London, 1999

Summary: London, 1999

Briony wakes up on her seventy-seventh birthday and decides to visit the library of the Imperial War Museum. She found out the day before that she has vascular dementia and hopes to make sure everything in the archives is in order before she loses her memory completely. As she arrives at the museum, she passes by Lord and Lady Marshall, Paul and Lola, on their way out. The Marshalls are now well known for their philanthropic actions, grand parties, and libel suits against various newspapers. Though they both have aged, Briony thinks that Paul looks in good shape for his eighty-eight years, while eighty-year-old Lola is in remarkable shape. She realizes that while Paul may die before Briony, Lola almost certainly will not, which will affect the publication of her next book. In the reading room, Briony hands over to the Keeper of Documents a bundle of letters she received from Corporal Nettle about Dunkirk, to be stored with the other letters Briony has provided. The Keeper delivers to Briony notes from an amateur historian he had introduced to Briony that detail historical inaccuracies and suggested revisions for her latest manuscript.

Back at her flat, Briony dresses for her birthday dinner and regards a picture of her deceased husband, Thierry. A car arrives to pick Briony up and drives her to her old family estate, which is now a hotel. She sees that the lake and the island are now gone, a lawn in their place. As Briony is shown to her room, she finds she does not feel nostalgic about the changes but is glad that people can find more happiness in this place as a hotel than when it was her home. Briony goes down to greet her guests, who include Leon, Pierrot, and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Relatives approach Briony to praise her books. Charles, Pierrot’s grandson, invites Briony to sit, and as a surprise, the children perform The Trials of Arabella.

After dinner, Briony is unable to sleep, thinking about her most recent novel, which she began in 1940 and finished only this year. She feels that she has finally done justice to describing the crime that she, Lola, and Paul Marshall all committed in the summer of 1935. She has disguised nothing, including names, and for this reason, her editors have warned her against publishing until Lola and Paul Marshall are dead due to their penchant for lawsuits. After seeing the Marshalls this morning, Briony knows that this means the book will not be published until she is dead as well. Only in the latest version of Briony’s novel does the story end with Cecilia and Robbie, the star-crossed lovers, together on a London street. Briony thinks it would serve no purpose to end with the truth: that Robbie died of sepsis on the way to Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed by a bomb in the London Underground. Briony feels that when she, Lola, and Paul are dead along with Robbie and Cecilia, they will all only exist as inventions of Briony’s imagination. She hopes that her novel serves as a final kindness to the memories of Robbie and Cecilia and pictures them in attendance, still together and in love, at her birthday party.

Analysis: London, 1999

This section finally reveals what the story has been all along: Briony’s novel, recounting what happened that summer in 1935 and its consequences. While she has tried to report everything as accurately as possible, corresponding with Corporal Nettle to receive a firsthand account of what Robbie experienced in the war, she has changed only the ending, hoping to give the long-deceased Cecilia and Robbie the happiness they never got to experience themselves. This reveal shows how Briony, sixty-four years after she wrote The Trials of Arabella, still uses her storytelling to craft real life to her own liking. Briony is not doing this selfishly, as the power of her words is the only tool she has to craft a happy ending for two people who died long ago. She hopes that the story can serve as an atonement for her sin, which had such devastating consequences. However, she knows she can never be forgiven, as the only people whose forgiveness she seeks can no longer give it. In a way, the story serves as Briony’s way of forgiving herself. If Cecilia and Robbie ended up together, then Briony’s crime was really not so damaging after all. However, that ending only exists in fiction.

Learning that Briony has been the author of the story also casts doubt on accounts delivered that were supposedly from the perspective of other people. This section is the only one in the novel told from first-person point of view. The rest have all been told in the third person for each character, including Briony. Although Briony has attempted to present an unbiased account of the truth, her story has proven that no one’s perspective is without bias, judgment, or assumption. Since Cecilia cut her family off after Robbie’s arrest, how can Briony know what really happened between the two of them at the fountain or in the library? She has read their letters and so knows they were in love, but would still have had to fill in certain aspects, which would have been influenced by her own biases.

Even decades after Briony’s crime, Cecilia and Robbie’s deaths, the end of a war, and a loving marriage, Briony’s guilt still weighs heavily on her. Most of the rest of the world has forgotten about what happened to Cecilia and Robbie. Any of their family members who remembered that night in 1935 are either dead, senile, or purposefully forgetful, and the scene of the crime has been literally erased. Even though Briony’s book will not be published until all those involved are dead, Briony has used her power of storytelling to make sure that Cecilia and Robbie’s memories live on.