Attending the Wedding

Briony Tallis, now a trainee nurse at St. Thomas's Hospital, secretly attends the wedding of Lola Quincey and Paul Marshall at Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common, a ceremony that formalizes a union built on the false accusation she helped create. The event forces her to confront the permanence of her childhood crime and the impossibility of undoing it through legal means, and afterward she walks to Balham to face her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, beginning the long, painful process of atonement.

The Wedding Ceremony

Briony arrives at the church after a long walk from the hospital, her nurse's uniform making her feel conspicuous. The church is a brick barn of elegant dimensions, like a Greek temple, with a black-tiled roof and windows of plain glass. Parked outside is a polished black Rolls-Royce, its radiator still warm. The congregation is tiny: only the immediate families are present—Aunt Hermione and Uncle Cecil, the twins Pierrot and Jackson (now lankier by several inches), and three members of the Marshall family. There are no society journalists. Briony slips into the rear pew, partly screened by the font, and watches as the vicar leads the couple through the service. Lola is in full traditional white, heavily veiled, with her hair gathered into a single childish plait. Marshall stands erect in his padded morning suit. As the vicar intones the words from the Book of Common Prayer, Briony is flooded with memory: Lola coming to her room in tears, the chafed and bruised wrists, the scratches on Lola's shoulder and down Marshall's face, and Lola's silence in the darkness at the lakeside as she let her earnest, prim younger cousin deliver the attacker into safety. She understands that Lola, barely more than a child, prized open and taken, saved herself from humiliation by falling in love—or persuading herself she had—and could not believe her luck when Briony insisted on doing the talking and blaming. The marriage is a mausoleum walling up the truth. When the vicar asks if anyone can show just cause why they may not be lawfully joined, Briony imagines rising and proclaiming the truth, but she remains in her seat, knowing that the scratches and bruises are long healed, that her own statements at the time were to the contrary, and that the verdict stands. She listens as Marshall booms, "With my body I thee worship," and as Lola repeats the words sweetly and surely. The last brick is set in place when the vicar pronounces them man and wife. As the procession reaches her, Lola's eyes meet Briony's for a fraction of a moment; a tiny frown of displeasure may register, then she looks to the front and is gone. Paul Marshall does not recognize her. The twins, delighted to see her, mime mock-horror at her costume. Then she is alone in the church, feeling foolish and cowardly.

The Walk to Balham

After the wedding, Briony walks across Clapham Common toward Balham, knowing that Cecilia's lodgings at 43 Dudley Villas lie at the far end. She is thirsty, her heel is throbbing, and she has eaten nothing. She stops at a drab café for tea and toast, then continues. The street she is looking for is three turnings past the tube station. The Edwardian terraces run straight for half a mile. Number 43 is distinguished only by an old Ford 8, without wheels, supported on brick piles, taking up the whole front garden. The doorbell does not work. She lets the knocker fall twice. A sharp-faced woman in her thirties, out of breath from a row, opens the door and, after a contemptuous look, yells for Cecilia. Briony waits in the hallway, counting the roses and snowflakes on the floral wallpaper. At last Cecilia appears on the stairs, in a blue silk dressing gown. She is much darker in complexion, more beautiful than Briony remembers, with a boldly sensual face and enlarged, dark eyes. The sisters exchange cold, stilted questions about their parents and the household. Cecilia is sardonic, dismissive. The landlady, Mrs. Jarvis, interrupts, and Cecilia, with a tone pure Nightingale, sends her away. She leads Briony up to her flat—a narrow, confined room divided into a kitchen strip and a bedroom. The walls are papered with pale vertical stripes like a boy's pajamas. On the table are a jam jar of harebells, a full ashtray, a pile of books including Gray's Anatomy and a collected Shakespeare, and two bottles of stout. Cecilia tells Briony that she has seen a solicitor: a change of heart is not enough for an appeal; without hard new evidence, Briony is an unreliable witness. She says she will never forgive Briony. Briony insists she will go to Surrey and tell their parents everything. Cecilia replies that their parents don't want to hear it—they believed Hardman's story. Briony is confused; she doesn't understand what Hardman has to do with it.

The Confrontation with Robbie

As Briony stands across the table from her sister, the bedroom door opens and Robbie Turner appears. He wears army trousers and shirt and polished boots, his braces hanging free. He is unshaven and tousled, and his gaze is on Cecilia only. He is older, with a harder look, sunken cheeks, and a small toothbrush mustache. He is startlingly handsome. When he sees Briony, he gives a little winded sigh. Cecilia tells him that Briony is going to tell everybody the truth. Robbie is angry, very angry. He paces the tiny room, desperate, suffocating. He asks Briony if she has any idea what it is like inside prison. He asks if she thought he assaulted Lola. She says no, and that she wasn't certain at the time. When he asks what has made her so certain now, she answers, "Growing up." He echoes the word with contempt, then his anger gives way to an extremity of bewilderment and disgust. His breathing is irregular, his eyes bright, his throat muscles tense. He is fighting off memories from Dunkirk. He takes a step toward her, and she shrinks back. But Cecilia slides between them, grips his shoulders, and draws his face toward her own. She kisses him lightly, lingeringly, and murmurs, "Come back... Robbie, come back." He nods, and they kiss deeply, privately. Briony moves to the window, feeling obliterated, expunged from the room.

The Terms of Atonement

When the kiss ends, Cecilia speaks in the ward sister's voice, describing the inevitable. Robbie, now calm, tells Briony what she must do. She is to go to her parents as soon as possible and tell them everything. She is to go to a solicitor and make a signed, witnessed statement retracting her evidence. She is to write to him in great detail, putting in everything relevant—what led up to her saying she saw him by the lake, and why she stuck to her story. She is to include anything about Danny Hardman that might put his alibi in question. Briony tells them that it was Paul Marshall. She has just come from their wedding. The revelation is met with amazed silence, then Robbie says he wants to kill him, and Cecilia says he will do no such thing. They are exhausted by her presence, by the subject. They walk her to Balham tube station. At the barrier, she looks back and they have gone. As she descends the escalator, she feels serene, sad, homesick for her sister with Robbie. Their love has not been destroyed. She knows what is required of her: not simply a letter, but a new draft, an atonement, and she is ready to begin.