‘I went to see Rochet after the first round-up. He said it was just the beginning. Soon, they’d all be swept away It would be a Babylon the like of which the world had never seen. There would be no weeping by any rivers, no Exodus. I don’t know what came over me. I said I’d join the police.’
Anselm felt heat in a room with no fire.
‘They’d carried out the arrests, so where better place to go? We’d know in advance what the Germans were up to.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Anselm.
Brionne seemed not to hear. ‘Why did I do it? I didn’t think about it at the time, but it was for Agnes: He drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘I had entertained what nineteenth-century novelists call “hopes”. They were dashed in nineteenth-century fashion when I learned she was carrying Jacques’ child. She told me a few months before I went to see Rochet. Somehow the two are linked: the end of my great expectations and me doing something that I knew would command her undying admiration, if ever she found out. There was a poetic symmetry in the self-sacrifice.’
Brionne got up and walked out of the room. He came back with a small, foxed black and white photograph with creased corners. He handed it to Anselm.
‘That’s her. I took it in 1936.’
She had long, straight hair, and had been caught in time as she threw the lot over her shoulder. In the shadow beneath, her mouth was slightly open, her eyes creased with … what was it? Self-consciousness, confidence, suppressed exhilaration … it was all of them and more, the gifts that come just before the parting of youth. Behind stood a young man, serious, his gaze fixed on Agnes … possessive, and wanting to be possessed.
‘That’s Jacques.’ Brionne held out his hand for the photograph. ‘So I joined up and got transferred to Avenue Foch, because of my German. At the time I thought it was the hand of God. Now? I’m not so sure. That was where I met Schwermann.’
Brionne dragged the bottle a few inches across the carpet, into better reach, and poured wine into a stained mug.
‘He was ordinary to look at. The evil ran through his mind. He poisoned himself with pseudo-scientific pamphlets against the Jews. He underlined phrases and ticked margins: He drank, the cigarette locked between two fingers. ‘Anyway Rochet decided he would be my sole contact. My code name was “Bedivere”, and it was known only to him and the Prior of Les Moineaux and his council. If I needed to run, they’d protect me. So, there I was, at the heart of things. I hadn’t been there long when “Spring Wind” was planned, though nothing had been worked out for the children. I told Rochet.’ Brionne grimaced. ‘So many could have been saved if we hadn’t been betrayed.’
‘Who by?’ asked Anselm quietly.
Brionne raised a hand, beseeching patience. ‘The strange thing was that Schwermann changed after The Round Table was broken. He abandoned his pamphlets. To this day I don’t know why, but I believe it had something to do with the arrest of Jacques in June 1942.’
Anselm’s memory spun back to that lunch with Roddy when the old sot had pointed out how odd it was that Jacques had been arrested in the June but the smuggling ring hadn’t been broken until the July. He asked, ‘What happened?’
‘He’d been demonstrating after the Jews had been forced to wear a star — outside the building where I worked. He was picked up and Schwermann was told to give him a scare, so a French speaker wasn’t needed. Anyway Jacques spoke reasonable German, thank God. If Schwermann had needed me my cover would have been blown — which nearly happened when Rochet rolled in, demanding to see Jacques. He was hauled off, slapped about a bit and thrown out. Ten minutes later Agnes turned up, asking for me … I couldn’t believe it, I thought the game was up. So there we are in the corridor — will I help, she asks, for old times’ sake? Then Schwermann appears out of nowhere. He’s staring at me, and her, and I can’t think why … he doesn’t speak French … he’s meant to be giving Jacques the once-over. So I try to say to her, with my eyes, “Not here, not now, I’ll do what I can.”‘ He gulped more wine. ‘She didn’t understand.’
Brionne reached down beside his chair and pulled up the bottle, resting it upon the arm of his chair. The cigarette, unsmoked, had grown to a long finger of ash.
‘Schwermann went back to work, but afterwards he wanted to know about her. Who was she? Did she know Fougères? No, just an old tart, I said. But I was worried. I found her a few days later and told her to keep away from Rochet and Jacques, for which she gave me a smack across the face.’ He filled the mug, spilling wine on to his wrist; the ash broke and fell.
‘Then, one morning, a month later, Schwermann told me he was going to lift a Frenchwoman in the eleventh arrondissement that afternoon and he wanted me to be there. On his desk was a file. After he’d gone, I looked. There was a report to Eichmann and an interrogation record — a handwritten draft and a typed copy — with all the names of the ring set down, spilled within minutes of being slapped about. He’d told them everything.’
‘Who had?’ blurted out Anselm. Brionne stared ahead, smoke pricking his nostrils and eyes, the desperation of the moment fresh upon him.
‘I took the handwritten draft, gambling it wouldn’t be missed. I didn’t have much time. I only had three travel passes, forged by Rochet’s contacts. I dated them and set off. Rochet himself was out. So I went to Anton Fougères. He wouldn’t see me because I was a collabo. So I handed the paperwork to Snyman, who’d answered the door, along with the passes so they could use the trains. There was nothing else I could do. By nightfall The Round Table was shattered.’
Brionne closed his eyes as a heavy silence cramped the room. ‘I didn’t know we were going to arrest Agnes until we got there, because I thought she was still at Parc Monceau. The flat door was broken open from when they’d come for Madame Klein. We sat there and waited. I can’t describe the rest.’ He smoked, repeatedly drawing in thick draughts. ‘We took her child and she screamed at me, a scream that pierces time. Then Schwermann knew I was involved in The Round Table. I never saw Agnes again. That is my last memory of her. A nurse took the boy to an orphanage.’
Brionne became eerily still, as though he’d quietly died. He said, ‘Three days later, he called me in. He placed the typed interrogation record on the left side of his desk, disclosing all the names of The Round Table. Then he produced two convoy deportation lists for Auschwitz, each with a string of names … including Agnes and her child. At the bottom was a space to be signed by the supervising officer, the one who ticks them on to the cattle truck. He put those on the right-hand side. “Sit down,” he said. “You have a choice.”
‘I sat down. “If you sign these documents,” he said, “you may keep the child. If you refuse he will see Auschwitz, and you will be shot.”‘ Victor stared at the bottle on the floor, now almost empty. ‘I signed everything.’ A thin laugh expelled a gust of smoke. ‘The irony of it struck me at the time: by writing my name I became the one who had betrayed The Round Table, just after I’d removed the proof that it was someone else—remember? I’d just given the draft to Jacques ‘father, Anton Fougères.’ He drained his mug in long gulps. ‘One thing happened next that I have never forgotten — I heard him being sick in the toilet. I collected the boy from an orphanage that afternoon and took him home to my mother. He was one of nine. The other eight were deported the next day. I cannot tell you what it was like to walk away with one of them.’
‘Robert?’
‘Yes.’
‘Robert is Agnes’ son?’
‘Yes.’ Brionne placed a shaking hand over his face. ‘Schwermann supervised the departure of the convoy that took Agnes away. Afterwards, he kept the original list signed by me and placed an unsigned duplicate on file. As for Robert, he did the same thing, covering the deportation himself so that no questions were asked as to the child’s whereabouts. The only difference was that no duplicate list was made. To tie the knot, he got a friend at Auschwitz to mess about with their records to make them consistent.’
‘Why?’
‘
He told me that if the Germans lost the war, the public records would confirm that he’d saved a child when he’d got the chance.’
‘So what?’
‘I said that … and he replied that if ever he had to fight for his life, it could be the one thing that might save him from the gallows.’
Brionne left the room. Anselm heard him swill his face in a rush of water. He spoke from the kitchen, coming back to his worn chair. ‘He read a lot of Goethe. “Du musst herrschen und gewinnen, oder dienen und verlieren,” he told me later. “You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve.” A very German apology. For the rest of the time I knew him he sweated profusely.’
The enormity of Anselm’s wilful credulity towered over him. He’d guessed Schwermann was blackmailing Brionne because of the documents given to Max, but that didn’t mean Brionne had done anything to induce the blackmail. It was simple logic.
‘From then on, he often used to say “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.” I was part of him and he was part of me, two souls dwelling within one breast. I was the one who would have to tell the tale of his heroism. I was the one who could procure his escape, using The Round Table structure to his advantage. And, in due course, I did. When it became clear the war was over, I took him to Les Moineaux.’
‘But neither of you were known to the community,’ said Anselm.
‘Father, just because they did not know me does not mean I did not know them. I told Father Pleyon, the Prior, that I was “Bedivere” and I was welcomed. And then I had to put that saintly man in the same position Schwermann had put me, which was ghastly because he had been the monk responsible for running the operation at the Priory.’
‘Father Pleyon?’
‘Yes.’
Anselm remembered Chambray referring to the doubts raised by Father Pleyon when the smuggling operation was first put to the community, and he saw at once the wise stewardship of Prior Morel — he had given the main job to a man with his eyes on the risks, rather than the enthusiast. And then Anselm glimpsed something he had never considered … he remembered Father Pleyon’s report to Rome … it was Pleyon who had ensured that Rochet met the Fougères family…
‘I told him if he couldn’t hide us, yes, a Nazi would be caught and hanged. But so would I. And the boy Schwermann had spared would learn the terrible truth about his own history. But if he assisted our escape, well, the child would be spared, a second, final time. The boy would grow, freed from the past, and some good would be salvaged from so much evil. And Schwermann? He would have been saved for the sake of a child, the least in this life but the greatest in the Kingdom. There was poetry in that. Father Rochet would have liked it.’ Brionne lit another cigarette. He passed one to Anselm.
‘Father Pleyon asked if he could write a report to Rome, explaining what had happened. I agreed. Robert was hidden in the convent as a refugee and I saw him every day until our passage was prepared for England.’
Anselm gave a moan of self-recrimination. Father Chambray had misunderstood every detail and Anselm had devoured the conclusions, principally because Rome had tried to hide them.
Brionne said, ‘When Schwermann was recognised on a train, as we were leaving Paris, he led them to me, one carriage further along. I was interviewed by a young officer, much the same age as me. I looked him in the eye and told him the same thing: Schwermann would hang, but what about the boy sitting on the bench outside? He was a brave man. He let us go.
The young Captain Lawson who could not remember anything when pressed by DI Armstrong, thought Anselm.
‘I built a new life for Robert,’ said Brionne. ‘He married, had children … but I was always waiting for Schwermann to be exposed, because I knew he’d come looking for me.’
‘So you went into hiding when he turned up at Larkwood Priory?’ asked Anselm.
‘Yes. And I would have stayed there if you hadn’t asked me if Pascal Fougères had died for nothing.’
‘But Victor, why didn’t you reveal what had happened?’
‘I wanted to, but when I stood there, in the witness box, I couldn’t do it. I looked at Schwermann. I looked at the survivors. And I looked at Robert. I hadn’t been able to tell him anything before seeing the police. How could I explain to him that I’m not his father? How do I prove that I didn’t put his mother on the train for Auschwitz? That I didn’t betray all her friends, and my own? Only Father Rochet knew I’d been a secret member of The Round Table and he’s dead.’
‘But Robert knows you, loves you; he would have believed you.
‘Father, you forget something.’ His voice was steady uncompromising, detached. ‘I was trapped as a collaborator for the rest of the war. It was the price for Robert’s survival. I couldn’t tell him that. So when I took the oath in court, I told the truth, even though no one understood the actual meaning of what I said. It’s contemptible.’
The swift consumption of wine had taken its toll. Brionne licked his lips; his head began to loll, suddenly dropping now and again off its axis. He spoke as though about to weep. ‘And the irony of it is that afterwards, when I stood with Robert in the street, I knew I’d lost him because he thought I’d lied.’ He let out a great sigh. ‘And all the while Agnes, his mother, my dear friend, was alive, here in London, and I could have condemned Schwermann in her name … It is too much, too much …’
Appalled by the plundering self—sacrifice, Anselm said, ‘After all you have suffered, you can restore to Agnes her son. You have raised him from the dead. I will speak to Robert.’ He walked over and kneeled by Brionne’s chair, Taking the wine bottle out of his hand he said, ‘Victor, who betrayed The Round Table?’
‘Oh Father,’ he said mournfully ‘do I have to say it out loud?’
3
At 4.17 p.m. the waiting was over. Everyone returned to court: Counsel, solicitors, observers, the Press and, of course, Eduard Schwermann. When all were comfortably seated, Mr Justice Pollbrook came swiftly on to the Bench. Lucy, sitting beside Mr Lachaise, watched the string of jurors file into their seats. They all looked guilty. The clerk stood up with his litany of questions. The foreman stood up, ready to deliver her nervous replies. After each answer was given, the clerk repeated the words verbatim, to remove all possible doubt. The foreman confirmed the repetition.
They had reached unanimous verdicts on all counts.
Chapter Forty-Three
1
The foreman was a young woman in her mid-thirties, wearing narrow glasses that insinuated bookish gravity. She wore black but her skin was paper-white. Upon hearing the first verdict, Lucy lost all memory of the previous questions and replies; they were swallowed up by her final, irrevocable judgment:
‘Not guilty.’
The tidy phrase was hardly spent before a most awful collective gasp arose from one side of the courtroom. The survivors and their relatives who had watched the whole process of the trial, mute but concentrated, broke out in an agony of protest. Lucy released a shuddering sound, horribly similar to a laugh. She turned to Mr Lachaise. He sat still, with a repose wholly alien to the moment. His hand reached out to Lucy’s. They were joined like father and daughter.
The other counts on the indictment were read out. Each received the same verdict: ‘Not guilty.’
Lucy sat in a trance out of time, hearing words but unable to link them coherently. She could not dispel the image of Agnes, lying absolutely still, defenceless, consumed by silence. Everyone stood as Mr Justice Pollbrook left the Bench. And then from all around came echoing shuffles and bangs as though the court was being dismantled by stagehands impatient for home. The clatter became erratic, less insistent, and then faded.
‘Excuse me, it’s time to go.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Lucy stirring. The court and public gallery were empty, except for herself and Mr Lachaise. She was still holding his hand.
‘It’s time to go. I have to lock up,’ said the usher, pointing like a curator towards the door.
Lucy stood. Mr Lachaise
withdrew his pipe and thumbed the bowl reflectively.
‘You can’t use that in here,’ said the usher officiously.
‘Indeed not. It’s just an old habit to occupy the hands.’ With a warm glance he said, ‘Go now, Lucy. ‘
She had always liked his accent and the engaging depth of his voice, like churning wet gravel. As she pushed open the swing doors she heard him ask:
‘Would you be so kind as to do me a small favour …?’
Then they closed.
Standing in Newgate Street, the presence of Agnes all around, suffusing metal, stone and cloud, Lucy hailed a taxi. ‘Hammersmith,’ she said woozily
2
Anselm left Victor Brionne, knowing he would continue to drink but knowing there was little he could do to hold him back. Victor — he could call him nothing else — had urged Anselm to tell Agnes about Robert. It was a secret that could not be withheld from the little time she had remaining.
Anselm left shortly before 5 p.m. He dropped into a newsagent, drawn by the blaring of a radio from behind a curtain over the back room. He leafed through a paper, waiting for the news on the hour. The shock verdict delivered in the trial led a series of other items, culminating in the shock transfer of a football player. Two shocks, one at either end.
Anselm walked out, dazed, and looked around. It was a lovely dusty, sunny day and there were children playing in the street.
3
The front door was slightly ajar. Wilma must have popped out. Lucy walked purposefully through to Agnes’ room. She kissed her forehead. It was warm and smooth, scented by baby oil —one of Wilma’s gentle ministrations. Lucy took both of her grandmother’s hands and said, ‘Gran, they’ve set him free. It’s all over.’
For a while Agnes did not respond. Her eyelids blinked slowly. Then her head swung to one side, arching backwards. From her mouth, stretched open, came a thin squealing exhalation of air that Lucy thought would never end.
The Sixth Lamentation Page 29
