The Sixth Lamentation (27 page)

Mr
Penshaw concluded:

‘The
Prosecution case against Schwermann is simply this: he was inextricably
involved in the machinery of death. And he must have known that execution or
serious harm awaited those who were deported to the camps. If you, the jury,
are sure this man was part of that enterprise then you must find him guilty of
murder in relation to each of the charges laid against him.’

Lucy
covered her face with her shawl and mumbled a sort of prayer to the ether: that
Victor Brionne would come forward; that Schwermann would be convicted; and that
Agnes would die in peace. Raising her head she looked to the man in the
cardigan beside her, and saw the thin tears streaming down his face.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

1

Anselm left Mr Roderick
Kemble QC prostrate in a cab at Waterloo and hurried through the Eurostar
terminal, finding his seat a matter of minutes before the train lurched
forward.

He
gloomily skimmed a cutting on The Round Table Wilf had given to him. He’d shown
the text to Roddy who’d glanced over it while he ate, raising an aimless
question as to why Jacques was interrogated in the June when the ring was not
broken until the July With affection, Anselm had filled the Master’s glass. As
expected Roddy appeared not to have read the cutting. The June arrest had had
nothing to do with the events of the following month. Only a Silk of Roddy’s
standing could get away with that sort of blunder — and he did, frequently with
breathtaking aplomb.

Once in
Paris, Anselm took a room in a cheap hotel near Sacré Coeur. The next morning
he set off for the Boulevard de Courcelles, near Parc Monceau, to the Fougères
home, wondering how he was going to phrase the application of the law to the
death of their son.

All the
witnesses were agreed on the basic facts: the pensioner, Mr Ogden, had grabbed
the man with the white beard (Milby never named him. Instead he used a rather
coarse term of art) . The man with the beard had told him to let go, but Mr
Ogden had then drawn back his fist. So the other had struck out. At that point
Pascal Fougères had slipped and fallen, banging his head. The terms of the
conversation prior to the altercation had also been agreed. But, as the
investigating officer repeatedly pointed out to the outraged witnesses,
nothing said by the man with the beard constituted a criminal offence. Milby
told Anselm that the police would have liked to nail him, ideally with a
manslaughter charge under the doctrine of transferred malice — on the
understanding that the backhand slap directed at Mr Ogden technically ‘shifted’
to Pascal. But that ignored the only compelling legal analysis: Mr Ogden was
the aggressor and the response of his victim was not an unlawful act. The brute
fact was that the terms of every other potential charge could not be stretched
to accommodate the offensiveness of the victim.

After
it became known that Pascal had died, the man with the white beard informed the
police that he would not insist on charges being laid against Mr Ogden.

2

Etienne was the son of
Claude Fougères and the nephew of Jacques, the Resistance hero. After the war
the family had remained in the South — until the eighties when Etienne’s political
career rose from local to national level. That prompted the return to Paris.
The house had been rented out for nearly forty years, so it was a real
homecoming.

‘And
then, just when things got back to where they were before the war, Pascal was
taken away

Anselm
gleaned this and more from the mumbling old butler who opened the great black
front door and took him slowly to a drawing room on the third floor.

Monsieur
and Madame Fougères were subdued elegance itself, sitting apart on either end
of a pink chaise longue, their faces darkened by grief. Anselm moved gently
over the terrain of sympathy, explaining the predicament faced by the police
enquiry. To his surprise, they understood perfectly They made no complaint: no
sallies against the Law; no plea for a fairer world. They did not expect the
legal system to give them something it was not designed, and could not be
designed, to produce: a civic response proportionate to their loss. But while
he spoke Anselm observed, painfully the cleft that had opened between mother
and father. It was freshly cut.

‘I
begged him not to go after that man. Begged him. But he would not listen,’ said
Etienne.

Monique
Fougères closed her eyes slowly, her hands cupped upon her lap.

‘I wish
he’d left the past alone,’ said Etienne. ‘It’s not a safe place while it
touches on the living.’

Madame
Fougères lowered her head, speaking quietly ‘Tell me anything he said, Father,
anything at all. I want to imagine his voice.’

‘We
only spoke about Schwermann … and someone called Agnes.’

Anselm
threw in the last half-truth as the door opened and the butler brought forth
tea. Etienne’s facial muscles had seized. The butler poured. Etienne reached
for a small cup.

‘Agnes?’
he said, enquiringly

‘Yes. I
got the impression she was once known to the family’

‘No, I’m
afraid not.’

Anselm
thought: you’re lying. He said, ‘Apparently she had a child.’

‘Pardon?’
said Etienne, an eyebrow raised, offering milk for the English palate.

‘A
child.’

‘I’m
sorry, no. As far as I know, Jacques never knew anyone called Agnes.’

Anselm
felt the warm trembling of success: we were talking about Pascal, not Jacques…

Monique
Fougères looked at her husband across a void. The butler softly closed the
doors and the cleft between mother and father fell open wide.

3

By the great entrance cars
chased each other down the Boulevard de Courcelles. The butler stepped outside
with Anselm, his eyes towards the ornate gates of Parc Monceau. He said, ‘I
knew Agnes Aubret.’

Anselm
only just caught the words.

‘I held
her child.’

The
raucous sound of children spilled out from the park, scattering through the
passing cars.

‘Is she
alive?’ The butler spoke as though he would die.

‘I’m
not sure, but I think so. I’ve met a young woman who knows her.’

The
butler pushed his hand deep into his pocket and produced a tattered envelope.

‘Father,
please, find out if she’s alive. Give her this. It’s from Jacques. He asked me
to get it to her after the war, if he was caught and she survived.’

Anselm
took the envelope.

‘Say Mr
Snyman has borne it for fifty years.’

The
butler stepped back and the door swung shut. Anselm stood still, slightly
stunned. He took another walk through the park to calm himself. It was crawling
with children on their lunch break, arriving in cohorts from a nearby school.
He paused by the gates into Avenue Hoche. A group entered two by two, each
child wearing a white sash. And on the sash was the name of the school and a
telephone number so that not one of them could be lost.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The stout figure in the
witness box was dressed in black and wore round bottle-end glasses. She did not
require the interpreter and answered Mr Penshaw’s questions with a
disturbingly loud and deep voice.

‘Your
name, please, Madame?’ said Mr Penshaw ‘Collette Beaussart.’

‘You
were born in Paris on 4th October 1918?’ ‘Yes.’

‘You
are now seventy-seven years of age?’ ‘I am.’

‘You
are a Knight of the Legion of Honour?’

‘I am.’

‘You
were decorated by General de Gaulle at the Invalides in 1946?’

‘I was.’

‘Please
confirm the following. You were a journalist and condemned the Nazi leadership
prior to the fall of France and afterwards. You were arrested on 18th February 1942.
You were deported. You are a survivor of Drancy, Auschwitz and Ravensbrück.’

‘I am.’

Before
calling any evidence, Mr Penshaw told the jury he intended to present the first
witness, Madame Beaussart, out of chronological order so as to give them a
constant reminder of what the case was really about. ‘And so, ladies and
gentlemen, in the coming days when you are listening to bare, lifeless facts
about train timetables or the method used to fill in a deportation record,
remember well what Madame Beaussart will now relate.’

Lucy
listened with a sort of proprietorial desperation. She had recognised the name.
Collette Beaussart was the political prisoner Agnes had written about. They’d
both got typhus and saved one another through talking … about jam. This was
the woman who’d claimed Agnes was part of the group to which she belonged, the
politicals who were transferred to Ravensbrück. Lucy wanted to stand up, to
claim the witness as her friend. But a wall had been built. She would listen,
like everyone else; and watch her go, like everyone else.

Madame
Beaussart was twenty-four when the gates of Drancy closed behind her. She
witnessed the arrival of children taken in the Vél d’Hiv round-up, after
separation from their parents. She saw them depart for the East. ‘I saw them
come. I saw them go.’

The
courtroom was utterly quiet, save for Madame Beaussart and the soft scuffle of
pen upon paper. Lucy was on the edge of her seat.

‘They
came in boxcars, all of them under thirteen or fourteen years, the youngest
just over a year or so. They were filthy their bodies covered with sores. Many
had dysentery. Attempts to clean them were futile. Some were seriously ill with
diphtheria … scarlet fever. One of them, naked, asked me why her mother
had left her behind. I said she’d only gone away for a while …’

Madame
Beaussart’s voice, loud, wavering, uncompromising, described the horrors of
trying to care for the abandoned.

‘Like
the rest of the prisoners, they slept on dirty straw mattresses until their
time came to move on. Them their heads were shaved.’

At
dawn, Madame Beaussart and other internees brought the children from where they
lay to the courtyard. Some didn’t even have shoes. In groups of fifty they were
packed on to buses. Each bore the number of a freight carriage. A thousand left
at a time for the station at Bourget.

It was
Schwermann who, with others, supervised their departure.

‘He
paced back and forth, impatiently, lists in hand, his face like stone, barking
orders. I can still see the children … and I hear now the engines that took
them away.’

Mr
Penshaw sat down.

‘Madame
Beaussart,’ said a yielding, compassionate voice. It was Mr Bartlett. He stood
perfectly still, rotating a pencil between his fingers. ‘Should you wish to sit
down at any time, please do not hesitate to ask his Lordship.’

‘Thank
you, but no.’

‘Could
you please describe what you can recall about the appearance of the camp at
Drancy?’

‘I can
remember it all.’

‘Then
choose the details which you remember best.’

‘I said
I can remember everything, sir. I cannot forget:

‘You
remember the armed guards?’

‘They
were French, my own countrymen. ‘‘The provision of electricity?’

‘Almost
entirely lacking.’

‘How
many prisoners to a room?’

‘About
fifty:

‘Sleeping
on what?’

‘Bunk
beds, planks. Many slept on plain straw ‘

‘If I
may say so, Madame Beaussart, your memory is without fault.’

Lucy glanced
at the judge, his head still, his hand writing down every word as it fell.

Mr
Bartlett picked up a sheet of paper. He seemed to hover over its contents, then
spoke in the same even, encouraging voice.

‘Do you
recollect anything in particular about Mr Schwermann’s appearance?’

‘He was
very handsome, with blond hair standing out against his black uniform.’

‘Let me
test your memory again, Madame.’ Mr Bartlett was smiling winsomely ‘Do you
recall the leather riding breeches?’

‘Yes, I
do. They shone.’

Mr Bartlett
paused to look at the sheet of paper.

‘You
would agree this form of dress was distinctive?’

‘Oh
yes.’

‘Idiosyncratic?’

‘Yes.’

‘Utterly
memorable?’

‘Yes.’

‘Almost
a caricature of a German officer, the sort of thing you’ve seen in the films?’

‘No, not
in films. I don’t watch them. I can’t bear to. I have pictures of my own and
they’ve never gone away I cannot forget that man and what he did. Never, never,
never.