Atonement: Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Emily prepares to telephone PC Vockins, the village constable. She thinks more about Lola’s injuries and feels little sympathy, because Lola reminds her of her scene-stealing sister Hermione. She wonders if she should hold off calling the constable, since Jack will call soon to apologize for his absence. She appears to suspect that his nights away from home indicate an extramarital affair, but both she and her husband are too averse to conflict to discuss the topic with one another. Emily thinks more on her husband’s career, and remembers catching a glimpse of some of his paperwork, which showed calculations predicting the casualties from the impending warfare.

Emily stays seated inside and muses that her refusal to “join in” the searching seems like a holdover from her ten-year-old self. She reflects on the dinner and notices that Robbie looked somewhat “manic;” and wonders if perhaps he is smoking marijuana. Emily sees Robbie as “a hobby of Jack’s,” cultivated to validate Jack’s notions of equality. She was not in favor of funding Robbie’s education, and has often remarked that “nothing good will come of it.”

Nevertheless, Emily thinks, Briony was out of line in her treatment of Robbie at the dinner. Paul Marshall eased the tension “artfully,” thinks Emily, and she wonders if he would make a good suitor for Cecilia. His chocolate business will make him enormously rich. After Emily muses for another half hour, Jack calls. Emily tells him of Robbie’s manic look at the table and asks if they really need to be funding medical school for him. Jack responds that they do.

Suddenly, Leon, Cecilia, and Briony enter, comforting a ghostly pale Lola. Leon reaches for the phone and tells his father to come home. He seems furious, but tries to calm himself. He tells his mother that she should sit down, and Emily is terrified that Leon’s news is so bad that he wants her to be seated before he delivers it.