Atonement (33 page)

She prattled
on, and contentedly he half listened. The path emerged from the woods onto the
broad grassy banks of the river. They walked upstream for half a mile and
entered woods again. Here, on a bend in the river, below overhanging trees, was
the pool, dug out in Briony’s grandfather’s time. A stone weir
slowed the current and was a favorite diving and jumping-off place. Otherwise,
it was not ideal for beginners. You went from the weir, or you jumped off the
bank into nine feet of water. He dived in and trod water, waiting for her. They
had started the lessons the year before, in late summer when the river was
lower and the current sluggish. Now, even in the pool there was a steady
rotating drift. She paused only for a moment, then jumped from the bank into
his arms with a scream. She practiced treading water until the current carried
her against the weir, then he towed her across the pool so that she could start
again. When she tried out her breaststroke after a winter of neglect, he had to
support her, not easy when he was treading water himself. If he removed his
hand from under her, she could only manage three or four strokes before
sinking. She was amused by the fact that, going against the current, she swam
to remain still. But she did not stay still. Instead, she was carried back each
time to the weir, where she clung to a rusty iron ring, waiting for him, her
white face vivid against the lurid mossy walls and greenish cement. Swimming
uphill, she called it. She wanted to repeat the experience, but the water was
cold and after fifteen minutes he’d had enough. He pulled her over to the
bank and, ignoring her protests, helped her out.

He took his
clothes from the basket and went a little way off into the woods to change.
When he returned she was standing exactly where he had left her, on the bank,
looking into the water, with her towel around her shoulders.

She said,
“If I fell in the river, would you save me?”

“Of
course.”

He was
bending over the basket as he said this and he heard, but did not see, her jump
in. Her towel lay on the bank. Apart from the concentric ripples moving out
across the pool, there was no sign of her. Then she bobbed up, snatched a
breath and sank again. Desperate, he thought of running to the weir to fish her
out from there, but the water was an opaque muddy green. He would only find her
below the surface by touch. There was no choice—he stepped into the
water, shoes, jacket and all. Almost immediately he found her arm, got his hand
under her shoulder and heaved her up. To his surprise she was holding her
breath. And then she was laughing joyously and clinging to his neck. He pushed
her onto the bank and, with great difficulty in his sodden clothes, struggled
out himself.

“Thank
you,” she kept saying. “Thank you, thank you.”

“That
was a bloody stupid thing to do.”

“I
wanted you to save me.”

“Don’t
you know how easily you could have drowned?”

“You
saved me.”

Distress and
relief were charging his anger. He was close to shouting. “You stupid
girl. You could have killed us both.”

She fell
silent. He sat on the grass, emptying the water from his shoes. “You went
under the surface, I couldn’t see you. My clothes were weighing me down.
We could have drowned, both of us. Is it your idea of a joke? Well, is
it?”

There was
nothing more to say. She got dressed and they went back along the path, Briony
first, and he squelching behind her. He wanted to get into the open sunlight of
the park. Then he faced a long trudge back to the bungalow for a change of
clothes. He had not yet spent his anger. She was not too young, he thought, to
get her mind around an apology. She walked in silence, head lowered, possibly
sulking, he could not see. When they came out of the woods and had gone through
the kissing gate, she stopped and turned. Her tone was forthright, even
defiant. Rather than sulk, she was squaring up to him.

“Do you
know why I wanted you to save me?”

“No.”

“Isn’t
it obvious?”

“No, it
isn’t.”

“Because
I love you.”

She said it
bravely, with chin upraised, and she blinked rapidly as she spoke, dazzled by
the momentous truth she had revealed.

He restrained
an impulse to laugh. He was the object of a schoolgirl crush. “What on
earth do you mean by that?”

“I mean
what everybody else means when they say it. I love you.”

This time the
words were on a pathetic rising note. He realized that he should resist the
temptation to mock. But it was difficult. He said, “You love me, so you
threw yourself in the river.”

“I
wanted to know if you’d save me.”

“And
now you know. I’d risk my life for yours. But that doesn’t mean I
love you.”

She drew
herself up a little. “I want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll
be eternally grateful to you.”

Lines,
surely, from one of her books, one she had read lately, or one she had written.

He said,
“That’s all right. But don’t do it again, for me or anyone
else. Promise?”

She nodded,
and said in parting, “I love you. Now you know.”

She walked
away toward the house. Shivering in the sunlight, he watched her until she was
out of sight, and then he set off for home. He did not see her on her own
before he left for France, and by the time he came back in September, she was
away at boarding school. Not long after, he went up to Cambridge, and in
December spent Christmas with friends. He didn’t see Briony until the
following April, and by then the matter was forgotten.

Or was it?

He’d
had plenty of time alone, too much time, to consider. He could remember no
other unusual conversation with her, no strange behavior, no meaningful looks
or sulks to suggest that her schoolgirlish passion had lasted beyond that day
in June. He had been back to Surrey almost every vacation and she had many
opportunities to seek him out at the bungalow, or pass him a note. He was busy
with his new life then, lost to the novelties of undergraduate life, and also
intent at that time on putting a little distance between himself and the Tallis
family. But there must have been signs which he had not noticed. For three
years she must have nurtured a feeling for him, kept it hidden, nourished it
with fantasy or embellished it in her stories. She was the sort of girl who
lived in her thoughts. The drama by the river might have been enough to sustain
her all that time.

This theory,
or conviction, rested on the memory of a single encounter—the meeting at
dusk on the bridge. For years he had dwelled on that walk across the park. She
would have known he was invited to dinner. There she was, barefoot, in a dirty
white frock. That was strange enough. She would have been waiting for him,
perhaps preparing her little speech, even rehearsing it out loud as she sat on
the stone parapet. When he finally arrived, she was tongue-tied. That was proof
of a sort. Even at the time, he thought it odd that she did not speak to him.
He gave her the letter and she ran off. Minutes later, she was opening it. She
was shocked, and not only by a word. In her mind he had betrayed her love by
favoring her sister. Then, in the library, confirmation of the worst, at which
point, the whole fantasy crashed. First, disappointment and despair, then a
rising bitterness. Finally, an extraordinary opportunity in the dark, during
the search for the twins, to avenge herself. She named him—and no one but
her sister and his mother doubted her. The impulse, the flash of malice, the
infantile destructiveness he could understand. The wonder was the depth of the
girl’s rancor, her persistence with a story that saw him all the way to
Wandsworth Prison. Now he might be cleared, and that gave him joy. He
acknowledged the courage it would require for her to go back to the law and
deny the evidence she had given under oath. But he did not think his resentment
of her could ever be erased. Yes, she was a child at the time, and he did not
forgive her. He would never forgive her. That was the lasting damage.

T
HERE WAS MORE
confusion ahead, more shouting.
Incredibly, an armored column was forcing its way against the forward press of
traffic, soldiers and refugees. The crowd parted reluctantly. People squeezed
into the gaps between abandoned vehicles or against shattered walls and
doorways. It was a French column, hardly more than a detachment—three
armored cars, two half-tracks and two troop carriers. There was no show of
common cause. Among the British troops the view was that the French had let
them down. No will to fight for their own country. Irritated at being pushed
aside, the Tommies swore, and taunted their allies with shouts of
“Maginot!” For their part, the
poilus
must have heard
rumors of an evacuation. And here they were, being sent to cover the rear.
“Cowards! To the boats! Go shit in your pants!” Then they were
gone, and the crowd closed in again under a cloud of diesel smoke and walked
on.

They were
approaching the last houses in the village. In a field ahead, he saw a man and
his collie dog walking behind a horse-drawn plow. Like the ladies in the shoe
shop, the farmer did not seem aware of the convoy. These lives were lived in
parallel—war was a hobby for the enthusiasts and no less serious for
that. Like the deadly pursuit of a hunt to hounds, while over the next hedge a
woman in the backseat of a passing motorcar was absorbed in her knitting, and
in the bare garden of a new house a man was teaching his son to kick a ball.
Yes, the plowing would still go on and there’d be a crop, someone to reap
it and mill it, others to eat it, and not everyone would be dead . . .

Turner was
thinking this when Nettle gripped his arm and pointed. The commotion of the
passing French column had covered the sound, but they were easy enough to see.
There were at least fifteen of them, at ten thousand feet, little dots in the
blue, circling above the road. Turner and the corporals stopped to watch, and
everyone nearby saw them too.

An exhausted
voice murmured close to his ear, “Fuck. Where’s the RAF?”

Another said
knowingly, “They’ll go for the Frogs.”

As if goaded
into disproof, one of the specks peeled away and began its near-vertical dive,
directly above their heads. For seconds the sound did not reach them. The
silence was building like pressure in their ears. Even the wild shouts that
went up and down the road did not relieve it. Take cover! Disperse! Disperse!
At the double!

It was
difficult to move. He could walk on at a steady trudge, and he could stop, but
it was an effort, an effort of memory, to reach for the unfamiliar commands, to
turn away from the road and run. They had stopped by the last house in the
village. Beyond the house was a barn and flanking both was the field where the
farmer had been plowing. Now he was standing under a tree with his dog, as
though sheltering from a shower of rain. His horse, still in harness, grazed
along the unplowed strip. Soldiers and civilians were streaming away from the
road in all directions. A woman brushed past him carrying a crying child, then
she changed her mind and came back and stood, turning indecisively at the side
of the road. Which way? The farmyard or the field? Her immobility delivered him
from his own. As he pushed her by the shoulder toward the gate, the rising howl
commenced. Nightmares had become a science. Someone, a mere human, had taken
the time to dream up this satanic howling. And what success! It was the sound
of panic itself, mounting and straining toward the extinction they all knew,
individually, to be theirs. It was a sound you were obliged to take personally.
Turner guided the woman through the gate. He wanted her to run with him into
the center of the field. He had touched her, and made her decision for her, so
now he felt he could not abandon her. But the boy was at least six years old
and heavy, and together they were making no progress at all.

He dragged
the child from her arms. “Come on,” he shouted.

A Stuka
carried a single thousand-pound bomb. The idea on the ground was to get away
from buildings, vehicles and other people. The pilot was not going to waste his
precious load on a lone figure in a field. When he turned back to strafe it
would be another matter. Turner had seen them hunt down a sprinting man for the
sport of it. With a free hand he was pulling on the woman’s arm. The boy
was wetting his pants and screaming in Turner’s ear. The mother seemed
incapable of running. She was stretching out her hand and shouting. She wanted
her son back. The child was wriggling toward her, across his shoulder. Now came
the screech of the falling bomb. They said that if you heard the noise stop
before the explosion, your time was up. As he dropped to the grass he pulled
the woman with him and shoved her head down. He was half lying across the child
as the ground shook to the unbelievable roar. The shock wave prized them from
the earth. They covered their faces against the stinging spray of dirt. They
heard the Stuka climb from its dive even as they heard the banshee wail of the
next attack. The bomb had hit the road less than eighty yards away. He had the
boy under his arm and he was trying to pull the woman to her feet.

“We’ve
got to run again. We’re too close to the road.”