On Chesil Beach (2007) by Mcewan Ian

Author:Mcewan, Ian [Mcewan, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-18T22:00:00+00:00

4

In the brief year between his first encounter with Florence in St Giles' and their wedding in St Mary's less than half a mile away, Edward was often an overnight guest at the large Victorian villa off the Banbury Road. Violet Ponting assigned him to what the family called the 'small room', on the top floor, chastely remote from Florence's, with a view over a walled garden a hundred yards long and, beyond, the grounds of a college or an old people's home - he never troubled to discover which. The 'small room' was larger than any of the bedrooms at the Turville Heath cottage, and possibly larger than its sitting room. One wall was covered in plain white-painted shelves of Loeb editions in Latin and Greek. Edward liked the association with such austere learning, though he knew he fooled no one by leaving out copies of Epictetus or Strabo on the bedside table. Like everywhere else in the house, the walls of his room were exotically painted white - there was not a scrap of wallpaper in the Ponting domain, floral or striped - and the floor was bare, untreated boards. He had the top of the house to himself, with an extensive bathroom on a half-landing, with Victorian windows of coloured glass and varnished cork tiles - another novelty.

His bed was wide and unusually hard. In a corner, under the slope of a roof, was a scrubbed deal table with an anglepoise lamp and a kitchen chair, painted blue. There were no pictures or rugs or ornaments, no chopped-up magazines, or any other remains of hobbies or projects. For the first time in his life he made a partial effort to be tidy, for this was a room like no other he had known, one in which it was possible to have calm, uncluttered thoughts. It was here one brilliant November midnight that Edward wrote a formal letter to Violet and Geoffrey Ponting declaring his ambition to marry their daughter, and did not quite ask their permission so much as confidently expect their approval.

He was not wrong. They appeared delighted, and marked the engagement with a family lunch one Sunday at the Randolph Hotel. Edward knew too little about the world to be surprised by his welcome into the Ponting household. He politely took it as his due, as Florence's steady boyfriend and then fiance, that when he hitch-hiked or took the train from Henley to Oxford, his room was always there for him, that there were always meals at which his opinions about the government and the world situation would be solicited, that he would have the run of the library and the garden with its croquet and marked-out badminton court. He was grateful, but not at all surprised, when his laundry was absorbed into the family's and a tidy ironed pile appeared on the blanket at the end of his bed, courtesy of the cleaning lady, who came every single weekday.

It seemed only proper that Geoffrey Ponting should want to play tennis with him on the grass courts at Summertown.

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