Atonement (16 page)

And so it was
resolved and the roast was saved. With tactful good grace, Betty set Doll to
scrubbing new potatoes, and Polly went outside with a knife.

As they came
away from the kitchen Emily put on her dark glasses and said, “I’m
glad that’s settled because what’s really bothering me is Briony. I
know she’s upset. She’s moping around outside and I’m going
to bring her in.”

“Good
idea. I was worried about her too,” Cecilia said. She was not inclined to
dissuade her mother from wandering far away from the terrace.

The drawing
room which had transfixed Cecilia that morning with its parallelograms of light
was now in gloom, lit by a single lamp near the fireplace. The open French
windows framed a greenish sky, and against that, in silhouette at some
distance, the familiar head and shoulders of her brother. As she made her way
across the room she heard the tinkle of ice cubes against his glass, and as she
stepped out she smelled the pennyroyal, chamomile and feverfew crushed
underfoot, and headier now than in the morning. No one remembered the name, or
even the appearance, of the temporary gardener who made it his project some years
back to plant up the cracks between the paving stones. At the time, no one
understood what he had in mind. Perhaps that was why he was sacked.

“Sis!
I’ve been out here forty minutes and I’m half stewed.”

“Sorry.
Where’s my drink?”

On a low
wooden table set against the wall of the house was a paraffin globe lamp and
ranged around it a rudimentary bar. At last the gin and tonic was in her hand.
She lit a cigarette from his and they chinked glasses.

“I like
the frock.”

“Can
you see it?”

“Turn
round. Gorgeous. I’d forgotten about that mole.”

“How’s
the bank?”

“Dull
and perfectly pleasant. We live for the evenings and weekends. When are you
going to come?”

They wandered
off the terrace onto the gravel path between the roses. The Triton pond rose
before them, an inky mass whose complicated outline was honed against a sky
turning greener as the light fell. They could hear the trickle of water, and
Cecilia thought she could smell it too, silvery and sharp. It may have been the
drink in her hand.

She said
after a pause, “I am going a little mad here.”

“Being
everyone’s mother again. D’you know, there are girls getting all
sorts of jobs now. Even taking the civil service exams. That would please the
Old Man.”

“They’d
never have me with a third.”

“Once
your life gets going you’ll find that stuff doesn’t mean a
thing.”

They reached
the fountain and turned to face the house, and remained in silence for a while,
leaning against the parapet, at the site of her disgrace. Reckless, ridiculous,
and above all shaming. Only time, a prudish veil of hours, prevented her
brother from seeing her as she had been. But she had no such protection from
Robbie. He had seen her, he would always be able to see her, even as time
smoothed out the memory to a barroom tale. She was still irritated with her
brother about the invitation, but she needed him, she wanted a share in his
freedom. Solicitously, she prompted him to give her his news.

In
Leon’s life, or rather, in his account of his life, no one was
mean-spirited, no one schemed or lied or betrayed. Everyone was celebrated at
least in some degree, as though it was a cause for wonder that anyone existed
at all. He remembered all his friends’ best lines. The effect of one of
Leon’s anecdotes was to make his listener warm to humankind and its
failings. Everyone was, at a minimal estimate, “a good egg” or
“a decent sort,” and motivation was never judged to be at variance
with outward show. If there was mystery or contradiction in a friend, Leon took
the long view and found a benign explanation. Literature and politics, science
and religion did not bore him—they simply had no place in his world, and
nor did any matter about which people seriously disagreed. He had taken a
degree in law and was happy to have forgotten the whole experience. It was hard
to imagine him ever lonely, or bored or despondent; his equanimity was
bottomless, as was his lack of ambition, and he assumed that everyone else was
much like him. Despite all this, his blandness was perfectly tolerable, even soothing.

He talked
first of his rowing club. He had been stroke for the second eight recently, and
though everyone had been kind, he thought he was happier taking the pace from
someone else. Likewise, at the bank there had been mention of promotion and
when nothing came of it he was somewhat relieved. Then the girls: the actress
Mary, who had been so wonderful in
Private Lives
, had suddenly removed
herself without explanation to Glasgow and no one knew why. He suspected she
was tending a dying relative. Francine, who spoke beautiful French and had
outraged the world by wearing a monocle, had gone with him to a Gilbert and
Sullivan last week and in the interval they had seen the King who had seemed to
glance in their direction. The sweet, dependable, well-connected Barbara whom
Jack and Emily thought he should marry had invited him to spend a week at her
parents’ castle in the Highlands. He thought it would be churlish not to
go.

Whenever he
seemed about to dry up, Cecilia prodded him with another question. Inexplicably,
his rent at the Albany had gone down. An old friend had got a girl with a lisp
pregnant, had married her and was jolly happy. Another was buying a motorbike.
The father of a chum had bought a vacuum cleaner factory and said it was a
license to print money. Someone’s grandmother was a brave old stick for
walking half a mile on a broken leg. As sweet as the evening air, this talk
moved through and round her, conjuring a world of good intentions and pleasant
outcomes. Shoulder to shoulder, half standing, half sitting, they faced their
childhood home whose architecturally confused medieval references seemed now to
be whimsically lighthearted; their mother’s migraine was a comic
interlude in a light opera, the sadness of the twins a sentimental extravagance,
the incident in the kitchen no more than the merry jostling of lively spirits.

When it was
her turn to give an account of recent months, it was impossible not to be
influenced by Leon’s tone, though her version of it came through,
helplessly, as mockery. She ridiculed her own attempts at genealogy; the family
tree was wintry and bare, as well as rootless. Grandfather Harry Tallis was the
son of a farm laborer who, for some reason, had changed his name from
Cartwright and whose birth and marriage were not recorded. As for
Clarissa
—all
those daylight hours curled up on the bed with pins and needles in her
arm—it surely proved the case of
Paradise Lost
in
reverse—the heroine became more loathsome as her death-fixated virtue was
revealed. Leon nodded and pursed his lips; he would not pretend to know what
she was talking about, nor would he interrupt. She gave a farcical hue to her
weeks of boredom and solitude, of how she had come to be with the family, and
make amends for being away, and had found her parents and sister absent in
their different ways. Encouraged by her brother’s generous near-laughter,
she attempted comic sketches based on her daily need for more cigarettes, on
Briony tearing down her poster, on the twins outside her room with a sock each,
and on their mother’s desire for a miracle at the feast—roast
potatoes into potato salad. Leon did not take the biblical reference here.
There was desperation in all she said, an emptiness at its core, or something
excluded or unnamed that made her talk faster, and exaggerate with less
conviction. The agreeable nullity of Leon’s life was a polished artifact,
its ease deceptive, its limitations achieved by invisible hard work and the
accidents of character, none of which she could hope to rival. She linked her
arm with his and squeezed. That was another thing about Leon: soft and charming
in company, but through his jacket his arm had the consistency of tropical
hardwood. She felt soft at every level, and transparent. He was looking at her
fondly.

“What’s
up, Cee?”

“Nothing.
Nothing at all.”

“You
really ought to come and stay with me and look around.”

There was a
figure moving about on the terrace, and lights were coming on in the drawing
room. Briony called out to her brother and sister.

Leon called
back. “We’re over here.”

“We
should go in,” Cecilia said, and still arm in arm, they began to walk
toward the house. As they passed the roses she wondered if there really was
anything she wanted to tell him. Confessing to her behavior this morning was
certainly not possible.

“I’d
love to come up to town.” Even as she said the words she imagined herself
being dragged back, incapable of packing her bag or of making the train.
Perhaps she didn’t want to go at all, but she repeated herself a little
more emphatically.

“I’d
love to come.”

Briony was
waiting impatiently on the terrace to greet her brother. Someone addressed her
from inside the drawing room and she spoke over her shoulder in reply. As
Cecilia and Leon approached, they heard the voice again—it was their mother
trying to be stern.

“I’m
only saying it one more time. You will go up now and wash and change.”

With a
lingering look in their direction, Briony moved toward the French windows.
There was something in her hand.

Leon said,
“We could set you up in no time at all.”

When they
stepped into the room, into the light of several lamps, Briony was still there,
still barefoot and in her filthy white dress, and her mother was standing by
the door on the far side of the room, smiling indulgently. Leon stretched out
his arms and did the comic Cockney voice he reserved for her.

“An’
if it ain’t my li’l sis!”

As she
hurried past, Briony pushed into Cecilia’s hand a piece of paper folded
twice and then she squealed her brother’s name and leaped into his
embrace.

Conscious of
her mother watching her, Cecilia adopted an expression of amused curiosity as
she unfolded the sheet. Commendably, it was a look she was able to maintain as
she took in the small block of typewriting and in a glance absorbed it
whole—a unit of meaning whose force and color was derived from the single
repeated word. At her elbow, Briony was telling Leon about the play she had
written for him, and lamenting her failure to stage it.
The Trials of
Arabella
, she kept repeating.
The Trials of Arabella
. Never had
she appeared so animated, so weirdly excited. She still had her arms about his
neck, and was standing on tiptoe to nuzzle her cheek against his.

Initially, a
simple phrase chased round and round in Cecilia’s thoughts:
Of
course, of course
. How had she not seen it? Everything was explained. The
whole day, the weeks before, her childhood. A lifetime. It was clear to her
now. Why else take so long to choose a dress, or fight over a vase, or find
everything so different, or be unable to leave? What had made her so blind, so
obtuse? Many seconds had passed, and it was no longer plausible to be staring
fixedly at the sheet of paper. The act of folding it away brought her to an
obvious realization: it could not have been sent unsealed. She turned to look
at her sister.

Leon was
saying to her, “How about this? I’m good at voices, you’re
even better. We’ll read it aloud together.”

Cecilia moved
round him, into Briony’s view.

“Briony?
Briony, did you read this?”

But Briony,
engaged in a shrill response to her brother’s suggestion, writhed in his
arms and turned her face from her sister and half buried it in Leon’s
jacket.

From across
the room Emily said soothingly, “Calmly now.”

Again,
Cecilia shifted her position so that she was on the other side of her brother.
“Where’s the envelope?”

Briony turned
her face away again and laughed wildly at something Leon was telling her.

Then Cecilia
was aware of another figure in their presence, at the edge of vision, moving
behind her, and when she turned she confronted Paul Marshall. In one hand he
held a silver tray on which stood five cocktail glasses, each one half filled
with a viscous brown substance. He lifted a glass and presented it to her.

“I
insist you try it.”

Ten