Atonement (49 page)

“Yes.”

He met
Cecilia’s look and nodded. “And if you can remember anything at all
about Danny Hardman, where he was, what he was doing, at what time, who else
saw him—anything that might put his alibi in question, then we want to
hear it.”

Cecilia was
writing out the addresses. Briony was shaking her head and starting to speak,
but Robbie ignored her and spoke over her. He had got to his feet and was
looking at his watch.

“There’s
very little time. We’re going to walk you to the tube. Cecilia and I want
the last hour together alone before I have to leave. And you’ll need to
spend the rest of today writing your statement, and letting your parents know
you’re coming. And you could start thinking about this letter
you’re sending me.”

With this
brittle précis of her obligations he left the table and went toward the
bedroom.

Briony stood
too and said, “Old Hardman was probably telling the truth. Danny was with
him all that night.”

Cecilia was
about to pass the folded sheet of paper she had been writing on. Robbie had
stopped in the bedroom doorway.

Cecilia said,
“What do you mean by that? What are you saying?”

“It was
Paul Marshall.”

During the
silence that followed, Briony tried to imagine the adjustments that each would
be making. Years of seeing it a certain way. And yet, however startling, it was
only a detail. Nothing essential was changed by it. Nothing in her own role.

Robbie came
back to the table. “Marshall?”

“Yes.”

“You
saw him?”

“I saw
a man his height.”

“My
height.”

“Yes.”

Cecilia now
stood and looked around her—a hunt for the cigarettes was about to start.
Robbie found them and tossed the packet across the room. Cecilia lit up and
said as she exhaled, “I find it difficult to believe. He’s a fool,
I know . . .”

“He’s
a greedy fool,” Robbie said. “But I can’t imagine him with
Lola Quincey, even for the five minutes it took . . .”

Given all
that had happened, and all its terrible consequences, it was frivolous, she
knew, but Briony took calm pleasure in delivering her clinching news.

“I’ve
just come from their wedding.”

Again, the
amazed adjustments, the incredulous repetition. Wedding? This morning? Clapham?
Then reflective silence, broken by single remarks.

“I want
to find him.”

“You’ll
do no such thing.”

“I want
to kill him.”

And then,
“It’s time to go.”

There was so
much more that could have been said. But they seemed exhausted, by her
presence, or by the subject. Or they simply longed to be alone. Either way, it
was clear they felt their meeting was at an end. All curiosity was spent.
Everything could wait until she wrote her letter. Robbie fetched his jacket and
cap from the bedroom. Briony noted the corporal’s single stripe.

Cecilia was
saying to him, “He’s immune. She’ll always cover for
him.”

Minutes were
lost while she searched for her ration book. Finally, she gave up and said to
Robbie, “I’m sure it’s in Wiltshire, in the cottage.”

As they were
about to leave, and he was holding the door open for the sisters, Robbie said,
“I suppose we owe an apology to Able Seaman Hardman.”

Downstairs,
Mrs. Jarvis did not appear from her sitting room as they went by. They heard
clarinets playing on her wireless. Once through the front door, it seemed to
Briony that she was stepping into another day. There was a strong, gritty
breeze blowing, and the street was in harsh relief, with even more sunlight,
fewer shadows than before. There was not enough room on the pavement to go
three abreast. Robbie and Cecilia walked behind her, hand in hand. Briony felt
her blistered heel rubbing against her shoe, but she was determined they should
not see her limp. She had the impression of being seen off the premises. At one
point she turned and told them she would be happy to walk to the tube on her
own. But they insisted. They had purchases to make for Robbie’s journey.
They walked on in silence. Small talk was not an option. She knew that she did
not have the right to ask her sister about her new address, or Robbie where the
train was taking him, or about the cottage in Wiltshire. Was that where the harebells
came from? Surely there had been an idyll. Nor could she ask when the two of
them would see each other again. Together, she and her sister and Robbie had
only one subject, and it was fixed in the unchangeable past.

They stood
outside Balham tube station, which in three months’ time would achieve
its terrible form of fame in the Blitz. A thin stream of Saturday shoppers
moved around them, causing them, against their will, to stand closer. They made
a cool farewell. Robbie reminded her to have money with her when she saw the
commissioner for oaths. Cecilia told her she was not to forget to take the
addresses with her to Surrey. Then it was over. They stared at her, waiting for
her to leave. But there was one thing she had not said.

She spoke
slowly. “I’m very very sorry. I’ve caused you such terrible
distress.” They continued to stare at her, and she repeated herself.
“I’m very sorry.”

It sounded so
foolish and inadequate, as though she had knocked over a favorite houseplant,
or forgotten a birthday.

Robbie said
softly, “Just do all the things we’ve asked.”

It was almost
conciliatory, that “just,” but not quite, not yet.

She said,
“Of course,” and then turned and walked away, conscious of them
watching her as she entered the ticket hall and crossed it. She paid her fare
to Waterloo. When she reached the barrier, she looked back and they had gone.

She showed
her ticket and went through into the dirty yellow light, to the head of the
clanking, creaking escalator, and it began to take her down, into the man-made
breeze rising from the blackness, the breath of a million Londoners cooling her
face and tugging at her cape. She stood still and let herself be carried down,
grateful to be moving without scouring her heel. She was surprised at how
serene she felt, and just a little sad. Was it disappointment? She had hardly
expected to be forgiven. What she felt was more like homesickness, though there
was no source for it, no home. But she was sad to leave her sister. It was her
sister she missed—or more precisely, it was her sister with Robbie. Their
love. Neither Briony nor the war had destroyed it. This was what soothed her as
she sank deeper under the city. How Cecilia had drawn him to her with her eyes.
That tenderness in her voice when she called him back from his memories, from
Dunkirk, or from the roads that led to it. She used to speak like that to her
sometimes, when Cecilia was sixteen and she was a child of six and things went
impossibly wrong. Or in the night, when Cecilia came to rescue her from a
nightmare and take her into her own bed. Those were the words she used.
Come
back. It was only a bad dream. Briony, come back.
How easily this
unthinking family love was forgotten. She was gliding down now, through the
soupy brown light, almost to the bottom. There were no other passengers in
sight, and the air was suddenly still. She was calm as she considered what she
had to do. Together, the note to her parents and the formal statement would
take no time at all. Then she would be free for the rest of the day. She knew
what was required of her. Not simply a letter, but a new draft, an atonement,
and she was ready to begin.

BT
London, 1999

LONDON, 1999

W
HAT A STRANGE
time this has been. Today, on the
morning of my seventy-seventh birthday, I decided to make one last visit to the
Imperial War Museum library in Lambeth. It suited my peculiar state of mind.
The reading room, housed right up in the dome of the building, was formerly the
chapel of the Royal Bethlehem Hospital—the old Bedlam. Where the unhinged
once came to offer their prayers, scholars now gather to research the
collective insanity of war. The car the family was sending was not due until
after lunch, so I thought I would distract myself, checking final details, and
saying my farewells to the Keeper of Documents, and to the cheerful porters who
have been escorting me up and down in the lift during these wintry weeks. I
also intended to donate to the archives my dozen long letters from old Mr.
Nettle. It was a birthday present to myself, I suppose, to pass an hour or two
in a half-pretense of seeming busy, fussing about with those little tasks of
housekeeping that come at the end, and are part of the reluctant process of
letting go. In the same mood, I was busy in my study yesterday afternoon; now
the drafts are in order and dated, the photocopied sources labeled, the
borrowed books ready for return, and everything is in the right box file.
I’ve always liked to make a tidy finish.

It was too
cold and wet, and I was feeling too troubled to go by public transport. I took
a taxi from Regent’s Park, and in the long crawl through central London I
thought of those sad inmates of Bedlam who were once a source of general
entertainment, and I reflected in a self-pitying way on how I was soon to join
their ranks. The results of my scan have come through and I went to see my
doctor about them yesterday morning. It was not good news. This was the way he
put it as soon as I sat down. My headaches, the sensation of tightness around
the temples, have a particular and sinister cause. He pointed out some granular
smears across a section of the scan. I noticed how the pencil tip quivered in
his hand, and I wondered if he too was suffering some neural disorder. In the
spirit of shoot the messenger, I rather hoped he was. I was experiencing, he
said, a series of tiny, nearly imperceptible strokes. The process will be slow,
but my brain, my mind, is closing down. The little failures of memory that dog
us all beyond a certain point will become more noticeable, more debilitating,
until the time will come when I won’t notice them because I will have
lost the ability to comprehend anything at all. The days of the week, the
events of the morning, or even ten minutes ago, will be beyond my reach. My
phone number, my address, my name and what I did with my life will be gone. In
two, three or four years’ time, I will not recognize my remaining oldest
friends, and when I wake in the morning, I will not recognize that I am in my
own room. And soon I won’t be, because I will need continuous care.

I have
vascular dementia, the doctor told me, and there was some comfort to be had.
There’s the slowness of the undoing, which he must have mentioned a dozen
times. Also, it’s not as bad as Alzheimer’s, with its mood swings
and aggression. If I’m lucky, it might turn out to be somewhat benign. I
might not be unhappy—just a dim old biddy in a chair, knowing nothing,
expecting nothing. I had asked him to be frank, so I could not complain. Now he
was hurrying me out. There were twelve people in his waiting room wanting their
turn. In summary, as he helped me into my coat, he gave me the route map: loss
of memory, short- and long-term, the disappearance of single words—simple
nouns might be the first to go—then language itself, along with balance,
and soon after, all motor control, and finally the autonomous nervous system.
Bon voyage!

I
wasn’t distressed, not at first. On the contrary, I was elated and
urgently wanted to tell my closest friends. I spent an hour on the phone
breaking my news. Perhaps I was already losing my grip. It seemed so momentous.
All afternoon I pottered about in my study with my housekeeping chores, and by
the time I finished, there were six new box files on the shelves. Stella and
John came over in the evening and we ordered in some Chinese food. Between them
they drank two bottles of Morgon. I drank green tea. My charming friends were
devastated by my description of my future. They’re both in their sixties,
old enough to start fooling themselves that seventy-seven is still young.
Today, in the taxi, as I crossed London at walking pace in the freezing rain, I
thought of little else. I’m going mad, I told myself. Let me not be mad.
But I couldn’t really believe it. Perhaps I was nothing more than a
victim of modern diagnostics; in another century it would have been said of me
that I was old and therefore losing my mind. What else would I expect?
I’m only dying then, I’m fading into unknowing.