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It is 1962 when Edward and Florence, 23 and 22 respectively, marry and repair to a hotel on the Dorset coast for their honeymoon. They are both virgins, both apprehensive about what's next and in Florence's case, utterly and blindly terrified and repelled by the little she knows. Through a tense dinner in their room, because Florence has decided that the weather is not fine enough to dine on the terrace, they are attended by two local boys acting as waiters. The cameo appearances of the boys and Edward and Florence's parents and siblings serve only to underline the emotional isolation of the two principals. Florence says of herself: "...she lacked some simple mental trick that everyone else had, a mechanism so ordinary that no one ever mentioned it, an immediate sensual connection to people and events, and to her own needs and desires...."

内容简介

In 1962, Florence and Edward celebrate their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties weighs over them. And unbeknownst to both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

作者简介

IAN McEWAN is the author of two collections of stories and ten previous novels, including Enduring Love, Amsterdam, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1998, Atonement, and Saturday.

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ONE

They were young, educated, and both virgins on this,their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversationabout sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is nevereasy. They had just sat down to supper in a tiny sitting room onthe first floor of a Georgian inn. In the next room, visiblethrough the open door, was a four–poster bed, rather narrow, whosebedcover was pure white and stretched startlingly smooth, as thoughby no human hand. Edward did not mention that he had never stayedin a hotel before, whereas Florence, after many trips as a childwith her father, was an old hand. Superficially, they were in finespirits. Their wedding, at St. Mary’s, Oxford, had gone well; theservice was decorous, the reception jolly, the send–off from schooland college friends raucous and uplifting. Her parents had notcondescended to his, as they had feared, and his mother had notsignificantly misbehaved, or completely forgotten the purpose ofthe occasion. The couple had driven away in a small car belongingto Florence’s mother and arrived in the early evening at theirhotel on the Dorset coast in weather that was not perfect formid–July or the circumstances, but entirely adequate: it was notraining, but nor was it quite warm enough, according to Florence,to eat outside on the terrace as they had hoped. Edward thought itwas, but, polite to a fault, he would not think of contradictingher on such an evening.

So they were eating in their rooms before the partially open Frenchwindows that gave onto a balcony and a view of a portion of theEnglish Channel, and Chesil Beach with its infinite shingle. Twoyouths in dinner jackets served them from a trolley parked outsidein the corridor, and their comings and goings through what wasgenerally known as the honeymoon suite made the waxed oak boardssqueak comically against the silence. Proud and protective, theyoung man watched closely for any gesture or expression that mighthave seemed satirical. He could not have tolerated any sniggering.But these lads from a nearby village went about their business withbowed backs and closed faces, and their manner was tentative, theirhands shook as they set items down on the starched linentablecloth. They were nervous too.

ONE 
 They were young, educated, and both virgins on this,
their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation
about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never
easy. They had just sat down to supper in a tiny sitting room on
the first floor of a Georgian inn. In the next room, visible
through the open door, was a four–poster bed, rather narrow, whose
bedcover was pure white and stretched startlingly smooth, as though
by no human hand. Edward did not mention that he had never stayed
in a hotel before, whereas Florence, after many trips as a child
with her father, was an old hand. Superficially, they were in fine
spirits. Their wedding, at St. Mary’s, Oxford, had gone well; the
service was decorous, the reception jolly, the send–off from school
and college friends raucous and uplifting. Her parents had not
condescended to his, as they had feared, and his mother had not
significantly misbehaved, or completely forgotten the purpose of
the occasion. The couple had driven away in a small car belonging
to Florence’s mother and arrived in the early evening at their
hotel on the Dorset coast in weather that was not perfect for
mid–July or the circumstances, but entirely adequate: it was not
raining, but nor was it quite warm enough, according to Florence,
to eat outside on the terrace as they had hoped. Edward thought it
was, but, polite to a fault, he would not think of contradicting
her on such an evening. 
 
So they were eating in their rooms before the partially open French
windows that gave onto a balcony and a view of a portion of the
English Channel, and Chesil Beach with its infinite shingle. Two
youths in dinner jackets served them from a trolley parked outside
in the corridor, and their comings and goings through what was
generally known as the honeymoon suite made the waxed oak boards
squeak comically against the silence. Proud and protective, the
young man watched closely for any gesture or expression that might
have seemed satirical. He could not have tolerated any sniggering.
But these lads from a nearby village went about their business with
bowed backs and closed faces, and their manner was tentative, their
hands shook as they set items down on the starched linen
tablecloth. They were nervous too. 
 
This was not a good moment in the history of English cuisine, but
no one much minded at the time, except visitors from abroad. The
formal meal began, as so many did then, with a slice of melon
decorated by a single glazed cherry. Out in the corridor, in silver
dishes on candle–heated plate warmers, waited slices of long–ago
roasted beef in a thickened gravy, soft boiled vegetables, and
potatoes of a bluish hue. The wine was from France, though no
particular region was mentioned on the label, which was embellished
with a solitary darting swallow. It would not have crossed Edward’s
mind to have ordered a red. 
 
Desperate for the waiters to leave, he and Florence turned in their
chairs to consider the view of a broad mossy lawn, and beyond, a
tangle of flowering shrubs and trees clinging to a steep bank that
descended to a lane that led to the beach. They could see the
beginnings of a footpath, dropping by muddy steps, a way lined by
weeds of extravagant size—giant rhubarb and cabbages they looked
like, with swollen stalks more than six feet tall, bending under
the weight of dark, thick–veined leaves. The garden vegetation rose
up, sensuous and tropical in its profusion, an effect heightened by
the gray, soft light and a delicate mist drifting in from the sea,
whose steady motion of advance and withdrawal made sounds of gentle
thunder, then sudden hissing against the pebbles. Their plan was to
change into rough shoes after supper and walk on the shingle
between the sea and the lagoon known as the fleet, and if they had
not finished the wine, they would take that along, and swig from
the bottle like gentlemen of the road. 
 
And they had so many plans, giddy plans, heaped up before them in
the misty future, as richly tangled as the summer flora of the
Dorset coast, and as beautiful. Where and how they would live, who
their close friends would be, his job with her father’s firm, her
musical career and what to do with the money her father had given
her, and how they would not be like other people, at least, not
inwardly. This was still the era—it would end later in that famous
decade—when to be young was a social encumbrance, a mark of
irrelevance, a faintly embarrassing condition for which marriage
was the beginning of a cure. Almost strangers, they stood,
strangely together, on a new pinnacle of existence, gleeful that
their new status promised to promote them out of their endless
youth—Edward and Florence, free at last! One of their favorite
topics was their childhoods, not so much the pleasures as the fog
of comical misconceptions from which they had emerged, and the
various parental errors and outdated practices they could now
forgive. 
 
From these new heights they could see clearly, but they could not
describe to each other certain contradictory feelings: they
separately worried about the moment, sometime soon after dinner,
when their new maturity would be tested, when they would lie down
together on the four–poster bed and reveal themselves fully to each
other. For over a year, Edward had been mesmerized by the prospect
that on the evening of a given date in July the most sensitive
portion of himself would reside, however briefly, within a
naturally formed cavity inside this cheerful, pretty, formidably
intelligent woman. How this was to be achieved without absurdity,
or disappointment, troubled him. His specific worry, based on one
unfortunate experience, was of overexcitement, of what he had heard
someone describe as “arriving too soon.” The matter was rarely out
of his thoughts, but though his fear of failure was great, his
eagerness—for rapture, for resolution—was far greater. 
 
Florence’s anxieties were more serious, and there were moments
during the journey from Oxford when she thought she was about to
draw on all her courage to speak her mind. But what troubled her
was unutterable, and she could barely frame it for herself. Where
he merely suffered conventional first-night nerves, she experienced
a visceral dread, a helpless disgust as palpable as seasickness.
For much of the time, through all the months of merry wedding
preparation, she managed to ignore this stain on her happiness, but
whenever her thoughts turned toward a close embrace—she preferred
no other term—her stomach tightened dryly, she was nauseous at the
back of her throat. In a modern, forward–looking handbook that was
supposed to be helpful to young brides, with its cheery tones and
exclamation marks and numbered illustrations, she came across
certain phrases or words that almost made her gag: mucous
membrane, and the sinister and glistening glans. Other
phrases offended her intelligence, particularly those concerning
entrances: Not long before he enters her…or, now at last he
enters her, and, happily, soon after he has entered her…Was she
obliged on the night to transform herself for Edward into a kind of
portal or drawing room through which he might process? Almost as
frequent was a word that suggested to her nothing but pain, flesh
parted before a knife: penetration. 
 
In optimistic moments she tried to convince herself that she
suffered no more than a heightened form of squeamishness, which was
bound to pass. Certainly, the thought of Edward's testicles,
pendulous below his engorged penis—another horrifying
term—had the potency to make her upper lip curl, and the idea of
herself being touched “down there” by someone else, even someone
she loved, was as repulsive as, say, a surgical procedure on her
eye. But her squeamishness did not extend to babies. She liked
them; she had looked after her cousin’'s little boys on occasion
and enjoyed herself. She thought she would love being pregnant by
Edward, and in the abstract, at least, she had no fears about
childbirth. If only she could, like the mother of Jesus, arrive at
that swollen state by magic. 
 
Florence suspected that there was something profoundly wrong with
her, that she had always been different, and that at last she was
about to be exposed. Her problem, she thought, was greater, deeper,
than straightforward physical disgust; her whole being was in
revolt against a prospect of entanglement and flesh; her composure
and essential happiness were about to be violated. She simply did
not want to be “entered” or “penetrated.” Sex with Edward could not
be the summation of her joy, but was the price she must pay for
it. 
 
She knew she should have spoken up long ago, as soon as he
proposed, long before the visit to the sincere and soft–voiced
vicar, and dinners with their respective parents, before the
wedding guests were invited, the gift list devised and lodged with
a department store, and the marquee and photographer hired, and all
the other irreversible arrangements. But what could she have said,
what possible terms could she have used when she could not have
named the matter to herself? And she loved Edward, not with the
hot, moist passion she had read about, but warmly, deeply,
sometimes like a daughter, sometimes almost maternally. She loved
cuddling him, and having his enormous arm around her shoulders, and
being kissed by him, though she disliked his tongue in her mouth
and had wordlessly made this clear. She thought he was original,
unlike anyone she had ever met. He always had a paperback book,
usually history, in his jacket pocket in case he found himself in a
queue or a waiting room. He marked what he read with a pencil stub.
He was virtually the only man Florence had met who did not smoke.
None of his socks matched. He had only one tie, narrow, knitted,
dark blue, which he wore nearly all the time with a white shirt.
She adored his curious mind, his mild country accent, the huge
st...

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