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I tell you all this, Patrick, so you’ll know how it was between me and Tom. So you’ll know there was tenderness, as well as pain. So you’ll know how we failed, both of us, but also how we both tried.
This passage is found in Part III, after Marion describes having sex with Tom for the first time on their wedding night. The scene has none of the passion and shared excitement of the moments of sexual intimacy between Tom and Patrick, yet Marion nevertheless feels a sense of wonder at having Tom so close. While Tom is awkward with Marion’s body, he is also kind to her, sharing with her an intimacy that is important to her though it falls short of what she craves. This moment demonstrates the complicated nature of their relationship to one another. In many ways, they are a less natural pair than Tom and Patrick, with far less sexual chemistry. Yet in this passage, Marion insists to Patrick that their relationship is nevertheless real in its own right. Tom and Marion do care for one another, despite their failures as a couple. While their marriage is ultimately a lonely one, they are both trying to make it work.
Lifting my feet off the bottom, I thought: He taught me to swim, but what use has it been? It would have been better never to have gone in the water at all.
These words are spoken by Marion in Part III as she visits the seafront with Julia after leafletting for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Tom and Patrick are in Venice. As they wade in, Marion goes to the deep water for the first time since her swimming lesson with Tom, feeling fearless as the sea moves her body. In this moment, she experiences something like what Tom did on the day he began their lessons, his body buoyant in the waves. However, the realization feels empty. Marion’s reason to learn with Tom was always to get closer to him, but it was always a hopeless effort because he was not driven to be close to her in the same way. Tom’s lessons came with a physical intimacy Marion hoped would translate into a sexual relationship, but instead, she finds herself alone in the waves. This suggests she is, in many ways, “at sea” in her marriage, lost as to how things could have gone so wrong. In this passage, the loneliness that defines her relationship with Tom makes her regret ever attempting to grow close to him.
Neither of us got what we wanted. Such a small thing, really—who does? And yet our ridiculous, blind, naive, brave, romantic longing for it is perhaps what binds us together, for I don’t believe either of us has ever truly accepted our defeat.
In this passage, from Part V of the novel, Marion directly addresses Patrick and reflects on the ways they are similar to each other. The connection they share through their love of Tom is a motif throughout the book. In this quotation, Marion notes that, in addition to their love of Tom and their shared views on mothers working outside of the home, they share the experience of a hopeless longing for Tom. Although Patrick initially meets Marion only to get closer to Tom, the two form their own friendship as well, a friendship they eventually lose as a consequence of Marion’s betrayal of Patrick. Marion’s decision to take Patrick into their home in 1999 is as much a gesture of rebuilding that connection as it is an act of contrition for having written the letter that ended his relationship with Tom in 1958.
