Eastbourne

Eastbourne is a remembered setting for the beginning of Bunny Munro and Libby Munro’s life together: a hotel there holds both a recollection of their first night and Bunny’s account of asking her to marry him. Recalled much later, the proposal becomes the happiest memory he can keep between himself and the painful present of Libby’s departure.

Hotel Memories

Bunny remembers their first night together in a down-at-heel hotel room in Eastbourne. In one recollection, Libby lies in his arms crying, an early moment of vulnerability that returns to him as he listens to her distress. Eastbourne is thus associated not only with romance but with the emotional uncertainty present in their relationship from its beginning.

A separate, more extended memory places Bunny and Libby together on a hotel bed in Eastbourne when he proposes. Both have been drinking. After Libby challenges the timing of his question, Bunny insists that it is morning and asks her to marry him. She responds by writing her answer in lipstick on his chest; as the room seems to tilt around him, he sees the word YES reversed in the dressing-table mirror. The memory ends with Libby smiling in the bathroom doorway, now his future wife.

Recalled from the Present

The proposal returns while Bunny stands on the balcony of their flat, watching attendants carry Libby to an ambulance. The ambulance leaves without apparent urgency, followed by a police car. Against this scene of loss, the Eastbourne hotel memory offers a stark contrast: it preserves the moment when their shared future seemed to begin, while the present confronts Bunny with its ending.

Narrative Significance

Eastbourne is presented through Bunny’s recollections rather than as a developed portrait of the town. The shift from the balcony to the hotel bed makes the location a vessel for personal memory: the story moves backward from Libby’s removal to the proposal, then returns to Bunny’s present. He feels that the image of Libby moving away through cigarette smoke will remain as a protective veil, shielding him from harder questions about how their life came to this. Eastbourne therefore marks the idealized center of his memory of their marriage, not a resolution of the grief surrounding her departure.