Atonement

falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.

From this new and intimate perspective, she learned a simple, obvious thing she had always known, and everyone knew: that a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.

a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn, not easily mended.

She was unforgivable.

Paul Marshall and Lola Quincey were to be married

He was falling now and sleep was all he wanted, a thousand hours of sleep. It was easier.

Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence.

No one would see them if he left them here and went back. Invisible baggage.

Through the material of his coat he felt for the bundle of her letters. I’ll wait for you. Come back. The words were not meaningless, but they didn’t touch him now. It was clear enough—one person waiting for another was like an arithmetical sum, and just as empty of emotion. Waiting. Simply one person doing nothing, over time, while another approached. Waiting was a heavy word. He felt it pressing down, heavy as a greatcoat. Everyone in the cellar was waiting, everyone on the beach. She was waiting, yes, but then what? He tried to make her voice say the words, but it was his own he heard, just below the tread of his heart. He could not even form her face. He forced his thoughts toward the new situation, the one that was supposed to make him happy. The intricacies were lost to him, the urgency had died.

In sudden petulance, Corporal Nettle sat down in the road, took off his boots and flung them into a field. He said he hated them, he fucking hated them more than all the fucking Germans put together. And his blisters were so bad he was better off with fuck all.