Marriage of Lola Quincey and Paul Marshall

The marriage of Lola Quincey and Paul Marshall took place on a Saturday in late May 1940 at Holy Trinity Church, Clapham Common, a brick barn of elegant dimensions with a black-tiled roof and a low portico with white columns. Briony Tallis, then a probationer nurse at St. Thomas's Hospital, learned of the wedding from a scribbled note from her father, Jack Tallis, who passed on information picked up from a colleague and confirmed by the family: Paul Marshall and Lola Quincey were to be married a week Saturday in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Clapham Common. He gave no reason why he supposed she would want to know, and made no comment on the matter himself. Briony had not seen Lola since that summer of 1935, so the figure she imagined at the altar was a spindly girl of fifteen. She did the sums: Lola was twenty, Marshall would be twenty-nine. It was not a surprise; the shock was in the confirmation. Throughout the day, up and down the ward, along the corridors, Briony felt her familiar guilt pursue her with a novel vibrancy. She knew that whatever skivvying or humble nursing she did, she would never undo the damage. She was unforgivable. For the first time in years she thought that she would like to talk to her father. She wondered whether in sending his letter with its specific information he was trying to tell her that he knew the truth.

The Ceremony and the Congregation

Briony arrived at the church after a long walk from the hospital, crossing London without maps or street signs, all of which had been removed to confuse an expected German invasion. She found the church half concealed among trees in leaf. Parked outside, close to the portico, was a polished black Rolls-Royce whose radiator was still warm. She went up the steps and pushed on the heavy, studded door. The church was almost empty. The vicar's words were in counterpoint with their echoes. She stood by the door, partly screened by the font, then advanced to the rear pew. She had been to various family weddings, though she was too young to have been at the grand affair in Liverpool Cathedral of Uncle Cecil and Aunt Hermione, whose form and elaborate hat she could now distinguish in the front row. Next to her were Pierrot and Jackson, lankier by five or six inches, wedged between the outlines of their estranged parents. On the other side of the aisle were three members of the Marshall family. This was the entire congregation. A private ceremony. No society journalists. Briony was not meant to be there. She was familiar enough with the form of words to know that she had not missed the moment itself. Facing the altar, framed by the elevated white-sheeted shape of the vicar, stood the couple. Lola was in white, the full traditional wear, and, as far as Briony could tell from the rear, was heavily veiled. Her hair was gathered into a single childish plait that fell from under the froth of tulle and organdy and lay along the length of her spine. Marshall stood erect, the lines of his padded morning-suit shoulders etched sharply against the vicar's surplice.

Briony's Reckoning at the Altar

As the vicar intoned the words of the marriage service, Briony felt the memories, the needling details, like a rash, like dirt on her skin: Lola coming to her room in tears, her chafed and bruised wrists, and the scratches on Lola's shoulder and down Marshall's face; Lola's silence in the darkness at the lakeside as she let her earnest, ridiculous, oh so prim younger cousin, who could not tell real life from the stories in her head, deliver the attacker into safety. Poor vain and vulnerable Lola with the pearl-studded choker and the rosewater scent, who longed to throw off the last restraints of childhood, who saved herself from humiliation by falling in love, or persuading herself she had, and who could not believe her luck when Briony insisted on doing the talking and blaming. And what luck that was for Lola—barely more than a child, prized open and taken—to marry her rapist. When the vicar reached the words "Therefore if any man can show any just cause, why they may not be lawfully joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace," Briony felt a powerful impulse to rise and proclaim the impediment. She imagined herself moving along the pew to take her position in the center of the aisle, and setting out her reasons, her just causes, in a defiant untrembling voice as she advanced in her cape and headdress, like a bride of Christ, toward the altar, toward the openmouthed vicar, toward the congregation of twisted necks, and the half-turned white-faced couple. But the scratches and bruises were long healed, and all her own statements at the time were to the contrary. Nor did the bride appear to be a victim, and she had her parents' consent. More than that, surely; a chocolate magnate, the creator of Amo. Aunt Hermione would be rubbing her hands. That Paul Marshall, Lola Quincey and she, Briony Tallis, had conspired with silence and falsehoods to send an innocent man to jail? But the words that had convicted him had been her very own, read out loud on her behalf in the Assize Court. The sentence had already been served. The debt was paid. The verdict stood. She remained in her seat with her accelerating heart and sweating palms, and humbly inclined her head. By any estimate, it was a very long time until judgment day, and until then the truth that only Marshall and his bride knew at first hand was steadily being walled up within the mausoleum of their marriage. There it would lie secure in the darkness, long after anyone who cared was dead. Every word in the ceremony was another brick in place.

The Procession and the Aftermath

When the vicar made the celebrated pronouncement—man and wife together—and invoked the Trinity after which his church was named, there cascaded from the fluting organ confetti of skittering triplets as the vicar turned to lead the couple down the aisle and the six family members fell in behind. Briony, who had been on her knees in a pretense of prayer, stood and turned to face the procession as it reached her. A slanting tongue of sunlight reached all the way to where she stood and illuminated her face and headdress. She wanted to be seen, but not quite so clearly. Lola, who was on Briony's side, drew level and their eyes met. Her veil was already parted. The freckles had vanished, but otherwise she was not much changed. Only slightly taller perhaps, and prettier, softer and rounder in the face, and the eyebrows severely plucked. Briony simply stared. All she wanted was for Lola to know she was there and to wonder why. For a fraction of a moment, a tiny frown of displeasure may have registered in the bride's face. Then she pursed her lips and looked to the front, and then she was gone. Paul Marshall had seen her too, but had not recognized her, and nor had Aunt Hermione or Uncle Cecil who had not met her in years. But the twins, bringing up the rear in school uniform trousers at half mast, were delighted to see her, and mimed mock-horror at her costume, and did clownish eye-rolling yawns, with hands flapping on their mouths. Then she was alone in the church with the unseen organist who went on playing for his own pleasure. It was over too quickly, and nothing for certain was achieved. She remained standing in place, beginning to feel a little foolish, reluctant to go outside. Daylight, and the banality of family small talk, would dispel whatever impact she had made as a ghostly illuminated apparition. She also lacked courage for a confrontation. She lingered another minute or two, then, annoyed with her own cowardice, hurried out onto the portico. The newlyweds were in the Rolls, Marshall at the wheel, reversing in order to turn round. She was certain they saw her. There was a metallic screech as he changed gear—a good sign perhaps. The car moved away, and through a side window she saw Lola's white shape huddled against the driver's arm. As for the congregation, it had vanished completely among the trees. Briony then walked across the Common to Balham, to 43 Dudley Villas, where she found Cecilia and Robbie Turner together, and where she finally told them the truth she had withheld for five years: that it was Paul Marshall she had seen by the lake, not Robbie.