The Sixth Lamentation Part 18

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

1.

Anselm left Mr Roderick Kemble QC prostrate in a cab at Waterloo and hurried through the Eurostar terminal, finding his seat a matter of minutes before the train lurched forward.

He gloomily skimmed a cutting on The Round Table Wilf had given to him. He'd shown the text to Roddy who'd glanced over it while he ate, raising an aimless question as to why Jacques was interrogated in the June when the ring was not broken until the July With affection, Anselm had filled the Master's gla.s.s. As expected Roddy appeared not to have read the cutting. The June arrest had had nothing to do with the events of the following month. Only a Silk of Roddy's standing could get away with that sort of blunder - and he did, frequently with breathtaking aplomb.

Once in Paris, Anselm took a room in a cheap hotel near Sacre Coeur. The next morning he set off for the Boulevard de Courcelles, near Parc Monceau, to the Fougeres home, wondering how he was going to phrase the application of the law to the death of their son.

All the witnesses were agreed on the basic facts: the pensioner, Mr Ogden, had grabbed the man with the white beard (Milby never named him. Instead he used a rather coa.r.s.e term of art) . The man with the beard had told him to let go, but Mr Ogden had then drawn back his fist. So the other had struck out. At that point Pascal Fougeres had slipped and fallen, banging his head. The terms of the conversation prior to the altercation had also been agreed. But, as the investigating officer repeatedly pointed out to the outraged witnesses, nothing said by the man with the beard const.i.tuted a criminal offence. Milby told Anselm that the police would have liked to nail him, ideally with a manslaughter charge under the doctrine of transferred malice - on the understanding that the backhand slap directed at Mr Ogden technically 'shifted' to Pascal. But that ignored the only compelling legal a.n.a.lysis: Mr Ogden was the aggressor and the response of his victim was not an unlawful act. The brute fact was that the terms of every other potential charge could not be stretched to accommodate the offensiveness of the victim.

After it became known that Pascal had died, the man with the white beard informed the police that he would not insist on charges being laid against Mr Ogden.

2.

Etienne was the son of Claude Fougeres and the nephew of Jacques, the Resistance hero. After the war the family had remained in the South - until the eighties when Etienne's political career rose from local to national level. That prompted the return to Paris. The house had been rented out for nearly forty years, so it was a real homecoming.

'And then, just when things got back to where they were before the war, Pascal was taken away Anselm gleaned this and more from the mumbling old butler who opened the great black front door and took him slowly to a drawing room on the third floor.

Monsieur and Madame Fougeres were subdued elegance itself, sitting apart on either end of a pink chaise longue, their faces darkened by grief. Anselm moved gently over the terrain of sympathy, explaining the predicament faced by the police enquiry. To his surprise, they understood perfectly They made no complaint: no sallies against the Law; no plea for a fairer world. They did not expect the legal system to give them something it was not designed, and could not be designed, to produce: a civic response proportionate to their loss. But while he spoke Anselm observed, painfully the cleft that had opened between mother and father. It was freshly cut.

'I begged him not to go after that man. Begged him. But he would not listen,' said Etienne.

Monique Fougeres closed her eyes slowly, her hands cupped upon her lap.

'I wish he'd left the past alone,' said Etienne. 'It's not a safe place while it touches on the living.'

Madame Fougeres lowered her head, speaking quietly 'Tell me anything he said, Father, anything at all. I want to imagine his voice.'

'We only spoke about Schwermann ... and someone called Agnes.'

Anselm threw in the last half-truth as the door opened and the butler brought forth tea. Etienne's facial muscles had seized. The butler poured. Etienne reached for a small cup.

'Agnes?' he said, enquiringly 'Yes. I got the impression she was once known to the family'

'No, I'm afraid not.'

Anselm thought: you're lying. He said, 'Apparently she had a child.'

'Pardon?' said Etienne, an eyebrow raised, offering milk for the English palate.

'A child.'

'I'm sorry, no. As far as I know, Jacques never knew anyone called Agnes.'

Anselm felt the warm trembling of success: we were talking about Pascal, not Jacques...

Monique Fougeres looked at her husband across a void. The butler softly closed the doors and the cleft between mother and father fell open wide.

3.

By the great entrance cars chased each other down the Boulevard de Courcelles. The butler stepped outside with Anselm, his eyes towards the ornate gates of Parc Monceau. He said, 'I knew Agnes Aubret.'

Anselm only just caught the words.

'I held her child.'

The raucous sound of children spilled out from the park, scattering through the pa.s.sing cars.

'Is she alive?' The butler spoke as though he would die.

'I'm not sure, but I think so. I've met a young woman who knows her.'

The butler pushed his hand deep into his pocket and produced a tattered envelope.

'Father, please, find out if she's alive. Give her this. It's from Jacques. He asked me to get it to her after the war, if he was caught and she survived.'

Anselm took the envelope.

'Say Mr Snyman has borne it for fifty years.'

The butler stepped back and the door swung shut. Anselm stood still, slightly stunned. He took another walk through the park to calm himself. It was crawling with children on their lunch break, arriving in cohorts from a nearby school. He paused by the gates into Avenue Hoche. A group entered two by two, each child wearing a white sash. And on the sash was the name of the school and a telephone number so that not one of them could be lost.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

The stout figure in the witness box was dressed in black and wore round bottle-end gla.s.ses. She did not require the interpreter and answered Mr Penshaw's questions with a disturbingly loud and deep voice.

'Your name, please, Madame?' said Mr Penshaw 'Collette Beaussart.'

'You were born in Paris on 4th October 1918?' 'Yes.'

'You are now seventy-seven years of age?' 'I am.'

'You are a Knight of the Legion of Honour?'

'I am.'

'You were decorated by General de Gaulle at the Invalides in 1946?'

'I was.'

'Please confirm the following. You were a journalist and condemned the n.a.z.i leadership prior to the fall of France and afterwards. You were arrested on 18th February 1942. You were deported. You are a survivor of Drancy, Auschwitz and Ravensbruck.'

'I am.'

Before calling any evidence, Mr Penshaw told the jury he intended to present the first witness, Madame Beaussart, out of chronological order so as to give them a constant reminder of what the case was really about. 'And so, ladies and gentlemen, in the coming days when you are listening to bare, lifeless facts about train timetables or the method used to fill in a deportation record, remember well what Madame Beaussart will now relate.'

Lucy listened with a sort of proprietorial desperation. She had recognised the name. Collette Beaussart was the political prisoner Agnes had written about. They'd both got typhus and saved one another through talking ... about jam. This was the woman who'd claimed Agnes was part of the group to which she belonged, the politicals who were transferred to Ravensbruck. Lucy wanted to stand up, to claim the witness as her friend. But a wall had been built. She would listen, like everyone else; and watch her go, like everyone else.

Madame Beaussart was twenty-four when the gates of Drancy closed behind her. She witnessed the arrival of children taken in the Vel d'Hiv round-up, after separation from their parents. She saw them depart for the East. 'I saw them come. I saw them go.'

The courtroom was utterly quiet, save for Madame Beaussart and the soft scuffle of pen upon paper. Lucy was on the edge of her seat.

'They came in boxcars, all of them under thirteen or fourteen years, the youngest just over a year or so. They were filthy their bodies covered with sores. Many had dysentery. Attempts to clean them were futile. Some were seriously ill with diphtheria ... scarlet fever. One of them, naked, asked me why her mother had left her behind. I said she'd only gone away for a while ...'

Madame Beaussart's voice, loud, wavering, uncompromising, described the horrors of trying to care for the abandoned.

'Like the rest of the prisoners, they slept on dirty straw mattresses until their time came to move on. Them their heads were shaved.'

At dawn, Madame Beaussart and other internees brought the children from where they lay to the courtyard. Some didn't even have shoes. In groups of fifty they were packed on to buses. Each bore the number of a freight carriage. A thousand left at a time for the station at Bourget.

It was Schwermann who, with others, supervised their departure.

'He paced back and forth, impatiently, lists in hand, his face like stone, barking orders. I can still see the children ... and I hear now the engines that took them away.'

Mr Penshaw sat down.

'Madame Beaussart,' said a yielding, compa.s.sionate voice. It was Mr Bartlett. He stood perfectly still, rotating a pencil between his fingers. 'Should you wish to sit down at any time, please do not hesitate to ask his Lordship.'

'Thank you, but no.'

'Could you please describe what you can recall about the appearance of the camp at Drancy?'

'I can remember it all.'

'Then choose the details which you remember best.'

'I said I can remember everything, sir. I cannot forget: 'You remember the armed guards?'

'They were French, my own countrymen. ''The provision of electricity?'

'Almost entirely lacking.'

'How many prisoners to a room?'

'About fifty: 'Sleeping on what?'

'Bunk beds, planks. Many slept on plain straw '

'If I may say so, Madame Beaussart, your memory is without fault.'

Lucy glanced at the judge, his head still, his hand writing down every word as it fell.

Mr Bartlett picked up a sheet of paper. He seemed to hover over its contents, then spoke in the same even, encouraging voice.

'Do you recollect anything in particular about Mr Schwermann's appearance?'

'He was very handsome, with blond hair standing out against his black uniform.'

'Let me test your memory again, Madame.' Mr Bartlett was smiling winsomely 'Do you recall the leather riding breeches?'

'Yes, I do. They shone.'

Mr Bartlett paused to look at the sheet of paper.

'You would agree this form of dress was distinctive?'

'Oh yes.'

'Idiosyncratic?'

'Yes.'

'Utterly memorable?'

'Yes.'

'Almost a caricature of a German officer, the sort of thing you've seen in the films?'

'No, not in films. I don't watch them. I can't bear to. I have pictures of my own and they've never gone away I cannot forget that man and what he did. Never, never, never.

Madame Beaussart covered her mouth.