The Sixth Lamentation (41 page)

‘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.