The Sixth Lamentation

For my
mother

Acknowledgements

Generally speaking, debts
are disagreeable things, especially those that endure. One kind, however, is a
pleasant exception. I extend my warm gratitude to Ursula Mackenzie who helped
me to produce the book I wanted to write as opposed to the one I had written;
to Pamela Dorman for insightful analysis and championing this novel in the
United States; to Araminta Whitley and Celia Hayley, both of whom have brought me
to where I now am; to Nicki Kennedy and Sam Edenborough for ploughing foreign
fields on my behalf. I’m grateful to Joanne Coen for her patience and
scrupulous attention to detail in preparing the text for publication. While I
dislike general expressions of thanks, that is the only way I can encompass
the many individuals at Time Warner Books and Penguin Putnam who have worked on
this novel with unstinting dedication: I’m grateful to you all.

I
reserve a particular word of thanks for Sarah Hannigan who encouraged me to
write and helped me discover the way I wanted to do it. I also thank: Penny
Moreland (who pushed me from doubt to confidence), Austin Donohoe (who urged me
to take the risk), Paulinus Barnes (for sound advice), James Hawks (who told me
to get on with it); Damien Charnock (who politely remarked upon the prevalence
of sentences without verbs); Nick Rowe (who suggested including a list of principal
characters); my family (for their part in shaping who I am, and for always
smiling upon my endeavours); and my Chambers (for accommodating the
peculiarities of someone who is writing a novel). I am grateful to the
following for help with specific enquiries: William Clegg QC; Michael Walsh
(Archivist, Heythrop College, University of London); Dr E. Rozanne Elder
(Director, Institute of Cistercian Studies, Western Michigan University);
Inspector Barbara Thompson (Suffolk Constabulary); Ian Fry and John ‘Archie’
Weeks (Old Bailey). I am responsible for any errors of interpretation that may
arise from what I was told.

I
reserve a special paragraph for Anne. Constant selfless support (all manner, in
all weather) and solitary childcare (three of them) combined to mark out the
space that made the writing of this book possible. No formal words of thanks
can do her justice or reflect what I would like to say

We both
thank the community whose quiet presence graces the valley where this novel was
begun and completed.

Principal Characters

This novel deals
with three generations: those living in Paris during the Occupation, their
children, and their offspring: old age, middle age and youth. Each is a bearer
of memory, actual or transmitted. It is hoped the following table will furnish
some assistance in holding in mind a number of characters and their place in
the narrative.

The family
of Agnes Embleton (née Aubret)

Freddie (father
of Lucy)

Lucy

Characters
mentioned in Agnes’ journal recounting the resistance activity of The Round
Table:

Father Rochet (parish priest, co-founder of The Round
Table with Madame Klein)

Madam Klein (a Jewish widow, guardian of Agnes)

Jacques Fougères (operational leader of The Round
Table)

Victor Brionne (childhood friend of Agnes and
Jacques)

Franz Snyman (a Jewish refugee)

Eduard Schwermann (a Nazi Officer)

Monks at
Notre Dame des Moineaux:

Father Morel (the Prior)

Father Pleyon (a member of The Round Table; successor
to Father Morel)

Father Chambray (librarian who leaves the monastery
after the war)

The family of
Victor Brionne:

Robert

Other
characters:

Father Anslem (a monk of Larkwood Priory)

Salomon Lachaise (a Jewish survivor, saved by The
Round Table)

Max Schwermann (grandson of Eduard Schwermann)

Pascal Fougères (descendant of Jacques Fougères)

‘L’Occupation’

April’s tiny
hands once captured Paris,

As you once
captured me: infant Trojan

Fingers gently
peeled away my resistance

To your charms.
It was an epiphany;

I saw waving
palms, rising dust, and yes,

I even heard the
stones cry out your name,

Agnes.

And then the
light fell short.

I made a pact
with the Devil when the

‘Spring Wind’
came, when Priam’s son lay bleeding

On the ground.
As morning broke the scattered

Stones whispered
‘God, what have you done?’ and yes,

I betrayed you
both. Can you forgive me,

Agnes?

(August, 1942)

Translated from
the French by Father Anselm Duffy

Feast of Saint
Agnes

Larkwood Priory,
21st January 1998

Part One

‘Now is the time for the burning of the leaves’

(Laurence Binyon, The Burning of the Leaves’, 1942)

First Prologue

1

April
1995.

“‘Night and day I’ve lived
among the tombs, cutting myself on stones”,’ replied Agnes quietly, searching
her memory.

Doctor
Scott’s eyes narrowed slightly. His East Lothian vowels had lilted over
diagnosis and prognosis, gently breaking the news while Agnes gazed at a
gleaming spring daffodil behind his head, rising alone from a rogue plant pot
balanced on a shelf — a present from a patient, perhaps, or free with lots of
petrol. Soon it would topple and fall.

She
forgot the flower when those old words, unbidden, rumbled from her mouth. Agnes
couldn’t place where they came from. Was it something Father Rochet had said,
worse for wear, back in the forties? Something she’d read? It didn’t matter.
They were hers now, coming like a gift to name the past: an autobiography.

Agnes
glanced at her doctor. He was a nice fellow, at home with neurological
catastrophe but less sure of himself with mangled quotation. He looked
over-troubled on her account and she was touched by his confusion.

‘Do you
mean to tell me that, after all I’ve been through, I’m going to die from a
disease whose patron is the Duchess of York?’

 ‘I’m
afraid so.

‘That’s
not fair, Doctor.’ Agnes rose from her seat, still wearing her coat and holding
her handbag.

‘Let me
get you a taxi.’

‘No,
no, I’d rather walk, thank you. While I can.’

‘Of
course.’

He
followed Agnes to the door and, turning, she said, ‘I’m not ready yet, Doctor.’

‘No, I’m
sure you’re not. But who ever is?’

Agnes
breathed in deeply A sudden unexpected relief turned her stomach, rising then
sinking away She closed her eyes. Now she could go home, for good, to Arthur —
and, funnily enough, to the knights of The Round Table. She’d never noticed
that before.

Agnes had known there was
something wrong when her speech became trapped in a slow drawl as if she’d had
too much gin. She let it be. And then she started tripping in the street. She
let that be. Like so many times before, Agnes only acted when pushed. She’d
made an appointment to see a doctor only after Freddie had snapped.

They
were walking through Cavendish Square towards the Wigmore Hall. A fine spray of
March rain floated out of the night, softly lit from high windows and
streetlamps. Freddie was a few impatient steps ahead and Agnes, trying to keep
up, stumbled and fell, cutting her nose and splintering her glasses. Tears
welled as she reached for her frames, not from pain, but because she knew
Freddie’s embarrassment was greater than hers.

‘Mother,
get up, please. Are you all right?’

Agnes
pulled herself to her feet, helped by a passer-by. She wiped her hands upon her
coat as Freddie produced a neatly folded handkerchief. His exasperation spilled
over. ‘Look, if something’s wrong, see a doctor. You won’t say anything to me.
Perhaps you’ll say something to him. But for God’s sake,’ he blurted out, ‘stop
this bloody performance.’

Agnes
knew he would berate himself for hurting her, as she berated herself for
failing him. Neither of them spoke again, save to put in place essential
courtesies.

‘No,
you first, really.’

‘Thank
you, Freddie.’

‘A
programme?’

‘I don’t
think so.’

Agnes
felt unaccountably tired by the interval so he took her home. She saw Doctor
Scott within the week and he made the referral. She saw a consultant. The
results came back. Doctor Scott had given her a call, and now she knew

Leaving the doctor to a
mother of five, Agnes ambled to her beloved home by the Thames where tall
houses were cut from their gardens by a lane that ran to Hogarth’s tomb. Here
was her refuge, among brindled masonry and odd round windows with the copper
glint of light on old glass. On the way she passed a troop of children holding
hands and singing, the teachers front and back armed with clipboards. Piercing
voices dislodged stones in her memory, stirring sediment. Frowning heavily, she
thought again of Madame Klein and Father Rochet, Jacques and Victor and Paris
and … all that.

No
green shoots of forgetfulness had grown. The memory remained freshly cut, known
only to Arthur. And now she was to die, without any resolution of the past,
with no memorial to the others. But how could it be otherwise?

Turning
the corner past the newsagent, she came into view of the river. The breeze
played upon the water, tousling a small boy pulling oars out of time. She
slowed, caught short by the resilient disappointment that always struck like a
sudden cramp when Agnes paid homage to brute circumstance.

‘Loose
ends are only tied up in books,’ she said quietly, and she pushed aside,
probably for the last time, the lingering, irrational hope that her life might
yet be repaired by a caring author. Agnes stopped and laughed. She turned,
walked back to the newsagent, and bought two school notebooks.

2

Freddie and Susan drove
over from Kensington that evening, and Lucy took the tube from Brixton.

It was
like a set piece of bad theatre: Freddie standing by the bay window, Susan
fiddling with the kettle flex and Lucy, their daughter, the unacknowledged
go-between, sitting slightly tensed in an armchair opposite Agnes, who was
reluctantly centre stage.

‘It’s
called motor neurone disease. ‘

No one
said anything immediately Freddie continued to avert his eyes. Lucy watched her
mother keeping still, the flex suspended in her hands.

‘Gran,
did he say anything else?’ Lucy asked tentatively.

‘Yes.
He expects it to advance on the quick side. At some point I won’t be able to walk
or talk, but I never did…’

Freddie
walked across the room and knelt by Agnes’ chair. He put his head on her lap
and Agnes, a mother again, stroked his hair. Susan cried. Agnes wasn’t sure if
it was for her or the sight of Freddie undone. It didn’t matter. Agnes
continued ‘… I never did say much anyway, did I?’