Atonement by Ian McEwan Page B

seen smoking: not in the street, or any other
public place, not on entering a room, not standing up, and only when offered,
never from her own supply—notions as self-evident to him as natural
justice. Three years among the sophisticates of Girton had not provided her
with the courage to confront him. The lighthearted ironies she might have
deployed among her friends deserted her in his presence, and she heard her own
voice become thin when she attempted some docile contradiction. In fact, being
at odds with her father about anything at all, even an insignificant domestic
detail, made her uncomfortable, and nothing that great literature might have
done to modify her sensibilities, none of the lessons of practical criticism,
could quite deliver her from obedience. Smoking on the stairway when her father
was installed in his
Whitehall
ministry was all the
revolt her education would allow, and still it cost her some effort.
    As she
reached the broad landing that dominated the hallway,
Leon
was showing Paul
Marshall through the wide-open front entrance. Danny Hardman was behind them
with their luggage. Old Hardman was just in view outside, gazing mutely at the
five-pound note in his hand. The indirect afternoon light, reflected from the
gravel and filtered through the fanlight, filled the entrance hall with the
yellowish-orange tones of a sepia print. The men had removed their hats and
stood waiting for her, smiling. Cecilia wondered, as she sometimes did when she
met a man for the first time, if this was the one she was going to marry, and
whether it was this particular moment she would remember for the rest of her
life—with gratitude, or profound and particular regret.
    “Sis-Celia!”
Leon
called. When they
embraced she felt against her collarbone through the fabric of his jacket a
thick fountain pen, and smelled pipe smoke in the folds of his clothes,
prompting a moment’s nostalgia for afternoon tea visits to rooms in
men’s colleges, rather polite and anodyne occasions mostly, but cheery
too, especially in winter.
    Paul Marshall
shook her hand and made a faint bow. There was something comically brooding
about his face. His opener was conventionally dull.
    “I’ve
heard an awful lot about you.”
    “And me
you.” What she could remember was a telephone conversation with her
brother some months before, during which they had discussed whether they had
ever eaten, or would ever eat, an Amo bar.
    “Emily’s
lying down.”
    It was hardly
necessary to say it. As children they claimed to be able to tell from across
the far side of the park whenever their mother had a migraine by a certain
darkening at the windows.
    “And
the Old Man’s staying in town?”
    “He
might come later.”
    Cecilia was
aware that Paul Marshall was staring at her, but before she could look at him
she needed to prepare something to say.
    “The
children were putting on a play, but it rather looks like it’s fallen
apart.”
    Marshall
said, “That
might have been your sister I saw down by the lake. She was giving the nettles
a good thrashing.”
    Leon
stepped aside to let
Hardman’s boy through with the bags. “Where are we putting Paul?”
    “On the
second floor.” Cecilia had inclined her head to direct these words at the
young Hardman. He had reached the foot of the stairs and now stopped and
turned, a leather suitcase in each hand, to face them where they were grouped,
in the center of the checkered, tiled expanse. His expression was of tranquil
incomprehension. She had noticed him hanging around the children lately.
Perhaps he was interested in Lola. He was sixteen, and certainly no boy. The
roundness she remembered in his cheeks had gone, and the childish bow of his
lips had become elongated and innocently cruel. Across his brow a constellation
of acne had a new-minted look, its garishness softened by the sepia light. All
day long, she realized, she had been feeling strange, and seeing strangely, as
though everything was already