NEITHER THE twins nor Lola knew precisely1 what led Briony to abandon the rehearsals2. At the time, they did not even know she had. They were doing the sickbed scene, the one in which bed-bound Arabella first receives into her garret the prince disguised as the good doctor, and it was going well enough, or no worse than usual, with the twins speaking their lines no more ineptly3 than before. As for Lola, she didn’t wish to dirty her cashmere by lying on the floor, and instead slumped4 in a chair, and the director could hardly object to that. The older girl entered so fully5 into the spirit of her own aloof6 compliance7 that she felt beyond reproach. One moment, Briony was giving patient instructions to Jackson, then she paused, and frowned, as if about to correct herself, and then she was gone. There was no pivotal moment of creative difference, no storming or flouncing out. She turned away, and simply drifted out, as though on her way to the lavatory8. The others waited, unaware9 that the whole project was at an end. The twins thought they had been trying hard, and Jackson in particular, feeling he was still in disgrace in the Tallis household, thought he might begin to rehabilitate10 himself by pleasing Briony.
While they waited, the boys played football with a wooden brick and their sister gazed out the window, humming softly to herself. After an immeasurable period of time, she went out into the corridor and along to the end where there was an open door to an unused bedroom. From here she had a view of the driveway and the lake across which lay a column of shimmering11 phosphorescence, white hot from the fierce late afternoon heat. Against this column she could just make out Briony beyond the island temple, standing12 right by the water’s edge. In fact, she may even have been standing in the water—against such light it was difficult to tell. She did not look as if she was about to come back. On her way out of the room, Lola noticed by the bed a masculine-looking suitcase of tan leather and heavy straps13 and faded steamer labels. It reminded her vaguely14 of her father, and she paused by it, and caught the faint sooty scent15 of a railway carriage. She put her thumb against one of the locks and slid it. The polished metal was cool, and her touch left little patches of shrinking condensation16. The clasp startled her as it sprang up with a loud chunky sound. She pushed it back and hurried from the room.
There followed more formless time for the cousins. Lola sent the twins down to see if the pool was free—they felt uneasy being there when adults were present. The twins returned to report that Cecilia was there with two other grown-ups, but by now Lola was not in the nursery. She was in her tiny bedroom, arranging her hair in front of a hand mirror propped17 against the windowsill. The boys lay on her narrow bed, and tickled18 each other, and wrestled19, and made loud howling noises. She could not be bothered to send them to their own room. Now there was no play, and the pool was not available, unstructured time oppressed them. Homesickness fell upon them when Pierrot said he was hungry—dinner was hours away, and it would not be proper to go down now and ask for food. Besides, the boys would not go in the kitchen because they were terrified of Betty whom they had seen on the stairs grimly carrying red rubber sheets toward their room.
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 scuffed21 blue brick was where they had left it, and everything was as before.
They stood about and Jackson said, “I don’t like it here.”
The simplicity22 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 lighter23 than his mother’s and Pierrot began to sob24, but quietly, still mindful of being in a strange house where politeness was all.
Jackson was tearful too, but 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 consonants25 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 mumbled26 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 doorway27 may have been there many minutes, long enough to have heard Jackson speak the word, and 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 Jackson and that’s 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 retrieve28 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 scrunched29 up around the eyebrows30, 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 creases31 as he looked from Quincey to Quincey. Lola’s attention was drawn32 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 awareness33 to close ranks by the consideration that if he knew more than they did about the rehearsals, he must know a great deal besides. Jackson spoke34 from the heart 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 momentous35: 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 England. They were awed36, but 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 hips37. 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 apprentice38 mouthing the incantation of a magus.
It appeared to work. Marshall winced39 in 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, Marshall turned his attention back to Lola. After two strong gin cocktails40 in the drawing room with Leon and his sister, Marshall had come upstairs to find his room, unpack41 and change for dinner. Without removing his shoes, he had stretched out on the enormous four-poster and, soothed42 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, prattling43 and touching44 and pulling at his clothes. He woke, hot across his chest and throat, uncomfortably aroused, and briefly45 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, poised46 and imperious, quite the little Pre-Raphaelite princess with her bangles and tresses, her painted nails and velvet47 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 fabric48 where it ballooned out across her narrow hips. “We got them in Liberty’s when my mother brought me to London to see a show.”
“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 Liberty’s was right 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 musingly49, “To be or not to be.”
“That is the question,” she agreed. “And I like your shoes.”
He tilted50 his foot to examine the craftsmanship51. “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 . . .”
Jackson interrupted. “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 inspection52. 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 tightened53 his grip, and they could see the tremor54 in his fingers exaggerated by the bar.
“There’ll be one of these inside the kit20 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.”
Marshall sounded a little testy55, and Lola said reassuringly56, “Perhaps there will be one.”
He smiled up at her. “We’re calling it the Army Amo.”
“Amo amas amat,” she said.
“Exactly.”
Jackson said, “I 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 insistently57, 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.”
收听单词发音 |
1
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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rehearsals
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| n.练习( rehearsal的名词复数 )；排练；复述；重复 | |
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ineptly
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| adv. 不适当地，无能地 | |
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slumped
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| 大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的过去式和过去分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下] | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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compliance
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| n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从 | |
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lavatory
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| n.盥洗室，厕所 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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rehabilitate
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| vt.改造(罪犯)，修复；vi.复兴，(罪犯)经受改造 | |
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shimmering
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| v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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straps
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| n.带子( strap的名词复数 )；挎带；肩带；背带v.用皮带捆扎( strap的第三人称单数 )；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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condensation
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| n.压缩，浓缩；凝结的水珠 | |
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propped
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| 支撑，支持，维持( prop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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wrestled
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| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
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kit
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| n.用具包，成套工具；随身携带物 | |
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scuffed
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| v.使磨损( scuff的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚走 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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sob
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| n.空间轨道的轰炸机；呜咽，哭泣 | |
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consonants
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| n.辅音，子音( consonant的名词复数 )；辅音字母 | |
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mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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scrunched
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| v.发出喀嚓声( scrunch的过去式和过去分词 )；蜷缩；压；挤压 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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creases
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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awed
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| adj.充满敬畏的，表示敬畏的v.使敬畏，使惊惧( awe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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apprentice
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| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
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winced
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| 赶紧避开，畏缩( wince的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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cocktails
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| n.鸡尾酒( cocktail的名词复数 )；餐前开胃菜；混合物 | |
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unpack
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| vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货 | |
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soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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43
prattling
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| v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话( prattle的现在分词 )；发出连续而无意义的声音；闲扯；东拉西扯 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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51
craftsmanship
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| n.手艺 | |
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52
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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53
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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54
tremor
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| n.震动，颤动，战栗，兴奋，地震 | |
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testy
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| adj.易怒的；暴躁的 | |
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reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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insistently
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| ad.坚持地 | |
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