Atonement Read Online Free PDF Page B

always had the freedom of the house. When she was called down, he was standing outside asking in a loud, impersonal voice if he could borrow a book. As it happened, Polly was on all fours, washing the tiles in the entrance hall. Robbie made a great show of removing his boots which weren’t dirty at all, and then, as an afterthought, took his socks off as well, and tiptoed with comic exaggeration across the wet floor. Everything he did was designed to distance her. He was play-acting the cleaning lady’s son come to the big house on an errand. They went into the library together, and when he found his book, she asked him to stay for a coffee. It was a pretence, his dithering refusal – he was one of the most confident people she had ever met. She was being mocked, she knew. Rebuffed, she left the room and went upstairs and lay on the bed with Clarissa , and read without taking in a word, feeling her irritation and confusion grow. She was being mocked, or she was being punished – she did not know which was worse. Punished for being in a different circle at Cambridge, for not having a charlady for a mother; mocked for her poor degree – not that they actually awarded degrees to women anyway.
    Awkwardly, for she still had her cigarette, she picked upthe vase and balanced it on the rim of the basin. It would have made better sense to take the flowers out first, but she was too irritable. Her hands were hot and dry and she had to grip the porcelain all the tighter. Robbie was silent, but she could tell from his expression – a forced, stretched smile that did not part his lips – that he regretted what he had said. That was no comfort either. This was what happened when they talked these days; one or the other was always in the wrong, trying to call back the last remark. There was no ease, no stability in the course of their conversations, no chance to relax. Instead, it was spikes, traps, and awkward turns that caused her to dislike herself almost as much as she disliked him, though she did not doubt that he was mostly to blame. She hadn’t changed, but there was no question that he had. He was putting distance between himself and the family that had been completely open to him and given him everything. For this reason alone – expectation of his refusal, and her own displeasure in advance – she had not invited him to dinner that night. If he wanted distance, then let him have it.
    Of the four dolphins whose tails supported the shell on which the Triton squatted, the one nearest to Cecilia had its wide-open mouth stopped with moss and algae. Its spherical stone eyeballs, as big as apples, were iridescent green. The whole statue had acquired around its northerly surfaces a bluish-green patina, so that from certain approaches, and in low light, the muscle-bound Triton really seemed a hundred leagues under the sea. Bernini’s intention must have been for the water to trickle musically from the wide shell with its irregular edges into the basin below. But the pressure was too weak, so that instead the water slid soundlessly down the underside of the shell where opportunistic slime hung in dripping points, like stalactites in a limestone cave. The basin itself was over three feet deep and clear. The bottom was of a pale, creamy stone over which undulating white-edged rectangles of refracted sunlight divided and overlapped.
    Her idea was to lean over the parapet and hold the flowersin the vase while she lowered it on its side into the water, but it was at this point that Robbie, wanting to make amends, tried to be helpful.
    â€˜Let me take that,’ he said, stretching out a hand. ‘I’ll fill it for you, and you take the flowers.’
    â€˜I can manage, thanks.’ She was already holding the vase over the basin.
    But he said, ‘Look, I’ve got it.’ And he had, tightly between forefinger and thumb. ‘Your cigarette will get wet. Take the flowers.’
    This