‘Is that Pascal Fougères?’ asked Max.
‘Yes,’ replied Anselm resignedly
Max took a step, halted and then called out, ‘Hold on … just a second … tell me about Agnes … and a child …’
The young woman who’d said hardly anything throughout their short meeting turned abruptly showing an involuntary flash of pain. She hurried past Fougères and out through the gate.
‘I showed my grandfather a cutting last week,’ said Max, watching them part. ‘It was about him, Pascal Fougères. My grandfather hadn’t realised he was involved in the group that had exposed him …’ He blinked rapidly, half squinting, ‘The next thing I know he’s walking back and forth … mumbling… and out spills that name … as though he could see her there, in the room … I barely heard him after that … but he said “child” as if he’d seen flesh and blood.’
They were alone, now, in a scented garden.
Max said, ‘I asked him today what he meant and all he’d say was that Victor Brionne knew the answer.’
Anselm felt a sudden affiliation with the young man. They were both relying on the missing Frenchman to make sense of strained loyalties.
‘You know, Father,’ said Max, ‘I think we are in much the same position. My grandfather planted himself here, behind these walls, and I sometimes wonder if he took refuge in my childhood … another secluded place where questions don’t have to be answered.’ He looked blankly at traces of paint beneath his nails. ‘But now I’ve grown up.
‘Unfortunately’ said Anselm, ‘that is never more apparent than when we ask the first forbidden question. Maybe that’s when we really cease to be children.’ Thinking of the young woman with the haunted eyes, Anselm went on, ‘I wonder who Agnes might be?’
Max said, ‘I get the feeling Pascal Fougères doesn’t know … but the girl does.’ He made to go, saying with a tinge of disinterest, ‘I just came to let you know there’s no sign of Victor Brionne as yet. ‘
‘There’s still time,’ said Anselm hopefully ‘Something will have found its way on to paper.
After Max had gone Anselm devoted half an hour to John Cassian’s Sixteenth Conference, On Friendship. Putting down the text at the bell for Vespers, Anselm was struck by an answer, on the face of things, unrelated to his reading, even before he’d formulated the question. Did Agnes know Victor? Yes, she did; she most certainly did. And they had both known Jacques — an interesting fact that had escaped the family education of Pascal Fougères.
Anselm shook his head, ruing the scheme of things that only allowed him to discover great truths by accident.
3
They travelled in silence for a mile or so. The roads were empty and the evening sun was beginning to dip behind the darkening trees.
‘Who’s Agnes?’ Pascal said.
A cold, crawling sensation spread over Lucy’s scalp: it’s a fact, he’s never even heard of her. Proudly vehemently, she said, ‘My grandmother.’
‘And the child?’
‘Her son.’
‘The father?’ He’d guessed the answer: his own history, the redactor’s script, had been torn in two.
Lucy checked her mirror and pulled into a lay-by near a farm gate. The sun slipped further down, a dying blaze. She said, ‘Jacques Fougères, your great-uncle:
‘What happened to the boy?’
Lucy couldn’t read his expression. Resentment and despair choked the words.
The whole story would now tumble forth. Pascal wound down his window, pulling in a slap of cold fresh air, and Lucy broke her promise to Agnes.
The late evening sky had acquired a faint glamour, like the surface of the sea, deep but impenetrable. Lucy drove into the advancing night, the obstacles that had lain between her and Pascal floating all around — broken words on a rising wave, a swell made of two rivers suddenly joined.
Chapter Twenty-Three
1
Pascal rang Lucy on her mobile while she was having lunch with her parents. Her father sat at the head of the table; her mother had just left the dining room for the kitchen. The opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth, electrified and appalling, blared out from Lucy’s pocket.
‘Destiny, I presume?’ asked Freddie woodenly
Lucy took the call.
‘I think a little miracle happened when we were at Larkwood Priory.’
‘It passed me by’
‘Meeting Max Nightingale.’
‘You’re joking.’ She thought of him with revulsion. ‘I call that unfortunate. ‘
A long moan of hopes betrayed floated out from the kitchen. As usual her mother was battling with milk and powder, strong adversaries that would not be reconciled.
Pascal said, ‘I don’t know why he threw that question in about your grandmother but he hadn’t the faintest idea who she was.’
‘That’s not a miracle.’
‘But if he knows of her, he may well know of Victor Brionne … and his name.
Her father realigned his plate, clinking it against a neatly laid dessert spoon.
Lucy said, ‘But he’s not going to tell you, is he?’
‘I’d like to find out.’
‘You’re joking again.’ Lucy sensed the future, predatory and inevitable.
‘I’m not. In a way he’s no different to you or me-Lucy spat, ‘How?’
‘He’s part of the aftermath. He’s not a criminal. I’d like to meet him, it’s just… right … and I couldn’t be bothered to work out why’
‘I have to go,’ said Lucy The approval of her father flowered in a smile. Phone calls during meals were not encouraged. It had been one of Darren’s specialities, done on purpose.
The call ended, and Lucy’s father said, ‘Dreadful things those. Who was that?’
‘Just a friend.’ The barricade on her private life appeared. Her father scouted around for an opening, looking for light between the slats: ‘How’s your study getting along?’
‘Not so bad.’ The phrase sealed a gap. Lucy had detected the true meaning beneath her father’s question: ‘You made a hash of Cambridge so please don’t fail again.’ She thought: fail who? You or me? Who do you really think lost out in my growing up? Shocked by her own charity she answered: we both did, terribly and she suddenly wanted to touch him. She took her father’s empty plate and laid it on hers. When were they ever going to forget the past? Why were they cursed to remember everything?
Her mother came into the room, hands on her hips, her face fallen: ‘I’m afraid there’s lots of lumps in the custard.’
‘Oh God, not again,’ said her father as he reached out for Susan’s hand.
2
Anselm drove Salomon Lachaise to Long Melford, a town of Suffolk pink not far from Larkwood. Having parked they walked into Holy Trinity Church, a huge construction more like a cathedral, its magnificence built upon medieval piety and the wool trade. Salomon Lachaise removed his heavy glasses, squinting with wonder at the windows and the empty stone niches in the chantry, once the home of solemn apostles. They passed through a churchyard to the Lady Chapel.
‘This was a school after the Reformation,’ said Anselm, pointing to a children’s multiplication table on the wall. Salomon Lachaise quietly studied the enduring markings of long, long ago. He said, ‘It is a kind of mockery, but one cannot survive without shame.’ He pressed small hands deep into cardigan pockets, making them bulge. ‘It is something I could never tell my mother.’
‘Why?’
‘Her peace grew out of my being am ordinary boy doing his sums at school like all the others.’
Anselm said, ‘But why shame?’
‘Because you cannot escape the sensation that you have taken someone else’s place.’ He looked closely at the wall. ‘It’s like a debt to heaven.’
They stepped outside, back into the churchyard. Salomon Lachaise said, ‘When I was a boy my mother used to say that hell was the painless place where everything has been forgotten. ‘
‘That doesn’t sound so bad.
’
‘It couldn’t be worse.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s no love. That’s why there is no pain.’
They walked beneath a milky sky shot with patches of insistent blue. Anselm looked up and asked, ‘Then what’s heaven?’
‘An inferno where you burn remembering all that should be remembered.’
3
Cathy and Lucy finally made it to the Turkish baths. There were three rooms linked by arches. Each got smaller and hotter than the one before. For twenty minutes they sat upon the white-tiled seats of the first chamber. Steam swirled around them. Their heads slowly fell under the weight of bone as strength drained away At a nod from Cathy they moved into the next phase of affliction; when Lucy thought she could bear it no more, Cathy gestured towards a small, empty compartment. None of the other users had been in there. The heat was overpowering. Lucy slumped in a corner, blinded by sweat, until she was so weak she could barely lift her limbs. Cathy leaned against the wall, her eyes tightly closed. Through the burning fog Lucy could just see the small scar upon the flushed cheek. It kept the lead, always a fraction redder.
Cathy slowly raised an arm, pointing to a swing-door adjacent to the entrance. ‘You first,’ she breathed.
Lucy staggered back, blinking rapidly, her eyes swimming from the sting of salt. She pushed through the door into a bright room by a small pool. Somehow she lay on a table.
‘That was hell,’ she said. ‘I’m never coming back as long as I live.’
‘It’s not over yet, love,’ said a deep voice. A woman with thick muscles appeared, armed with a huge lathered sponge. At its touch upon her toes Lucy howled. It was too much. The lightest contact was like merciless tickling. Lucy shrieked until she was hauled off and pushed towards a warm, gentle shower. When she emerged, the woman with the muscles gave her a shove and Lucy toppled into the pool of freezing water. When she surfaced she was ready to die. Death had lost its sting.
Lying on a padded leather divan, wrapped in a warm towel, Lucy had her first experience of transcendence. By her side on a small table was a mug of hot, sweet tea and a bacon sandwich. Cathy lay upon a parallel couch.
‘I believe in God,’ said Lucy
‘I’m told a bishop died of a heart attack in a place like this.’
‘No better surroundings.’
‘I don’t think he made it to the pool.’
‘He coughed it on the table?’
‘So it seems.
‘What a way to go.
Cathy reached for her sandwich and said, ‘Did you take my advice and invite the Frenchman out?’
‘I did, actually,’ replied Lucy
‘Where did you go?’
‘A monastery. ‘
Cathy chewed thoughtfully ‘Before that you had a meal in a crypt.’ She licked melted butter off a finger. ‘Where to next time?’
‘A pub, I suspect. ‘
Chapter Twenty-Four
1
Lucy met Pascal on a wet pavement outside Sibyl’s Cave on a Friday night. She said, ‘It’s seething.’
‘We’ll be all right: He rubbed his hands confidently, as if about to spin a couple of dice down the felt. He winked and Lucy bridled. She couldn’t split the gesture from scaffolds and whistling beery cheek. He said, ‘I have a good feeling about this.’
Pascal had obtained Max Nightingale’s phone number from Father Anselm. The meeting was set up. Apparently he’d been keen. When Pascal had told Lucy she’d felt a sharp, churning disgust. ‘Good,’ she’d said.
Lucy yanked at the pub door, releasing from the bright hallway a gasp of heat and noise. The lounge was packed with competition, professionals loudly shedding the pressures of work. They glanced into a small smoking room. Thick blue swirls hung above the tables like belchings from so many garden fires. Empty glasses stood in tight crowds. A young girl in a short black skirt pushed past gripping a damp cloth. They forced their way towards the veranda entrance. Pinned to a jamb was a forbidding notice: Private Party. Through the window panel Lucy saw suits, legs crossed while standing, wine glasses pressed to the chest: the boss was leaving. Pascal pulled her by the arm towards the debating room.
The appetite for argument was on the wane — young bloods were heading for the bar or home, leaving disparate clusters of older men. Where were the women? thought Lucy Her gaze shifted and she saw Max Nightingale sitting in a corner. On the table was a black motorcycle helmet. It stared at Lucy and she thought of an empty, severed head. They joined him, pulling up chairs.
‘Who’s Sibyl?’ asked Max Nightingale. Lucy noticed dark grime beneath his nails: a trace of his grandfather’s dirt. Catching her glance he said, ‘Paint. I’ve been painting.’
‘Papered cracks?’
‘No, pictures.’
‘Oh.’
‘Sibyl?’ he repeated.
Pascal said, ‘She’s the maim player in a tragic myth, a mystic who pushed off death and spent centuries in a cave. She wrote out riddles on leaves but left them to the mercy of the wind.’
Max Nightingale stared back blankly ‘I thought she was the landlord.’
Lucy laughed, against the will to scoff … she who hadn’t known either.
Pascal said, ‘You asked a question at the Priory — about Agnes and a child. Where did you get the name from?’
‘My grandfather.’ He spoke frankly quickly
‘Do you know who she is?’
‘No.’
Pascal seemed to see suspicion and caution peeling away ‘I’d like to ask you a question, but first I just want to say something.’
Max Nightingale removed the helmet from the table. A space opened up, flat, ready to be crossed. Lucy regarded it with horror.
Pascal said, ‘We’ve been born on different sides of a nightmare, but it’s worth saying … I’ve got nothing against you.
Max Nightingale flinched. Then, recovered, he said, ‘Ask me your question. ‘
Lucy heard a shuffle: standing almost over them was the man she called The Don.
2
Brother Sylvester must have enjoyed one of his flashes of competence, for he managed to transfer a telephone call from the switchboard to the extension where Anselm was to be found. The shock of the feat momentarily distracted Anselm’s attention from DI Armstrong’s words:
‘We’ve put all the evidence to Schwermann during the interviews. He said only one thing, a quotation: “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.”‘
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you there. ‘
‘I don’t need help, thank you. It’s from Goethe’s Faust. Translates as “Two souls dwell, alas, within my breast.” I think it’s am admission of sorts.’
‘But it won’t get you very far with a jury’
‘I realise that. Anyway, the investigation is over. We’re going to charge him tomorrow with murder.’
‘Joint enterprise?’
‘Yes.’
Anselm had a premonition of what was to follow
‘As for Victor Brionne, or Berkeley, nothing has turned up. There are no records to show that he ever lived or died, not under those names.
Anselm thought back to the charming Robert B, legs crossed, confiding the little he knew; coming to Vespers and taking his time in parting.
DI Armstrong said, ‘Brionne has been a very cautious man. He must have changed his name again — perhaps by deed poll, or simply by claiming his papers had been destroyed: that would have been fairly easy for a refugee after the war. Either way, there’s little chance of finding him. It is as though he never existed.’
3
‘May I join you?’ A warm smile lit The Don’s face, among a shock of white hair, from his scalp down to the beard. In his hand was a pint of beer. Without waiting for a reply he drew up a chair and sat down.
‘I recognise you, actually,’ he said, nodding to Pascal, ‘from the television.’
Max Nightingale opened his mouth to speak but the stranger said, ‘Well, well, h
ere we are, four open minds round one table. There’s nothing we cannot question and, as so often happens in the dialogues of Plato, our combined ignorance can lead us to the truth. The blind can lead the blind after all.’ He smiled cheerily
‘Look,’ said Max Nightingale, ‘we’re in the middle of something.’
‘I’ll join in.’
‘I’m sorry, but—’
Pascal interrupted: ‘Max, this is the debating room. I should have said … anyone can participate …
‘So,’ said the man with the white beard, looking amiably round the table, ‘what’s the subject?’
Pascal said, with strained patience, ‘We haven’t got one.’
‘Then let me oblige,’ and rather too quickly he said: ‘My thesis is that getting hold of the truth requires us to distinguish different kinds of narrative — symbol, allegory, parable and the like. Now, one of the main problems is when one form of discourse pretends to be another … myth or fable masquerading as fact. Story dressed up as history. ‘
Max Nightingale looked deeply bored.
The stranger said, ‘Have any of you read the Narnia books?’
While Pascal and Max Nightingale seemed irritated at the interruption, Lucy was relieved. It was an interlude in a difficult meeting, that was all. Pascal could ask about Brionne’s name after the discussion was over. There was no rush. She said, ‘I’ve read them, several times. ‘
He smiled winningly and cried, ‘But you haven’t tried talking to a lion, have you? It’s just a myth about good and evil and the lion wins.
Lucy noticed Pascal’s face darkening with a sort of expectation.
The stranger said, ‘There’s no difficulty in that instance because there are no facts, it’s just fiction. But what happens when fact and fiction mix?’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s take the Holocaust, for example.’
The Sixth Lamentation Page 17
