Atonement (30 page)

There was
another, closer matter that troubled him. Cecilia had not spoken to her
parents, brother or sister since November 1935 when Robbie was sentenced. She
would not write to them, nor would she let them know her address. Letters
reached her through his mother who had sold the bungalow and moved to another
village. It was through Grace that she let her family know she was well and did
not wish to be contacted. Leon had come to the hospital once, but she would not
speak to him. He waited outside the gates all afternoon. When she saw him, she
retreated inside until he went away. The following morning he was outside the
nurses’ hostel. She pushed past him and would not even look in his direction.
He took her elbow, but she wrenched her arm free and walked on, outwardly
unmoved by his pleading.

Robbie knew
better than anyone how she loved her brother, how close she was to her family,
and how much the house and the park meant to her. He could never return, but it
troubled him to think that she was destroying a part of herself for his sake. A
month into his training he told her what was on his mind. It wasn’t the
first time they had been through this, but the issue had become clearer.

She wrote in
reply, “They turned on you, all of them, even my father. When they
wrecked your life they wrecked mine. They chose to believe the evidence of a
silly, hysterical little girl. In fact, they encouraged her by giving her no
room to turn back. She was a young thirteen, I know, but I never want to speak
to her again. As for the rest of them, I can never forgive what they did. Now
that I’ve broken away, I’m beginning to understand the snobbery
that lay behind their stupidity. My mother never forgave you your first. My
father preferred to lose himself in his work. Leon turned out to be a grinning,
spineless idiot who went along with everyone else. When Hardman decided to
cover for Danny, no one in my family wanted the police to ask him the obvious
questions. The police had you to prosecute. They didn’t want their case
messed up. I know I sound bitter, but my darling, I don’t want to be.
I’m honestly happy with my new life and my new friends. I feel I can
breathe now. Most of all, I have you to live for. Realistically, there had to
be a choice—you or them. How could it be both? I’ve never had a
moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my
dearest one, my reason for life. Cee.”

He knew these
last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life.
Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and
why he must survive. He lay on his side, staring at where he thought the
barn’s entrance was, waiting for the first signs of light. He was too
restless for sleep now. He wanted only to be walking to the coast.

There was no
cottage in Wiltshire for them. Three weeks before his training ended, war was
declared. The military response was automatic, like the reflexes of a clam. All
leave was canceled. Sometime later, it was redefined as postponed. A date was
given, changed, canceled. Then, with twenty-four hours’ notice, railway
passes were issued. They had four days before reporting back for duty with
their new regiment. The rumor was they would be on the move. She had tried to
rearrange her holiday dates, and partly succeeded. When she tried again she
could not be accommodated. By the time his card arrived, telling her of his
arrival, she was on her way to Liverpool for a course in severe trauma nursing
at the Alder Hey Hospital. The day after he reached London he set out to follow
her north, but the trains were impossibly slow. Priority was for military
traffic moving southward. At Birmingham New Street station he missed a
connection and the next train was canceled. He would have to wait until the
following morning. He paced the platforms for half an hour in a turmoil of
indecision. Finally, he chose to turn back. Reporting late for duty was a
serious matter.

By the time
she returned from Liverpool, he was disembarking at Cherbourg and the dullest
winter of his life lay before him. The distress of course was shared between
them, but she felt it her duty to be positive and soothing. “I’m
not going to go away,” she wrote in her first letter after Liverpool.
“I’ll wait for you. Come back.” She was quoting herself. She
knew he would remember. From that time on, this was how she ended every one of
her letters to Robbie in France, right through to the last, which arrived just
before the order came to fall back on Dunkirk.

It was a long
bitter winter for the British Expeditionary Force in northern France. Nothing
much happened. They dug trenches, secured supply lines and were sent out on
night exercises that were farcical for the infantrymen because the purpose was
never explained and there was a shortage of weapons. Off-duty, every man was a
general. Even the lowliest private soldier had decided that the war would not
be fought in the trenches again. But the antitank weapons that were expected
never arrived. In fact, they had little heavy weaponry at all. It was a time of
boredom and football matches against other units, and daylong marches along
country roads with full pack, and nothing to do for hours on end but to keep in
step and daydream to the beat of boots on asphalt. He would lose himself in
thoughts of her, and plan his next letter, refining the phrases, trying to find
comedy in the dullness.

It may have
been the first touches of green along the French lanes and the haze of
bluebells glimpsed through the woods that made him feel the need for
reconciliation and fresh beginnings. He decided he should try again to persuade
her to make contact with her parents. She needn’t forgive them, or go
back over the old arguments. She should just write a short and simple letter,
letting them know where and how she was. Who could tell what changes might
follow over the years to come? He knew that if she did not make her peace with
her parents before one of them died, her remorse would be endless. He would
never forgive himself if he did not encourage her.

So he wrote
in April, and her reply did not reach him until mid-May, when they were already
falling back through their own lines, not long before the order came to retreat
all the way to the Channel. There had been no contact with enemy fire. The
letter was in his top pocket now. It was her last to reach him before the post
delivery system broke down.

. . . I
wasn’t going to tell you about this now. I still don’t know what to
think and I wanted to wait until we’re together. Now I have your letter,
it doesn’t make sense not to tell you. The first surprise is that Briony
isn’t at Cambridge. She didn’t go up last autumn, she didn’t
take her place. I was amazed because I’d heard from Dr. Hall that she was
expected. The other surprise is that she’s doing nurse’s training
at my old hospital. Can you imagine Briony with a bedpan? I suppose they all
said the same thing about me. But she’s such a fantasist, as we know to
our cost. I pity the patient who receives an injection from her. Her letter is
confused and confusing. She wants to meet. She’s beginning to get the
full grasp of what she did and what it has meant. Clearly, not going up has
something to do with it. She’s saying that she wants to be useful in a
practical way. But I get the impression she’s taken on nursing as a sort
of penance. She wants to come and see me and talk. I might have this wrong, and
that’s why I was going to wait and go through this with you face to face,
but I think she wants to recant. I think she wants to change her evidence and
do it officially or legally. This might not even be possible, given that your
appeal was dismissed. We need to know more about the law. Perhaps I should see
a solicitor. I don’t want us to get our hopes up for nothing. She might
not mean what I think she does, or she might not be prepared to see it through.
Remember what a dreamer she is.

I’ll
do nothing until I’ve heard from you. I wouldn’t have told you any
of this, but when you wrote to tell me again that I should be in touch with my
parents (I admire your generous spirit), I had to let you know because the
situation could change. If it’s not legally possible for Briony to go
before a judge and tell him she’s had second thoughts, then she can at
least go and tell our parents. Then they can decide what they want to do. If
they can bring themselves to write a proper apology to you, then perhaps we may
have the beginning of a new start.

I keep
thinking of her. To go into nursing, to cut herself off from her background, is
a bigger step for her than it was for me. I had my three years at Cambridge at
least, and I had an obvious reason to reject my family. She must have her
reasons too. I can’t deny that I’m curious to find out. But
I’m waiting for you, my darling, to tell me your thoughts. Yes, and by
the way, she also said she’s had a piece of writing turned down by Cyril
Connolly at
Horizon
. So at least someone can see through her wretched
fantasies.

Do you
remember those premature twins I told you about? The smaller one died. It
happened in the night, when I was on. The mother took it very badly indeed.
We’d heard that the father was a bricklayer’s mate, and I suppose
we were expecting some cheeky little chap with a fag stuck on his lower lip.
He’d been in East Anglia with contractors seconded to the army, building
coastal defenses, which was why he was so late coming to the hospital. He
turned out to be a very handsome fellow, nineteen years old, more than six feet
tall, with blond hair that flopped over his forehead. He has a clubfoot like Byron,
which was why he hadn’t joined up. Jenny said he looked like a Greek god.
He was so sweet and gentle and patient comforting his young wife. We were all
touched by it. The saddest part was that he was just getting somewhere, calming
her down, when visiting time ended and Sister came through and made him leave
along with everyone else. That left us to pick up the pieces. Poor girl. But
four o’clock, and rules are rules.

I’m
going to rush down with this to the Balham sorting office in the hope that it
will be across the Channel before the weekend. But I don’t want to end on
a sad note. I’m actually very excited by this news about my sister and
what it could mean for us. I enjoyed your story about the sergeants’
latrines. I read that bit to the girls and they laughed like lunatics.
I’m so glad the liaison officer has discovered your French and given you
a job that makes use of it. Why did they take so long to find out about you?
Did you hang back? You’re right about French bread—ten minutes
later and you’re hungry again. All air and no substance. Balham
isn’t as bad as I said it was, but more about that next time. I’m
enclosing a poem by Auden on the death of Yeats cut out from an old
London
Mercury
from last year. I’m going down to see Grace at the weekend
and I’ll look in the boxes for your Housman. Must dash. You’re in
my thoughts every minute. I love you. I’ll wait for you. Come back. Cee.

H
E WAS WOKEN
by a boot nudging the small of his
back. “C’mon, guv’nor. Rise and shine.”

He sat up and
looked at his watch. The barn entrance was a rectangle of bluish-black. He had
been asleep, he reckoned, for less than forty-five minutes. Mace diligently
emptied the straw from the sacks and dismantled his table. They sat in silence
on the hay bales smoking the first cigarette of the day. When they stepped
outside they found a clay pot with a heavy wooden lid. Inside, wrapped in
muslin cloth, was a loaf and a wedge of cheese. Turner divided the provisions
right there with a bowie knife.

“In
case we’re separated,” he murmured.

A light was
on already in the farmhouse and the dogs were in a frenzy as they walked away.
They climbed a gate and began to cross a field in a northerly direction. After
an hour they stopped in a coppiced wood to drink from their canteens and smoke.
Turner studied the map. Already, the first bombers were high overhead, a
formation of about fifty Heinkels, heading the same way to the coast. The sun
was coming up and there was little cloud. A perfect day for the Luftwaffe. They
walked in silence for another hour. There was no path, so he made a route by
the compass, through fields of cows and sheep, turnips and young wheat. They
were not as safe as he thought, away from the road. One field of cattle had a
dozen shell craters, and fragments of flesh, bone and brindled skin had been
blasted across a hundred-yard stretch. But each man was folded into his
thoughts and no one spoke. Turner was troubled by the map. He guessed they were
twenty-five miles from Dunkirk. The closer they came, the harder it would be to
stay off the roads. Everything converged. There were rivers and canals to
cross. When they headed for the bridges they would only lose time if they cut
away across country again.

Just after
ten they stopped for another rest. They had climbed a fence to reach a track,
but he could not find it on the map. It ran in the right direction anyway, over
flat, almost treeless land. They had gone another half hour when they heard
antiaircraft fire a couple of miles ahead where they could see the spire of a
church. He stopped to consult the map again.

Corporal
Nettle said, “It don’t show crumpet, that map.”

“Ssh.
He’s having his doubts.”

Turner leaned
his weight against a fence post. His side hurt whenever he put his right foot
down. The sharp thing seemed to be protruding and snagging on his shirt.
Impossible to resist probing with a forefinger. But he felt only tender,
ruptured flesh. After last night, it wasn’t right he should have to
listen to the corporals’ taunts again. Tiredness and pain were making him
irritable, but he said nothing and tried to concentrate. He found the village
on the map, but not the track, though it surely led there. It was just as he
had thought. They would join the road, and they would need to stay on it all
the way to the defense line at the Bergues-Furnes canal. There was no other
route. The corporals’ banter was continuing. He folded the map and walked
on.