists say the word
“baby.” By now, I’ve listened to the song over a dozen times. As I write this,
I have it on repeat, and I do not hear Judy Bridgewater howl the word “baby.”
Why use a real
song as the premise of a novel only to insert a lyric that isn’t there?
I suppose that
the presence of the word “baby” makes the young Kathy H.’s definition of the
song more plausible. I only ever heard terms of endearment exchanged between my
parents or other adult couples when I was a kid, so it makes sense that to the
parentless Kathy H., “baby” would literally mean “infant.” Yet, I think that
Ishiguro may have had a purpose in inserting a lyric that isn’t in the song
that he chose.
Kathy isn’t an extremely reliable narrator. I go into this more
in depth in my 295 textual analysis paper, but she quite often qualifies her
reported memories by admitting that it’s impossible for her to be entirely
honest about her stories because she’s unable to remember every detail
perfectly, or because it’s impossible for her to have known what other people
were thinking. On pages 142-143, she explains the concept of the student’s “dream
futures,” about how people sometimes liked to forget about who they really were
and what their purposes would be after they were carers. “Mind you, none of us
pushed it too far. I don’t remember
anyone saying they were going to be a movie star or anything like that” (143).
Here (and in myriad other places) Kathy H. is able to admit the faults in her
own narrative. Yet, even when listening to the tape again after she finds it in
Norfolk, she doesn’t recognize that she got the words wrong.
It seems too
strange to assume that the addition of “baby” is Ishiguro’s own authorial
decision. Why make up a lyric to a song that really exists? Wouldn’t it have
been easier to base the book around a song that actually has “baby” in it, or
just make up a new song and singer entirely? There are things that Kathy H.
does not tell the “you” that she’s speaking to in the book. Without listening
to the song, I wouldn’t have known about the discrepancy. It is my theory that
as a child, Kathy H. added “baby” to the song on her own, or perhaps just
imposed it onto her memory after the original tape was long gone. Maybe she
realizes as an adult that the lyric is wrong, but with the added revelation of
how awful Madame felt as she watched her (“I saw a new world coming rapidly…And
I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old
kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was
holding it and pleading, never to let her go…”) she could not let go of her own
old vision (272). It’s important that Kathy H. hears the word “baby” when she
listens to the song because it’s a relic of her childhood, a relic of a
Hailsham that doesn’t exist anymore. We don’t ever get an outright explanation
of why she’s projected this word because it’s something that she hasn’t thought
on that much herself, something that would be ruined if she thought too hard
about it.
There are more important things for her to remember.
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