The Sixth Lamentation (44 page)

‘Brownlow?’
interjected Anselm with a faint, querying smile.

‘The
man who rescued Oliver Twist,’ replied Victor. For him it was an old joke, lame
but enduring, a sniff at adversity.

‘Of
course,’ snapped Anselm. ‘I knew I recognised it.’

Abandoning
the advantages his education and talent would have brought him, Victor then
chose factory work as a long-term hiding place. For most of his employed life
he stood by a conveyor belt putting lids on jars of mustard. He saved what he
could for Robert’s precocious talent at the piano. He met Pauline, his
wife-to-be, at a church fair bookstall. Nature ran its course and she became a
mother to Robert, but he was old enough to remember her coming into his life.

‘When
he was old enough to understand, I told him his real mother had died during an
air raid. Disasters are always convincing.’

For
twenty-six years Pauline had been his strength, the woman to whom he confided
all that had happened. When she knew she was going to die from a rare kidney
complaint she wrote Victor a letter, to help him after she had gone. But they
were lifeless words, shapes in ink. He used to stare at them, trying to summon
up the voice that had once spoken to him, her passion, her belief in him, her
constant forgiveness for the wrongs of which he was a part. He’d been to
confession.

‘He
gave me absolution,’ Victor remembered, ‘but he refused to give me a penance.
Keep talking to Pauline, he said. And I did. But her kidneys packed up and she
died. That’s when I started drinking.’

All the
family thought it was grief, which was true, but it was also the other burden
he could no longer carry alone. He attended an expensive rehabilitation
programme sorted out by Robert and found it completely humiliating — not
because he was proud but because he could not disclose the reasons for his
collapse.

‘They
thought I was “avoiding the pain required to face the truth about myself”. I
found that judgment distinctly unpalatable. It was, as with so much of my
life, a hideous misunderstanding.’

They
sat in silence until Anselm rose. He had a train to catch.

‘Robert
will have to be told everything,’ Victor said, exhausted. ‘Difficult as that
might be, the thought of it done is like … an accomplishment.’

‘I have
already arranged to see him,’ said Anselm.

Cautiously,
reflectively. Victor said, ‘It’s all been an inexplicable mix of misfortune and
luck. But since I’m a religious man, I look to Providence. Only that rather
complicates things, don’t you think? Because there’s no accounting for the
graces received, set against what went wrong, without hindrance, for so long.’

Anselm
didn’t have a reply for that particular observation.

2

Lucy met Father Anselm on
the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station. She had wanted to see him before he
went back to Larkwood Priory, to say thank you, and had duly rung him at St
Catherine’s the night before. The monk stood behind his suitcase like one of
those carved statues on the front of a cathedral, observing the passing world
on its busy way to somewhere important. He saw her and raised a hand.

Lucy
said, ‘I’m told it’s because of you I’m not going to be charged.’

‘That’s
not strictly true,’ replied the monk. ‘Detective Superintendent Milby and I go
back a long way He’d never have put you through the system if he could help it.
But what you did was remarkably daft, wasn’t it?’

‘At the
time I was watching myself,’ said Lucy. ‘It was as though the whole episode was
part of a play and once I’d started writing the script I couldn’t stop. At last
I was in control. I could choose the ending. But it was unreal. I just wanted
to rehearse what it would be like and see it through to the end.’ She felt
again the queasy warmth of guilt passed by ‘Detective Inspector Armstrong told
me that, once cocked, the trigger was so light it could have gone off in my
hand without me even touching it.’

‘And
you would have killed the last knight of The Round Table,’ said Father Anselm, ‘the
man who saved Robert. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’ The monk went on to give
a short account of Victor’s true position in the weave of events. Horrified at
the magnitude of her error, humbled and ashamed, Lucy said, ‘Someone must have
been looking after me.’

‘I know
what you mean,’ replied the monk pensively ‘That is a phrase upon which to
ponder.’ He glanced at the departure board. ‘I’m afraid I have to go.

Lucy
walked with him along the platform. ‘I must tell my father who he is.’

‘Yes
… and I must tell Robert Brownlow whose son he is.’

Lucy
felt the first stirrings of an idea that she knew would fulfil itself. She had
a sense of festival, streamers, a family outing. Father Anselm stopped by the
train door and said: ‘Did you know that Salomon Lachaise was saved by The Round
Table?’

‘No.’
She thought of the gentleman who had become her friend, having at one definite
point in the course of the trial sought her out, along with Max Nightingale. ‘And
yet he didn’t sit with the other survivors.

The monk
looked at her curiously ‘How strange. I didn’t realise that …’

Lucy’s
idea took a firm shape:

‘I’d
like to bring all these people together, before my grand-mother dies. They all
belong in the same room.

Surprised
agreement lit the monk’s face.

She
said, ‘Would you come.’ Father?’

‘Thank
you, and remember … I’m also a messenger from the past.’

A
messenger: somehow, despite the long, unrelenting conspiracy of misfortune, a
letter had been passed on, as by runners at night, despite the guns, despite
the wire. It would be brought to Agnes just before she died.

A man
in a tired uniform appeared, urging stragglers to get on board. The one
remaining question fell from her lips as the door began to swing on its dirty
hinge: ‘I wonder what Mr Lachaise said to Schwermann …’

‘Yes, I
wonder,’ replied the monk.

The
door banged shut. A loud whistle soared over the carriages. The train heaved
forwards, clattering on the rails. The man in uniform walked quickly past, his
job done. And Father Anselm, his face framed by a grimy square of glass, moved
away.

Chapter Forty-Six

Salomon Lachaise said he
wanted to come to Larkwood. He needed some time to be alone and asked if he
might stay at The Hermitage. The Prior granted his permission. For three days
the Priory’s guest wandered in the woods, along the stream and round the lake.
Then, one morning, Anselm found a note in his pigeonhole. Salomon Lachaise
would welcome a visit.

Anselm
walked quickly through the fields after lunch. About two hundred yards from The
Hermitage was a narrow wooden footbridge, without railings, spanning the stream.
The small man sat upon the timbers. Silently, Anselm joined him. Their legs
hung loose over the edge.

Salomon
Lachaise said, ‘Do you remember, before the end of the trial, saying you had
been one person with me while all the while you were another?’

‘Yes.
You replied that that was true of all of us.’

‘Your
memory serves you well.’

‘I
wondered what you meant. ‘

‘I’m
not sure I’ll ever be able to explain. But I will try. You know that I learned
early on in my life that I was one of the few who had escaped … that my whole
family had been taken away. I kept the memory of their names alive. I told you
that I found peace in scholarship, that I owed the outset of my academic life
to a survivor.’

‘Yes.’
I remember.’

For a
short while Salomon Lachaise pondered the rush of water beneath his feet. He
said, ‘My life changed on a bright, cold morning just after a lecture on feudal
iconography I walked into the common room at the University and picked up a
newspaper. A journalist had discovered that … that man … had found refuge
in Britain after the war.’

‘Pascal
Fougères was the author?’

‘Yes. I
decided to contact him, and told my mother. No, she said, dear God, no. Leave
the past alone. I turned to Mr Bremer — I told you about him when we first met
— the lawyer who had become my guide. He, too, had seen the article. He, too,
advised me to get on with my life … to forget what I had read.’

‘Did
you?’

‘No.’

Salomon
Lachaise proceeded in a low monotone. ‘I went to see Mr Bremer. I told him my
mind was made up; I was going to join myself to those who were seeking that
man. I asked for his support before I told my mother.’

‘You
received it?’

‘No. It
would be right to say he lost his professional detachment.’

‘Why?’

‘The
article we had both read gave the name of the small town that man had come from
…Wissendorf … Mr Bremer recognised it from his dealings with the lawyer
retained by my benefactor. He made what I think is called a reasonable assumption
of fact. My refusal to heed his advice forced him to tell me that the German
lawyer acting on behalf of the “survivor” was the family solicitor for …
that man.’

‘Schwermann
was the … survivor?’ asked Anselm, aghast at the appropriation of the word.

‘Yes.
And to think … I made my name in a field of learning that is known as the age
of patronage.’

Salomon
Lachaise watched his dangling feet, carefully trailing the soles of his shoes
against the heavy pull of water. Blackened silver spurted either side at every
sweeping touch.

Anselm
said, tentatively ‘Why you?’

Very
slowly Salomon Lachaise said, ‘I was the last child saved by The Round Table,
taken to safety by Agnes Aubret just before her arrest.’

Anselm
turned and scrutinised the face of his companion. It was a miracle of calm, a
screen of chalk that would fall into powder if touched. Uncomprehending, Anselm
said, ‘He must have seen your existence as a salving of conscience.’

‘My
entire academic life rests upon contamination. Everything 1 have achieved rises
from poison, bright flowers out of filth. I shall never practise my art again.

Anselm
struggled to remonstrate, ‘But surely …’ He floundered, lacking
conviction, for he knew that the most costly decisions are often not made — they
happen.

‘I did
not contact Fougères and my mother thought that I had taken her advice. Shortly
afterwards she died, peacefully. And while that brought grief, it set me free.’

‘To do
what?’ Anselm had sensed something specific … something crucial.

‘Mr
Bremer was a meticulous man, a keeper of detailed records which he never
destroyed. By chance there had once been an error in the transfer of funds from
the solicitor in Germany. to him. In sorting out the tangle he’d learned the
name of the client. At my request he dug out his old papers and there it was… Nightingale.’

‘And
you passed that on to Pascal Fougères?’ asked Anselm.

‘Yes. When
that man claimed sanctuary.’ I took early retirement and followed his route of
escape, from Paris to Les Moineaux. I had an inkling he’d somehow taken the
same route as my mother. Then I came here, to Larkwood. After that it was a
matter of waiting for the outcome of the trial.’ He breathed deeply, like one
bent over.’ preparing to heave a rock to one side. He said, ‘I waited for him
to speak, to hear what he had to say to those he had robbed. But in the end he
said nothing, and they freed him. He was exactly what he appeared to be, only
the jury had a doubt. The moment I’d waited for had come … and I did not want
it. I told an usher I wanted to see him and I gave my name.

Again
he ran his feet upon the surface of the stream, watching the sweeping cuts in
the silvery rush, opened up, now closed, then opened up again. Salomon Lachaise
described how he was shown through to a room rather like a post office counter.

A
window of thick glass lay seated in the wall. Beneath, on each side, was a wide
sill — a table passing through the divide — and a chair.

‘A door
opened and suddenly there he was. For a long while I just looked at him, each
line upon his face, the nails upon his fingers. He raised a hand, putting it
against the glass.’

Schwermann
had spoken first across the divide:

‘I didn’t
realise it was you, in the woods …’

‘Yes.’

‘I can
hardly believe that you are here, that you have come. Gratitude and fearful
wonder loosened his drawn features.

‘Yes, I
have come.

‘How
did you find out?’

‘I am
here, that is all that matters.’

‘I
managed to save you, do you know that?’

‘Yes, I
do.’

‘After
I got away and had enough money I had you traced.’ I gave what I could, I’ve
followed your success …’ The appeal sought recognition, appreciation.

‘Yes, I
understand that.’