The Sixth Lamentation (47 page)

The
water rippled across the stones below, endlessly smoothing them.

Father
Anselm said, ‘There is a kind of silence that always prevails, but we have to
wait.’

They
both turned and walked back to the house. Lucy said, ‘I’m going to introduce
Max Nightingale to an old girlfriend of mine. I suspect they’ll get on.’

‘Someone
did that to me once,’ said the monk, smiling, ‘and look what happened.’

Lucy
laughed. ‘It can’t do any harm then.’

‘No,’
said the monk, ‘I get the feeling we’re all on the other side of harm.’

‘For
now’

‘That’s
good enough.’

By the
front door they heard soft undulations with a gentle melody rising like a song.

‘That
must be Robert,’ said Father Anselm, stopping. ‘Do you know what he’s playing?’

‘Yes,
it’s my Gran’s favourite piece of Fauré,’ replied Lucy deeply moved. “‘Romance
sans parole”.’

“‘A love
song without words”,’ said the monk.

‘Oh
God,’ exclaimed Lucy, ‘every time I see you I cry.

And the
reserved monk took her arm in his and held it tight.

Chapter Forty-Nine

1

Anselm stood awkwardly
facing Conroy on the forecourt to the Priory. His sabbatical was over. He’d
finished his book and found a publisher with an appetite for trouble, and now
the big man was heading back to Rome. After handing the manuscript over to his
Order’s censors, he’d catch a flight home to São Paulo and his children.

They
shook hands, Anselm wincing at the grip. Conroy compressed himself into the
driving seat and wound down a window

‘I’ll
wend my way so.

‘Come
back.’

‘Sure,
I’m taking something of the place with me.’

‘And
you’re leaving something of you and your work behind.’

‘Pray
for my kids.’

Anselm
waved and the chariot of fire left Larkwood.

After Compline that night,
when the Great Silence was under way, Father Andrew led Anselm out of the
cloister and into the grounds, suggesting a walk.

They
talked over all that had happened under a fading sky then idled down the
bluebell path towards the Priory. The woods on either side lay deep in silence,
restraining a cool, brooding presence. A solitary owl cried out somewhere near
the lake.

‘Almost
without exception, I misunderstood everything, said Anselm, his feet scuffing
bracken and loose, dry twigs. ‘The list of misjudgements is too long to
enumerate … all from prejudice, loose-thinking, fancy. But I’m not
altogether sure Holy Mother Church helped me on my way.

Father
Andrew stepped into the woods, foraging among the undergrowth. He re-emerged
with a long quirky branch that must have fallen in the winds. The Prior smiled
and swung the stick at the raised heads of winsome dandelions, a boyhood
pastime that had come back in older years. He said, ‘She has a frail face, made
up of the glorious and the twisted.’

Anselm
said, ‘I still don’t know what Rome was really up to.

The
Prior, harvesting, made a heavy, sweeping swish with his stick.

Anselm
continued, ‘The Vatican had two reports about what happened at Les Moineaux,
one of them, damning, from Chambray … the other, from Pleyon, apparently
exculpatory — only it was never finished. So Rome couldn’t have known what
Brionne would do when I found him and pushed him into court. He might have
filled out the exculpation — which happened to be true … or he might have
lied to protect himself. Either way, the face of the Church would have been
saved. It’s not particularly inspiring.’

‘Like I
said’ — the Prior looked around for something else to reap — ‘at times the face
we love takes a turn, so much so that we might not recognise what we see. And
yet, there is another explanation.’

‘Which
is?’

‘Rome
trusted the reputation of Pleyon over the words of Chambray’

Anselm
frowned with concentration as the Prior continued, … and remember, they
went to Chambray first, before they spoke to you, and he told them to get lost.
His mind had been made up fifty years earlier.’

The
Prior and his disciple slowed to a standstill. The owl, high now in the sky
cried again. An early silver moon hung over the Priory in a weakening blue sky
Anselm sat on the stump of a tree, cut down by Benedict and Jerome after the
last year’s storms. The Prior, standing, looked at him directly and said, ‘And
what about you?’

It was
a typical question from him. It was so wide in compass that anything could be
caught in its net. The Prior always threw such things when he had something
specific in mind. Anselm said, ‘I lost myself, and I don’t know when it
happened … I lost my hold on Larkwood.’

‘It
usually happens that way’ said the Prior. ‘There’s rarely a signpost where the
roads divide.’ He lopped a clump of ferns. ‘Have you found your way back?’

Anselm
looked down the path to the monastery, barely discernible from the trees. ‘No,
I haven’t.’

‘Good,’
said Father Andrew, delivering yet another whack.

The
Prior, as was so often the case, seemed to see things not on view Anselm said, ‘I
think in an obscure way I might have arrived’ — he had a sudden thought — ‘helped
on my way by Salomon Lachaise … the scale of his suffering.’

The
Prior rested both hands on his stick, looking quizzically at his son.

‘I can’t
tell you the route. But I’ve arrived with something like … tears in my
soul.’

The
Prior’s gaze grew penetrating. Anselm said, ‘Millions died from hatred, beneath
a blue sky like the one over Larkwood this afternoon … almost by chance,
someone like Pascal is trodden underfoot like an ant, along with countless
others. And yet, against that, the life of Agnes Embleton is resolved, as if
there is a healing hand at work that cannot be deflected from its purpose. I
just can’t make sense of it, other than to cry.

The
Prior said, ‘You never will understand, fully; and in a way you mustn’t. If you
do, you’ll be trotting out formulas. That will bring you very close to
superstition. It can be comforting’ — he struck out at the air — ‘but it won’t
last.’

Walking
over to Anselm, the Prior thought for a while, leaning his back against a tree.
His silver eyebrows, thick and untrimmed, for once looked incongruous on a face
so devoid of guile. He said, ‘Those tears are part of what it is to be a monk.
Out there, in the world, it can be very cold. It seems to be about luck, good
and bad, and the distribution is absurd. We have to be candles, burning between
hope and despair, faith and doubt, life and death, all the opposites. That is
the disquieting place where people must always find us. And if our life means
anything, if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and does some good, it
is that somehow, by being here, at peace, we help the world cope with what it
cannot understand.’

Father
Andrew touched Anselm’s shoulder and together they headed down the last quarter
mile to the Priory. It had suddenly turned cold, and the glittering lights in
the distant windows carried a summons to warmth. Their feet fell softly on the
path. The evening light slipped further behind the trees and the moon grew
strong. Slightly to the east was the lake, like a black pool, and out of sight
the Old Foundry.

Anselm
said, ‘Schwermann just stood there, before the world, saying he’d done
something good among all the evil. He waved it in the air as if it were the
winning number in the lottery, a ticket to absolution.’

Father
Andrew replied, quietly ‘There might just have been a trace of love in it.’

‘Is
that enough to redeem a man?’

‘God
knows.’

‘It’s
terrifying, but do you think a man could so blot out his own life that he can’t
be saved?’

‘No, I
don’t —’ he flung the branch into a pool of shadow — ‘but something frightens
me far more. There might come a point where someone could choose hell rather
than acknowledge fault and accept the forgiveness of God.’

They
reached Larkwood Priory and the two monks pushed open the great gate, leaving
the breathing woods to the coming night.

2

Lying in bed that night,
waiting for
Sailing By,
Anselm involuntarily returned to his earlier
reflections. He thought of Pascal and a brutal irony: an accidental consequence
of his death was that Agnes was eventually reunited with her son. If Pascal
hadn’t died, Victor might never have come forward to give evidence … if he
hadn’t given any evidence, Anselm would never have discovered that Victor
believed Agnes was dead … it was only when Victor realised she was alive
that the whole truth came out …

And,
going back further, if Pascal hadn’t died then Anselm would never have gone to
France and mentioned the name of Agnes to Etienne Fougères as the butler poured
the tea, and discovered that Etienne knew about her, and Robert, and that his
family had kept a secret for fifty years … That jarred on him now, as it
had jarred on him then, but suddenly
Sailing By
began.

Instantly
Anselm was in the crow’s-nest of a great dipping schooner, high above the
decks, with the scurrying crew in black and white below The spars creaked and
groaned and the sails strained against their ropes. Sunlight flashed upon
cerulean waves and in the distance thick green foliage burst from the pale
sands of a small island. It was a vision that suggested itself every time the
music came on and Anselm blissfully surrendered himself to its charms,
shutting down the engine of his thinking. However, with his thoughts attuned to
the past, a window to his mind was left ajar. Just before he sank beneath the
waves he heard a small voice, a little idea. He woke, knocking his radio on to
the floor in excitement. This was one thing he had got right.

Chapter Fifty

The old butler led Anselm
across the Boulevard de Courcelles towards a side entrance to Parc Monceau.
They walked along a path until they reached one corner, near a monument to
Chopin. Beside it was a play area with climbing frames and a sandpit, reserved
for the under-threes. Stray fallen leaves skipped with each flick of the wind.

‘That
is where Madame Klein used to live,’ said Mr Snyman, pointing to an elegant
apartment building directly overlooking the grounds. Defined in those terms,
the place appeared instantly hollow, its walls damp. ‘That is where Agnes
learned the piano … it is where I first met her.’

They
sat down on a bench near a flourishing lime tree. The grounds were deserted, as
if the usual strollers had been carted off. Within the hour, at lunchtime, it
would fill up again and then the noisy play would rattle over the ornate
fencing and fight with the rumble of the traffic.

‘She’s
dead?’ asked Mr Snyman.

‘Yes.’

‘Peacefully?’
There was almost a prayer in his voice.

‘Very
much so.

Eventually
Agnes had been taken to hospital. The final stages of life could not be handled
very well so an ambulance was called. Death popped by while Agnes was lying on
a trolley in a corridor, her hand held reassuringly by a nurse. Lucy had run to
a pay phone to tell her father. When she’d got back Agnes had gone. The nurse
had said she’d smiled. A few days later, Anselm had buried Agnes beneath sleet
and rain in the presence of her family.

‘I
would dearly have liked to have been there,’ said the old butler.

‘I
remembered you.’

‘That
is something.’ After a subdued pause he asked, ‘How did you find out about me?’

‘It
came as I was falling asleep,’ Anselm replied. ‘But there are reasons. I just
didn’t join them together properly. It was you who needed to escape, not your
family. And yet they fled without you. There were other marks in the sand, like
not coming back to Paris until no one could recognise you, and prodding Pascal
to find Victor. And more. I didn’t understand them until I’d already guessed
what they meant:

Anselm
regarded the broken man with compassion. He would be a servant to the past
until the day he died. It was his only home, and he was not welcome there.

The old
butler stared deep into memory. ‘I got back to the house after Victor had gone,’
he said. ‘My father showed me the record of betrayal. I sometimes think he must
have slapped me across the face. But he didn’t. I had condemned them all to
death. But he understood. He knew I didn’t mean to be so weak.’ He paused. ‘Please,
can we walk? My limbs stiffen up unless I move. I may as well tell you what I’ve
kept to myself since Agnes was taken away from me, with my only son.

They
walked side by side as Jacques Fougères spoke. Anselm listened, appalled.

‘There
were only three passes. We had minutes to decide what to do. “Go!” shouted
Snyman, “use my papers.” They’d been forged by some friends of Father Rochet,
making him a Fougères, my brother. “When they come, I’ll say I’m you. At least
it will buy time. For God’s sake, go now! I’ve nothing to live for but you have
a son, you have Agnes.”‘