The Sixth Lamentation Part 9

Victor breathed deeply; his eyes scanned the silent, tumbling sea, the long threads of foam clinging on to light that vanished on the sh.o.r.e. Robert remained by his side, as if he were a boy again, and together they faced the vast, brightening darkness.

'Son, I am not who you think I am. I am another man, someone I buried fifty years ago, after the war. Someone who, but for you, would have been better dead.' .

No questions came. And, not seeing Robert or the confusion that must be clouding his eyes, Victor picked his way over all that might be said.

'My name was Brionne. I was a police officer seconded by chance to the Gestapo: Victor's attention shifted to Robert's hand. It was heavy upon him. I beg you, don't take it away ...

'To some I was a collaborator ... there was nothing I could do to stop ...' Now that simply wasn't true, and he knew it. His voice trailed off. How much shall I say? If I go too far, I'll go over the edge. It will all come out. I can't... I can't do that.

Victor tried again. 'I worked as an a.s.sistant to a young German officer, Eduard Schwermann. He's the one who's claimed sanctuary in a monastery. You've read the papers ... Francis talked of him last night.'

Victor lived each moment through that hand, his existence depending on the movement of someone else's fingers.

'Pascal Fougeres, who found Schwermann, will almost certainly come looking for me ...' Again, his voice faltered on the threshold of complete disclosure. 'Schwermann will also seek me out ... I suspect there will be others ... they'll all want me for the trial.'

Victor felt the grip of panic. He told himself: you'll be all right, you've already planned for this. When he left Les Moineaux he had a new ident.i.ty; he was Victor Berkeley But that name was known to Schwermann and the monks. So when Victor got to England he changed it again, to Brownlow No one else knew. Again he said to the beating in his chest: you'll be all right ... but don't wait around ...

It was now completely dark outside. Tiny lights from fishing boats twinkled in the distance upon the hidden, brooding presence of the sea. The catch was out there somewhere in the deep, but they'd be found and decked by morning.

'Robert, I cannot tell you any more. Perhaps one day things might be different. But for now, if you can, trust me. Trust me as you've never trusted anyone before. Believe me,' Victor swallowed hard, reaching out for words that might slip through the gap between truth and deceit, 'it has been the curse of my life that I ever knew that man.

Victor waited, his eyes closed, facing an abyss. Robert's hand lay still upon him.

'I have to hide,' he said simply 'I have to go where no one would think of looking for me, until it's all over. Then I can bury Victor Brionne for the last time. And after that ... I'll be your father again ... the man you have known.' Tears filled his eyes, rising from a deep, ancient sorrow Robert's hand fell away After a long moment, Victor heard these words, quietly spoken: 'I don't know Brionne. As far as I'm concerned, he's still dead. He's not my father and never was. You are. You were and always will be.'

Tramping footsteps and voices mingled on the stairs. It was time for a game of Consequences before the crackling fire.

Chapter Fifteen.

1.

'I won't be going into hospital at all. I want to die here.'

'But you can't. '

'I can and I will. This is my home. This is where I'll die.'

Lucy sank her nails into her thighs, as if they were party of her father's neck. Susan fiddled with the b.u.t.tons on her blouse. This was the inevitable confrontation between mother and son. They had all gathered at Chiswick Mall that afternoon, at Freddie's instigation, to deal with the question 'my mother won't face'.

Agnes walked deliberately across the room as if she had a pile of books on her head. She flopped confidently into her usual chair by the bay window 'Mother, your legs are giving way more often, you- 'I know'

'-need a wheelchair-'

'I know'

'Getting in and out will not be straightforward.' 'No.'

'You already need help with washing.'

'Freddie-'

'Before long, there are going to be problems with feeding, talking, moving-'

'Freddie,' said Agnes, her voice rising and the muscles on her face beginning to contort.

'The house will need cleaning, sheets washed, bedclothes changed-'

'Freddie- '

'-what about going to the toilet-'

'FREDDIEEeeeeeee!' Agnes' cry became a strange howl, rising and trailing off. She heaved with a sort of anguished laughter, tears gathering in her eyes, her thin hands shaking uncontrollably 'Now look what you've done,' snapped Lucy, running towards her. Agnes waved her away, angrily, her mouth locked wide open.

Freddie pulled at his hair, saying sorry over and over again. Agnes was trying to say something by hand gesture, her head thrown back while she moaned.

Lucy could barely contain her anger. 'Just read this, will you? Go on, read it.' She reached over to the bureau and handed her father a piece of paper. Agnes had written an explanation: Sometimes I laugh or cry or wail for no reason. Please ignore me while it lasts. It will stop soon. Thank you.

Lucy took the paper back. Agnes was quiet now No one said anything. Susan made some tea.

Agnes sipped from old china, the tinkling saucer held beneath. The cup was so fragile that sunlight pa.s.sed through its clay, tracing the outline of frail fingers on the other side.

'Freddie, don't worry. It's difficult for all of us. But I've made my mind up,' said Agnes kindly Freddie moved to speak. He was resolute, as if he too had made up his mind. He was going to press his point. Lucy felt a flash of anger and confusion. There was such a dreadful mix of motives and concerns. Yes, Agnes was going to deteriorate, and planning was necessary. But there was another powerful drive, and that was Freddie's reluctance, if not refusal, to become ensnared in day-in day-out nursing care. The illness was creeping up on all of them. Lucy could see her father's terror. He wasn't capable of giving Agnes what she needed, he could not carry the strain of intimate dependence on him. And now he was feeling rising desperation, shifting from right to left as if routes of escape were closing down. Lucy saw all this internal squirming, while her father sat stock-still on the settee, his hands on his knees as if for a school photograph. And she loathed it, in him and in herself.

'I won't need your help. None of you need worry about that: Freddie immediately spilled a lie: 'We're not worried, we want to help. It's just that we've got to be practical. All of us.'

'I've already planned everything, Freddie.'

No one knew what to say The question they were all asking themselves didn't need to be asked. Agnes nodded at her tea cup, wanting more. 'And a chocolate finger, please, Lucy' Freddie relaxed a little with the promise of relief. And, hating herself for it, so did Lucy 'I've spoken to Social Services. As and when it becomes necessary, carers will come each day to help with washing and dressing. They'll provide appliances "subject to budget" and I can get all sorts of toys from the hospital or Trusts. There really is nothing to worry about.'

Susan was still fiddling with the b.u.t.tons on her blouse when she spoke. 'I don't want you being cared for by strangers. 'It's not right. You need your family I want to help, if you don't mind, I really do. I'll do anything you like - I can cook, clean up, I can ... do anything ... give me the chance, can't you?'

Agnes was visibly moved. Lucy had always felt Agnes valued Susan's confused attempts to establish normal relations with her mother-in-law It cost her so much, and always without reward. Susan, like Lucy wanted things to be different, and in her own way had kept on trying.

'Thank you, Susan, there's plenty of time, yet, for both of us. Of course you can help.'

Freddie, ashamed, ran for the line: 'But all this isn't enough, is it? I mean, it's not just about bits of help at certain times of the day What about the nights? You're going to be needing' - Freddie hesitated, the corner flag was in view - 'twenty-four-hour-a-day a.s.sistance,' and then he dived, full length, 'from people who know what they're doing.'

He was pale. He'd finally said it. He'd said he couldn't and wouldn't become a nurse, or move in, or take Agnes to his own home.

'That's right, Freddie, and I've sorted it all out.'

For the second time, no one knew what to say Lucy, incredulous, guessed immediately The question fell out of Freddie's mouth: 'How? In what way?'

Agnes put down her saucer, and then the cup, and then the biscuit, saying, 'I've asked Wilma to move in.

Freddie, rigid again, almost stopped breathing.

2.

It seemed it was going to be a day of arguments. After her mother and father had left, Lucy urged Agnes to give a statement to the police.

'If I get involved, replied Agnes, 'your father will have to know everything. I don't want that. His life with me has been hard enough.' She spoke without a trace of self-pity. 'It would be too much to ask of him.'

'What would?'

'To understand me more than he understands himself.'

'But if he knew what was done to you, and how you saved him-'

'Lucy you forget, I also failed him.' She raised a hand to stop any protestation. 'That can't be changed, even by forgiveness. I used to blame myself, but after I met Wilma I realised things couldn't have been otherwise. But that only makes the remorse all the more insupportable.' Her features became still and extraordinarily beautiful, like a rapt child at a pantomime, and she said, 'In a way I lost Freddie as well. I could not bear to lose the little I have left.'

Agnes had a way of saying dreadful things with complete simplicity, as if she were commenting on the wallpaper. Unless one inhabited a similar inner landscape it was quite impossible to reply Even Lucy came up against these awful flashes of tranquillity, where one would expect to find anguish, when she could only look upon her grandmother from a distance with a sort of shocked reverence.

Outside the window rain began to fall, bouncing off the pavement, gathering the litter, washing stray cuttings from tidy gardens, and Agnes, serene, reached for the newspaper by her side, saying, 'There's a doc.u.mentary tonight on The Round Table.' She paused. 'One of the contributors is Pascal Fougeres. I'm worried he might mention me ... the family will not have forgotten ...' Her eyes reached out to Lucy. 'You'll have to stay '

'All right then, if I must.'

'You must.'

Lucy regarded her grandmother and became almost cold with apprehension. Impulsively, with sudden terror, she said, 'Does it make any difference to you?'

Agnes looked up, mildly surprised, and said, 'Of course it does.'

'No, Gran,' Lucy replied, squirming, p.r.i.c.kling with intimacy, 'I mean, does it matter that I'm not your own blood?' She flushed hot; sweat tingled across her back and neck.

Agnes dropped the paper. With coruscating simplicity she said, 'It has made you utterly irreplaceable.'

The doc.u.mentary had been constructed in such a way as to follow the steps of Pascal Fougeres through a tragic moment in history. To her amazement, Lucy found her sensibilities dozing, sluggish, as she watched the footage of German soldiers surveying Paris with the lazy contentment of ownership. She could not rouse the naked fear they must have represented. Anodyne war films and comedies about silly n.a.z.is had tamed them, even in Lucy's eyes.

The narrator described how Fougeres, a foreign correspondent for Le Monde, had inadvertently come across a cryptic memo recently decla.s.sified in the United States. The doc.u.ment briefly reported the capture and release of a young German officer by British Intelligence. The journalist immediately recognised the name for it was Schwermann who had been responsible for the breaking of a Resistance network and the death of its leader - Pascal's great-uncle, Jacques. The viewer was taken back to the time of Occupation, when Jacques, with other students, formed The Round Table. On the day the Star of David had become compulsory apparel, Jacques had worn his own star, marked 'Catholique', outside the Gestapo offices on Avenue Foch. He had been arrested and interned in Drancy for two weeks. But that had not discouraged the young protester.

'The Round Table continued with its work,' said Pascal, his face filling the screen, dark-eyed and pensive, 'but it was broken by Schwermann within the month. They were all deported. None survived.'

Schwermann escaped from France after the war and made his way to England, along with a Frenchman, Victor Brionne, who had been based in the same department of the Gestapo. They did so under false ident.i.ties that had never been discovered. All this, and no more, was set out in the terse memo the young journalist had been fortunate enough to find. He publicised his findings, expecting a strong reaction throughout Great Britain. It caused a brief outcry somewhere on the third or fourth pages and then became yesterday's news. Attempts to trace Schwermann through official channels floundered. Meanwhile, back in France, a consortium of interested parties had been formed and the case against the fugitive n.a.z.i was painstakingly constructed. The decisive breakthrough came when Pascal Fougeres received a letter, anonymous and tantalisingly brief, disclosing the false name under which Schwermann was hiding: Nightingale.

The narrator, interviewing Fougeres, asked about the Frenchman whose whereabouts were still unknown. Pascal replied, 'Victor was Jacques' best friend and, as with so many others, the war split them apart. He fled, I think, because he'd been trapped by circ.u.mstances. He was just an ordinary policeman but ended up at Avenue Foch.' He smiled, as if cracking a joke: 'I doubt whether it would have been a good idea to trade arguments with the Resistance after the Germans had gone.

As for Schwermann, said the narrator with a level voice, he had found sanctuary in a monastery.

Lucy turned off the television. It was dark outside and the rain was still falling, lightly but interminably She said, 'You weren't mentioned.'

'No.'

'I didn't realise Jacques had been the one who set up The Round Table.'

'That's not how I remember it.

Lucy reflected further about Pascal Fougeres. 'He's got no idea what Victor Brionne did to you and Jacques ... and the others.'

'No,' replied Agnes, distracted. She smoothed a wrinkle in the fabric on the arm of her chair. Her eyes narrowed as if trying to make out a figure in the dark, half seen, familiar but receding from view 'I wonder who wrote that letter ... giving the name?'

'Yes, I wonder ...' Agnes stared into the shadows, still calmly smoothing the material.

Chapter Sixteen.

1.

Finding the whereabouts of Father Louis Chambray (for he had never been laicised) was a relatively straightforward matter. While a Gilbertine monk like Anselm, he belonged to a different Province, a French strain, which had nonetheless been founded as a result of Henry VIII's delirious policy of closure that had removed the Gilbertines from English life. Remnants of the Order had sought refuge in Burgundy - mindful, perhaps, that its Dukes had once sold Joan of Arc to the English. Such courtesies promote lasting trust, a commodity the Gilbertines required if they were to survive. For whatever reason the characteristic double-houses (monks and nuns in separate buildings but joined for services on Sundays and feast days) thrived, notwithstanding the various anti-clerical movements that followed the feast of revolution two hundred years later. The French Order subsequently re-established an English presence at Larkwood Priory in the early 1 920s. After that there was little contact between the two Provinces, not least because each house was self-governing. But historic familiarity and a sort of religious entente cordiale helped Anselm's purpose.

The French Gilbertines' motherhouse in Rome freely supplied Anselm with details about Father Chambray, as they had evidently done on an earlier occasion to an emissary from the Vatican. Chambray kept in contact with his Order once a year, sending a Bonne Annee card to a Prior General he had never known. He'd gone, but that one slender tie remained.

'Why's he so popular all of a sudden?' asked the plump archivist, chewing one of his fingernails.

'Some ancient history, that's all,' replied Anselm.

'History is never ancient,' said the keeper of the books, blinking solemnly 'Indeed,' said Anselm dryly He wasn't altogether fond of inversions. They tended to sound good and mean very little. He thanked the young sage, placed the address in his pocket and wandered back to San Giovanni's. There was much to be done before returning to England.

Before directing his efforts to finding Victor Brionne, Anselm decided to follow the escape trail from Paris to Notre-Dame des Moineaux. Tracing history had its own poetic attraction, but geography and pride were the decisive factors: Chambray now lived in the capital, and since Anselm had to pa.s.s that way to reach the monastery he thought he might as well track down the one living survivor from the time. All the more so, coming to the pride, because Anselm considered himself particularly adept at handling individuals described as 'uncooperative'. It had been his hallmark at the Bar. Back at San Giovanni's, Anselm rang Father Andrew to explain matters and get the necessary permissions .