Atonement (19 page)

Robbie said
tersely, “I suppose we are,” and then, to make amends for him,
added for general consideration, “Has England ever been hotter?”

Leaning away
from the field of Cecilia’s body warmth, and averting his eyes from
Briony’s, he found himself pitching the end of his question into the
frightened gaze of Pierrot diagonally to his left. The boy gaped, and
struggled, as he might in the classroom, with a test in history. Or was it
geography? Or science?

Briony leaned
over Jackson to touch Pierrot’s shoulder, all the while keeping her eyes
on Robbie. “Please leave him alone,” she said in a forceful
whisper, and then to the little boy, softly, “You don’t have to
answer.”

Emily spoke
up from her end of the table. “Briony, it was a perfectly bland remark
about the weather. You’ll apologize, or go now to your room.”

Whenever Mrs.
Tallis exercised authority in the absence of her husband, the children felt
obliged to protect her from seeming ineffectual. Briony, who in any case would
not have left her sister undefended, lowered her head and said to the
tablecloth, “I’m very sorry. I wish I hadn’t said it.”

The
vegetables in lidded serving dishes, or on platters of faded Spode, were passed
up and down, and such was the collective inattention or the polite desire to
conceal a lack of appetite that most ended with roast potatoes and potato
salad, Brussels sprouts and beetroot, and lettuce leaves foundering in gravy.

“The
Old Man’s not going to be too pleased,” Leon said as he got to his
feet. “It’s a 1921 Barsac, but it’s open now.” He
filled his mother’s glass, then his sister’s and Marshall’s,
and when he was standing by Robbie he said, “And a healing draft for the
good doctor. I want to hear about this new plan.”

But he did
not wait for a reply. On his way back to his seat he said, “I love
England in a heat wave. It’s a different country. All the rules change.”

Emily Tallis
picked up her knife and fork and everyone did likewise.

Paul Marshall
said, “Nonsense. Name a single rule that changes.”

“All
right. At the club the only place one’s allowed to remove one’s
jacket is the billiard room. But if the temperature reaches ninety degrees
before three o’clock, then jackets can be taken off in the upstairs bar
the following day.”

“The
following day! A different country indeed.”

“You
know what I mean. People are more at ease—a couple of days’
sunshine and we become Italians. Last week in Charlotte Street they were eating
dinner at pavement tables.”

“It was
always the view of my parents,” Emily said, “that hot weather
encouraged loose morals among young people. Fewer layers of clothing, a
thousand more places to meet. Out of doors, out of control. Your grandmother
especially was uneasy when it was summer. She would dream up a thousand reasons
to keep my sisters and me in the house.”

“Well
then,” Leon said. “What do you think, Cee? Have you behaved even
worse than usual today?”

All eyes were
on her, and the brotherly banter was relentless.

“Good
heavens, you’re blushing. The answer must be yes.”

Sensing that
he should step in for her, Robbie started to say, “Actually . . .”

But Cecilia
spoke up. “I’m awfully hot, that’s all. And the answer is
yes. I behaved very badly. I persuaded Emily against her will that we should
have a roast in your honor, regardless of the weather. Now you’re
sticking to salad while the rest of us are suffering because of you. So pass
him the vegetables, Briony, and perhaps he’ll pipe down.”

Robbie
thought he heard a tremor in her voice.

“Good
old Cee. Top form,” Leon said.

Marshall
said, “That’s put you in your place.”

“I
suppose I’d better pick on someone smaller.” Leon smiled at Briony
by his side. “Have you done something bad today on account of the
terrible heat? Have you broken the rules? Please tell us you have.” He
took her hand in mock-beseeching, but she pulled it away.

She was still
a child, Robbie thought, not beyond confessing or blurting out that she had
read his note, which in turn could lead her to describe what she had
interrupted. He was watching her closely as she played for time, taking her
napkin, dabbing her lips, but he felt no particular dread. If it had to, let it
happen. However appalling, the dinner would not last forever, and he would find
a way to be with Cecilia again that night, and together they would confront the
extraordinary new fact in their lives—their changed lives—and
resume. At the thought, his stomach plunged. Until that time, everything was
shadowy irrelevance and he was afraid of nothing. He took a deep pull of the
sugary lukewarm wine and waited.

Briony said,
“It’s boring of me, but
I’ve
done nothing wrong
today.”

He had
underestimated her. The emphasis could only have been intended for him and her
sister.

Jackson at
her elbow spoke out. “Oh yes you have. You wouldn’t let there be a
play. We wanted to be in the play.” The boy looked around the table, his
green eyes shining with the grievance. “And you said you wanted us
to.”

His brother
was nodding. “Yes. You wanted us to be in it.” No one could know
the extent of their disappointment.

“There,
you see,” Leon said. “Briony’s hotheaded decision. On a
cooler day we’d be in the library watching the theatricals now.”

These
harmless inanities, far preferable to silence, allowed Robbie to retreat behind
a mask of amused attention. Cecilia’s left hand was cupped above her
cheek, presumably to exclude him from her peripheral vision. By appearing to
listen to Leon who was now recounting his glimpse of the King in a West End
theater, Robbie was able to contemplate her bare arm and shoulder, and while he
did so he thought she could feel his breath on her skin, an idea which stirred
him. At the top of her shoulder was a little dent, scalloped in the bone, or
suspended between two bones, with a fuzz of shadow along its rim. His tongue
would soon trace the oval of this rim and push into the hollow. His excitement
was close to pain and sharpened by the pressure of contradictions: she was
familiar like a sister, she was exotic like a lover; he had always known her,
he knew nothing about her; she was plain, she was beautiful; she was
capable—how easily she protected herself against her brother—and
twenty minutes ago she had wept; his stupid letter repelled her but it unlocked
her. He regretted it, and he exulted in his mistake. They would be alone
together soon, with more contradictions—hilarity and sensuousness, desire
and fear at their recklessness, awe and impatience to begin. In an unused room
somewhere on the second floor, or far from the house, beneath the trees by the
river. Which? Mrs. Tallis’s mother was no fool. Outdoors. They would wrap
themselves in the satin darkness and begin again. And this was no fantasy, this
was real, this was his near future, both desirable and unavoidable. But that
was what wretched Malvolio thought, whose part he had played once on the
college lawn—“Nothing that can be can come between me and the full
prospect of my hopes.”

Half an hour
before there had been no hope at all. After Briony had disappeared into the
house with his letter, he kept on walking, agonizing about turning back. Even
when he reached the front door, his mind was not made up, and he loitered
several minutes under the porch lamp and its single faithful moth, trying to
choose the less disastrous of two poor options. It came down to this: go in now
and face her anger and disgust, give an explanation which would not be
accepted, and most likely be turned away—unbearable humiliation; or go
home now without a word, leaving the impression that the letter was what he
intended, be tortured all night and for days to come by brooding, knowing
nothing of her reaction—even more unbearable. And spineless. He went over
it again and it looked the same. There was no way out, he would have to speak
to her. He put his hand over the bell push. Still, it remained tempting to walk
away. He could write her an apology from the safety of his study. Coward! The
cool porcelain was under the tip of his forefinger, and before the arguments
could start around again, he made himself press it. He stood back from the door
feeling like a man who had just swallowed a suicide pill—nothing to do
but wait. From inside he heard steps, staccato female steps across the hall.

When she
opened the door he saw the folded note in her hand. For several seconds they
continued to stare at each other and neither spoke. For all his hesitation he
had prepared nothing to say. His only thought was that she was even more
beautiful than his fantasies of her. The silk dress she wore seemed to worship
every curve and dip of her lithe body, but the small sensual mouth was held
tight in disapproval, or perhaps even disgust. The house lights behind her were
strong in his eyes, making it hard to read her precise expression.

Finally he
said, “Cee, it was a mistake.”

“A
mistake?”

Voices
reached him across the hallway through the open door of the drawing room. He
heard Leon’s voice, then Marshall’s. It may have been fear of
interruption that caused her to step back and open the door wider for him. He
followed her across the hall into the library which was in darkness, and waited
by the door while she searched for the switch of a desk lamp. When it came on
he pushed the door closed behind him. He guessed that in a few minutes he would
be walking back across the park toward the bungalow.

“It
wasn’t the version I intended to send.”

“No.”

“I put
the wrong one in the envelope.”

“Yes.”

He could
gauge nothing by these terse replies and he was still unable to see her
expression clearly. She moved beyond the light, down past the shelves. He
stepped further into the room, not quite following her, but unwilling to let
her out of close range. She could have sent him packing from the front door and
now there was a chance of giving an explanation before he left.

She said,
“Briony read it.”

“Oh
God. I’m sorry.”

He had been
about to conjure for her a private moment of exuberance, a passing impatience
with convention, a memory of reading the Orioli edition of
Lady
Chatterley’s Lover
, which he had bought under the counter in Soho.
But this new element—the innocent child—put his lapse beyond
mitigation. It would have been frivolous to go on. He could only repeat
himself, this time in a whisper.

“I’m
sorry . . .”

She was
moving further away, toward the corner, into deeper shadow. Even though he
thought she was recoiling from him, he took another couple of steps in her
direction.

“It was
a stupid thing. You were never meant to read it. No one was.”

Still she
shrank away. One elbow was resting on the shelves, and she seemed to slide
along them, as though about to disappear between the books. He heard a soft,
wet sound, the kind that is made when one is about to speak and the tongue
unglues from the roof of the mouth. But she said nothing. It was only then that
it occurred to him that she might not be shrinking from him, but drawing him
with her deeper into the gloom. From the moment he had pressed the bell he had
nothing to lose. So he walked toward her slowly as she slipped back, until she
was in the corner where she stopped and watched him approach. He too stopped,
less than four feet away. He was close enough now, and there was just enough
light, to see she was tearful and trying to speak. For the moment it was not
possible and she shook her head to indicate that he should wait. She turned
aside and made a steeple of her hands to enclose her nose and mouth and pressed
her fingers into the corners of her eyes.

She brought
herself under control and said, “It’s been there for weeks . .
.” Her throat constricted and she had to pause. Instantly, he had an idea
what she meant, but he pushed it away. She drew a deep breath, then continued
more reflectively, “Perhaps it’s months. I don’t know. But
today . . . all day it’s been strange. I mean, I’ve been seeing
strangely, as if for the first time. Everything has looked different—too
sharp, too real. Even my own hands looked different. At other times I seem to be
watching events as if they happened long ago. And all day I’ve been
furious with you—and with myself. I thought that I’d be perfectly
happy never seeing you or speaking to you again. I thought you’d go off
to medical school and I’d be happy. I was so angry with you. I suppose
it’s been a way of not thinking about it. Rather convenient really . .
.”

She gave a
tense little laugh.

He said,
“It?”

Until now,
her gaze had been lowered. When she spoke again she looked at him. He saw only
the glimmer of the whites of her eyes.

“You
knew before me. Something has happened, hasn’t it? And you knew before
me. It’s like being close up to something so large you don’t even
see it. Even now, I’m not sure I can. But I know it’s there.”

She looked
down and he waited.

“I know
it’s there because it made me behave ridiculously. And you, of course . .
. But this morning, I’ve never done anything like that before. Afterward
I was so angry about it. Even as it was happening. I told myself I’d
given you a weapon to use against me. Then, this evening, when I began to
understand—well, how could I have been so ignorant about myself? And so
stupid?” She started, seized by an unpleasant idea. “You do know
what I’m talking about. Tell me you do.” She was afraid that there
was nothing shared at all, that all her assumptions were wrong and that with
her words she had isolated herself further, and he would think she was a fool.