medical degree.
Leon
, I wish you
hadn’t asked him.”
“The
Old Man’s said yes?”
She shrugged.
“Look, I think you ought to go round to the bungalow now and ask him not
to come.”
Leon
had walked to the
shallow end and stood facing her across the gently rocking sheet of oily blue
water.
“How
can I possibly do that?”
“I
don’t care how you do it. Make an excuse.”
“Something’s
happened between you.”
“No it
hasn’t.”
“Is he
bothering you?”
“For
God’s sake!”
She got up
irritably and walked away, toward the swimming pool pavilion, an open structure
supported by three fluted pillars. She stood, leaning against the central
pillar, smoking and watching her brother. Two minutes before, they had been in
league and now they were at odds—childhood revisited indeed. Paul
Marshall stood halfway between them, turning his head this way and that when
they spoke, as though at a tennis match. He had a neutral, vaguely inquisitive
air, and seemed untroubled by this sibling squabble. That at least, Cecilia
thought, was in his favor.
Her brother
said, “You think he can’t hold a knife and fork.”
“
Leon
, stop it. You had no
business inviting him.”
“What
rot!”
The silence
that followed was partly mitigated by the drone of the filtration pump. There
was nothing she could do, nothing she could make
Leon
do, and she suddenly
felt the pointlessness of argument. She lolled against the warm stone, lazily
finishing her cigarette and contemplating the scene before her—the
foreshortened slab of chlorinated water, the black inner tube of a tractor tire
propped against a deck chair, the two men in cream linen suits of
infinitesimally different hues, bluish-gray smoke rising against the bamboo
green. It looked carved, fixed, and again, she felt it: it had happened a long
time ago, and all outcomes, on all scales—from the tiniest to the most
colossal—were already in place. Whatever happened in the future, however
superficially strange or shocking, would also have an unsurprising, familiar
quality, inviting her to say, but only to herself, Oh yes, of course. That. I
should have known.
She said
lightly, “D’you know what I think?”
“What’s
that?”
“We
should go indoors, and you should mix us a fancy kind of drink.”
Paul Marshall
banged his hands together and the sound ricocheted between the columns and the
back wall of the pavilion. “There’s something I do rather
well,” he called. “With crushed ice, rum and melted dark
chocolate.”
The
suggestion prompted an exchange of glances between Cecilia and her brother, and
thus their discord was resolved.
Leon
was already moving
away, and as Cecilia and Paul Marshall followed him and converged on the gap in
the thicket she said, “I’d rather have something bitter. Or even
sour.”
He smiled,
and since he had reached the gap first, he paused to hand her through, as
though it were a drawing room doorway, and as she passed she felt him touch her
lightly on her forearm.
Or it may
have been a leaf.
----
Five
N EITHER THE twins nor Lola knew precisely what
led Briony to abandon the rehearsals. 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 ineptly than before. As for Lola, she didn’t wish to dirty
her cashmere by lying on the floor, and instead slumped in a chair, and the
director could hardly object to that. The older girl entered so fully into the
spirit of her own aloof compliance 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
Leon
, I wish you
hadn’t asked him.”
“The
Old Man’s said yes?”
She shrugged.
“Look, I think you ought to go round to the bungalow now and ask him not
to come.”
Leon
had walked to the
shallow end and stood facing her across the gently rocking sheet of oily blue
water.
“How
can I possibly do that?”
“I
don’t care how you do it. Make an excuse.”
“Something’s
happened between you.”
“No it
hasn’t.”
“Is he
bothering you?”
“For
God’s sake!”
She got up
irritably and walked away, toward the swimming pool pavilion, an open structure
supported by three fluted pillars. She stood, leaning against the central
pillar, smoking and watching her brother. Two minutes before, they had been in
league and now they were at odds—childhood revisited indeed. Paul
Marshall stood halfway between them, turning his head this way and that when
they spoke, as though at a tennis match. He had a neutral, vaguely inquisitive
air, and seemed untroubled by this sibling squabble. That at least, Cecilia
thought, was in his favor.
Her brother
said, “You think he can’t hold a knife and fork.”
“
Leon
, stop it. You had no
business inviting him.”
“What
rot!”
The silence
that followed was partly mitigated by the drone of the filtration pump. There
was nothing she could do, nothing she could make
Leon
do, and she suddenly
felt the pointlessness of argument. She lolled against the warm stone, lazily
finishing her cigarette and contemplating the scene before her—the
foreshortened slab of chlorinated water, the black inner tube of a tractor tire
propped against a deck chair, the two men in cream linen suits of
infinitesimally different hues, bluish-gray smoke rising against the bamboo
green. It looked carved, fixed, and again, she felt it: it had happened a long
time ago, and all outcomes, on all scales—from the tiniest to the most
colossal—were already in place. Whatever happened in the future, however
superficially strange or shocking, would also have an unsurprising, familiar
quality, inviting her to say, but only to herself, Oh yes, of course. That. I
should have known.
She said
lightly, “D’you know what I think?”
“What’s
that?”
“We
should go indoors, and you should mix us a fancy kind of drink.”
Paul Marshall
banged his hands together and the sound ricocheted between the columns and the
back wall of the pavilion. “There’s something I do rather
well,” he called. “With crushed ice, rum and melted dark
chocolate.”
The
suggestion prompted an exchange of glances between Cecilia and her brother, and
thus their discord was resolved.
Leon
was already moving
away, and as Cecilia and Paul Marshall followed him and converged on the gap in
the thicket she said, “I’d rather have something bitter. Or even
sour.”
He smiled,
and since he had reached the gap first, he paused to hand her through, as
though it were a drawing room doorway, and as she passed she felt him touch her
lightly on her forearm.
Or it may
have been a leaf.
----
Five
N EITHER THE twins nor Lola knew precisely what
led Briony to abandon the rehearsals. 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 ineptly than before. As for Lola, she didn’t wish to dirty
her cashmere by lying on the floor, and instead slumped in a chair, and the
director could hardly object to that. The older girl entered so fully into the
spirit of her own aloof compliance 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
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