Atonement (37 page)

They passed a
hotel that had taken a hit. Turner wondered if it was a hotel room he had been
thinking of. Nettle was seized by the idea of dragging out some bedding. They
went in through a hole in the wall, and picked their way through the gloom,
across rubble and fallen timbers, and found a staircase. But scores of men had
the same idea. There was actually a queue forming up at the bottom of the
stairs, and soldiers struggling down with heavy horsehair mattresses. On the
landing above—Turner and Nettle could just see boots and lower legs
moving stiffly from side to side—a fight was developing, with wrestling
grunts and a smack of knuckles on flesh. Following a sudden shout, several men
fell backward down the stairs onto those waiting below. There was laughter as
well as cursing, and people were getting to their feet and feeling their limbs.
One man did not get up, but lay awkwardly across the stairs, his legs higher
than his head, and screaming hoarsely, almost inaudibly, as though in a panicky
dream. Someone held a lighter to his face and they saw his bared teeth and
flecks of white in the corners of his mouth. He had broken his back, someone
said, but there was nothing anyone could do, and now men were stepping over him
with their blankets and bolsters, and others were jostling to go up.

They came
away from the hotel and turned inland again, back toward the old lady and her
pig. The electricity supply from Dunkirk must have been cut, but round the
edges of some heavily curtained windows they saw the ocher glow of candlelight
and oil lamps. On the other side of the road soldiers were knocking at doors,
but no one would open up now. This was the moment Turner chose to describe to
Nettle the kind of place that he had in mind for dinner. He embellished to make
his point, adding French windows open onto a wrought-iron balcony through which
an ancient wisteria threaded, and a gramophone on a round table covered by a
green chenille cloth, and a Persian rug spread across a chaise longue. The more
he described, the more certain he was that the room was close by. His words
were bringing it into being.

Nettle, his
front teeth resting on his lower lip in a look of kindly rodent bafflement, let
him finish and said, “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

They were
standing outside a bombed house whose cellar was half open to the sky and had
the appearance of a gigantic cave. Grabbing him by his jacket, Nettle pulled
him down a scree of broken bricks. Cautiously, he guided him across the cellar
floor into the blackness. Turner knew this was not the place, but he could not
resist Nettle’s unusual determination. Ahead, there appeared a point of
light, then another, and a third. The cigarettes of men already sheltering
there.

A voice said,
“Geh. Bugger off. We’re full.”

Nettle struck
a match and held it up. All around the walls there were men, propped in a
sitting position, most of them asleep. A few were lying in the center of the
floor, but there was still room, and when the match went out he pressed down on
Turner’s shoulders to make him sit. As he was pushing debris away from
under his buttocks, Turner felt his soaked shirt. It may have been blood, or
some other fluid, but for the moment there was no pain. Nettle arranged the
greatcoat around Turner’s shoulders. Now the weight was off his feet, an
ecstasy of relief spread upward through his knees and he knew he would not move
again that night, however disappointed Nettle might be. The rocking motion of
daylong walking transferred itself to the floor. Turner felt it tilt and buck
beneath him as he sat in total darkness. The problem now was to eat without
being set upon. To survive was to be selfish. But he did nothing for the moment
and his mind emptied. After a while Nettle nudged him awake and slipped the
bottle of wine into his hands. He got his mouth around the opening, tipped the
bottle and drank. Someone heard him swallowing.

“What’s
that you got?”

“Sheep’s
milk,” Nettle said. “Still warm. Have some.”

There was a
hawking sound, and something tepid and jellylike landed on the back of
Turner’s hand. “You’re filthy, you are.”

Another
voice, more threatening, said, “Shut up. I’m trying to
sleep.”

Moving
soundlessly, Nettle groped in his haversack for the saucisson, cut it into
three and passed a piece to Turner with a chunk of bread. He stretched out full
length on the concrete floor, pulled his greatcoat over his head to contain the
smell of the meat as well as the sound of his chewing, and in the fug of his
own breathing, and with pieces of brick and grit pressing into his cheek, began
to eat the best meal of his life. There was a smell of scented soap on his
face. He bit into the bread that tasted of army canvas, and tore and sucked at
the sausage. As the food reached his stomach a bloom of warmth opened across
his chest and throat. He had been walking these roads, he thought, all his
life. When he closed his eyes he saw moving asphalt and his boots swinging in
and out of view. Even as he chewed, he felt himself plunging into sleep for
seconds on end. He entered another stretch of time, and now, lying snugly on
his tongue, was a sugared almond, whose sweetness belonged to another world. He
heard men complaining of the cold in the cellar and he was glad of the coat
tucked around him, and felt a fatherly pride that he had stopped the corporals
throwing theirs away.

A group of
soldiers came in looking for shelter and striking matches, just as he and
Nettle had. He felt unfriendly toward them and irritated by their West Country
accents. Like everyone else in the cellar, he wanted them to go away. But they
found a place somewhere beyond his feet. He caught a whiff of brandy and
resented them more. They were noisy organizing their sleeping places, and when
a voice from along the wall called out, “Fucking yokels,” one of
the newcomers lurched in that direction and for a moment it seemed there would
be a rumble. But the darkness and the weary protests of the residents held the
peace.

Soon there
were only the sounds of steady breathing and snores. Beneath him the floor
still seemed to list, then switch to the rhythm of a steady march, and once
again Turner found himself too afflicted by impressions, too fevered, too
exhausted to sleep. Through the material of his coat he felt for the bundle of
her letters.
I’ll wait for you. Come back.
The words were not
meaningless, but they didn’t touch him now. It was clear enough—one
person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of
emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another
approached. Waiting was a heavy word. He felt it pressing down, heavy as a
greatcoat. Everyone in the cellar was waiting, everyone on the beach. She was
waiting, yes, but then what? He tried to make her voice say the words, but it
was his own he heard, just below the tread of his heart. He could not even form
her face. He forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was
supposed to make him happy. The intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had
died. Briony would change her evidence, she would rewrite the past so that the
guilty became the innocent. But what was guilt these days? It was cheap.
Everyone was guilty, and no one was. No one would be redeemed by a change of
evidence, for there weren’t enough people, enough paper and pens, enough
patience and peace, to take down the statements of all the witnesses and gather
in the facts. The witnesses were guilty too. All day we’ve witnessed each
other’s crimes. You killed no one today? But how many did you leave to
die? Down here in the cellar we’ll keep quiet about it. We’ll sleep
it off, Briony. His sugared almond tasted of her name which seemed so quaintly
improbable that he wondered if he had remembered it correctly. Cecilia’s
too. Had he always taken for granted the strangeness of these names? Even this
question was hard to hold for long. He had so much unfinished business here in
France that it seemed to him sensible to delay his departure for England, even
though his bags were packed, his strange, heavy bags. No one would see them if
he left them here and went back. Invisible baggage. He must go back and get the
boy from the tree. He had done it before. He had gone back where no one else
was and found the boys under a tree and carried Pierrot on his shoulders and
Jackson in his arms, across the park. So heavy! He was in love, with Cecilia,
with the twins, with success and the dawn and its curious glowing mist. And
what a reception party! Now he was used to such things, a roadside commonplace,
but back then, before the coarsening and general numbness, when it was a
novelty and when everything was new, he felt it sharply. He cared when she ran
out across the gravel and spoke to him by the open police car door.
Oh,
when I was in love with you,/Then I was clean and brave
. So he would go
back the way he had come, walk back through the reverses of all they had
achieved, across the drained and dreary marshes, past the fierce sergeant on
the bridge, through the bombed-up village, and along the ribbon road that lay
across the miles of undulating farmland, watching for the track on the left on
the edge of the village, opposite the shoe shop, and two miles on, go over the
barbed-wire fence and through the woods and fields to an overnight stop at the
brothers’ farm, and next day, in yellow morning light, on the swing of a
compass needle, hurry through that glorious country of little valleys and
streams and swarming bees, and take the rising footpath to the sad cottage by
the railway. And the tree. Gather up from the mud the pieces of burned, striped
cloth, the shreds of his pajamas, then bring him down, the poor pale boy, and
make a decent burial. A nice-looking kid. Let the guilty bury the innocent, and
let no one change the evidence. And where was Mace to help with the digging?
That brave bear, Corporal Mace. Here was more unfinished business and another
reason why he could not leave. He must find Mace. But first he must cover the
miles again, and go back north to the field where the farmer and his dog still
walked behind the plow, and ask the Flemish lady and her son if they held him
accountable for their deaths. For one can assume too much sometimes, in fits of
conceited self-blame. She might say no—the Flemish for no. You tried to
help us. You couldn’t carry us across the field. You carried the twins,
but not us, no. No, you are not guilty. No.

There was a
whisper, and he felt the breath of it on his burning face. “Too much
noise, guv’nor.”

Behind
Corporal Nettle’s head was a wide strip of deep blue sky and, etched
against it, the ragged black edge of the cellar’s ruined ceiling.

“Noise?
What was I doing?”

“Shouting
‘no’ and waking everyone up. Some of these lads was getting a bit
peeved.”

He tried to
lift his head and found that he couldn’t. The corporal struck a match.

“Christ.
You look fucking terrible. Come on. Drink.”

He raised
Turner’s head and put the canteen to his lips.

The water
tasted metallic. When he was done, a long steady oceanic swell of exhaustion
began to push him under. He walked across the land until he fell in the ocean.
In order not to alarm Nettle, he tried to sound more reasonable than he really
felt.

“Look,
I’ve decided to stay on. There’s some business I need to see
to.”

With a dirty
hand, Nettle was wiping Turner’s forehead. He saw no reason why Nettle
should think it necessary to put his face, his worried ratty face, so close to
his own.

The corporal
said, “Guv’nor, can you hear me? Are you listening? About an hour
ago I went out for a slash. Guess what I saw. There was the navy coming down
the road, putting out the call for officers. They’re getting organized on
the beach. The boats are back. We’re going home, mate. There’s a
lieutenant from the Buffs here who’s marching us down at seven. So get
some sleep and no more of your bloody shouting.”

He was
falling now and sleep was all he wanted, a thousand hours of sleep. It was
easier. The water was vile, but it helped and so did the news and
Nettle’s soothing whisper. They would be forming up in the road outside
and marching to the beach. Squaring off to the right. Order would prevail. No
one at Cambridge taught the benefits of good marching order. They revered the
free, unruly spirits. The poets. But what did the poets know about survival?
About surviving as a body of men. No breaking ranks, no rushing the boats, no
first come first served, no devil take the hindmost. No sound of boots as they
crossed the sand to the tide line. In the rolling surf, willing hands to steady
the gunwale as their mates climbed in. But it was a tranquil sea, and now that
he himself was calm, of course he saw how fine it really was that she was
waiting. Arithmetic be damned.
I’ll wait for you
was elemental.
It was the reason he had survived. It was the ordinary way of saying she would
refuse all other men. Only you.
Come back
. He remembered the feel of
the gravel through his thin-soled shoes, he could feel it now, and the icy
touch of the handcuffs on his wrists. He and the inspector stopped by the car
and turned at the sound of her steps. How could he forget that green dress, how
it clung to the curve of her hips and hampered her running and showed the
beauty of her shoulders. Whiter than the mist. It didn’t surprise him
that the police let them talk. He didn’t even think about it. He and Cecilia
behaved as though they were alone. She would not let herself cry when she was
telling him that she believed him, she trusted him, she loved him. He said to
her simply that he would not forget this, by which he meant to tell her how
grateful he was, especially then, especially now. Then she put a finger on the
handcuffs and said she wasn’t ashamed, there was nothing to be ashamed
of. She took a corner of his lapel and gave it a little shake and this was when
she said, “I’ll wait for you. Come back.” She meant it. Time
would show she really meant it. After that they pushed him into the car, and
she spoke hurriedly, before the crying began that she could no longer hold
back, and she said that what had happened between them was theirs, only theirs.
She meant the library, of course. It was theirs. No one could take it away.
“It’s our secret,” she called out, in front of them all, just
before the slam of the door.