The burial was nonetheless a sad affair. It soon became clear that no one in the family knew anything about Dunstan’s experience of Belsen. Neither, of course, did anyone in the community. All those hints at self-importance as an interrogator had been intimations of shame and failure. But no one could have had the slightest idea. And they still didn’t, because Anselm knew he was the bearer of a secret that Dunstan wanted taken to his grave.
‘He never forgave the Service for denying him a career after the war,’ said Evelyn, knowledgeably, making ready to leave in the car park. ‘That’s where his disappointments began. He was a bloody awkward sod.’
They were evidently a plain-speaking family because a number of bystanders nodded in agreement. A spade was a spade. But they couldn’t have known that Dunstan had been exiled from the Service because of a mistake, robbing him of the chance to make amends; that C’s underlings had kept the wound open by retaining him as a talent spotter; that they’d probably scotched any chance he might have had of becoming a Fellow – they couldn’t have him sipping sherry in one of their Alma Maters. All of which, if true, would have made Kafka blink, because while punishing Dunstan, they’d recruited former SS officers to help fight the Russians.
‘He urged me to join the Service,’ said Carrington to Evelyn. ‘But he warned me that the place was jam-packed with – I’m sorry, but I have to quote him – “masons, arseholes, pimps and peers”. He meant no harm, I’m sure. I joined the Lambertines instead.’
The supposed asymmetry brought a smile to Anselm’s face. Carrington wasn’t simply a man of principle, he had a devilish sense of humour which, linked to Dunstan’s acid wit, must have made tutorials on mysticism an unforgettable experience. Strange to think that it was there, in a Cambridge don’s rooms discussing Margery Kempe, that a friendship had been forged that would one day generate a plan to secure Dominic Tabley’s arrest.
The gathering was sad in other respects. Dunstan had so effaced himself in the plan to expose Dominic Tabley that none of his victims could possibly have known that an obscure monk was the architect of the scheme; or that there had even been a scheme. Had Robert Sambourne not stumbled upon the faxed cuttings, no one save Carrington and Littlemore would ever have known at all. As a result, to Anselm’s mind, there was a group missing from the graveside: the Silent Ones. None of them had come – none of them could come – to pay their respects, to thank him for what he’d done: he’d ensured his own invisibility from the outset. For the same reason, there were no representatives of the Brandwell family. If they thanked anyone it was Edmund Littlemore and Anselm. Even Carrington hadn’t made the list.
‘You’ll return to London?’ Anselm was speaking to Edmund as Evelyn was driven away, arguing with a nephew twice-removed who’d said the pipes were out of tune.
‘No, I’m going home.’
‘To Boston?’
‘It’s where I belong; it’s where I’ve always belonged. I should never have run away. I should never have pretended I had nothing to do with changing the future. George taught me that lesson.’
You’re an accomplished liar, thought Anselm. Like Justin, you’ve learned to hide what you know, along with who you are; like Justin, your wounds are hidden wounds, but having your own you were able to see his. No one would ever know that in coming to England you were vindicating your mother, bringing your own father to justice, and doing what could be done to help his other victims. And to think … everyone thought you’d run away from a scandal. No one would ever know your true motives.
You don’t always have to talk about everything.
It was a subtle truth that Tabley had twisted to his advantage; Edmund had made it something noble. They shook hands, promising to keep in touch. There’s a thing called Skype, said Edmund. There are things called pens and paper, replied Anselm. In certain important respects (which Anselm wouldn’t wish to change) Larkwood had remained embedded in the early thirteenth century.
‘London awaits you,’ said Anselm, turning to Carrington.
‘Yes.’
There was nothing else to add. Both of them understood the implications of Anselm’s observation. Carrington would return to deal with the legacy of Dominic Tabley. He’d already been pilloried in the press, simply because he was the man in charge. It was relentless. His evidence in the Littlemore trial had been minutely re-examined. Commentators had judged him – by turns – to be prevaricating, evasive, ambiguous and slippery. He’d been damned as a casuist. A politician. A career cleric. They can’t have known that he’d also sent a message across the courtroom to Anselm. As with Dunstan, his true contribution had remained hidden from view.
‘Why not tell everyone about Dunstan’s plan, and your place in it?’ asked Anselm. ‘I’ll support you. People ought to know.’
Carrington didn’t agree. ‘I have an important role to play in the resolution of things. Someone has to be accountable for what the Order did, for elevating Tabley above his victims. Someone has to be there, physically present, to receive and accept the anger, the outrage, the suffering. I can’t point to Murphy’s grave. I’m the one who was elected. I’m the one who opened the secret archive. I’m the one who has to answer for what I found.’
Anselm was amazed. Perhaps it was the lawyer in him. Perhaps it was the coward. Perhaps it was the sophist that would stress truth-telling without regard to timing. But his first instinct would have been to defend himself. He’d have dodged the avalanche of condemnation. Carrington had done the opposite. He must have known, right at the beginning when he first came to Larkwood, that if Anselm succeeded in his mission, he would be damned. People would point at him as if he was Tabley. He’d always accepted the outcome. He’d welcomed it. And he, like the Silent Ones before him, would have to wait for some future time before he could be vindicated.
‘Dunstan foresaw this, didn’t he?’ said Anselm.
Carrington paused, no doubt recalling the language used. ‘He warned me, yes. But I didn’t really have a choice. He was telling me what had to happen.’
After waving goodbye to Carrington and Edmund, Anselm returned to Dunstan’s grave. He looked at the mound of fresh earth and the simple white wooden cross that bore his name. It was already leaning slightly to one side. He’d lived with Dunstan for years. At no point in that long, shared history had he ever remotely felt an attachment to the man. And now, from nothing, he’d moved to a deep and abiding gratitude. He felt immensely privileged to have been involved in his scheme to bring dignity to those who’d been thrown aside.
‘I hope you found something rather than nothing,’ he said, honouring Dunstan’s last scuffle with doubt. But what’s your epitaph? he wondered. What have you left behind that everyone knows about and for which you’ll always be remembered? What single detail would surface when time had softened the harshest recollections?
Anselm laughed quietly. Dunstan had dealt with that one, too. He’d left clear instructions with Aelred. As a result it could safely be said that Dunstan Hartley-Wilkinson was the only monk in the history of Christendom to have been buried wearing a pink silk cravat.
57
Dominic Tabley pleaded guilty to all counts on the indictment – and there were many. Following the preparation of reports for the court he was sentenced to eighteen years in prison, the final figure made up of consecutive and concurrent terms, balanced against each other by Mr Justice Keating in a hopeless attempt – his words – to reflect the overall gravity of the case. In effect, of course, it was a life sentence. Dominic Tabley would die behind bars. Or, more likely, in the hospital wing, cared for by people who could no more understand his crimes than his victims could understand his supposed change of character, stressed by counsel during his speech in mitigation.
‘Help me clean out Dunstan’s cell,’ said the Prior.
They’d left his room untouched until the Tabley matter had been dealt with. It was a way of keeping him around until the very end. Anselm opened a window and the spring air brushed against his
face. Down below, Bruno was beating dust out of a rug with a cricket bat. Aelred was talking to a wayfarer. Wilf was cleaning the guest-house windows. Life went on. As for Dunstan’s effects, there was nothing to sort out, really. A few clothes in a cupboard. Some books on a shelf. Worn-out boots in the corner. A walking stick. A cloak on a hook. Anselm sat down on the blue striped mattress and looked at a facing desk where Dunstan had devised his plan. There was a shoebox behind the typewriter. The Prior lifted the lid.
‘It’s not just about perpetrators,’ said Anselm, suddenly. He didn’t know where to begin. ‘It’s about the people who cover up. It’s about the people who spend time wondering how best to manage a crisis. It’s about the decisions they make.’
‘What is “it”?’ The Prior was leafing through some folded papers.
‘The scandal. Maybe I’m going too far, but I wonder if the people who organise the smoothing over are as culpable as the perpetrators. Whether, in doing what they do, they take on themselves all the filth they tried to hide, and more. I’m thinking of Owen Murphy. He’s committed a crime too, but it doesn’t even exist in the statute book. He’s hardly been mentioned in any of the discussions about what’s happened. Just passing references. The fact that he’s dead. But what he did was unconscionable.’
The Prior was frowning at the shoebox. Putting the lid back, he seated himself against the edge of the table and Anselm let loose the thoughts that had been plaguing him since Dunstan’s funeral when Carrington had accepted the opprobrium due to his predecessor. He’d been rehearsing that throwaway line of Justin Brandwell’s, that Murphy had been a desk clerk who found himself running the bank. The phrase had jarred with Anselm because, in using it, Justin had pitied Murphy himself and his hapless attempt to deal with Tabley’s crimes. But Anselm had come to view him very differently indeed:
‘He turned that secret archive into a burial ground of unsolved crime, enduring a troubled conscience as if it was the kind of martyrdom that comes with high office.’
By resolving matters with an agreement, by enjoining the parties to secrecy on a voluntary basis, Murphy had exploited the consent of the victims – if consent was the right word to describe the assent of people like Justin Brandwell. He’d drawn him and others into an arrangement whereby he could protect Tabley. If ever quizzed about his own silence, he could only point – respectfully and with compunction – to the expressed wishes of those most intimately involved. But the desired outcome was this: Tabley was protected from any criminal investigation. And Murphy could hide behind the victims’ silence as if he had a moral obligation to do so. As could Tabley. This is what had set him free … to change … in complete isolation from the true and paramount needs of the people he’d left behind.
‘When Tabley moved to protect himself he told people, “You don’t always have to talk about everything”,’ said Anselm. ‘And that has been the ongoing trick. It’s the central plank to all these horrendous confidentiality agreements. What Tabley said in fear, Murphy turned into a kind of law. It served no one except Tabley and the Order. And that puts them both on the same moral plane as Fraser … They were all exploiting people’s compassion, their readiness to forgive.’
Had Murphy known about Tabley’s child? Had Skyler been to see him? Had the Order – a charitable organisation funded by voluntary donations for prescribed legal purposes – contributed to Edmund’s upkeep? Or – and Anselm instinctively felt this to be the case – had Skyler just turned her back on the lot of them and flown back to Boston, rejected by her husband? Anselm had to close his eyes: Tabley had brought unimaginable devastation into the lives of decent people, simply because they’d believed him to be more decent than they were. That must have been part of the wayward attraction. Handling the fallout, in every and all respects, was now Carrington’s life’s work. The man who’d drafted the child protection procedures would have to pick his way through the moral ruins of the past. The same man, by cooperating with Dunstan, had made the secret archive public. The contents had been literally emptied onto the street – if discarded newspapers could be taken as a proxy. What else could be expected of the poor fellow?
‘You remain troubled,’ observed the Prior. He knew the darker corners of Anselm’s mind. ‘You’ve told yourself that Dominic Tabley could never be truly rehabilitated until he publicly acknowledged his crimes. You’ve wondered if he enjoyed his reformed life, depriving his victims of justice because he wanted to keep his reputation for goodness. And you’ve wondered if he only stopped offending because self-control had become easier – which it does, with age. You’ve whittled away at what you can, but one thing won’t go away, will it? He did, in fact, change. He did a great deal of good. However imperfectly, he tried to make amends. It would have been easier, wouldn’t it, if he’d remained a monster?’
Maisie was struggling with that very question, though she’d gone further, straining to imagine the appalling vista of a mercy without any kind of limitation. For Anselm, however, the problem was slightly different. It was just as familiar, only the familiarity didn’t especially help, because every time he encountered it – as he had done with Justin and Maisie and Martin and everyone affected by the outpouring of harm – the freshness of the problem scalded him.
‘You’re right. I’ve thought everything you said. But I’m troubled more by the possibility that, while he changed, his victims can’t. Or have lost the chance to change. Or will change, but only at immense cost. It’s hard to hold the two together – his transformation, if there was one, and their ongoing devastation; what he gained set against what they lost. It’s a heart-breaking outcome.’
The Prior nodded, watching Anselm closely. Bruno was giving that rug a pasting. During a pause, the Prior said, ‘Dunstan never used to confide much, not in me, not in anyone. Not with his family and not with his friends. But he once turned to me in the cloister after Compline, as if he was going to share some great secret. And all he said was this: “The world is a tragic place.” Then he walked off.’
Anselm could almost hear the old man’s polished vowels. One had to get on with things. Face the morrow. Do your best. Help those who couldn’t cope.
‘What’s in the shoebox?’ asked Anselm, rising.
‘Letters. From the forties onwards.’ The Prior was baffled. ‘They’re about war crimes.’
Everything was in chronological order. They all dealt with the same subject: Dunstan’s enquiries in relation to a certain Helga Brüning. He’d written to the War Office, the Foreign Office, the United Nations War Crimes Commission, embassies, consulates, here and abroad … and these were the replies. Most of them were rather terse, acknowledging his enquiry and refusing proffered assistance. The matter was being dealt with by the proper authorities. He was referred to previous correspondence. At the bottom of the box was a postcard. The Prior gave it to Anselm. It showed a brook and a mill. Written on the back by a wavering hand was a single line in German: War es also gemeint, mein rauschender Freund?
Anselm translated: ‘Was this what you meant, my rushing friend?’
The Prior squinted, angling his glasses. Dunstan’s tiny writing was in the corner. He’d dated the card in pencil.
‘Two years ago,’ he murmured.
It had been an eventful time in the old man’s life, recalled Anselm. He’d got cancer, which hadn’t troubled him in the least; but then he’d been contacted by Carrington, and he’d received a message from Helga. She’d kept her promise to write after all. Listening to Bruno flog the rug, Anselm wondered in what order the blows might have come.
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ said the Prior, putting the lid back on the box. ‘We’d better hand it over to Bede for the archives. He can find out what it all means.’
‘No,’ said Anselm, abruptly. ‘Burn the lot. It’s what Dunstan would have wanted.’
The Prior slowed, regarding Anselm with arched misgiving. To forestall any questioning, Anselm took the initiative.
‘Dunstan said I coul
d have the typewriter.’
The Prior looked like he’d dropped a catch. ‘Anything you’d like to add?’
‘Not really, but thanks for asking.’
After sweeping the cell, the window and door were left open to create a draught. The books went to the library, the stick to Sylvester, the cloak to the vestiary, the boots and clothes to the bin. Anselm then went to the common room and, standing on the rug beaten clean by Bruno, he threw the shoebox on the fire. After a moment of resistance, the cardboard buckled into flame. The letters curled. The mill and the stream vanished, along with the poetry.
Anselm put the typewriter on a table by the window in his cell. He sat down and pressed a few keys. The arms swung up, banged and fell back again. He jabbed the space bar and the carriage jolted along. He slapped the silver lever and the roller gave a turn. It was a beautiful machine. It had been used for a quite astonishing range of purposes, for good and for ill. While giving it a shine with the sleeve of his habit, Anselm had a flash of insight.
Dunstan’s real target hadn’t been Dominic Tabley. His sharp and jaundiced eye had been on someone else: Owen Murphy, and all he’d done to suppress the truth. When Dunstan wrote to Robert Sambourne his intention was to retrieve every word and phrase that had been hidden away. It was a nuanced insight – obvious, perhaps, given what had subsequently transpired – but it sharpened Anselm’s view of Dunstan’s legacy: the man who’d said nothing about his own history had given his dying days to those who’d been silenced.
The Silent Ones Page 29
