The Accusation by the Lake

The Accusation by the Lake is the decisive moment in Ian McEwan's Atonement when thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis, driven by a mixture of righteous indignation, a desire to protect her sister, and a storyteller's need for a coherent villain, identifies Robbie Turner as the man who assaulted her cousin Lola Quincey on the island of the Tallis estate's artificial lake. This single act of naming, delivered with a certainty that belies the darkness and ambiguity of the scene, transforms a private violation into a public crime, destroys Robbie's life, and sets Briony on a decades-long path of guilt and literary atonement. The accusation is the novel's moral and narrative fulcrum, the point at which a child's imaginative leap into the adult world of sex and violence becomes an irrevocable act of destruction.

The Scene of the Crime

After the collapse of her play and the flight of the twins Jackson and Pierrot, Briony wanders the grounds of the Tallis estate, feeling herself to be an adult now, a participant in a richer story. She makes her way to the island temple, a dilapidated ornamental building on the lake. As she approaches, she sees a bush that seems to break up and change shape, resolving into a figure—a person backing away into the darkness. The remaining dark patch on the ground sits up and calls her name: it is Lola. Briony instantly understands what has happened, feeling nauseous with disgust and fear. She sees the larger figure circle the clearing and mount the slope to the roadway, disappearing toward the house. She has no doubt: she could describe him. She kneels beside her cousin, who is sitting forward, hugging herself and rocking slightly, her voice faint and distorted. Lola says, "I'm sorry, I didn't, I'm sorry . . ." Briony whispers, "Who was it?" and then, with all the calm she can muster, adds, "I saw him. I saw him." Meekly, Lola says, "Yes."

The Construction of Certainty

Briony feels a flowering of tenderness for her cousin; together they face real terrors. She says, "It was him, wasn't it?" and feels against her chest her cousin nod, slowly, reflectively. After many seconds Lola says in the same weak, submissive voice, "Yes. It was him." Briony wants her to say his name, to seal the crime, frame it with the victim's curse, close his fate with the magic of naming. She whispers, "Lola. Who was it?" But Lola turns her head away, and Briony, unable to hold herself back, cuts her off. Everything connects. It is her own discovery. It is her story, the one that is writing itself around her. She says, "It was Robbie, wasn't it?" Lola says nothing and does not move. Briony says it again, this time without the trace of a question: "It was Robbie." Lola turns slowly to face her and says, "You saw him." Briony draws nearer and covers Lola's hand with her own, telling her about the attack in the library. Lola repeats, "But you saw him. You actually saw him." Briony replies, "Of course I did. Plain as day. It was him." Lola explains that she couldn't see because his hand was over her eyes, but she thought it might be him by his voice. Briony says, "Well I can. And I will."

The Consolidation of the Lie

Their respective positions—which will find public expression in the weeks and months to come, and then be pursued as demons in private for many years afterward—are established in these moments by the lake. Briony's certainty rises whenever her cousin appears to doubt herself. Nothing much is ever required of Lola after that, for she can retreat behind an air of wounded confusion, letting herself be bathed in the concern and guilt of the adults. Lola does not need to lie, to look her supposed attacker in the eye and summon the courage to accuse him, because all that work is done for her, innocently and without guile, by the younger girl. Lola is required only to remain silent about the truth, banish it and forget it entirely, and persuade herself not of some contrary tale, but simply of her own uncertainty. Briony is there to help her at every stage. As far as she is concerned, everything fits; the terrible present fulfills the recent past. Events she herself witnessed foretell her cousin's calamity. She blames herself for her childish assumption that Robbie would limit his attentions to Cecilia. He is a maniac after all. Anyone would do. And he is bound to go for the most vulnerable—a spindly girl, stumbling about in the dark in an unfamiliar place, bravely searching around the island temple for her brothers. That his victim could easily have been her increases Briony's outrage and fervor. If her poor cousin is not able to command the truth, then she will do it for her.

The Aftermath and the Unraveling

Briony's glazed surface of conviction is not without its blemishes and hairline cracks. Whenever she is conscious of them, she is driven back to the understanding that what she knows is not literally, or not only, based on the visible. It is too dark for that. Even Lola's face at eighteen inches is an empty oval, and the figure was many feet away, and turned from her as it moved back around the clearing. But nor is this figure invisible, and its size and manner of moving are familiar to her. Her eyes confirm the sum of all she knows and has recently experienced. The truth is in the symmetry, which is to say, it is founded in common sense. The truth instructs her eyes. So when she says, over and again, "I saw him," she means it, and is perfectly honest, as well as passionate. What she means is rather more complex than what everyone else so eagerly understands, and her moments of unease come when she feels that she cannot express these nuances. She does not even seriously try. Within a matter of hours, a process is moving fast and well beyond her control. Her words summon awful powers from the familiar and picturesque local town. She is asked again and again, and as she repeats herself, the burden of consistency is pressed upon her. Minor deviations earn her little frowns on wise brows, or a degree of frostiness and withdrawal of sympathy. She becomes anxious to please, and learns quickly that the minor qualifications she might have added would disrupt the process that she herself has set in train. She is like a bride-to-be who begins to feel her sickening qualms as the day approaches, and dares not speak her mind because so many preparations have been made on her behalf. She does not wish to cancel the whole arrangement. She does not think she has the courage, after all her initial certainty and two or three days of patient, kindly interviewing, to withdraw her evidence. However, she would have preferred to qualify, or complicate, her use of the word "saw." Less like seeing, more like knowing. She traps herself, she marches into the labyrinth of her own construction, and is too young, too awestruck, too keen to please, to insist on making her own way back. An imposing congregation has massed itself around her first certainties, and now it is waiting and she cannot disappoint it at the altar. Her doubts can be neutralized only by plunging in deeper. By clinging tightly to what she believes she knows, narrowing her thoughts, reiterating her testimony, she is able to keep from mind the damage she only dimly senses she is doing. When the matter is closed, when the sentence is passed and the congregation dispersed, a ruthless youthful forgetting, a willful erasing, protects her well into her teens.

The Immediate Consequences

Briony and Lola sit in silence for a while, and Lola's shivering begins to subside. When Lola speaks, her tone is reflective, as though she is pondering subtle currents of counterarguments. She says, "But it doesn't make sense. He's such a close friend of your family. It might not have been him." Briony murmurs, "You wouldn't be saying that if you'd been with me in the library." Lola sighs and shakes her head slowly, as though trying to reconcile herself to the unacceptable truth. When Briony helps her to stand, and they make their way toward the bridge, Lola finally begins to cry. She says she is too weak to go up the slope. Briony is about to run to the house for help when they hear voices from the road above, and torchlight is in their eyes. Leon comes down the bank and takes Lola into his arms. Before they reach the driveway, Briony is beginning to tell him what has happened, exactly as she has seen it. Later that night, in her formal interview with the police, Briony is asked, "You saw him then." She replies, "I know it was him." The inspector presses her: "Let's forget what you know. You're saying you saw him." She says, "Yes, I saw him." He asks, "Just as you see me." She says, "Yes." He asks, "You saw him with your own eyes." She says, "Yes. I saw him. I saw him." This testimony, given with unwavering certainty, sends Robbie Turner to prison and sets the course for the rest of their lives.