narrowed and
converged over rising ground to a point where a tiny shape, made formless by
the warping heat, was growing, and then flickered and seemed to recede. It
would be Hardman, who said he was too old to learn to drive a car, bringing the
visitors in the trap.
Briony
changed her mind and faced her sister. “The whole thing’s a
mistake. It’s the wrong . . .” She snatched a breath and glanced
away, a signal, Cecilia sensed, of a dictionary word about to have its first
outing. “It’s the wrong genre!” She pronounced it, as she
thought, in the French way, monosyllabically, but without quite getting her
tongue round the
r
.
“
Jean?”
Cecilia called after her. “What are you talking about?”
But Briony
was hobbling away on soft white soles across the fiery gravel.
Cecilia went
to the kitchen to fill the vase, and carried it up to her bedroom to retrieve
the flowers from the handbasin. When she dropped them in they once again
refused to fall into the artful disorder she preferred, and instead swung round
in the water into a willful neatness, with the taller stalks evenly distributed
around the rim. She lifted the flowers and let them drop again, and they fell
into another orderly pattern. Still, it hardly mattered. It was difficult to
imagine this Mr. Marshall complaining that the flowers by his bedside were too
symmetrically displayed. She took the arrangement up to the second floor, along
the creaking corridor to what was known as Auntie Venus’s room, and set
the vase on a chest of drawers by a four-poster bed, thus completing the little
commission her mother had set her that morning, eight hours before.
However, she
did not immediately leave, for the room was pleasingly uncluttered by personal
possessions—in fact, apart from Briony’s, it was the only tidy
bedroom. And it was cool here, now that the sun had moved round the house.
Every drawer was empty, every bare surface without so much as a fingerprint. Under
the chintz counterpane the sheets would be starchily pure. She had an impulse
to slip her hand between the covers to feel them, but instead she moved deeper
into Mr. Marshall’s room. At the foot of the four-poster, the seat of a
Chippendale sofa had been so carefully straightened that sitting down would
have seemed a desecration. The air was smooth with the scent of wax, and in the
honeyed light, the gleaming surfaces of the furniture seemed to ripple and
breathe. As her approach altered her angle of view, the revelers on the lid of
an ancient trousseau chest writhed into dance steps. Mrs. Turner must have
passed through that morning. Cecilia shrugged away the association with Robbie.
Being here was a kind of trespass, with the room’s future occupant just a
few hundred yards away from the house.
From where
she had arrived by the window she could see that Briony had crossed the bridge
to the island, and was walking down the grassy bank, and beginning to disappear
among the lakeshore trees that surrounded the island temple. Further off,
Cecilia could just make out the two hatted figures sitting up on the bench
behind Hardman. Now she saw a third figure whom she had not noticed before,
striding along the driveway toward the trap. Surely it was Robbie Turner on his
way home. He stopped, and as the visitors approached, his outline seemed to
fuse with that of the visitors. She could imagine the scene—the manly
punches to the shoulder, the horseplay. She was annoyed that her brother could
not know that Robbie was in disgrace, and she turned from the window with a
sound of exasperation, and set off for her room in search of a cigarette.
She had one
packet remaining, and only after several minutes of irritable raking through
her mess did she find it in the pocket of a blue silk dressing gown on her
bathroom floor. She lit up as she descended the stairs to the hall, knowing
that she would not have dared had her father been at home. He had precise ideas
about where and when a woman should be
converged over rising ground to a point where a tiny shape, made formless by
the warping heat, was growing, and then flickered and seemed to recede. It
would be Hardman, who said he was too old to learn to drive a car, bringing the
visitors in the trap.
Briony
changed her mind and faced her sister. “The whole thing’s a
mistake. It’s the wrong . . .” She snatched a breath and glanced
away, a signal, Cecilia sensed, of a dictionary word about to have its first
outing. “It’s the wrong genre!” She pronounced it, as she
thought, in the French way, monosyllabically, but without quite getting her
tongue round the
r
.
“
Jean?”
Cecilia called after her. “What are you talking about?”
But Briony
was hobbling away on soft white soles across the fiery gravel.
Cecilia went
to the kitchen to fill the vase, and carried it up to her bedroom to retrieve
the flowers from the handbasin. When she dropped them in they once again
refused to fall into the artful disorder she preferred, and instead swung round
in the water into a willful neatness, with the taller stalks evenly distributed
around the rim. She lifted the flowers and let them drop again, and they fell
into another orderly pattern. Still, it hardly mattered. It was difficult to
imagine this Mr. Marshall complaining that the flowers by his bedside were too
symmetrically displayed. She took the arrangement up to the second floor, along
the creaking corridor to what was known as Auntie Venus’s room, and set
the vase on a chest of drawers by a four-poster bed, thus completing the little
commission her mother had set her that morning, eight hours before.
However, she
did not immediately leave, for the room was pleasingly uncluttered by personal
possessions—in fact, apart from Briony’s, it was the only tidy
bedroom. And it was cool here, now that the sun had moved round the house.
Every drawer was empty, every bare surface without so much as a fingerprint. Under
the chintz counterpane the sheets would be starchily pure. She had an impulse
to slip her hand between the covers to feel them, but instead she moved deeper
into Mr. Marshall’s room. At the foot of the four-poster, the seat of a
Chippendale sofa had been so carefully straightened that sitting down would
have seemed a desecration. The air was smooth with the scent of wax, and in the
honeyed light, the gleaming surfaces of the furniture seemed to ripple and
breathe. As her approach altered her angle of view, the revelers on the lid of
an ancient trousseau chest writhed into dance steps. Mrs. Turner must have
passed through that morning. Cecilia shrugged away the association with Robbie.
Being here was a kind of trespass, with the room’s future occupant just a
few hundred yards away from the house.
From where
she had arrived by the window she could see that Briony had crossed the bridge
to the island, and was walking down the grassy bank, and beginning to disappear
among the lakeshore trees that surrounded the island temple. Further off,
Cecilia could just make out the two hatted figures sitting up on the bench
behind Hardman. Now she saw a third figure whom she had not noticed before,
striding along the driveway toward the trap. Surely it was Robbie Turner on his
way home. He stopped, and as the visitors approached, his outline seemed to
fuse with that of the visitors. She could imagine the scene—the manly
punches to the shoulder, the horseplay. She was annoyed that her brother could
not know that Robbie was in disgrace, and she turned from the window with a
sound of exasperation, and set off for her room in search of a cigarette.
She had one
packet remaining, and only after several minutes of irritable raking through
her mess did she find it in the pocket of a blue silk dressing gown on her
bathroom floor. She lit up as she descended the stairs to the hall, knowing
that she would not have dared had her father been at home. He had precise ideas
about where and when a woman should be
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