Atonement: London, 1999

If I’m lucky, it might turn out to be somewhat benign.

I sat forward on the edge of my seat to take in my favorite view of the city, and as I turned my neck, downstream to St. Pauls, upstream to Big Ben, the full panoply of tourist London in between, I felt myself to be physically well and mentally intact, give or take the headaches and a little tiredness.

I worked in three hospitals in the duration—Alder Hey and the Royal East Sussex as well as St. Thomas’s—and I merged them in my description to concentrate all my experiences into one place. A convenient distortion, and the least of my offenses against veracity.

There was a round of handshakes, and a chorus of genial laughter at something Lord Marshall said.

Despite the liver spots and the purplish swags under his eyes, he at last appeared the cruelly handsome plutocrat, though somewhat reduced.

I thought there was a touch of the stage villain here—the gaunt figure, the black coat, the lurid lips.

His notes were handed to me now—irascible, helpful.

I love these little things, this pointillist approach to verisimilitude, the correction of detail that cumulatively gives such satisfaction.

Are you aware that a navy frigate hardly weighs that much?

Everything followed easily then: a white satin scarf held by Emily’s cameo brooch, patent court shoes—low-heeled, of course—a black dévoré shawl.

But I insisted, and so the thumping twangy bass noise resumed, and over it, a light baritone chanting in Caribbean patois to the rhythms of a nursery rhyme, or a playground skipping-rope jingle.

But from a distance it had a stark and unprotected look.

I stood at the window to admire the sunlight slanting over the golf course, and burnishing the bare trees on the distant hills.

And so it was that I entered that enormous L-shaped room, on his arm, in my cashmere finery, to the applause, and then the raised glasses of fifty relatives.

His body was frail, which made his head seem large and gave him an ethereal look.

It grieved her parents to see their firstborn
Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne
Without permission, to get ill and find indigence
Until she was down to her last sixpence.

It grieved her parents to see their firstborn
Evanesce from her home to go to Eastbourne
Without permission, to get ill and find indigence
Until she was down to her last sixpence.

Suddenly, she was right there before me, that busy, priggish, conceited little girl, and she was not dead either, for when people tittered appreciatively at “evanesce” my feeble heart—ridiculous vanity!—made a little leap.

For that fortuitous girl the sweet day dawned
To wed her gorgeous prince.

But be warned,
Because Arabella almost learned too late,
That before we love, we must cogitate!

Here’s the beginning of love at the end of our travail.

The obvious suggestions have been made—displace, transmute, dissemble.

Lovers and their happy ends have been on my mind all night long. As into the sunset we sail. An unhappy inversion.

Or rather, I’ve made a huge digression and doubled back to my starting place.

The problem these fifty-nine years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?