Atonement Read online

  Back with the boys, she tidied Jackson’s hair with a comb dipped in water from a vase of flowers, holding his chin tightly between forefinger and thumb as she carved across his scalp a fine, straight parting. Pierrot patiently waited his turn, then without a word they ran off downstairs together to face Betty.

  Cecilia followed at a slow pace, passing the critical mirror with a glance and completely satisfied with what she saw. Or rather, she cared less, for her mood had shifted since being with the twins, and her thoughts had broadened to include a vague resolution which took shape without any particular content and prompted no specific plan; she had to get away. The thought was calming and pleasurable, and not desperate at all. She reached the first-floor landing and paused. Downstairs, her mother, guilt-stricken by her absence from the family, would be spreading anxiety and confusion all about her. To this mix must be added the news, if it was the case, that Briony was missing. Time and worry would be expended before she was found. There would be a phone call from the department to say that Mr. Tallis had to work late and would stay up in town. Leon, who had the pure gift of avoiding responsibility, would not assume his father’s role. Nominally, it would pass to Mrs. Tallis, but ultimately the success of the evening would be in Cecilia’s care. All this was clear and not worth struggling against—she would not be abandoning herself to a luscious summer’s night, there would be no long session with Leon, she would not be walking barefoot across the lawns under the midnight stars. She felt under her hand the black-stained varnished pine of the banisters, vaguely neo-Gothic, immovably solid and sham. Above her head there hung by three chains a great cast-iron chandelier which had never been lit in her lifetime. One depended instead on a pair of tasseled wall lights shaded by a quarter circle of fake parchment. By their soupy yellow glow she moved quietly across the landing to look toward her mother’s room. The half-open door, the column of light across the corridor carpet, confirmed that Emily Tallis had risen from her daybed. Cecilia returned to the stairs and hesitated again, reluctant to go down. But there was no choice.

  There was nothing new in the arrangements and she was not distressed. Two years ago her father disappeared into the preparation of mysterious consultation documents for the Home Office. Her mother had always lived in an invalid’s shadow land, Briony had always required mothering from her older sister, and Leon had always floated free, and she had always loved him for it. She had not thought it would be so easy to slip into the old roles. Cambridge had changed her fundamentally and she thought she was immune. No one in her family, however, noticed the transformation in her, and she was not able to resist the power of their habitual expectations. She blamed no one, but she had hung about the house all summer, encouraged by a vague notion she was reestablishing an important connection with her family. But the connections had never been broken, she now saw, and anyway her parents were absent in their different ways, Briony was lost to her fantasies and Leon was in town. Now it was time for her to move on. She needed an adventure. There was an invitation from an uncle and aunt to accompany them to New York. Aunt Hermione was in Paris. She could go to London and find a job—it was what her father expected of her. It was excitement she felt, not restlessness, and she would not allow this evening to frustrate her. There would be other evenings like this, and to enjoy them she would have to be elsewhere.

  Animated by this new certainty—choosing the right dress had surely helped—she crossed the hallway, pushed through the baize door and strode along the checkered tiled corridor to the kitchen. She entered a cloud in which disembodied faces hung at different heights, like studies in an artist’s sketchbook, and all eyes were turned down to a display upon the kitchen table, obscured to Cecilia by Betty’s broad back. The blurred red glow at ankle level was the coal fire of the double range whose door was kicked shut just then with a great clang and an irritable shout. The steam rose thickly from a vat of boiling water which no one was attending. The cook’s help, Doll, a thin girl from the village with her hair in an austere bun, was at the sink making a bad-tempered clatter scouring the saucepan lids, but she too was half turned to see what Betty had set upon the table. One of the faces was Emily Tallis’s, another was Danny Hardman’s, a third was his father’s. Floating above the rest, standing on stools perhaps, were Jackson and Pierrot, their expressions solemn. Cecilia felt the gaze of the young Hardman on her. She returned it fiercely, and was gratified when he turned away. The labor in the kitchen had been long and hard all day in the heat, and the residue was everywhere: the flagstone floor was slick with the spilt grease of roasted meat and trodden-in peel; sodden tea towels, tributes to heroic forgotten labors, drooped above the range like decaying regimental banners in church; nudging Cecilia’s shin, an overflowing basket of vegetable trimmings which Betty would take home to feed to her Gloucester Old Spot, fattening for December. The cook glanced over her shoulder to take in the newcomer, and before she turned away there was time to see the fury in eyes that cheek fat had narrowed to gelatinous slices.

  “Take it orf!” she yelled. No doubting that the irritation was directed at Mrs. Tallis. Doll sprang from sink to range, skidded and almost slipped, and picked up two rags to drag the cauldron off the heat. The improving visibility revealed Polly, the chambermaid who everyone said was simple, and who stayed on late whenever there was a do. Her wide and trusting eyes were also fixed upon the kitchen table. Cecilia moved round behind Betty to see what everyone else could see—a huge blackened tray recently pulled from the oven bearing a quantity of roast potatoes that still sizzled mildly. There were perhaps a hundred in all, in ragged rows of pale gold down which Betty’s metal spatula dug and scraped and turned. The undersides held a stickier yellow glow, and here and there a gleaming edge was picked out in nacreous brown, and the occasional filigree lacework that blossomed around a ruptured skin. They were, or would be, perfect.

  The last row was turned and Betty said, “You want these, ma’am, in a potato salad?”

  “Exactly so. Cut the burnt bits away, wipe off the fat, put them in the big Tuscan bowl and give them a good dousing in olive oil and then …” Emily gestured vaguely toward a display of fruit by the larder door where there may or may not have been a lemon.

  Betty addressed the ceiling. “Will you be wanting a Brussels sprouts salad?”

  “Really, Betty.”

  “A cauliflower gratin salad? A horseradish sauce salad?”

  “You’re making a great fuss about nothing.”

  “A bread and butter pudding salad?”

  One of the twins snorted.

  Even as Cecilia guessed what would come next, it began to happen. Betty turned to her, gripped her arm, and made her appeal. “Miss Cee, it was a roast what was ordered and we’ve been at it all day in temperatures above the boiling point of blood.”

  The scene was novel, the spectators were an unusual element, but the dilemma was familiar enough: how to keep the peace and not humiliate her mother. Also, Cecilia had resolved afresh to be with her brother on the terrace; it was therefore important to be with the winning faction and push to a quick conclusion. She took her mother aside, and Betty, who knew the form well enough, ordered everyone back to their business. Emily and Cecilia Tallis stood by the open door that led to the kitchen garden.

  “Darling, there’s a heat wave and I’m not going to be talked out of a salad.”

  “Emily, I know it’s far too hot, but Leon’s absolutely dying for one of Betty’s roasts. He goes on about them all the time. I heard him boasting about them to Mr. Marshall.”

  “Oh my God,” Emily said.

  “I’m with you. I don’t want a roast. Best thing is to give everyone a choice. Send Polly out to cut some lettuces. There’s beetroot in the larder. Betty can do some new potatoes and let them cool.”

  “Darling, you’re right. You know, I’d hate to let little Leon down.”

  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.