The Sixth Lamentation (46 page)

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

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. ‘

Anselm
paused at the end of the first verse. He looked over to Agnes. A faint pulse
jerked behind her eyelids. Anselm resumed reading:

‘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?’

At the
words of confession she opened her eyes. Inflections of shadow seemed to move
beneath her skin like passing cloud. Agnes lifted her hand to one side,
exposing the white, soft palm. She turned to Anselm, who understood. He placed
the letter on the bed and her hand lay tenderly upon it as though it were
flesh.

After a
long moment Agnes looked to Lucy who walked around Anselm to pick up the second
school notebook from the bedside table; then she reached for the alphabet card
and placed it in position. Agnes said:

F-A-T-H-E-R

Pause.

P-L-E-A-S-E

Pause.

W-I-L-L

Pause.

Y-O-U

Pause.

G-I-V-E

Pause.

T-H-I-S

Pause.

T-O

Pause.

M-R

Pause.

S-N-Y-M-A-N

Anselm
took the notebook offered to him by Lucy.

Agnes
continued:

W-I-L-L

Pause.

Y-O-U

Pause.

B-U-R-Y

Pause.

M-E

Pause.

A-F-T-E-R

Pause.

I-M

Pause.

D-E-A-D

Through
his teeth, Anselm said, ‘Of course.’

A-N-D

Pause.

N-O-T

Pause.

B-E-F-O-R-E

There
was something about the fall of light upon her lips that suggested a smile:
with joy sorrow, acquiescence, loss, gratitude and farewell: each transparent
inflection inhabiting the other. Anselm moved to the French windows and stepped
outside, all but overcome by a stifled impulse to shout. He faced a small lawn
in a courtyard garden that trapped sunlight between high, brick-red walls. On
the far side, like someone lost, stood Salomon Lachaise, distraught.

4

Lucy left Father Anselm
and returned to the living room; then Robert and Victor followed her down the
short, narrow passage back to the half-open door. She stood aside to let them
pass. Victor walked closely behind Robert, one arm round his waist, a hand upon
his shoulder: a faithful mentor guiding a nervous protégé on to the stage at
prize-giving — a boy frightened of applause, its roar, its power to dismantle
what had been built in secret.

The
door swung open at Robert’s touch. On entering, Victor covered his mouth,
defeated, and said, ‘Agnes, je te présent … ton fils…’

Lucy
stood transfixed by a miracle greater than any of the old school stories —
manna in the desert, water from a rock or the parting of any waves — Agnes
slowly raised her head and neck fully off the pillow In answer to the call, her
face turned towards her son. As Lucy backed away astounded, she heard what to
many might have been a sigh, a sudden loud breathing, at most a gathering of soft
. vowels, but to her it carried the unmistakable shape of a name not uttered in
fifty years: ‘Robert!’

5

After all the family had
passed through to Agnes, Lucy stood alone by her grandmother’s bed, looking out
through the open French windows. The thick, polished glass flashed in the sun,
catching dark reflections of red brick; people, young and old, talked casually
a hand in a pocket, a schooner twinkling; and tumbling upon the grass were the
children, dressed in yellow and blue and green. Agnes gazed out upon them all.
Lucy took in the drip and its serpentine tubing, sliding along the starched sheets
to the back of a hand, its teeth hidden by cotton wool and a clean strip of
antiseptic plaster. She ran her eye up her grandmother’s arm to her captivated
face. Lucy tried to stamp down the heat of unassailable joy the wild fingers of
fire: surely this was a time for kicking down the walls. But she couldn’t
summon the rage: it lay dead in a yesterday. .

Lucy
kissed her grandmother’s forehead and then slipped outside towards the front
garden, separated from the house by a quiet avenue. Crossing the road, she saw
Father Anselm leaning on a wall, looking at the river. He must have nipped out
the back way from the courtyard. Lucy thought she saw faint blue spirals of
smoke rising by his head. But no, she concluded, a monk would never have a
cigarette.

They both leaned on the
wall, watching boys pull oars out of time.

Lucy
said, ‘I’ve waited all my life for what’s happening now, although I never knew
it.’

Father
Anselm flicked something from his fingers.

‘I
could never have planned it,’ she continued, ‘because so much was hidden …
but even if I’d known all there was to know, there was still no thing I could
do … nothing I could say. We’re all so helpless.’

They
were both quiet, listening to the tidal lapping of the river. Lucy went on:

‘I’ve
tried — several times — to talk through the mess I did know about, to unravel
the misunderstandings, but that usually made things worse. And yet, now, the
words work … as if they’ve come to life.’