“I say, are we still on for tennis tomorrow?”
There was a two-inch scratch, Robbie noticed, from the corner of Marshall’s eye, running parallel to his nose, drawing attention to the way his features were set high up in his face, bunched up under the eyes. Only fractions of an inch kept him from cruel good looks. Instead, his appearance was absurd—the empty tract of his chin was at the expense of a worried, overpopulated forehead. Out of politeness, Robbie too had moved back in his seat to hear the remark, but even in his state he flinched. It was inappropriate, at the beginning of the meal, for Marshall to turn away from his hostess and begin a private conversation. Robbie said tersely, “I suppose we are,” and then, to make amends for him, added for general consideration, “Has England ever been hotter?”
Leaning away from the field of Cecilia’s body warmth, and averting his eyes from Briony’s, he found himself pitching the end of his question into the frightened gaze of Pierrot diagonally to his left. The boy gaped, and struggled, as he might in the classroom, with a test in history. Or was it geography? Or science? Briony leaned over Jackson to touch Pierrot’s shoulder, all the while keeping her eyes on Robbie. “Please leave him alone,” she said in a forceful whisper, and then to the little boy, softly, “You don’t have to answer.”
Emily spoke up from her end of the table. “Briony, it was a perfectly bland remark about the weather. You’ll apologize, or go now to your room.”
Whenever Mrs. Tallis exercised authority in the absence of her husband, the children felt obliged to protect her from seeming ineffectual. Briony, who in any case would not have left her sister undefended, lowered her head and said to the tablecloth, “I’m very sorry. I wish I hadn’t said it.”
The vegetables in lidded serving dishes, or on platters of faded Spode, were passed up and down, and such was the collective inattention or the polite desire to conceal a lack of appetite that most ended with roast potatoes and potato salad, Brussels sprouts and beetroot, and lettuce leaves foundering in gravy.
“The Old Man’s not going to be too pleased,” Leon said as he got to his feet. “It’s a 1921 Barsac, but it’s open now.” He filled his mother’s glass, then his sister’s and Marshall’s, and when he was standing by Robbie he said, “And a healing draft for the good doctor. I want to hear about this new plan.”
But he did not wait for a reply. On his way back to his seat he said, “I love England in a heat wave. It’s a different country. All the rules change.”
Emily Tallis picked up her knife and fork and everyone did likewise. Paul Marshall said, “Nonsense. Name a single rule that changes.”
“All right. At the club the only place one’s allowed to remove one’s jacket is the billiard room. But if the temperature reaches ninety degrees before three o’clock, then jackets can be taken off in the upstairs bar the following day.”
“The following day! A different country indeed.”
“You know what I mean. People are more at ease—a couple of days’ sunshine and we become Italians. Last week in Charlotte Street they were eating dinner at pavement tables.”
“It was always the view of my parents,” Emily said, “that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people. Fewer layers of clothing, a thousand more places to meet. Out of doors, out of control. Your grandmother especially was uneasy when it was summer. She would dream up a thousand reasons to keep my sisters and me in the house.”
“Well then,” Leon said. “What do you think, Cee? Have you behaved even worse than usual today?”
All eyes were on her, and the brotherly banter was relentless.
“Good heavens, you’re blushing. The answer must be yes.”
Sensing that he should step in for her, Robbie started to say, “Actually . . .”
But Cecilia spoke up. “I’m awfully hot, that’s all. And the answer is yes. I behaved very badly. I persuaded Emily against her will that we should have a roast in your honor, regardless of the weather. Now you’re sticking to salad while the rest of us are suffering because of you. So pass him the vegetables, Briony, and perhaps he’ll pipe down.”
Robbie thought he heard a tremor in her voice.
“Good old Cee. Top form,” Leon said. Marshall said, “That’s put you in your place.”
“I suppose I’d better pick on someone smaller.” Leon smiled at Briony by his side. “Have you done something bad today on account of the terrible heat? Have you broken the rules? Please tell us you have.” He took her hand in mock-beseeching, but she pulled it away. She was still a child, Robbie thought, not beyond confessing or blurting out that she had read his note, which in turn could lead her to describe what she had interrupted. He was watching her closely as she played for time, taking her napkin, dabbing her lips, but he felt no particular dread. If it had to, let it happen. However appalling, the dinner would not last forever, and he would find a way to be with Cecilia again that night, and together they would confront the extraordinary new fact in their lives—their changed lives—and resume. At the thought, his stomach plunged. Until that time, everything was shadowy irrelevance and he was afraid of nothing. He took a deep pull of the sugary lukewarm wine and waited. Briony said, “It’s boring of me, but I’ve done nothing wrong today.”
He had underestimated her. The emphasis could only have been intended for him and her sister. Jackson at her elbow spoke out. “Oh yes you have. You wouldn’t let there be a play. We wanted to be in the play.” The boy looked around the table, his green eyes shining with the grievance. “And you said you wanted us to.”
His brother was nodding. “Yes. You wanted us to be in it.” No one could know the extent of their disappointment.
“There, you see,” Leon said. “Briony’s hotheaded decision. On a cooler day we’d be in the library watching the theatricals now.”
These harmless inanities, far preferable to silence, allowed Robbie to retreat behind a mask of amused attention. Cecilia’s left hand was cupped above her cheek, presumably to exclude him from her peripheral vision. By appearing to listen to Leon who was now recounting his glimpse of the King in a West End theater, Robbie was able to contemplate her bare arm and shoulder, and while he did so he thought she could feel his breath on her skin, an idea which stirred him. At the top of her shoulder was a little dent, scalloped in the bone, or suspended between two bones, with a fuzz of shadow along its rim. His tongue would soon trace the oval of this rim and push into the hollow. His excitement was close to pain and sharpened by the pressure of contradictions: she was familiar like a sister, she was exotic like a lover; he had always known her, he knew nothing about her; she was plain, she was beautiful; she was capable—how easily she protected herself against her brother—and twenty minutes ago she had wept; his stupid letter repelled her but it unlocked her. He regretted it, and he exulted in his mistake. They would be alone together soon, with more contradictions—hilarity and sensuousness, desire and fear at their recklessness, awe and impatience to begin. In an unused room somewhere on the second floor, or far from the house, beneath the trees by the river. Which? Mrs. Tallis’s mother was no fool. Outdoors. They would wrap themselves in the satin darkness and begin again. And this was no fantasy, this was real, this was his near future, both desirable and unavoidable. But that was what wretched Malvolio thought, whose part he had played once on the college lawn—“Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.”