Atonement: a novel, page 33
“Have you heard from the Old Man?”
“No, I haven’t.”
The downward tone implied she didn’t want to, and wouldn’t care or reply if she did. Cecilia said, “Have you?”
“I had a scribbled note a couple of weeks ago.”
“Good.”
So there was no more to be said on that. After another pause, Briony tried again.
“What about from home?”
“No. I’m not in touch. And you?”
“She writes now and then.”
“And what’s her news, Briony?”
The question and the use of her name was sardonic. As she forced her memory back, she felt she was being exposed as a traitor to her sister’s cause.
“They’ve taken in evacuees and Betty hates them. The park’s been plowed up for corn.” She trailed away. It was inane to be standing there listing these details. But Cecilia said coldly, “Go on. What else?”
“Well, most of the lads in the village have joined the East Surreys, except for . . .”
“Except for Danny Hardman. Yes, I know all about that.” She smiled in a bright, artificial way, waiting for Briony to continue.
“They’ve built a pillbox by the post office, and they’ve taken up all the old railings. Um. Aunt Hermione’s living in Nice, and oh yes, Betty broke Uncle Clem’s vase.”
Only now was Cecilia roused from her coolness. She uncrossed her arms and pressed a hand against her cheek.
“Broke?”
“She dropped it on a step.”
“You mean properly broken, in lots of pieces?”
“Yes.”
Cecilia considered this. Finally she said, “That’s terrible.”
“Yes,” Briony said. “Poor Uncle Clem.” At least her sister was no longer derisive. The interrogation continued.
“Did they keep the pieces?”
“I don’t know. Emily said the Old Man shouted at Betty.”
At that moment, the door snapped open and the landlady stood right in front of Briony, so close to her that she could smell peppermint on the woman’s breath. She pointed at the front door.
“This isn’t a railway station. Either you’re in, young lady, or you’re out.”
Cecilia was getting to her feet without any particular hurry, and was retying the silk cord of her dressing gown. She said languidly, “This is my sister, Briony, Mrs. Jarvis. Try and remember your manners when you speak to her.”
“In my own home I’ll speak as I please,” Mrs. Jarvis said. She turned back to Briony. “Stay if you’re staying, otherwise leave now and close the door behind you.”
Briony looked at her sister, guessing that she was unlikely to let her go now. Mrs. Jarvis had turned out to be an unwitting ally. Cecilia spoke as though they were alone. “Don’t mind the landlady. I’m leaving at the end of the week. Close the door and come up.”
Watched by Mrs. Jarvis, Briony began to follow her sister up the stairs.
“And as for you, Lady Muck,” the landlady called up. But Cecilia turned sharply and cut her off. “Enough, Mrs. Jarvis. Now that’s quite enough.”
Briony recognized the tone. Pure Nightingale, for use on difficult patients or tearful students. It took years to perfect. Cecilia had surely been promoted to ward sister. On the first-floor landing, as she was about to open her door, she gave Briony a look, a cool glance to let her know that nothing had changed, nothing had softened. From the bathroom across the way, through its half-open door, drifted a humid scented air and a hollow dripping sound. Cecilia had been about to take a bath. She led Briony into her flat. Some of the tidiest nurses on the ward lived in stews in their own rooms, and she would not have been surprised to see a new version of Cecilia’s old chaos. But the impression here was of a simple and lonely life. A medium-sized room had been divided to make a narrow strip of a kitchen and, presumably, a bedroom next door. The walls were papered with a design of pale vertical strips, like a boy’s pajamas, which heightened the sense of confinement. The lino was irregular offcuts from downstairs, and in places, gray floorboards showed. Under the single sash window was a sink with one tap and a one-ring gas cooker. Against the wall, leaving little room to squeeze by, was a table covered with a yellow gingham cloth. On it was a jam jar of blue flowers, harebells perhaps, and a full ashtray, and a pile of books. At the bottom were Gray’s Anatomy and a collected Shakespeare, and above them, on slenderer spines, names in faded silver and gold—she saw Housman and Crabbe. By the books were two bottles of stout. In the corner furthest from the window was the door to the bedroom on which was tacked a map of northern Europe. Cecilia took a cigarette from a packet by the cooker, and then, remembering that her sister was no longer a child, offered one to her. There were two kitchen chairs by the table, but Cecilia, who leaned with her back to the sink, did not invite Briony to sit down. The two women smoked and waited, so it seemed to Briony, for the air to clear of the landlady’s presence. Cecilia said in a quiet level voice, “When I got your letter I went to see a solicitor. It’s not straightforward, unless there’s hard new evidence. Your change of heart won’t be enough. Lola will go on saying she doesn’t know. Our only hope was old Hardman and now he’s dead.”
“Hardman?” The contending elements—the fact of his death, his relevance to the case—confused Briony and she struggled with her memory. Was Hardman out that night looking for the twins? Did he see something? Was something said in court that she didn’t know about?
“Didn’t you know he was dead?”
“No. But . . .”
“Unbelievable.”
Cecilia’s attempts at a neutral, factual tone were coming apart. Agitated, she came away from the cooking area, squeezed past the table and went to the other end of the room and stood by the bedroom door. Her voice was breathy as she tried to control her anger.
“How odd that Emily didn’t include that in her news along with the corn and the evacuees. He had cancer. Perhaps with the fear of God in him he was saying something in his last days that was rather too inconvenient for everyone at this stage.”
“But Cee . . .”
She snapped, “Don’t call me that!” She repeated in a softer voice, “Please don’t call me that.” Her fingers were on the handle of the bedroom door and it looked like the interview was coming to an end. She was about to disappear. With an implausible display of calm, she summarized for Briony.
“What I paid two guineas to discover is this. There isn’t going to be an appeal just because five years on you’ve decided to tell the truth.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying . . .” Briony wanted to get back to Hardman, but Cecilia needed to tell her what must have gone through her head many times lately.
“It isn’t difficult. If you were lying then, why should a court believe you now? There are no new facts, and you’re an unreliable witness.”
Briony carried her half-smoked cigarette to the sink. She was feeling sick. She took a saucer for an ashtray from the plate rack. Her sister’s confirmation of her crime was terrible to hear. But the perspective was unfamiliar. Weak, stupid, confused, cowardly, evasive—she had hated herself for everything she had been, but she had never thought of herself as a liar. How strange, and how clear it must seem to Cecilia. It was obvious, and irrefutable. And yet, for a moment she even thought of defending herself. She hadn’t intended to mislead, she hadn’t acted out of malice. But who would believe that? She stood where Cecilia had stood, with her back to the sink and, unable to meet her sister’s eye, said, “What I did was terrible. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said soothingly, and in the second or two during which she drew deeply on her cigarette, Briony flinched as her hopes lifted unreally. “Don’t worry,” her sister resumed. “I won’t ever forgive you.”
“And if I can’t go to court, that won’t stop me telling everyone what I did.”
As her sister gave a wild little laugh, Briony realized how frightened she was of Cecilia. Her derision was even harder to confront than her anger. This narrow room with its stripes like bars contained a history of feeling that no one could imagine. Briony pressed on. She was, after all, in a part of the conversation she had rehearsed.
“I’ll go to Surrey and speak to Emily and the Old Man. I’ll tell them everything.”
“Yes, you said that in your letter. What’s stopping you? You’ve had five years. Why haven’t you been?”
“I wanted to see you first.”
Cecilia came away from the bedroom door and stood by the table. She dropped her stub into the neck of a stout bottle. There was a brief hiss and a thin line of smoke rose from the black glass. Her sister’s action made Briony feel nauseous again. She had thought the bottles were full. She wondered if she had ingested something unclean with her breakfast. Cecilia said, “I know why you haven’t been. Because your guess is the same as mine. They don’t want to hear anything more about it. That unpleasantness is all in the past, thank you very much. What’s done is done. Why stir things up now? And you know very well they believed Hardman’s story.”
Briony came away from the sink and stood right across the table from her sister. It was not easy to look into that beautiful mask. She said very deliberately, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What’s he got to do with this? I’m sorry he’s dead, I’m sorry I didn’t know . . .”
At a sound, she started. The bedroom door was opening and Robbie stood before them. He wore army trousers and shirt and polished boots, and his braces hung free at his waist. He was unshaven and tousled, and his gaze was on Cecilia only. She had turned to face him, but she did not go toward him. In the seconds during which they looked at each other in silence, Briony, partly obscured by her sister, shrank into her uniform. He spoke to Cecilia quietly, as though they were alone. “I heard voices and I guessed it was something to do with the hospital.”
“That’s all right.”
He looked at his watch. “Better get moving.”
As he crossed the room, just before he went out onto the landing, he made a brief nod in Briony’s direction. “Excuse me.”
They heard the bathroom door close. Into the silence Cecilia said, as if there were nothing between her and her sister, “He sleeps so deeply. I didn’t want to wake him.” Then she added, “I thought it would be better if you didn’t meet.”
Briony’s knees were actually beginning to tremble. Supporting herself with one hand on the table, she moved away from the kitchen area so that Cecilia could fill the kettle. Briony longed to sit down. She would not do so until invited, and she would never ask. So she stood by the wall, pretending not to lean against it, and watched her sister. What was surprising was the speed with which her relief that Robbie was alive was supplanted by her dread of confronting him. Now she had seen him walk across the room, the other possibility, that he could have been killed, seemed outlandish, against all the odds. It would have made no sense. She was staring at her sister’s back as she moved about the tiny kitchen. Briony wanted to tell her how wonderful it was that Robbie had come back safely. What deliverance. But how banal that would have sounded. And she had no business saying it. She feared her sister, and her scorn. Still feeling nauseous, and now hot, Briony pressed her cheek against the wall. It was no cooler than her face. She longed for a glass of water, but she did not want to ask her sister for anything. Briskly, Cecilia moved about her tasks, mixing milk and water to egg powder, and setting out a pot of jam and three plates and cups on the table. Briony registered this, but it gave her no comfort. It only increased her foreboding of the meeting that lay ahead. Did Cecilia really think that in this situation they could sit together and still have an appetite for scrambled eggs? Or was she soothing herself by being busy? Briony was listening out for footsteps on the landing, and it was to distract herself that she attempted a conversational tone. She had seen the cape hanging on the back of the door.
“Cecilia, are you a ward sister now?”
“Yes, I am.”
She said it with a downward finality, closing off the subject. Their shared profession was not going to be a bond. Nothing was, and there was nothing to talk about until Robbie came back. At last she heard the click of the lock on the bathroom door. He was whistling as he crossed the landing. Briony moved away from the door, further down toward the darker end of the room. But she was in his sight line as he came in. He had half raised his right hand in order to shake hers, and his left trailed, about to close the door behind him. If it was a double take, it was undramatic. As soon as their eyes met, his hands dropped to his sides and he gave a little winded sigh as he continued to look at her hard. However intimidated, she felt she could not look away. She smelled the faint perfume of his shaving soap. The shock was how much older he looked, especially round the eyes. Did everything have to be her fault? she wondered stupidly. Couldn’t it also be the war’s?
“So it was you,” he said finally. He pushed the door closed behind him with his foot. Cecilia had come to stand by his side and he looked at her. She gave an exact summary, but even if she had wanted, she would not have been able to withhold her sarcasm.
“Briony’s going to tell everybody the truth. She wanted to see me first.”
He turned back to Briony. “Did you think I might be here?”
Her immediate concern was not to cry. At that moment, nothing would have been more humiliating. Relief, shame, self-pity, she didn’t know which it was, but it was coming. The smooth wave rose, tightening her throat, making it impossible to speak, and then, as she held on, tensing her lips, it fell away and she was safe. No tears, but her voice was a miserable whisper.
“I didn’t know if you were alive.”
Cecilia said, “If we’re going to talk we should sit down.”
“I don’t know that I can.” He moved away impatiently to the adjacent wall, a distance of seven feet or so, and leaned against it, arms crossed, looking from Briony to Cecilia. Almost immediately he moved again, down the room to the bedroom door where he turned to come back, changed his mind and stood there, hands in pockets. He was a large man, and the room seemed to have shrunk. In the confined space he was desperate in his movements, as though suffocating. He took his hands from his pockets and smoothed the hair at the back of his neck. Then he rested his hands on his hips. Then he let them drop. It took all this time, all this movement, for Briony to realize that he was angry, very angry, and just as she did, he said,
“What are you doing here? Don’t talk to me about Surrey. No one’s stopping you going. Why are you here?”
She said, “I had to talk to Cecilia.”
“Oh yes. And what about?”
“The terrible thing that I did.”
Cecilia was going toward him. “Robbie,” she whispered. “Darling.” She put her hand on his arm, but he pulled it clear.
“I don’t know why you let her in.” Then to Briony, “I’ll be quite honest with you. I’m torn between breaking your stupid neck here and taking you outside and throwing you down the stairs.”
If it had not been for her recent experience, she would have been terrified. Sometimes she heard soldiers on the ward raging against their helplessness. At the height of their passion, it was foolish to reason with them or try to reassure them. It had to come out, and it was best to stand and listen. She knew that even offering to leave now could be provocative. So she faced Robbie and waited for the rest, her due. But she was not frightened of him, not physically. He did not raise his voice, though it was straining with contempt. “Have you any idea at all what it’s like inside?”
She imagined small high windows in a cliff face of brick, and thought perhaps she did, the way people imagined the different torments of hell. She shook her head faintly. To steady herself she was trying to concentrate on the details of his transformation. The impression of added height was due to his parade-ground posture. No Cambridge student ever stood so straight. Even in his distraction his shoulders were well back, and his chin was raised like an old-fashioned boxer’s.
“No, of course you don’t. And when I was inside, did that give you pleasure?”
“No.”
“But you did nothing.”
She had thought about this conversation many times, like a child anticipating a beating. Now it was happening at last, and it was as if she wasn’t quite here. She was watching from far away and she was numb. But she knew his words would hurt her later. Cecilia had stood back. Now she put her hand again on Robbie’s arm. He had lost weight, though he looked stronger, with a lean and stringy muscular ferocity. He half turned to her.
“Remember,” Cecilia was starting to say, but he spoke over her.
“Do you think I assaulted your cousin?”
“No.”
“Did you think it then?”
She fumbled her words. “Yes, yes and no. I wasn’t certain.”
“And what’s made you so certain now?”
She hesitated, conscious that in answering she would be offering a form of defense, a rationale, and that it might enrage him further.
