Atonement (9 page)
A little
later the three found themselves back in the nursery which, apart from the
bedrooms, was the only room they felt they had a right to be in. The scuffed
blue brick was where they had left it, and everything was as before.
They stood
about and
don’t like it here.”
The
simplicity of the remark unhinged his brother who went by a wall and found
something of interest in the skirting board which he worried with the tip of
his shoe.
Lola put her
arm across his shoulder and said, “It’s all right. We’ll be
going home soon.” Her arm was much thinner and lighter than his
mother’s and Pierrot began to sob, but quietly, still mindful of being in
a strange house where politeness was all.
he was still capable of speech. “It won’t be soon. You’re
just saying that. We can’t go home anyway . . .” He paused to
gather his courage. “It’s a divorce!”
Pierrot and
Lola froze. The word had never been used in front of the children, and never
uttered by them. The soft consonants suggested an unthinkable obscenity, the
sibilant ending whispered the family’s shame. Jackson himself looked
distraught as the word left him, but no wishing could bring it back now, and
for all he could tell, saying it out loud was as great a crime as the act
itself, whatever that was. None of them, including Lola, quite knew. She was
advancing on him, her green eyes narrowed like a cat’s.
“How
dare
you say that.”
“
’S true,” he mumbled and looked away. He knew that he was in
trouble, that he deserved to be in trouble, and he was about to run for it when
she seized him by an ear and put her face close to his.
“If you
hit me,” he said quickly, “I’ll tell The Parents.” But
he himself had made the invocation useless, a ruined totem of a lost golden
age.
“You
will never
ever
use that word again. D’you hear me?”
Full of
shame, he nodded, and she let him go.
The boys had
been shocked out of tears, and now Pierrot, as usual eager to repair a bad
situation, said brightly, “What shall we do now?”
“I’m
always asking myself that.”
The tall man
in a white suit standing in the doorway may have been there many minutes, long
enough to have heard
it was this thought, rather than the shock of his presence, that prevented even
Lola from making a response. Did he know about their family? They could only
stare and wait to find out. He came toward them and extended his hand.
“Paul
Marshall.”
Pierrot, who
was the nearest, took the hand in silence, as did his brother. When it was the
girl’s turn she said, “Lola Quincey. This is
Pierrot.”
“What
marvelous names you all have. But how am I supposed to tell you two
apart?”
“I’m
generally considered more pleasant,” Pierrot said. It was a family joke,
a line devised by their father which usually made strangers laugh when they put
the question. But this man did not even smile as he said, “You must be
the cousins from the north.”
They waited
tensely to hear what else he knew, and watched as he walked the length of the
nursery’s bare boards and stooped to retrieve the brick which he tossed
in the air and caught smartly with a snap of wood against skin.
“I’m
staying in a room along the corridor.”
“I
know,” Lola said. “Auntie Venus’s room.”
“Exactly
so. Her old room.”
Paul Marshall
lowered himself into the armchair lately used by the stricken Arabella. It
really was a curious face, with the features scrunched up around the eyebrows,
and a big empty chin like Desperate Dan’s. It was a cruel face, but his
manner was pleasant, and this was an attractive combination, Lola thought. He
settled his trouser creases as he looked from Quincey to Quincey. Lola’s
attention was drawn to the black and white leather of his brogues, and he was
aware of her admiring them and waggled one foot to a rhythm in his head.
“I’m
sorry to hear about your play.”
The twins
moved closer together, prompted from below the threshold of awareness to close
ranks by the consideration that if he knew more than they did about the
rehearsals, he must know a great deal besides.
of their concern.
“Do you
know our parents?”
“Mr.
and Mrs. Quincey?”
“Yes!”
“I’ve
read about them in the paper.”
The boys
stared at him as they absorbed this and could not speak, for they knew that the
business of newspapers was momentous: earthquakes and train crashes, what the
government and nations did from day to day, and whether more money should be
spent on guns in case Hitler attacked
not completely surprised, that their own disaster should rank with these godly
affairs. This had the ring of confirming truth.
To steady
herself, Lola put her hands on her hips. Her heart was beating painfully hard
and she could not trust herself to speak, even though she knew she had to. She
thought a game was being played which she did not understand, but she was
certain there had been an impropriety, or even an insult. Her voice gave out
when she began, and she was obliged to clear her throat and start again.
“What
have you read about them?”
He raised his
eyebrows, which were thick and fused together, and blew a dismissive, blubbery
sound through his lips. “Oh, I don’t know. Nothing at all. Silly
things.”
“Then
I’ll thank you not to talk about them in front of the children.”
It was a
construction she must have once overheard, and she had uttered it in blind
faith, like an apprentice mouthing the incantation of a magus.
It appeared
to work.
acknowledgment of his error, and leaned toward the twins. “Now you two
listen carefully to me. It’s clear to everybody that your parents are
absolutely wonderful people who love you very much and think about you all the
time.”
Jackson and
Pierrot nodded in solemn agreement. Job done,
back to Lola. After two strong gin cocktails in the drawing room with Leon and
his sister,
find his room, unpack and change for dinner. Without removing his shoes, he had
stretched out on the enormous four-poster and, soothed by the country silence,
the drinks and the early evening warmth, dropped away into a light sleep in
which his young sisters had appeared, all four of them, standing around his
bedside, prattling and touching and pulling at his clothes. He woke, hot across
his chest and throat, uncomfortably aroused, and briefly confused about his
surroundings. It was while he was sitting on the edge of his bed, drinking
water, that he heard the voices that must have prompted his dream. When he went
along the creaky corridor and entered the nursery, he had seen three children.
Now he saw that the girl was almost a young woman, poised and imperious, quite
the little Pre-Raphaelite princess with her bangles and tresses, her painted
nails and velvet choker.
He said to
her, “You’ve jolly good taste in clothes. Those trousers suit you
especially well, I think.”
She was
pleased rather than embarrassed and her fingers lightly brushed the fabric
where it ballooned out across her narrow hips. “We got them in
mother brought me to
“And
what did you see?”
“
Hamlet
.”
They had in fact seen a matinee pantomime at the London Palladium during which
Lola had spilled a strawberry drink down her frock, and
across the street.
“One of
my favorites,” Paul said. It was fortunate for her that he too had
neither read nor seen the play, having studied chemistry. But he was able to
say musingly, “To be or not to be.”
“That
is the question,” she agreed. “And I like your shoes.”
He tilted his
foot to examine the craftsmanship. “Yes. Ducker’s in The Turl. They
make a wooden thingy of your foot and keep it on a shelf forever. Thousands of
them down in a basement room, and most of the people are long dead.”
“How
simply awful.”
“I’m
hungry,” Pierrot said again.
“Ah
well,” Paul Marshall said, patting his pocket. “I’ve got something
to show you if you can guess what I do for a living.”
“You’re
a singer,” Lola said. “At least, you have a nice voice.”
“Kind
but wrong. D’you know, you remind me of my favorite sister . . .”
“You make chocolates in a factory.”
Before too
much glory could be heaped upon his brother, Pierrot added, “We heard you
talking at the pool.”
“Not a
guess then.”
He drew from
his pocket a rectangular bar wrapped in greaseproof paper and measuring about
four inches by one. He placed it on his lap and carefully unwrapped it and held
it up for their inspection. Politely, they moved nearer. It had a smooth shell
of drab green against which he clicked his fingernail.
“Sugar
casing, see? Milk chocolate inside. Good for any conditions, even if it
melts.”
He held his
hand higher and tightened his grip, and they could see the tremor in his
fingers exaggerated by the bar.
“There’ll
be one of these inside the kit bag of every soldier in the land. Standard
issue.”
The twins
looked at each other. They knew that an adult had no business with sweets.
Pierrot said, “Soldiers don’t eat chocolate.”
His brother
added, “They like cigarettes.”
“And
anyway, why should they all get free sweets and not the children?”
“Because
they’ll be fighting for their country.”
“Our
dad says there isn’t going to be a war.”
“Well,
he’s wrong.”
testy, and Lola said reassuringly, “Perhaps there will be one.”
He smiled up
at her. “We’re calling it the Army Amo.”
“Amo
amas amat,” she said.
“Exactly.”
don’t see why everything you buy has to end in
o
.”
“It’s
really boring,” Pierrot said. “Like Polo and Aero.”
“And
Oxo and Brillo.”
“I
think what they’re trying to tell me,” Paul Marshall said to Lola
as he presented her the bar, “is that they don’t want any.”
She took it
solemnly, and then for the twins, gave a serves-you-right look. They knew this
was so. They could hardly plead for Amo now. They watched her tongue turn green
as it curled around the edges of the candy casing. Paul Marshall sat back in
the armchair, watching her closely over the steeple he made with his hands in
front of his face.
He crossed
and uncrossed his legs. Then he took a deep breath. “Bite it,” he
said softly. “You’ve got to bite it.”
It cracked
loudly as it yielded to her unblemished incisors, and there was revealed the
white edge of the sugar shell, and the dark chocolate beneath it. It was then
that they heard a woman calling up the stairs from the floor below, and then
she called again, more insistently, from just along the corridor, and this time
the twins recognized the voice and a look of sudden bewilderment passed between
them.
Lola was
laughing through her mouthful of Amo. “There’s Betty looking for
you. Bathtime! Run along now. Run along.”
