The Sixth Lamentation (16 page)

Victor’s
attention shifted to Robert’s hand. It was heavy upon him.
I beg you, don’t
take it away
…

‘To
some I was a collaborator … there was nothing I could do to stop …’ Now
that simply wasn’t true, and he knew it. His voice trailed off. How much shall
I say? If I go too far, I’ll go over the edge. It will all come out. I can’t… I can’t do that.

Victor
tried again. ‘I worked as an assistant to a young German officer, Eduard
Schwermann. He’s the one who’s claimed sanctuary in a monastery. You’ve read
the papers … Francis talked of him last night.’

Victor
lived each moment through that hand, his existence depending on the movement of
someone else’s fingers.

‘Pascal
Fougères, who found Schwermann, will almost certainly come looking for me …’
Again, his voice faltered on the threshold of complete disclosure. ‘Schwermann
will also seek me out … I suspect there will be others … they’ll all
want me for the trial.’

Victor
felt the grip of panic. He told himself: you’ll be all right, you’ve already
planned for this. When he left Les Moineaux he had a new identity; he was
Victor Berkeley But that name was known to Schwermann and the monks. So when
Victor got to England he changed it again, to Brownlow No one else knew. Again
he said to the beating in his chest: you’ll be all right … but don’t wait
around …

It was
now completely dark outside. Tiny lights from fishing boats twinkled in the
distance upon the hidden, brooding presence of the sea. The catch was out
there somewhere in the deep, but they’d be found and decked by morning.

‘Robert,
I cannot tell you any more. Perhaps one day things might be different. But for
now, if you can, trust me. Trust me as you’ve never trusted anyone before.
Believe me,’ Victor swallowed hard, reaching out for words that might slip
through the gap between truth and deceit, ‘it has been the curse of my life
that I ever knew that man.

Victor
waited, his eyes closed, facing an abyss. Robert’s hand lay still upon him.

‘I have
to hide,’ he said simply ‘I have to go where no one would think of looking for
me, until it’s all over. Then I can bury Victor Brionne for the last time. And
after that … I’ll be your father again … the man you have known.’ Tears
filled his eyes, rising from a deep, ancient sorrow

Robert’s
hand fell away

After a
long moment, Victor heard these words, quietly spoken: ‘I don’t know Brionne.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s still dead. He’s not my father and never was. You
are. You were and always will be.’

Tramping
footsteps and voices mingled on the stairs. It was time for a game of
Consequences before the crackling fire.

Chapter Fifteen

1

‘I won’t be going into
hospital at all. I want to die here.’

‘But
you can’t. ‘

‘I can
and I will. This is my home. This is where I’ll die.’

Lucy
sank her nails into her thighs, as if they were party of her father’s neck.
Susan fiddled with the buttons on her blouse. This was the inevitable
confrontation between mother and son. They had all gathered at Chiswick Mall
that afternoon, at Freddie’s instigation, to deal with the question ‘my mother
won’t face’.

Agnes
walked deliberately across the room as if she had a pile of books on her head.
She flopped confidently into her usual chair by the bay window

‘Mother,
your legs are giving way more often, you— ‘I know’

‘—need
a wheelchair—’

‘I know’

‘Getting
in and out will not be straightforward.’ ‘No.’

‘You
already need help with washing.’

‘Freddie-’

‘Before
long, there are going to be problems with feeding, talking, moving—’

‘Freddie,’
said Agnes, her voice rising and the muscles on her face beginning to contort.

‘The
house will need cleaning, sheets washed, bedclothes changed—’

‘Freddie-
‘

‘—what
about going to the toilet—’

‘FREDDIEEeeeeeee!’
Agnes’ cry became a strange howl, rising and trailing off. She heaved with a
sort of anguished laughter, tears gathering in her eyes, her thin hands shaking
uncontrollably

‘Now
look what you’ve done,’ snapped Lucy, running towards her. Agnes waved her
away, angrily, her mouth locked wide open.

Freddie
pulled at his hair, saying sorry over and over again. Agnes was trying to say
something by hand gesture, her head thrown back while she moaned.

Lucy
could barely contain her anger. ‘Just read this, will you? Go on, read it.’ She
reached over to the bureau and handed her father a piece of paper. Agnes had
written an explanation:

Sometimes I laugh or cry or wail for no reason. Please ignore me while
it lasts. It will stop soon. Thank you.

Lucy took the paper back.
Agnes was quiet now No one said anything. Susan made some tea.

Agnes
sipped from old china, the tinkling saucer held beneath. The cup was so fragile
that sunlight passed through its clay, tracing the outline of frail fingers on
the other side.

‘Freddie,
don’t worry. It’s difficult for all of us. But I’ve made my mind up,’ said
Agnes kindly

Freddie
moved to speak. He was resolute, as if he too had made up his mind. He was
going to press his point. Lucy felt a flash of anger and confusion. There was
such a dreadful mix of motives and concerns. Yes, Agnes was going to
deteriorate, and planning was necessary. But there was another powerful drive,
and that was Freddie’s reluctance, if not refusal, to become ensnared in day-in
day-out nursing care. The illness was creeping up on all of them. Lucy could
see her father’s terror. He wasn’t
capable
of giving Agnes what she needed,
he could not carry the strain of intimate dependence on him. And now he was
feeling rising desperation, shifting from right to left as if routes of escape
were closing down. Lucy saw all this internal squirming, while her father sat
stock-still on the settee, his hands on his knees as if for a school
photograph. And she loathed it, in him and in herself.

‘I won’t
need your help. None of you need worry about that:

Freddie
immediately spilled a lie: ‘We’re not
worried,
we
want
to help.
It’s just that we’ve got to be practical. All of us.’

‘I’ve
already planned everything, Freddie.’

No one
knew what to say The question they were all asking themselves didn’t need to be
asked. Agnes nodded at her tea cup, wanting more. ‘And a chocolate finger,
please, Lucy’ Freddie relaxed a little with the promise of relief. And, hating
herself for it, so did Lucy

‘I’ve
spoken to Social Services. As and when it becomes necessary, carers will come
each day to help with washing and dressing. They’ll provide appliances “subject
to budget” and I can get all sorts of toys from the hospital or Trusts. There
really is nothing to worry about.’

Susan
was still fiddling with the buttons on her blouse when she spoke. ‘I don’t want
you being cared for by strangers. ‘It’s not right. You need your family I want
to help, if you don’t mind, I really do. I’ll do anything you like — I can
cook, clean up, I can … do anything … give me the chance, can’t you?’

Agnes
was visibly moved. Lucy had always felt Agnes valued Susan’s confused attempts
to establish normal relations with her mother-in-law It cost her so much, and
always without reward. Susan, like Lucy wanted things to be different, and in
her own way had kept on trying.

‘Thank
you, Susan, there’s plenty of time, yet, for both of us. Of course you can
help.’

Freddie,
ashamed, ran for the line: ‘But all this isn’t enough, is it? I mean, it’s not
just about bits of help at certain times of the day What about the nights? You’re
going to be needing’ — Freddie hesitated, the corner flag was in view — ‘twenty-four-hour-a-day
assistance,’ and then he dived, full length, ‘from people who know what they’re
doing.’

He was
pale. He’d finally said it. He’d said he couldn’t and wouldn’t become a nurse,
or move in, or take Agnes to his own home.

‘That’s
right, Freddie, and I’ve sorted it all out.’

For the
second time, no one knew what to say Lucy, incredulous, guessed immediately The
question fell out of Freddie’s mouth: ‘How? In what way?’

Agnes
put down her saucer, and then the cup, and then the biscuit, saying, ‘I’ve asked
Wilma to move in.

Freddie,
rigid again, almost stopped breathing.

2

It seemed it was going to
be a day of arguments. After her mother and father had left, Lucy urged Agnes
to give a statement to the police.

‘If I
get involved, replied Agnes, ‘your father will have to know everything. I don’t
want that. His life with me has been hard enough.’ She spoke without a trace of
self-pity. ‘It would be too much to ask of him.’

‘What
would?’

‘To
understand me more than he understands himself.’

‘But if
he knew what was done to you, and how you saved him—’

‘Lucy
you forget, I also failed him.’ She raised a hand to stop any protestation. ‘That
can’t be changed, even by forgiveness. I used to blame myself, but after I met
Wilma I realised things couldn’t have been otherwise. But that only makes the
remorse all the more insupportable.’ Her features became still and extraordinarily
beautiful, like a rapt child at a pantomime, and she said, ‘In a way I lost
Freddie as well. I could not bear to lose the little I have left.’

Agnes
had a way of saying dreadful things with complete simplicity, as if she were
commenting on the wallpaper. Unless one inhabited a similar inner landscape it
was quite impossible to reply Even Lucy came up against these awful flashes of
tranquillity, where one would expect to find anguish, when she could only look
upon her grandmother from a distance with a sort of shocked reverence.

Outside
the window rain began to fall, bouncing off the pavement, gathering the litter,
washing stray cuttings from tidy gardens, and Agnes, serene, reached for the
newspaper by her side, saying, ‘There’s a documentary tonight on The Round
Table.’ She paused. ‘One of the contributors is Pascal Fougères. I’m worried he
might mention me … the family will not have forgotten …’ Her eyes
reached out to Lucy. ‘You’ll have to stay ‘

‘All
right then, if I must.’

‘You
must.’

Lucy
regarded her grandmother and became almost cold with apprehension. Impulsively,
with sudden terror, she said, ‘Does it make any difference to you?’

Agnes
looked up, mildly surprised, and said, ‘Of course it does.’

‘No,
Gran,’ Lucy replied, squirming, prickling with intimacy, ‘I mean, does it
matter that I’m not your own blood?’ She flushed hot; sweat tingled across her
back and neck.

Agnes
dropped the paper. With coruscating simplicity she said, ‘It has made you
utterly irreplaceable.’

The documentary had been
constructed in such a way as to follow the steps of Pascal Fougères through a
tragic moment in history. To her amazement, Lucy found her sensibilities
dozing, sluggish, as she watched the footage of German soldiers surveying Paris
with the lazy contentment of ownership. She could not rouse the naked fear they
must have represented. Anodyne war films and comedies about silly Nazis had
tamed them, even in Lucy’s eyes.

The
narrator described how Fougères, a foreign correspondent for
Le Monde,
had
inadvertently come across a cryptic memo recently declassified in the United States.
The document briefly reported the capture and release of a young German officer
by British Intelligence. The journalist immediately recognised the name for it
was Schwermann who had been responsible for the breaking of a Resistance
network and the death of its leader — Pascal’s great—uncle, Jacques. The viewer
was taken back to the time of Occupation, when Jacques, with other students,
formed The Round Table. On the day the Star of David had become compulsory
apparel, Jacques had worn his own star, marked ‘Catholique’, outside the
Gestapo offices on Avenue Foch. He had been arrested and interned in Drancy for
two weeks. But that had not discouraged the young protester.

‘The
Round Table continued with its work,’ said Pascal, his face filling the screen,
dark-eyed and pensive, ‘but it was broken by Schwermann within the month. They
were all deported. None survived.’

Schwermann
escaped from France after the war and made his way to England, along with a
Frenchman, Victor Brionne, who had been based in the same department of the
Gestapo. They did so under false identities that had never been discovered.
All this, and no more, was set out in the terse memo the young journalist had
been fortunate enough to find. He publicised his findings, expecting a strong
reaction throughout Great Britain. It caused a brief outcry somewhere on the
third or fourth pages and then became yesterday’s news. Attempts to trace
Schwermann through official channels floundered. Meanwhile, back in France, a
consortium of interested parties had been formed and the case against the
fugitive Nazi was painstakingly constructed. The decisive breakthrough came
when Pascal Fougères received a letter, anonymous and tantalisingly brief,
disclosing the false name under which Schwermann was hiding: Nightingale.