IN THE EARLY evening, high-altitude clouds in the western sky formed a thin yellow wash which became richer over the hour, and then thickened until a filtered orange glow hung above the giant crests1 of parkland trees; the leaves became nutty brown, the branches glimpsed among the foliage2 oily black, and the desiccated grasses took on the colors of the sky. A Fauvist dedicated3 to improbable color might have imagined a landscape this way, especially once sky and ground took on a reddish bloom and the swollen4 trunks of elderly oaks became so black they began to look blue. Though the sun was weakening as it dropped, the temperature seemed to rise because the breeze that had brought faint relief all day had faded, and now the air was still and heavy.
The scene, or a tiny portion of it, was visible to Robbie Turner through a sealed skylight window if he cared to stand up from his bath, bend his knees and twist his neck. All day long his small bedroom, his bathroom and the cubicle5 wedged between them he called his study had baked under the southern slope of the bungalow6’s roof. For over an hour after returning from work he lay in a tepid7 bath while his blood and, so it seemed, his thoughts warmed the water. Above him the framed rectangle of sky slowly shifted through its limited segment of the spectrum8, yellow to orange, as he sifted9 unfamiliar10 feelings and returned to certain memories again and again. Nothing palled12. Now and then, an inch below the water’s surface, the muscles of his stomach tightened13 involuntarily as he recalled another detail. A drop of water on her upper arm. Wet. An embroidered14 flower, a simple daisy, sewn between the cups of her bra. Her breasts wide apart and small. On her back, a mole15 half covered by a strap17. When she climbed out of the pond, a glimpse of the triangular18 darkness her knickers were supposed to conceal19. Wet. He saw it, he made himself see it again. The way her pelvic bones stretched the material clear of her skin, the deep curve of her waist, her startling whiteness. When she reached for her skirt, a carelessly raised foot revealed a patch of soil on each pad of her sweetly diminishing toes. Another mole the size of a farthing on her thigh20 and something purplish on her calf—a strawberry mark, a scar. Not blemishes21. Adornments.
He had known her since they were children, and he had never looked at her. At Cambridge she came to his rooms once with a New Zealand girl in glasses and someone from her school, when there was a friend of his from Downing there. They idled away an hour with nervous jokes, and handed cigarettes about. Occasionally, they passed in the street and smiled. She always seemed to find it awkward—That’s our cleaning lady’s son, she might have been whispering to her friends as she walked on. He liked people to know he didn’t care—There goes my mother’s employer’s daughter, he once said to a friend. He had his politics to protect him, and his scientifically based theories of class, and his own rather forced self-certainty. I am what I am. She was like a sister, almost invisible. That long, narrow face, the small mouth—if he had ever thought about her at all, he might have said she was a little horsey in appearance. Now he saw it was a strange beauty—something carved and still about the face, especially around the inclined planes of her cheekbones, with a wild flare22 to the nostrils23, and a full, glistening24 rosebud25 mouth. Her eyes were dark and contemplative. It was a statuesque look, but her movements were quick and impatient—that vase would still be in one piece if she had not jerked it so suddenly from his hands. She was restless, that was clear, bored and confined by the Tallis household, and soon she would be gone.
He would have to speak to her soon. He stood up at last from his bath, shivering, in no doubt that a great change was coming over him. He walked naked through his study into the bedroom. The unmade bed, the mess of discarded clothes, a towel on the floor, the room’s equatorial warmth were disablingly sensual. He stretched out on the bed, facedown into his pillow, and groaned26. The sweetness of her, the delicacy27, his childhood friend, and now in danger of becoming unreachable. To strip off like that—yes, her endearing attempt to seem eccentric, her stab at being bold had an exaggerated, homemade quality. Now she would be in agonies of regret, and could not know what she had done to him. And all of this would be very well, it would be rescuable, if she was not so angry with him over a broken vase that had come apart in his hands. But he loved her fury too. He rolled onto his side, eyes fixed28 and unseeing, and indulged a cinema fantasy: she pounded against his lapels before yielding with a little sob29 to the safe enclosure of his arms and letting herself be kissed; she didn’t forgive him, she simply gave up. He watched this several times before he returned to what was real: she was angry with him, and she would be angrier still when she knew he was to be one of the dinner guests. Out there, in the fierce light, he hadn’t thought quickly enough to refuse Leon’s invitation. Automatically, he had bleated30 out his yes, and now he would face her irritation31. He groaned again, and didn’t care if he were heard downstairs, at the memory of how she had taken off her clothes in front of him—so indifferently, as though he were an infant. Of course. He saw it clearly now. The idea was to humiliate32 him. There it stood, the undeniable fact. Humiliation33. She wanted it for him. She was not mere34 sweetness, and he could not afford to condescend35 to her, for she was a force, she could drive him out of his depth and push him under.
But perhaps—he had rolled onto his back—he should not believe in her outrage36. Wasn’t it too theatrical37? Surely she must have meant something better, even in her anger. Even in her anger, she had wanted to show him just how beautiful she was and bind38 him to her. How could he trust such a self-serving idea derived39 from hope and desire? He had to. He crossed his legs, clasped his hands behind his head, feeling his skin cool as it dried. What might Freud say? How about: she hid the unconscious desire to expose herself to him behind a show of temper. Pathetic hope! It was an emasculation, a sentence, and this—what he was feeling now—this torture was his punishment for breaking her ridiculous vase. He should never see her again. He had to see her tonight. He had no choice anyway—he was going. She would despise him for coming. He should have refused Leon’s invitation, but the moment it was made his pulse had leaped and his bleated yes had left his mouth. He’d be in a room with her tonight, and the body he had seen, the moles40, the pallor, the strawberry mark, would be concealed41 inside her clothes. He alone would know, and Emily of course. But only he would be thinking of them. And Cecilia would not speak to him or look at him. Even that would be better than lying here groaning42. No, it wouldn’t. It would be worse, but he still wanted it. He had to have it. He wanted it to be worse.
At last he rose, half dressed and went into his study and sat at his typewriter, wondering what kind of letter he should write to her. Like the bedroom and bathroom, the study was squashed under the apex43 of the bungalow’s roof, and was little more than a corridor between the two, barely six feet long and five feet wide. As in the two other rooms, there was a skylight framed in rough pine. Piled in a corner, his hiking gear—boots, alpenstock, leather knapsack. A knife-scarred kitchen table took up most of the space. He tilted44 back his chair and surveyed his desk as one might a life. At one end, heaped high against the sloping ceiling, were the folders45 and exercise books from the last months of his preparations for finals. He had no further use for his notes, but too much work, too much success was bound up with them and he could not bring himself to throw them out yet. Lying partly across them were some of his hiking maps, of North Wales, Hampshire and Surrey and of the abandoned hike to Istanbul. There was a compass with slitted sighting mirror he had once used to walk without maps to Lulworth Cove16.
Beyond the compass were his copies of Auden’s Poems and Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. At the other end of the table were various histories, theoretical treatises46 and practical handbooks on landscape gardening. Ten typed-up poems lay beneath a printed rejection48 slip from Criterion magazine, initialed by Mr. Eliot himself. Closest to where Robbie sat were the books of his new interest. Gray’s Anatomy49 was open by a folio pad of his own drawings. He had set himself the task of drawing and committing to memory the bones of the hand. He tried to distract himself by running through some of them now, murmuring their names: capitate, hamate, triquetral, lunate . . . His best drawing so far, done in ink and colored pencils and showing a cross section of the esophageal tract50 and the airways51, was tacked52 to a rafter above the table. A pewter tankard with its handle missing held all the pencils and pens. The typewriter was a fairly recent Olympia, given to him on his twenty-first by Jack53 Tallis at a lunchtime party held in the library. Leon had made a speech as well as his father, and Cecilia had been there surely. But Robbie could not remember a single thing they might have said to each other. Was that why she was angry now, because he had ignored her for years? Another pathetic hope.
At the outer reaches of the desk, various photographs: the cast of Twelfth Night on the college lawn, himself as Malvolio, cross-gartered. How apt. There was another group shot, of himself and the thirty French kids he had taught in a boarding school near Lille. In a belle54 époque metal frame tinged55 with verdigris56 was a photograph of his parents, Grace and Ernest, three days after their wedding. Behind them, just poking57 into the picture, was the front wing of a car—certainly not theirs, and further off, an oasthouse looming58 over a brick wall. It was a good honeymoon59, Grace always said, two weeks picking hops60 with her husband’s family, and sleeping in a gypsy caravan61 parked in a farmyard. His father wore a collarless shirt. The neck scarf and the rope belt around his flannel62 trousers may have been playful Romany touches. His head and face were round, but the effect was not exactly jovial63, for his smile for the camera was not wholehearted enough to part his lips, and rather than hold the hand of his young bride, he had folded his arms. She, by contrast, was leaning into his side, nestling her head on his shoulder and holding on to his shirt at the elbow awkwardly with both hands. Grace, always game and good-natured, was doing the smiling for two. But willing hands and a kind spirit would not be enough. It looked as though Ernest’s mind was already elsewhere, already drifting seven summers ahead to the evening when he would walk away from his job as the Tallises’ gardener, away from the bungalow, without luggage, without even a farewell note on the kitchen table, leaving his wife and their six-year-old son to wonder about him for the rest of their lives.
Elsewhere, strewn between the revision notes, landscape gardening and anatomy piles, were various letters and cards: unpaid64 battels, letters from tutors and friends congratulating him on his first, which he still took pleasure in rereading, and others mildly querying65 his next step. The most recent, scribbled66 in brownish ink on Whitehall departmental notepaper, was a message from Jack Tallis agreeing to help with fees at medical school. There were application forms, twenty pages long, and thick, densely67 printed admission handbooks from Edinburgh and London whose methodical, exacting68 prose seemed to be a foretaste of a new kind of academic rigor69. But today they suggested to him, not adventure and a fresh beginning, but exile. He saw it in prospect—the dull terraced street far from here, a floral wallpapered box with a louring wardrobe and candlewick bedspread, the earnest new friends mostly younger than himself, the formaldehyde vats70, the echoing lecture room—every element devoid71 of her.
From among the landscape books he took the volume on Versailles he had borrowed from the Tallis library. That was the day he first noticed his awkwardness in her presence. Kneeling to remove his work shoes by the front door, he had become aware of the state of his socks—holed at toe and heel and, for all he knew, odorous—and on impulse had removed them. What an idiot he had then felt, padding behind her across the hall and entering the library barefoot. His only thought was to leave as soon as he could. He had escaped through the kitchen and had to get Danny Hardman to go round the front of the house to collect his shoes and socks.
She probably would not have read this treatise47 on the hydraulics of Versailles by an eighteenth-century Dane who extolled72 in Latin the genius of Le N?tre. With the help of a dictionary, Robbie had read five pages in a morning and then given up and made do with the illustrations instead. It would not be her kind of book, or anyone’s really, but she had handed it to him from the library steps and somewhere on its leather surface were her fingerprints73. Willing himself not to, he raised the book to his nostrils and inhaled74. Dust, old paper, the scent75 of soap on his hands, but nothing of her. How had it crept up on him, this advanced stage of fetishizing the love object? Surely Freud had something to say about that in Three Essays on Sexuality. And so did Keats, Shakespeare and Petrarch, and all the rest, and it was in The Romaunt of the Rose. He had spent three years drily studying the symptoms, which had seemed no more than literary conventions, and now, in solitude76, like some ruffed and plumed77 courtier come to the edge of the forest to contemplate78 a discarded token, he was worshiping her traces—not a handkerchief, but fingerprints!—while he languished79 in his lady’s scorn.
For all that, when he fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter he did not forget the carbon. He typed the date and salutation and plunged81 straight into a conventional apology for his “clumsy and inconsiderate behavior.” Then he paused. Was he going to make any show of feeling at all, and if so, at what level?
“If it’s any excuse, I’ve noticed just lately that I’m rather lightheaded in your presence. I mean, I’ve never gone barefoot into someone’s house before. It must be the heat!”
How thin it looked, this self-protective levity82. He was like a man with advanced TB pretending to have a cold. He flicked83 the return lever twice and rewrote: “It’s hardly an excuse, I know, but lately I seem to be awfully84 lightheaded around you. What was I doing, walking barefoot into your house? And have I ever snapped off the rim85 of an antique vase before?” He rested his hands on the keys while he confronted the urge to type her name again. “Cee, I don’t think I can blame the heat!” Now jokiness had made way for melodrama87, or plaintiveness88. The rhetorical questions had a clammy air; the exclamation89 mark was the first resort of those who shout to make themselves clearer. He forgave this punctuation90 only in his mother’s letters where a row of five indicated a jolly good joke. He turned the drum and typed an x. “Cecilia, I don’t think I can blame the heat.” Now the humor was removed, and an element of self-pity had crept in. The exclamation mark would have to be reinstated. Volume was obviously not its only business.
He tinkered with his draft for a further quarter of an hour, then threaded in new sheets and typed up a fair copy. The crucial lines now read: “You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad—wandering into your house barefoot, or snapping your antique vase. The truth is, I feel rather lightheaded and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat! Will you forgive me? Robbie.” Then, after a few moments’ reverie, tilted back on his chair, during which time he thought about the page at which his Anatomy tended to fall open these days, he dropped forward and typed before he could stop himself, “In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.”
There it was—ruined. The draft was ruined. He pulled the sheet clear of the typewriter, set it aside, and wrote his letter out in longhand, confident that the personal touch fitted the occasion. As he looked at his watch he remembered that before setting out he should polish his shoes. He stood up from his desk, careful not to thump91 his head on the rafter.
He was without social unease—inappropriately so, in the view of many. At a dinner in Cambridge once, during a sudden silence round the table, someone who disliked Robbie asked loudly about his parents. Robbie held the man’s eye and answered pleasantly that his father had walked out long ago and that his mother was a charlady who supplemented her income as an occasional clairvoyant92. His tone was of easygoing tolerance93 of his questioner’s ignorance. Robbie elaborated upon his circumstances, then ended by asking politely about the parents of the other fellow. Some said that it was innocence94, or ignorance of the world, that protected Robbie from being harmed by it, that he was a kind of holy fool who could step across the drawing room equivalent of hot coals without harm. The truth, as Cecilia knew, was simpler. He had spent his childhood moving freely between the bungalow and the main house. Jack Tallis was his patron, Leon and Cecilia were his best friends, at least until grammar school. At university, where Robbie discovered that he was cleverer than many of the people he met, his liberation was complete. Even his arrogance95 need not be on display.
Grace Turner was happy to take care of his laundry—how else, beyond hot meals, to show mother love when her only baby was twenty-three?—but Robbie preferred to shine his own shoes. In a white singlet and the trousers of his suit, he went down the short straight run of stairs in his stockinged feet carrying a pair of black brogues. By the living room door was a narrow space that ended in the frosted-glass door of the front entrance through which a diffused96 blood-orange light embossed the beige and olive wallpaper in fiery97 honeycomb patterns. He paused, one hand on the doorknob, surprised by the transformation98, then he entered. The air in the room felt moist and warm, and faintly salty. A session must have just ended. His mother was on the sofa with her feet up and her carpet slippers99 dangling100 from her toes.
“Molly was here,” she said, and moved herself upright to be sociable101. “And I’m glad to tell you she’s going to be all right.”
Robbie fetched the shoeshine box from the kitchen, sat down in the armchair nearest his mother and spread out a page of a three-day-old Daily Sketch102 on the carpet.
“Well done you,” he said. “I heard you at it and went up for a bath.”
He knew he should be leaving soon, he should be polishing his shoes, but instead he leaned back in the chair, stretched his great length and yawned.
“Weeding! What am I doing with my life?”
There was more humor than anguish80 in his tone. He folded his arms and stared at the ceiling while massaging103 the instep of one foot with the big toe of the other.
His mother was staring at the space above his head. “Now come on. Something’s up. What’s wrong with you? And don’t say ‘Nothing.’”
Grace Turner became the Tallises’ cleaner the week after Ernest walked away. Jack Tallis did not have it in him to turn out a young woman and her child. In the village he found a replacement104 gardener and handyman who was not in need of a tied cottage. At the time it was assumed Grace would keep the bungalow for a year or two before moving on or remarrying. Her good nature and her knack105 with the polishing—her dedication106 to the surface of things, was the family joke—made her popular, but it was the adoration107 she aroused in the six-year-old Cecilia and her eight-year-old brother Leon that was the saving of her, and the making of Robbie. In the school holidays Grace was allowed to bring her own six-year-old along. Robbie grew up with the run of the nursery and those other parts of the house the children were permitted, as well as the grounds. His tree-climbing pal11 was Leon, Cecilia was the little sister who trustingly held his hand and made him feel immensely wise. A few years later, when Robbie won his scholarship to the local grammar, Jack Tallis took the first step in an enduring patronage108 by paying for the uniform and textbooks. This was the year Briony was born. The difficult birth was followed by Emily’s long illness. Grace’s helpfulness secured her position: on Christmas Day that year—1922—Leon dressed in top hat and riding breeches, walked through the snow to the bungalow with a green envelope from his father. A solicitor’s letter informed her that the freehold of the bungalow was now hers, irrespective of the position she held with the Tallises. But she had stayed on, returning to housework as the children grew older, with responsibilities for the special polishing.
Her theory about Ernest was that he had got himself sent to the Front under another name, and never returned. Otherwise, his lack of curiosity about his son was inhuman109. Often, in the minutes she had to herself each day as she walked from the bungalow to the house, she would reflect on the benign110 accidents of her life. She had always been a little frightened of Ernest. Perhaps they would not have been so happy together as she had been living alone with her darling genius son in her own tiny house. If Mr. Tallis had been a different kind of man . . . Some of the women who came for a shilling’s glimpse of the future had been left by their husbands, even more had husbands killed at the Front. It was a pinched life the women led, and it easily could have been hers.
“Nothing,” he said in answer to her question. “There’s nothing up with me at all.” As he took up a brush and a tin of blacking, he said, “So the future’s looking bright for Molly.”
“She’s going to remarry within five years. And she’ll be very happy. Someone from the north with qualifications.”
“She deserves no less.”
They sat in comfortable silence while she watched him buffing his brogues with a yellow duster. By his handsome cheekbones the muscles twitched111 with the movement, and along his forearms they fanned and shifted in complicated rearrangements under the skin. There must have been something right with Ernest to have given her a boy like this.
“So you’re off out.”
“Leon was just arriving as I was coming away. He had his friend with him, you know, the chocolate magnate. They persuaded me to join them for dinner tonight.”
“Oh, and there was me all afternoon, on the silver. And doing out his room.”
He picked up his shoes and stood. “When I look for my face in my spoon, I’ll see only you.”
“Get on. Your shirts are hanging in the kitchen.”
He packed up the shoeshine box and carried it out, and chose a cream linen112 shirt from the three on the airer. He came back through and was on his way out, but she wanted to keep him a little longer.
“And those Quincey children. That boy wetting his bed and all. The poor little lambs.”
He lingered in the doorway113 and shrugged114. He had looked in and seen them round the pool, screaming and laughing through the late morning heat. They would have run his wheelbarrow into the deep end if he had not gone across. Danny Hardman was there too, leering at their sister when he should have been at work.
“They’ll survive,” he said.
Impatient to be out, he skipped up the stairs three at a time. Back in his bedroom he finished dressing115 hurriedly, whistling tunelessly as he stooped to grease and comb his hair before the mirror inside his wardrobe. He had no ear for music at all, and found it impossible to tell if one note was higher or lower than another. Now he was committed to the evening, he felt excited and, strangely, free. It couldn’t be worse than it already was. Methodically, and with pleasure in his own efficiency, as though preparing for some hazardous116 journey or military exploit, he accomplished117 the familiar little chores—located his keys, found a ten-shilling note inside his wallet, brushed his teeth, smelled his breath against a cupped hand, from the desk snatched up his letter and folded it into an envelope, loaded his cigarette case and checked his lighter118. One last time, he braced119 himself in front of the mirror. He bared his gums, and turned to present his profile and looked across his shoulder at his image. Finally, he patted his pockets, then loped down the stairs, three at a time again, called a farewell to his mother, and stepped out onto the narrow brick path which led between the flower beds to a gate in the picket120 fence.
In the years to come he would often think back to this time, when he walked along the footpath121 that made a shortcut122 through a corner of the oak woods and joined the main drive where it curved toward the lake and the house. He was not late, and yet he found it difficult to slow his pace. Many immediate123 and other less proximal pleasures mingled124 in the richness of these minutes: the fading, reddish dusk, the warm, still air saturated125 with the scents126 of dried grasses and baked earth, his limbs loosened by the day’s work in the gardens, his skin smooth from his bath, the feel of his shirt and of this, his only suit. The anticipation127 and dread128 he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation—it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient129, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him. Other tributaries130 swelled131 his happiness; he still derived satisfaction from the thought of his first—the best in his year he was told. And now there was confirmation132 from Jack Tallis of his continuing support. A fresh adventure ahead, not an exile at all, he was suddenly certain. It was right and good that he should study medicine. He could not have explained his optimism—he was happy and therefore bound to succeed.
One word contained everything he felt, and explained why he was to dwell on this moment later. Freedom. In his life as in his limbs. Long ago, before he had even heard of grammar schools, he was entered for an exam that led him to one. Cambridge, much as he enjoyed it, was the choice of his ambitious headmaster. Even his subject was effectively chosen for him by a charismatic teacher. Now, finally, with the exercise of will, his adult life had begun. There was a story he was plotting with himself as the hero, and already its opening had caused a little shock among his friends. Landscape gardening was no more than a bohemian fantasy, as well as a lame86 ambition—so he had analyzed133 it with the help of Freud—to replace or surpass his absent father. Schoolmastering—in fifteen years’ time, Head of English, Mr. R. Turner, M.A. Cantab.—was not in the story either, nor was teaching at a university. Despite his first, the study of English literature seemed in retrospect134 an absorbing parlor135 game, and reading books and having opinions about them, the desirable adjunct to a civilized136 existence. But it was not the core, whatever Dr. Leavis said in his lectures. It was not the necessary priesthood, nor the most vital pursuit of an inquiring mind, nor the first and last defense137 against a barbarian138 horde139, any more than the study of painting or music, history or science. At various talks in his final year Robbie had heard a psychoanalyst, a Communist trade union official and a physicist140 each declare for his own field as passionately141, as convincingly, as Leavis had for his own. Such claims were probably made for medicine, but for Robbie the matter was simpler and more personal: his practical nature and his frustrated142 scientific aspirations143 would find an outlet144, he would have skills far more elaborate than the ones he had acquired in practical criticism, and above all he would have made his own decision. He would take lodgings145 in a strange town—and begin.
He had emerged from the trees and reached the point where the path joined the drive. The falling light magnified the dusky expanse of the park, and the soft yellow glow at the windows on the far side of the lake made the house seem almost grand and beautiful. She was in there, perhaps in her bedroom, preparing for dinner—out of view, at the back of the building on the second floor. Facing over the fountain. He pushed away these vivid, daylight thoughts of her, not wanting to arrive feeling deranged146. The hard soles of his shoes rapped loudly on the metaled road like a giant clock, and he made himself think about time, about his great hoard147, the luxury of an unspent fortune. He had never before felt so self-consciously young, nor experienced such appetite, such impatience148 for the story to begin. There were men at Cambridge who were mentally agile149 as teachers, and still played a decent game of tennis, still rowed, who were twenty years older than him. Twenty years at least in which to unfold his story at roughly this level of physical well-being—almost as long as he had already lived. Twenty years would sweep him forward to the futuristic date of 1955. What of importance would he know then that was obscure now? Might there be for him another thirty years beyond that time, to be lived out at some more thoughtful pace?
He thought of himself in 1962, at fifty, when he would be old, but not quite old enough to be useless, and of the weathered, knowing doctor he would be by then, with the secret stories, the tragedies and successes stacked behind him. Also stacked would be books by the thousand, for there would be a study, vast and gloomy, richly crammed150 with the trophies151 of a lifetime’s travel and thought—rare rain forest herbs, poisoned arrows, failed electrical inventions, soapstone figurines, shrunken skulls152, aboriginal153 art. On the shelves, medical reference and meditations154, certainly, but also the books that now filled the cubbyhole in the bungalow attic—the eighteenth-century poetry that had almost persuaded him he should be a landscape gardener, his third-edition Jane Austen, his Eliot and Lawrence and Wilfred Owen, the complete set of Conrad, the priceless 1783 edition of Crabbe’s The Village, his Housman, the autographed copy of Auden’s The Dance of Death. For this was the point, surely: he would be a better doctor for having read literature. What deep readings his modified sensibility might make of human suffering, of the self-destructive folly155 or sheer bad luck that drive men toward ill health! Birth, death, and frailty156 in between. Rise and fall—this was the doctor’s business, and it was literature’s too. He was thinking of the nineteenth-century novel. Broad tolerance and the long view, an inconspicuously warm heart and cool judgment157; his kind of doctor would be alive to the monstrous158 patterns of fate, and to the vain and comic denial of the inevitable159; he would press the enfeebled pulse, hear the expiring breath, feel the fevered hand begin to cool and reflect, in the manner that only literature and religion teach, on the puniness160 and nobility of mankind . . .
His footsteps quickened in the still summer evening to the rhythm of his exultant161 thoughts. Ahead of him, about a hundred yards away, was the bridge, and on it, he thought, picked out against the darkness of the road, was a white shape which seemed at first to be part of the pale stone of the parapet. Staring at it dissolved its outlines, but within a few paces it had taken on a vaguely162 human form. At this distance he was not able to tell whether it faced away or toward him. It was motionless and he assumed he was being watched. He tried for a second or two to entertain himself with the idea of a ghost, but he had no belief in the supernatural, not even in the supremely163 undemanding being that presided over the Norman church in the village. It was a child, he saw now, and therefore it must be Briony, in the white dress he had seen her wearing earlier in the day. He could see her clearly now and he raised his hand and called out to her, and said, “It’s me, Robbie,” but still she did not move.
As he approached it occurred to him that it might be preferable for his letter to precede him into the house. Otherwise he might have to pass it to Cecilia in company, watched perhaps by her mother who had been rather cool toward him since he came down. Or he might be unable to give the letter to Cecilia at all because she would be keeping her distance. If Briony gave it to her, she would have time to read it and reflect in private. The few extra minutes might soften164 her.
“I was wondering if you’d do me a favor,” he said as he came up to her.
She nodded and waited.
“Will you run ahead and give this note to Cee?”
He put the envelope into her hand as he spoke165, and she took it without a word.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he started to say, but she had already turned and was running across the bridge. He leaned back against the parapet and took out a cigarette as he watched her bobbing and receding166 form fade into the dusk. It was an awkward age in a girl, he thought contentedly167. Twelve, or was it thirteen? He lost sight of her for a second or two, then saw her as she crossed the island, highlighted against the darker mass of trees. Then he lost her again, and it was only when she reappeared, on the far side of the second bridge, and was leaving the drive to take a shortcut across the grass that he stood suddenly, seized by horror and absolute certainty. An involuntary, wordless shout left him as he took a few hurried steps along the drive, faltered168, ran on, then stopped again, knowing that pursuit was pointless. He could no longer see her as he cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed169 Briony’s name. That was pointless too. He stood there, straining his eyes to see her—as if that would help—and straining his memory too, desperate to believe that he was mistaken. But there was no mistake. The handwritten letter he had rested on the open copy of Gray’s Anatomy, Splanchnology section, page 1546, the vagina. The typed page, left by him near the typewriter, was the one he had taken and folded into the envelope. No need for Freudian smart-aleckry—the explanation was simple and mechanical—the innocuous letter was lying across figure 1236, with its bold spread and rakish crown of pubic hair, while his obscene draft was on the table, within easy reach. He bellowed Briony’s name again, though he knew she must be by the front entrance by now. Sure enough, within seconds, a distant rhombus of ocher light containing her outline widened, paused, then narrowed to nothing as she entered the house and the door was closed behind her.
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1
crests
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| v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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cubicle
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| n.大房间中隔出的小室 | |
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bungalow
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| n.平房，周围有阳台的木造小平房 | |
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tepid
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| adj.微温的，温热的，不太热心的 | |
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spectrum
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| n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列 | |
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sifted
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| v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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pal
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| n.朋友，伙伴，同志；vi.结为友 | |
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palled
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| v.（因过多或过久而）生厌，感到乏味，厌烦( pall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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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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embroidered
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| adj．绣花的 | |
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mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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cove
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| n.小海湾，小峡谷 | |
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strap
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| n.皮带，带子；v.用带扣住，束牢；用绷带包扎 | |
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triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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blemishes
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| n.（身体的）瘢点( blemish的名词复数 )；伤疤；瑕疵；污点 | |
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flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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rosebud
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| n.蔷薇花蕾，妙龄少女 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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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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bleated
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| v.（羊，小牛）叫( bleat的过去式和过去分词 )；哭诉；发出羊叫似的声音；轻声诉说 | |
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31
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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humiliate
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| v.使羞辱，使丢脸[同]disgrace | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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condescend
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| v.俯就，屈尊；堕落，丢丑 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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theatrical
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| adj.剧场的，演戏的；做戏似的，做作的 | |
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38
bind
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| vt.捆，包扎；装订；约束；使凝固；vi.变硬 | |
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39
derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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40
moles
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| 防波堤( mole的名词复数 )； 鼹鼠； 痣； 间谍 | |
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41
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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42
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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43
apex
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| n.顶点，最高点 | |
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tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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45
folders
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| n.文件夹( folder的名词复数 )；纸夹；（某些计算机系统中的）文件夹；页面叠 | |
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46
treatises
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| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
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47
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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48
rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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49
anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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50
tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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51
AIRWAYS
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| 航空公司 | |
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52
tacked
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| 用平头钉钉( tack的过去式和过去分词 )； 附加，增补； 帆船抢风行驶，用粗线脚缝 | |
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53
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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54
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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55
tinged
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| v.（使）发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56
verdigris
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| n.铜锈；铜绿 | |
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57
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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58
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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59
honeymoon
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| n.蜜月（假期）；vi.度蜜月 | |
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60
hops
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| 跳上[下]( hop的第三人称单数 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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61
caravan
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| n.大蓬车；活动房屋 | |
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62
flannel
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| n.法兰绒；法兰绒衣服 | |
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63
jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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64
unpaid
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| adj.未付款的，无报酬的 | |
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65
querying
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的现在分词 )；询问 | |
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66
scribbled
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| v.潦草的书写( scribble的过去式和过去分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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67
densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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68
exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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69
rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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70
vats
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| varieties 变化，多样性，种类 | |
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71
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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72
extolled
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| v.赞颂，赞扬，赞美( extol的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
fingerprints
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| n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 ) | |
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74
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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75
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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76
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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77
plumed
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| 饰有羽毛的 | |
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78
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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79
languished
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| 长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐 | |
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80
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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81
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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82
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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83
flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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84
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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85
rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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86
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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87
melodrama
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| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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88
plaintiveness
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89
exclamation
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| n.感叹号，惊呼，惊叹词 | |
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90
punctuation
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| n.标点符号，标点法 | |
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91
thump
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| v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声 | |
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92
clairvoyant
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| adj.有预见的；n.有预见的人 | |
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93
tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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94
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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95
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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96
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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97
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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98
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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99
slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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100
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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101
sociable
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| adj.好交际的，友好的，合群的 | |
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102
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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103
massaging
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| 按摩，推拿( massage的现在分词 ) | |
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104
replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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105
knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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106
dedication
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| n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞 | |
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107
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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108
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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109
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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110
benign
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| adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的 | |
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111
twitched
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| vt.& vi.（使）抽动，（使）颤动（twitch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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112
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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113
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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114
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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115
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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116
hazardous
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| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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117
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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118
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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119
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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120
picket
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| n.纠察队；警戒哨；v.设置纠察线；布置警卫 | |
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121
footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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122
shortcut
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| n.近路，捷径 | |
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123
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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124
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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125
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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126
scents
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| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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127
anticipation
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| n.预期，预料，期望 | |
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128
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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129
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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130
tributaries
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| n. 支流 | |
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131
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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132
confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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133
analyzed
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| v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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134
retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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135
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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137
defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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138
barbarian
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| n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的 | |
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139
horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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140
physicist
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| n.物理学家，研究物理学的人 | |
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141
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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142
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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143
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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144
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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145
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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deranged
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| adj.疯狂的 | |
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hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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148
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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149
agile
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| adj.敏捷的，灵活的 | |
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150
crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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151
trophies
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| n.（为竞赛获胜者颁发的）奖品( trophy的名词复数 )；奖杯；（尤指狩猎或战争中获得的）纪念品；（用于比赛或赛跑名称）奖 | |
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152
skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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155
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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156
frailty
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| n.脆弱；意志薄弱 | |
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157
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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158
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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159
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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160
puniness
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| n.微小，弱小 | |
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161
exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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162
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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163
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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164
soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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165
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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166
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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167
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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168
faltered
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的过去式和过去分词 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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169
bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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