The Sixth Lamentation (28 page)

Madame
Beaussart covered her mouth.

‘Would
you like a glass of water, Madame?’

She
nodded. And with shaking hands she tried to drink, spilling water over her
fingers.

The
judge put down his pen, saying, ‘Do take your time.’

‘I’m
sorry,’ she mumbled, ‘I’ve waited all my life for this moment.’

‘We all
understand,’ said the judge.

Mr
Bartlett waited until Madame Beaussart was ready to continue and them he handed
the sheet of paper to the usher, to be passed on to the witness.

‘Would
you be so kind as to look at this photograph?’

The
witness took off her glasses and produced another pair from a small pouch.

‘That
is the man you have been describing, isn’t it?’

Without
hesitation she replied, ‘Yes, that is him. Schwermann.’

‘And of
that you are sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘His
appearance is etched in your memory?’

‘Yes.’

‘Look
again, Madame. Is there nothing that causes you to doubt your judgment? It was,
after all, over fifty years ago.’

‘I will
never forget the man who forced those children on to the buses.’

Inching
towards the jury, Mr Bartlett said: ‘Madame Beaussart, you have been right
about everything you have told the court today Except in one important detail.
But let me make it plain, I do not challenge your candour. The man in the
photograph did supervise deportations from Drancy. He has already been
convicted by a German court, in a trial you were unable to attend because of a
serious illness from which, thankfully, you have recovered.’

Madame
Beaussart, bewildered, could not speak.

‘You
have correctly identified someone else, not Mr Schwermann. I will supply the
details to the court in due course.

He sat
down, the flap of his silk gown disturbing loose papers laid out neatly on the
table before him.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

1

Anselm got back to
Larkwood just after Vespers, in time for a brief conference with Father Andrew
before supper. They sat in the Prior’s study, looking out over the cloister
garth. It was a calm evening and long shadows lay on the neat grass like canvas
sheets of scenery fallen flat.

Father
Andrew asked, ‘How did they respond when you said the police were powerless?’

‘With
inspiring equanimity. I’d prepared myself for bewildered anger.’

‘Those close
to politics often understand better than most the limits of the law’

‘There
was something between them though, coming I think from the mother, something
like an accusation. That is where the anger lay, the confusion. And by accident
I think I trespassed upon it:

‘.Anselm,’
said the Prior dryly, ‘most of your accidents stem from intuition let loose.
What did you say?’

‘We
were talking about Pascal and I mentioned Agnes, that she had had a child, and
I asked if she’d ever been known to the family’

‘And?’

‘The
mother said absolutely nothing but the father said Jacques never knew anyone
called Agnes … we weren’t talking about Jacques but he made the link.’

‘And
you call that an accident?’

Anselm
remonstrated, ‘Not far off. My best cross-examinations were always by mistake.
I didn’t realise how clever it looked until it was done:

The
Prior smiled with faint indulgence. Anselm continued, ‘Anyway I then had a most
peculiar encounter with the butler. Throughout he pours the tea, sidles in,
says nothing, sidles out … but when he shows me the door he tells me he
knew Agnes and held her child. He then gives me a letter to deliver to Agnes
from Jacques, a letter he’d guarded since the war on the off-chance she
survived.’

The two
monks pondered in silence. Frowning, Father Andrew said, ‘It is clear from what
Max Nightingale said to you that his grandfather, somehow, knew both Jacques
and Agnes. In this whole tragic business they seem to be the only ones to have
reduced him to a state of panic. So they must have come across each other
during the war …’ He rounded on Anselm: ‘What was that riddle you were told
about Schwermann at Les Moineaux?’

‘That
he had risked his life to save life.’

The
Prior tilted his head as though straining to catch distant voices. His
glittering eyes vanished behind long creases … but whatever he’d sensed was
slipping out of reach.

The
bell rang for supper. Anselm said, ‘The strange thing is, how do Etienne
Fougères and his wife come to know about Agnes and her child?’

They
rose and entered the corridor. The busy sound of other feet heading down to the
refectory echoed from a stairwell. The Prior replied, ‘Jacques’ family must
have passed it on after his death’ — he followed his insight through — ‘and in
due course Etienne told his wife … but they did not tell their son, Pascal
… a secret known by a paid servant, a butler … now, why’s that?’

Intuition
failed them both and they went into the refectory.

2

The evening meal was the
usual emetic blend of leftovers from the guesthouse. Anselm pushed something
purple around his plate. There would be no knowing what it had been in its many
previous lives. Afterwards, the community filed into the common room for recreation,
where Anselm joined Wilf in his usual corner by the aspidistra that no one
watered but yet miraculously never died. It was one of Wilf’s greatest
attributes that he used events in his life as a prompt for research into things
about which he knew nothing. After Schwermann’s arrival he had quietly buried
himself in reading about the Occupation and its aftermath. He liked to share
his findings and Anselm enjoyed his reported forays, marked as they were by the
wonder of David Bellamy having found a new snail in the garden.

‘Wartime
creates its own unique moral dilemmas,’ uttered Wilf with Delphic calm,
inviting a request for more disclosure.

‘Why’s
that?’ obliged Anselm.

‘Well,’
said Wilf, gratified and settling back, ‘there’s the strange case of Paul
Touvier. A traditionalist Catholic but in the Vichy Milice. Pushed into it by
his father and a priest. So he’s French, policing the French for the Germans. ‘

‘A
collaborator,’ contributed Anselm obviously

‘Indeed.
And his job was to combat the Resistance.’

‘Not a
very devout thing to do.’

‘Bear
with me, Father. For therein lies an interesting conundrum. The Resistance
assassinated the Vichy minister of information in 1944. The Germans wanted
reprisals. According to Touvier, they demanded the execution of a hundred Jews.
He says he bargained them down to thirty, and ordered the deaths of seven, at
Rillieux-la-Pape, as an appeasement to save the remaining twenty-three.’

‘Where’s
the devotion in that?’

‘Well,
there isn’t any of course. Only it set me thinking. Here is a man who will, in
due course, be convicted in absentia of treason. I don’t know any more about
him, and what he said was probably nonsense, but it occurred to me that it was
only those who collaborated who were in a position to bargain with the Nazis if
the opportunity arose. That is not, of course, a reason for collaborating. But
it suggests an interesting abstract principle: in certain situations, only
someone who’s lost himself can do the good deed, even though he can never make
atonement for what he has done.’

A
shared pause of reflection ensued. Wilf picked up a newspaper, found the
crossword and said: ‘Even so, I can’t for the life of me understand why Touvier
was hidden in a monastery.’

‘Pardon?’
said Anselm.

Wilf
repeated his observation, frowning gravely at the first clue. ‘Fundamentalists,
apparently
Intégristes.
Not our cup of tea.’ A touch complicated, he
added, because Touvier had been pardoned by Pompidou. Ten years later he went
into hiding when it transpired he could still be prosecuted. He was eventually
convicted of the Rillieux murders in 1994, the first Frenchman to go down for
war-related crimes against humanity.

‘Hideously
embarrassing for the Church when they caught him, of course,’ pursued Wilf,
laying the paper on his lap, ‘if only because it dredged up the ecclesiastical
compromises of the past.’ During the war, he said, the Church had been in a
very difficult position. Pétain and Vichy reintroduced support that had been
previously withdrawn by a viciously anti-clerical state. An alliance grew that
was far too cosy ‘It was all rather complicated.’

Slightly
uneasy, Anselm left Wilf to his crossword. As he got ready to clean the
refectory floor he all but heard another voice, whispering, and he saw the
luminous eyes of Cardinal Vincenzi:

‘It’s
all rather complicated.’

Chapter Thirty

1

The court rose for the day
after Mr Bartlett had made his surprising announcement that followed the
completion of Madame Beaussart’s evidence.

‘That
seems a good place to stop, gentlemen,’ said Mr Justice Pollbrook.

Bile
stung Lucy’s gut and she thought bitterly: You’re right. There’s no point in
going on. It’s a mess; a bloody, senseless mess. Max Nightingale hurriedly
brushed by, his mouth set tight. The man in the cardigan beside her stood to
make way, his features relaxed as if by an expectation painfully fulfilled.
Lucy left the court in a sort of panic, as though the air had swollen with a
stench. She ran to St Paul’s tube station and shoved herself into the doorway
of a heaving train. Elbows, staking their claim, stiffened. The carriage door
slid shut, scraping across her back. I endure this, she thought, so that I can
give my grandmother a summary of ‘the day’s play’. That’s what one barrister
had called it.

The opening of the trial had
brought focus to Lucy’s life, lost since the death of Pascal. Struggling to
attend lectures, she had confided in her tutor, a man who seemed to apprehend a
fear she had not even mentioned: the prospect of dropping out of the course, a
second failure from which she might not recover.

He
referred Lucy to a college counsellor called Myriam Anderson. Talking helped to
a degree; but death, of all experiences, could only be accommodated through
further suffering, and entangled with that prospect was the certain death of
Agnes. These two events, one past, the other to come, lay like a frame on
either side of the trial, giving it shape. Myriam had said:

‘It’s
tempting to separate life’s problems into miniatures — that’s when the trouble
starts. Your greatest asset is that you see the single canvas: Myriam watched
Lucy closely before saying, ‘Don’t rule out another death.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Another
death ― an outcome to this trial that defeats your hope.’

By the time Lucy reached
Hammersmith, the long shadows of evening lay as still as paint, losing depth
and shape as the light withdrew She pushed her key into Agnes’ front door lock
and stepped inside, slipping on the wet tiles and crashing into the wall. Bloody
Wilma.

Agnes
could no longer speak or walk. A nurse came twice a week. Susan paid a visit
every other day As for Freddie, the monumental unease that had once kept him
apart from Agnes seemed to be crumbling, not at the edges but deep down in its
foundations. Lucy saw a pallor spread across his face whenever he came to
Chiswick Mall: he simply could not bear to witness the slow, tortured decline
that was received by Agnes with such shattering calm.

Lucy
crept down the dark corridor towards the thin band of orange light across the
floor. She stood at the door, pushing it silently ajar. Agnes lay completely
still. So still Lucy thought she had gone. Her heart raced. And then Agnes
lifted one arm, like an ailing Caesar at the games. Lucy approached and sat by
the bed.

‘The
trial’s under way

A nod.

‘We
heard from Madame Beaussart today the journalist you met in Auschwitz, the one
who dreamed about making jam and you dreamed about eating it. You wrote about
her.’

A nod.

‘She
remembers almost everything.’

Lucy
could go no further.

Agnes
didn’t respond. Her face could not be read; only her eyes, and they were turned
to one side. Had she already heard the news — about the first witness for the
Crown abandoning the stand, exclaiming through her tears that she
did
remember
Schwermann? Had she heard about Mr Bartlett’s surprise announcement to the
court? These were things Lucy would not say, not to Schwermann’s most secret
victim, lying here unable to reply Agnes would discover them soon enough when
Wilma declaimed from
The Times
report next morning.