‘There was nothing I could do.’
‘You did a great deal:
The old man wheedled, as if for the hundredth time, ‘I had no choice.’
‘Yes, you did. You have forgotten too much.’
‘Please, Salomon, listen … can’t you forgive …’ The pleading became a wail.
‘I do not have that power. And neither does God. It belongs to those you abandoned. Now hear me.
Schwermann became instantly still, as though his heart had ceased to beat. He simply breathed, a functioning suddenly foreign to his waiting, expectant body Salomon Lachaise stood up and said: ‘I raise in my hands the dust from which you were made and I cast it to the wind. May you never be remembered, either under the sun or at its setting.’
He turned away from the dividing glass. And from the prisoner on the other side, soon to be freed, came the sound of a withered, resentful moan.
Salomon Lachaise had finished speaking. The wild chase of water beneath their feet grew loud. Anselm repeated what he’d read in the papers:
‘The police found capsules in two of his jackets, sewn into the same corner below the left pocket, with a loose thread ready to be pulled when needed.’
‘So I understand.’
‘Presumably they were taken out and put back after every visit to the dry cleaner’s.’
‘Yes, I expect you are right.’
Anselm thought of the private ritual, the unpicking and the sewing up over the years, the constant preparedness to escape a judgment imposed by anyone other than himself. Before Anselm could pursue his reflections, Salomon Lachaise said, with closing authority: ‘I shall never talk of him again.’
As at a signal, they both clambered on to their knees and stood, Anselm helping his companion gain balance. Strolling back to The Hermitage, Anselm said, ‘What will you do now?’
‘Travel. I want to keep moving. I have no commitments, no dependants.’
‘You’ll remain in Geneva?’
‘Yes. As much as I have left the University, it remains something of a home. Anyway’ — he smiled brightly — ‘I intend to arrange a small exhibition of young Max’s paintings. Have you seen them?’
‘No.’
‘You should. They possess alarming innocence. I shall try to use the ignominy of his background to his advantage. Otherwise it will remain a curse.
‘That is kind.’
‘Nothing done for pleasure is kind.’
They reached The Hermitage shack, and Anselm made to amble back to the Priory. Pointing at the open door, Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Can you join me for a final glass of port? I never go anywhere without a bottle.’
They sat on wobbling wooden chairs, sipping in silence, until Anselm said, ‘Would you like to meet Agnes Aubret?’
Salomon Lachaise, with tears in his eyes, could not reply.
Chapter Forty-Seven
1
Lucy met her father in the noble gardens of Gray’s Inn. As they entered, she pointed at the stone beasts on the gate columns. ‘Griffins,’ said her father knowledgably. ‘Protectors of paradise. Don’t they teach you anything about myths these days?’
His suit was crafted to his body immaculately creased and cut. In his own world, thought Lucy he was powerful and successful and wore the uniform of esteemed competence. When they found a bench, he dusted off dry particles of nothing with the back of a hand. Sitting like two lone strays at a matinee, each with their legs crossed, Lucy began the stripping of her father.
‘Dad, none of us are who we think we are.’
Her father, enjoying a tease, replied, ‘And I suppose no one else is who we think they are.
‘No, quite right.’ She cut through the smart cloth of known appearances to the soft epidermis. ‘It’s true of Gran’ — he looked suddenly wary — ‘and it is especially true of you.
Lucy explained to her father how he had been saved from Ravensbrück by Agnes, that he was born of unknown, murdered parents, from an unknown place, that they were buried no one knew where. And she told him Agnes was the mother of a son whom she’d lost, a son who had been found. He listened, entranced and dismayed, fingering the constricting knot of his tie. When Lucy had finished he sat stunned, as though waiting for the lights to come on in a theatre, the only one left in a curved, empty stall.
‘Do you know,’ he said faintly ‘I think she nearly told me once.
‘When?’
‘Years and years ago … before the rot set in … I was fifteen or sixteen and I gave her a mouthful about her silence’ — again he reached for his restricting collar — ‘I said she’d never cared, not even when I’d fallen as a boy and cut my knee.’
‘What did she say?’ asked Lucy
Her father sat upright, the movement of feet scuffing a gleaming shoe. He wiped his dry lips with a handkerchief and said, ‘Nothing, actually at first. But her face crumpled … in a way that 1 have never been able to forget … and just when I thought she was going to tell me something she was gone, into herself …’
‘She didn’t speak?’
He nodded, his face flushed and shining. ‘She said, “Oh Freddie, say anything about me but not that, not that:” He joined his hands in hopeless, abject supplication. ‘God, I have to see her … I have to tell her I’m sorry …’
The gardens of the Inn were due to close, their lunchtime access about to be withdrawn by edict of the Honourable Benchers. Like a stream of obedient refugees, young and old started threading their way towards the ornate gates. Lucy and Freddie followed suit. They walked back the way they had come, changed from who they were when they’d entered.
‘I had always thought, in some obscure way she did not want me.
These were words Lucy could hardly bear to hear. She looked down, fastening her attention on the measured crunching of fine gravel.
‘In one sense, I suppose that is true …
Lucy lowered her head further, her chin discovering a necklace given to her by him on her tenth birthday. She pressed hard against the warm gold chain as he spoke:
‘Isn’t life bloody awful sometimes. She could never have told me when I most wanted to know because I would not have understood. And now that I am old enough to understand she can’t tell me.’
Lucy forced the tiny links into the skin of her neck. He said:
‘I’d give anything to go back to that moment when her face fell, to tell her I didn’t mean it … but that is part of the hell — I did mean it … I did. I just wish I’d never said it. Unfortunately we have to live with what we’ve said, as well as what we’ve done.’
Reaching the gates, Lucy looked up. It seemed her father had aged, but the lines through his skin were yielding, well drawn. He was like a man who’d been well treated by an indulgent parole board. Yes, they would recommend his release; but so many years of imprisonment had passed that the spout within for exhilaration had rusted, clogged. They all watched him in a line, waiting for the bursting forth. He could only smile, shake hands, bow … mutter thanks.
He faced Lucy and said plainly, ‘There’s still enough time left to make a difference, don’t you think?’
‘Yes.’
They walked out into Field Court and the gates of paradise politely closed. Her father kissed her goodbye. Strange, thought Lucy: it was only since she’d told her father about the death of Pascal that intimacy of the kind they each wanted, had been restored between them. Glancing up at a mute griffin, Lucy could have sworn she saw the little beast breathe.
2
Anselm left Salomon Lachaise to the solitude of Larkwood and took a train to Newcastle. From there he took the rattling Metro to the coast where Robert Brownlow lived.
Anselm had made the arrangement with Maggie, who opened the door before he could knock. She led him anxiously to the foot of the stairs. Anselm told her not to worry and went up to join Robert in the lounge.
They stood at the window, looking out on Cullercoats Bay Down below on the beach was little Stephen, heaping sand wit
h his father, Francis.
‘Francis is my eldest,’ said Robert. ‘Over there is Caroline, his wife, with the recent addition, Ian. He’s eleven months.’ A woman, evidently not used to the rigours of a sunny North-East afternoon, sat wrapped in an overcoat by an outcrop of rocks. The round, covered head of an infant protruded between the raised lapels.
‘I’ve got four other children. Two are married, both of them have kids. Altogether we come to thirteen. And now we re in pieces.’
They watched two generations shivering on the sand.
‘Robert,’ said Anselm, ‘you told me when we first met that Victor had died after the war:
‘As far as I was concerned, he had. That man was not my father. Victor Brownlow was. At least, that is what I wanted to believe, for their sake,’ he nodded towards the beach, ‘and for mine. But now, after watching him in court defending that man, it’s the other way round. My father has died and I find myself the son of Victor Brionne.’
Unseen by his father, little Stephen had begun to undress, his face set towards the frozen sea. Stephen’s mother, permanently alert, shooed her husband away back to his charge.
Anselm chose his words carefully. ‘Part of what you have said is true. Your father is dead.’
Robert turned, his brown eyes puzzled, not quite meshing with the bite of the words.
Anselm continued, ‘As you say, Victor Brionne is not your father. Nor is he now. He never was.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Robert.
‘You are the son of Jacques Fougères.’
Robert’s mouth fell slightly apart; he roughly drew a hand across his short, neat hair. ‘The man mentioned in the trial?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who had a child by Agnes Aubret?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am that child?’
‘Yes, Robert, you are.
He moved away from the light of the window, unsteadily towards a chair. Sitting down cautiously, he said, ‘Agnes Aubret … my mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who died in Auschwitz?’ His eyes began to flicker. He coughed, lightly
‘No. Robert, she is alive. She survived. She lives in London. She is very ill and will soon die.’
‘My God.’
‘It is a long and involved story,’ said Anselm, moving to
Robert’s side, ‘and Victor will tell you everything. All I want to say is this. You are alive today because he saved you. The price he paid was horrendous and he’s been paying ever since.’
‘Tell me a little more, anything …
Anselm briefly gave the outline of Victor’s chosen path, with its unforeseen penalty, and his further choices.
Fearful, like one trapped in the sand, the tide approaching, Robert said, ‘I’ll have to relive my whole life, right from the beginning, find myself … seek out… my father … seek out Victor.’ He stumbled over the changing references within simple words .
Anselm replied quickly with gentle insistence, ‘Robert, begin that journey with your mother; she already knows … and let Victor be your guide.’
Robert walked to the door and called out faintly ‘Maggie, come here, please …’
She came running up the stairs. As she entered the room Robert weakly extended his arms. She clasped his neck, exclaiming, ‘What’s happened, Robert? Tell me, tell me.’
Anselm strode outside into a sudden blustering, the long exhalations of the sea. Beneath a cupola of unremitting light he passed through a gate and found a cliff trail skirting the bay. He walked, his face averted to the wind, until, at a midpoint, he turned, squinting, and looked back: there was the house, etched into hard, shapeless cloud, the windows punched small and black; and there, below, on the beach, was little Stephen with tousled blond hair, piling up the wet sand … the carefree, joyous great-grandson of Agnes Aubret and Jacques Fougères.
Chapter Forty-Eight
1
The day before Agnes’ first and last reunion with her family it rained: a bombarding, cruel inundation that bled the sky. Bloated cloud hung low, shrouding high-rise flats and sharp steeples. For once Lucy didn’t want to be on her own. She rang Cathy and asked if she could stay the night.
Lucy took the tube to Pimlico and dashed through the puddles, her head bent into her chest. By the time she got to Cathy’s flat she was drenched. After a bath, she wrapped herself in a large, warmed towel. When she padded into the sitting room she saw takeaway cartons lined up on a tray Cathy looked up and said, ‘Mongolian. Honestly’
Lucy noticed the absence of make-up. Cathy looked younger, like she’d been at Cambridge but without the confident aggression. Outside, the rain thumped upon dull, empty pavements; and, as the night fell, Lucy told Cathy what would happen the next day. Cathy listened, moving food around her plate with tiny flicks of a fork. It was in the telling that Lucy had another idea. While they were preparing for bed, she stuck her head around the bathroom door and said, ‘Would you like to meet someone?’
‘Who?’
‘A man.’
‘I need a bit more than that.’
‘He knows how to use a pallet knife.’
‘Set it up.’
Lucy lay awake, longing for the wind and rain to be reconciled, or at least to put off their fight for another day. The weather was going to wreck the plans for the morrow. While she worked out an alternative strategy sleep crept upon her by surprise. When Lucy woke the next morning, weak sunshine stole between a gap in the curtains and lit the wall with a shaft of subdued flame. Throwing open the window, she listened with gratitude to the silent work of heat upon water, a union that always recaptured the first freshness of things.
After breakfast, Lucy abandoned the trousers and top she’d bought the day before and dressed in one of Cathy’s smart conversation-stoppers: a navy blue dress with hand-painted enamel buttons. Standing on the doorstep Cathy warned, ‘If you stain that, I’ll weep.’
Lucy caught a glint of tears.
‘I hope everything goes fine,’ Cathy said.
2
Freddie had organised the reception at Agnes’ flat. A trellis table was set up in the back courtyard, covered with plates, laden trays, glasses, plastic cups, bottles of Bollinger, Manzanilla and ghastly fizzy drinks for children. It was lavish, and Wilma said he’d gone mad. The guests arrived for two o’clock: Salomon Lachaise; Victor Brionne; Robert and Maggie Brownlow, with their five children, and their children; Father Anselm; and Father Conroy who moved round the living room quietly spinning threads among them all.
Stepping slightly forward, Lucy gave words of welcome and then abandoned everything she had planned to say Instead she said, ‘I would simply like to remember the names of those who, for reasons we all know, cannot join us.’ She raised her glass, speaking with unaffected ceremony.’ Father Rochet and Madame Klein … Jacques Fougères and all the knights of The Round Table … Father Morel … Father Pleyon … Grandpa Arthur … Pascal Fougères …’ Lucy turned instinctively to her father, willing him to take the torch.
‘And I thank heaven, said Freddie, moving towards the open door, within earshot of Agnes, ‘that among us there is someone who almost lost herself saving others. Friends, to my mother.’
They all sipped in silence. Unseen by all save Lucy Wilma deftly wiped a surface. After the toast, parents surreptitiously produced toys, strategically laying them on the ground like bait to trap wild beasts.
The plan was this: each guest, after seeing Agnes, would knock on the door through which they had come, as a signal to the next, and then go out into the back garden through the French windows. The drawing of a single curtain secured privacy for each meeting. When he was ready Lucy took Salomon Lachaise to Agnes.
The small man was dressed in an elegant suit with new shoes. He walked stiffly his hands meshed. Lucy led him through the open door and then withdrew, watching his reverent approach. She heard his deep, compassionate voice:
‘Madame Embleton, we have met once before, when I was a boy…
’
Lucy shut the door. For a moment she stood still, straining to catch a word, as Agnes had once done with Madame Klein and Father Rochet. Then she turned away as his voice rose.
She came back to the living room exhausted, and marvelled at the smooth ministrations of Father Conroy. After a while there came a faint knock, and Lucy threw a glance at Father Anselm.
3
Agnes was elevated by pillows with the alphabet card on her lap. The drip stood tall, like a hiding guard, its tubes and bags clothed by a flag of linen. She wore a green silk blouse and red cashmere cardigan. The colours threw a faint diaphanous sheen on to the skin around her neck. Illness, resplendent and spoiling, could not take away her radiance. There were two chairs by the bed, with a vase of flowers on the table. Beside the vase lay a small school notebook. A light breeze gently flapped the curtain upon the open French window like bunting on a seaside stall.
Agnes’ blue eyes fixed on Anselm. Emotion pierced his throat and he swallowed hard against a blade. Deathbed scenes, he thought; the last chance to say something sensible, something honest, to wrap it all up. But not here, not now He shuddered: this wasn’t death; that had been and gone, long ago, routed; this was life. He sat down, shaking, and took out a brown, brittle envelope. Lucy sat beside him as he withdrew a single sheet of paper.
‘Agnes,’ he began, ‘I was handed this by Mr Snyman. He told me Jacques had given it to him before he was arrested, hoping it might be brought to you if, by some unimaginable chance, you survived the coming night.’
Through a simple dilating movement of the eyes, Agnes told him to read. Her breathing began to catch hesitantly; fine, curved lashes slowly fell, remaining shut. At the raising of a single, trembling finger, Anselm began reading, in French:
‘April’s tiny hands once captured Paris
As you once captured me: infant Trojan
The Sixth Lamentation Page 32
