Atonement (20 page)

He moved
nearer. “I do. I know it exactly. But why are you crying? Is there
something else?”

He thought
she was about to broach an impossible obstacle and he meant, of course,
someone
,
but she didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to answer and she
looked at him, quite flummoxed. Why was she crying? How could she begin to tell
him when so much emotion, so many emotions, simply engulfed her? He in turn
felt that his question was unfair, inappropriate, and he struggled to think of
a way of putting it right. They stared at each other in confusion, unable to
speak, sensing that something delicately established might slip from them. That
they were old friends who had shared a childhood was now a barrier—they
were embarrassed before their former selves. Their friendship had become vague
and even constrained in recent years, but it was still an old habit, and to
break it now in order to become strangers on intimate terms required a clarity
of purpose which had temporarily deserted them. For the moment, there seemed no
way out with words.

He put his
hands on her shoulders, and her bare skin was cool to the touch. As their faces
drew closer he was uncertain enough to think she might spring away, or hit him,
movie-style, across the cheek with her open hand. Her mouth tasted of lipstick
and salt. They drew away for a second, he put his arms around her and they
kissed again with greater confidence. Daringly, they touched the tips of their
tongues, and it was then she made the falling, sighing sound which, he realized
later, marked a transformation. Until that moment, there was still something
ludicrous about having a familiar face so close to one’s own. They felt
watched by their bemused childhood selves. But the contact of tongues, alive
and slippery muscle, moist flesh on flesh, and the strange sound it drew from
her, changed that. This sound seemed to enter him, pierce him down his length
so that his whole body opened up and he was able to step out of himself and
kiss her freely. What had been self-conscious was now impersonal, almost
abstract. The sighing noise she made was greedy and made him greedy too. He
pushed her hard into the corner, between the books. As they kissed she was
pulling at his clothes, plucking ineffectually at his shirt, his waistband.
Their heads rolled and turned against one another as their kissing became a
gnawing. She bit him on the cheek, not quite playfully. He pulled away, then moved
back and she bit him hard on his lower lip. He kissed her throat, forcing back
her head against the shelves, she pulled his hair and pushed his face down
against her breasts. There was some inexpert fumbling until he found her
nipple, tiny and hard, and put his mouth around it. Her spine went rigid, then
juddered along its length. For a moment he thought she had passed out. Her arms
were looped around his head and when she tightened her grip he rose through it,
desperate to breathe, up to his full height and enfolded her, crushing her head
against his chest. She bit him again and pulled at his shirt. When they heard a
button ping against the floorboards, they had to suppress their grins and look
away. Comedy would have destroyed them. She trapped his nipple between her
teeth. The sensation was unbearable. He tilted her face up, and trapping her
against his ribs, kissed her eyes and parted her lips with his tongue. Her
helplessness drew from her again the sound like a sigh of disappointment.

At last they
were strangers, their pasts were forgotten. They were also strangers to
themselves who had forgotten who or where they were. The library door was thick
and none of the ordinary sounds that might have reminded them, might have held
them back, could reach them. They were beyond the present, outside time, with
no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation,
thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as
their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling. His
experience was limited and he knew only at second hand that they need not lie
down. As for her, beyond all the films she had seen, and all the novels and
lyrical poems she had read, she had no experience at all. Despite these limitations,
it did not surprise them how clearly they knew their own needs. They were
kissing again, her arms were clasped behind his head. She was licking his ear,
then biting his earlobe. Cumulatively, these bites aroused him and enraged him,
goaded him. Under her dress he felt for her buttocks and squeezed hard, and
half turned her to give her a retaliatory slap, but there wasn’t quite
the space. Keeping her eyes fixed on his, she reached down to remove her shoes.
There was more fumbling now, with buttons and positioning of legs and arms. She
had no experience at all. Without speaking, he guided her foot onto the lowest
shelf. They were clumsy, but too selfless now to be embarrassed. When he lifted
the clinging, silky dress again he thought her look of uncertainty mirrored his
own. But there was only one inevitable end, and there was nothing they could do
but go toward it.

Supported
against the corner by his weight, she once again clasped her hands behind his
neck, and rested her elbows on his shoulder and continued to kiss his face. The
moment itself was easy. They held their breath before the membrane parted, and
when it did she turned away quickly, but made no sound—it seemed to be a
point of pride. They moved closer, deeper and then, for seconds on end, everything
stopped. Instead of an ecstatic frenzy, there was stillness. They were stilled
not by the astonishing fact of arrival, but by an awed sense of
return—they were face to face in the gloom, staring into what little they
could see of each other’s eyes, and now it was the impersonal that
dropped away. Of course, there was nothing abstract about a face. The son of
Grace and Ernest Turner, the daughter of Emily and Jack Tallis, the childhood
friends, the university acquaintances, in a state of expansive, tranquil joy,
confronted the momentous change they had achieved. The closeness of a familiar
face was not ludicrous, it was wondrous. Robbie stared at the woman, the girl
he had always known, thinking the change was entirely in himself, and was as
fundamental, as fundamentally biological, as birth. Nothing as singular or as
important had happened since the day of his birth. She returned his gaze,
struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty in
a face which a lifetime’s habit had taught her to ignore. She whispered
his name with the deliberation of a child trying out the distinct sounds. When
he replied with her name, it sounded like a new word—the syllables
remained the same, the meaning was different. Finally he spoke the three simple
words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can ever quite cheapen. She
repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as
though she had been the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but
it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room,
and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.

They had been
motionless for perhaps as long as half a minute. Longer would have required the
mastery of some formidable tantric art. They began to make love against the
library shelves which creaked with their movement. It is common enough at such
times to fantasize arriving in a remote and high place. He imagined himself
strolling on a smooth, rounded mountain summit, suspended between two higher
peaks. He was in an unhurried, reconnoitering mood, with time to go to a rocky
edge and take a glimpse of the near-vertical scree down which he would shortly
have to throw himself. It was a temptation to leap into clear space now, but he
was a man of the world and he could walk away, and wait. It was not easy, for
he was being drawn back and he had to resist. As long as he did not think of
the edge, he would not go near it, and would not be tempted. He forced himself
to remember the dullest things he knew—bootblack, an application form, a
wet towel on his bedroom floor. There was also an upturned dustbin lid with an
inch of rainwater inside, and the incomplete tea-ring stain on the cover of his
Housman poems. This precious inventory was interrupted by the sound of her
voice. She was calling to him, inviting him, murmuring in his ear. Exactly so.
They would jump together. He was with her now, peering into an abyss, and they
saw how the scree plunged down through the cloud cover. Hand in hand, they
would fall backward. She repeated herself, mumbling in his ear, and this time
he heard her clearly.

“Someone’s
come in.”

He opened his
eyes. It was a library, in a house, in total silence. He was wearing his best
suit. Yes, it all came back to him with relative ease. He strained to look over
his shoulder and saw only the dimly illuminated desk, there as before, as
though remembered from a dream. From where they were in their corner, it was
not possible to see the door. But there was no sound, not a thing. She was
mistaken, he was desperate for her to be mistaken and she actually was. He
turned back to her, and was about to tell her so, when she tightened her grip
on his arm and he looked back once more. Briony moved slowly into their view, stopped
by the desk and saw them. She stood there stupidly, staring at them, her arms
hanging loose at her sides, like a gunslinger in a Western showdown. In that
shrinking moment he discovered that he had never hated anyone until now. It was
a feeling as pure as love, but dispassionate and icily rational. There was
nothing personal about it, for he would have hated anyone who came in. There
were drinks in the drawing room or on the terrace, and that was where Briony
was supposed to be—with her mother, and the brother she adored, and the
little cousins. There was no good reason why she should be in the library,
except to find him and deny him what was his. He saw it clearly, how it had
happened: she had opened a sealed envelope to read his note and been disgusted,
and in her obscure way felt betrayed. She had come looking for her
sister—no doubt with the exhilarated notion of protecting her, or
admonishing her, and had heard a noise from behind the closed library door.
Propelled from the depths of her ignorance, silly imagining and girlish
rectitude, she had come to call a halt. And she hardly had to do that—of
their own accord, they had moved apart and turned away, and now both were
discreetly straightening their clothes. It was over.

The main
course plates had long been cleared away and Betty had returned with the bread
and butter pudding. Was it imagining on his part, Robbie wondered, or malign
intent on hers, that made the adults’ portions appear twice the size of
the children’s? Leon was pouring from the third bottle of Barsac. He had
removed his jacket, thus allowing the other two men to do the same. There was a
soft tapping on the windowpanes as various flying creatures of the night threw
themselves against the glass. Mrs. Tallis dabbed at her face with a napkin and
looked fondly at the twins. Pierrot was whispering in Jackson’s ear.

“No
secrets at the dinner table, boys. We’d all like to hear, if you
don’t mind.”

Jackson, the
delegated voice, swallowed hard. His brother stared at his lap.

“We’d
like to be excused, Aunt Emily. Please can we go to the lavatory?”

“Of
course. But it’s may, not can. And there’s no need to be quite so
specific.”

The twins
slipped from their chairs. As they reached the door, Briony squealed and
pointed.

“My
socks! They’re wearing my strawberry socks!”

The boys
halted and turned, and looked in shame from their ankles to their aunt. Briony
was half standing. Robbie assumed that powerful emotions in the girl were
finding release.

“You
went in my room and took them from my drawer.”

Cecilia spoke
for the first time during the meal. She too was venting deeper feelings.

“Shut
up, for goodness’ sake! You really are a tiresome little prima donna. The
boys had no clean socks so I took some of yours.”

Briony stared
at her, amazed. Attacked, betrayed, by the one she only longed to protect.
Jackson and Pierrot were still looking toward their aunt who dismissed them now
with a quizzical tilt of her head and a faint nod. They closed the door behind
them with exaggerated, perhaps even satirical, care, and at the moment they
released the handle Emily picked up her spoon and the company followed her.

She said
mildly, “You could be a little less expressive toward your sister.”

As Cecilia
turned toward her mother Robbie caught a whiff of underarm perspiration, which
put him in mind of freshly cut grass. Soon they would be outside. Briefly, he
closed his eyes. A two-pint jug of custard was placed beside him, and he
wondered that he had the strength to lift it.

“I’m
sorry, Emily. But she has been quite over the top all day long.”

Briony spoke
with adult calm. “That’s pretty strong, coming from you.”

“Meaning
what?”

That, Robbie
knew, was not the question to ask. At this stage in her life Briony inhabited
an ill-defined transitional space between the nursery and adult worlds which
she crossed and recrossed unpredictably. In the present situation she was less
dangerous as an indignant little girl.

In fact,
Briony herself had no clear idea of what she meant, but Robbie could not know
this as he moved in quickly to change the subject. He turned to Lola on his
left, and said in a way that was intended to include the whole table,
“They’re nice lads, your brothers.”