The Sixth Lamentation (7 page)

‘Motor
neurone disease,’ said Cathy, sitting up.

‘Yes.
How do you know?’

‘I read
an article.’

Lucy
sat on the edge of an armchair and shrugged. ‘It’s just ordinary life showing
its colours.’ She didn’t want to talk about it any more, and said so.

Cathy
thought for a moment and said, ‘I’ve a good idea.’ She left the room and came
back with a pack of cards. ‘Let’s play Rummy’

‘I don’t
know the rules.’

‘Any
other game?’

‘No.’

Cathy
pondered the scale of ignorance. ‘You must know Snap.’

They
moved to the dining table and started laying down the cards, flip, flap, flip,
flap, their concentration fixed on whatever turned up, waiting for a match.

‘Do you
ever think about the past?’ asked Lucy Flip, flap.

‘Never.’

Flip,
flap.

‘Why?’

Flip,
flap.

‘It’s
dead.’

Lucy
paused, eyeing the Queen of Spades. ‘Do you really mean that?’

‘No.’

Flip,
flap.

‘Then
why …’

‘Because
it’s already won.

Flip,
flap, flip, flap.

Lucy
threw her hand across the table and said, ‘I’ve changed my mind. Let’s have a
meal … and a drink … what do you think?’

‘I’ll
just put on a subtle, enhancing cream,’ said Cathy, reaching for a make-up bag.
‘You can help me think up a slogan to flog a critical illness insurance policy’

They had a good time
talking about death and money parting in the knowledge it would be months
before the phone next rang. Lucy went home clutching the envelope, thinking of
her grandmother who seemed now to pervade each waking moment, each
conversation. She climbed into bed with the distinctive loneliness that only
arises between members of the same family Agnes was breaking away and there was
no time to adjust. She had begun her departure and an awkward goodbye was under
way She was like one of those rare desert plants, apparently lifeless but
opening petals just before death under the heat of the sun. It was late, so
late in the coming. Cathy was right. The past had won.

Lucy
pressed the quilt into the folds of her body and pulled out a school notebook
from the envelope. Grandpa Arthur’s old wall clock struck midnight.

2

Throughout the week
following Larkwood’s four extraordinary visitors, Anselm lingered in the
cloister after every Office on some unconvincing pretext, hoping the Prior
would take him to one side — to confide or seek guidance. But he did not. On
the sixth day the Prior informed the community of his decision at the usual
morning Chapter, after the customary reading of an excerpt from The Rule.

‘As you
know,’ he said, ‘I received a visit from the Papal Nuncio. It has been strongly
suggested by Rome that I permit Schwermann to remain here while the police
carry out their investigation.’ He glanced around the vaulted chamber. ‘Rome s
suggestions are even more loaded than mine. The view I hold is that they wouldn’t
take an interest unless it touched on wider implications — matters I may not
fully appreciate. Accordingly I have decided he can stay’ With characteristic
brevity he made the necessary appointments. ‘He will be housed in the Old
Foundry. Security arrangements are in the hands of the police and the Home
Office. Brother Wilfred will be the daily point of contact on all matters
relating to Schwermann. Brother Edmund will handle all enquiries from the
media. That’s it.

Anselm
bridled. He had waited with the anticipation of certainty for his name to be
mentioned. He thought, angrily: that’s it? I’m the lawyer … I know Milby… I speak bloody good French.

The
Chapter moved swiftly on to deal with a dispute about the work rota.

Anselm
continued to wrangle. Edmund? He doesn’t speak to anyone in the monastery,
never mind the world … how can he handle an investigative journalist? Wilf?
He’s timid to the point of paralysis …

The
Chapter ended: the monks filed out to their cells for the time allotted to
Lectio Divina; the Prior did the same; and Anselm stood in the cloister
smarting at the rejection.

Over
the next few weeks the lawyers came and the Press made their enquiries. Wilf
apprehensively led the first group to the Old Foundry by the lake but never let
his curiosity off the leash. Edmund gave interviews to the second lot but told
them nothing of significance, not even about the monastic life. As a
consequence, no one in the Priory or the outside world gleaned any information
other than that which had already been released. In recognising this outcome,
Anselm beheld the astuteness of his Prior.

Anselm
only saw Schwermann once, while taking a walk by the lake after his afternoon
session in the bottling plant. The elderly fugitive was sitting on a stool,
painting. The brush flashed across the paper while he urbanely chatted to his
personal protection officer. The weeks turned to months and still Schwermann
did not leave. The investigation continued and the Prior became increasingly
brittle. But he did not confide in Anselm about what the Priory should do if it
transpired allowing Schwermann to stay had been a mistake. There were difficult
issues to handle, involving Rome, the Home Office and the media. Anselm wanted
to remonstrate. The Prior was deliberately wasting the skills he had to offer.
Anselm’s mind teemed with exhortations from scripture and the
Early Church
Fathers
(which he’d eventually read) to the effect that lights should not
be put under bushels, talents shouldn’t be buried in fields, a monk should be
given work suited to his powers and capabilities, and so on. However, Anselm
was also obedient and said nothing to the Prior; and the Prior did what he knew
was wise and said nothing to Anselm — until the day Anselm had a devastating
encounter with a stranger by the lake; the day the fax came from Rome.

Chapter Six

Grandpa Arthur’s old wall
clock struck midnight. The German bullet had probably been a stray, but it came
through an open window, tore past Grandpa Arthur’s head just as he took off his
helmet and smashed into the central glass panel of the wall-mounted wooden
clock. The pendulum swung out of the way and back again, as if nothing had
happened. The dull clunk of the ticking continued softly, as before, while
Captain Embleton lay shaking on the ground, wetting himself like a baby

Grandpa
Arthur had always said there was a moral in there about Providence, but he didn’t
know what it was. He brought the clock home with its missing panel and hole in
the back and never let it wind down. It was a sort of companion, holding time
to a measured tempo and giving assurance that troubled times always pass. It
had only stopped once: the day after he died. That was when Lucy had burst into
tears, and Agnes had simply said: ‘The pendulum’s stopped swinging.’ She never
wound it up again.

When
Lucy left home after the row with her parents, Agnes gave her the clock,
saying, ‘Here’s an old friend. Wind him up every morning, like Arthur did.’ It
had sprung to life at the first turn of the key It was as though Grandpa was
nearby, out of sight.

Lucy
smiled at the front cover of the school notebook. From old habit and the
embedded obedience of a diligent pupil,

Agnes
had carefully printed her name along the dotted line, ready for her work to be
handed in and marked. The text was in pencil, with a crafted yet fluid hand,
the kind that used to be taught by severe masters and perfected in detention.
There were no corrections. The swift strokes imperceptibly became a voice, and
Lucy could hear Agnes speaking to her in a way she never had before. She read
without pausing to rest. Grandpa Arthur’s wall clock ticked and softly chimed
the half-hours. The night traffic rolled on, like the distant moan of the sea.
The pendulum swung and the tiny bells trembled, as if stirred . from sleep.

Lucy put the notebook to
one side. She was unable to move. Her eyes swam out of focus. Eventually she
stumbled into the kitchen. From behind the microwave she fished out a packet of
Camel, bought the same day Darren had left her to go back to the wife and kids
she hadn’t known about. She’d thrown them unopened across the room when she’d
got back from the corner shop. Lucy lit up her first cigarette on the gas
cooker, singeing her eyebrows. Sitting on the floor of the living room with a
side plate for an ashtray, she smoked and grimaced, calmed by the sudden punch
of nicotine.

In
reading her grandmother’s story a kaleidoscope had turned, and almost
everything Lucy knew about Agnes had tumbled out of place and fallen into a new
configuration. Memories of peculiar things her grandmother had said and done
in the past, making sense now, burst across her mind. Like that shopping trip
after Christmas to the Army and Navy store in Victoria Street. They’d walked
across the piazza facing Westminster Cathedral as the sound of the choir had
filtered through the open doors. Agnes had suddenly turned and gone inside. She’d
sat at the back for something like half an hour. Mosaics had glittered in the
distance, and a boy’s voice had spiralled between pillars that rose to hold the
darkness overhead. As they were leaving Agnes had said cheerlessly, ‘The Feast
of the Holy Innocents. ‘

‘What’s
that, Gran?’

‘The
remembering of a great slaughter. After the birth of Christ, King Herod wanted
him killed. He didn’t know where he was so he ordered the massacre of all
children under the age of two.’

‘How
many was that?’

‘Two
thousand.’

‘What
about the one they were after?’

‘Warned
beforehand, by an angel. The family escaped.’

‘Why
not warn all the others?’

‘A very
good question.’

Lucy
looked at her gran enquiringly ‘How do you know all that?’

‘A
decent education.’

‘Do you
believe any of that stuff? God, angels, three wise men?’

Agnes
hadn’t replied immediately She’d slipped her moorings, as she was prone to do
when loosened by an unspoken memory. ‘Sometimes I think it’s homesickness. But
you can’t get back.’

Lucy
hadn’t taken the matter further, but Agnes’ remarks had stayed in her mind. Now
she understood.

During
her third cigarette, lolling but seasick on rising waves, she ran for the
toilet and vomited. Lucy faced the mirror. She studied her black hair, the
colourless oval face, the translucent skin, those dark lashes that always got
her into trouble. She was a stranger to herself.

Lucy
made a large mug of tea with two heaped teaspoons of sugar, to help swallow the
unpalatable. Her mind turned bitterly to Schwermann, who lay protected in a
monastery, and to Victor Brionne, the man of fine words, the collaborator who’d
betrayed Agnes. But how did he get away after the war? Who on earth could have
wanted to help a man deaf to the cries of children?

She
poured the tea down the sink and made her way back to bed, knowing that a
different person would see the morning. Her old self had closed her eyes for
ever. Lucy glanced at the notebook lying open on the floor. What has happened,
she thought, in my growing up that I can read such things and not even cry?

Chapter Seven

The
first notebook of Agnes Embleton.

3rd April 1995.

Dear Lucy, I have
just seen the face of the man who took away my life, on the very day Doctor
Scott said I was going to die. I sensed that months ago, when the voices and
faces of my youth came back, like rooks coming home. I should have known
Schwermann would turn up as well.

I would have liked to talk to you about me, and my childhood
friends, but I’m not able. Soon I’ll be gone and I do not want their memory to
go with me. The time has come for you to know everything.

10th April.

I’ve often
wondered why the path of my life diverged from what I hoped for, and sent me on
track for what I got. But there’s no point in seeking explanations. There are
no ‘might have beens’. So I look to London, and my birth in March 1919.

My father was French and came to England in 1913 to work in a bank.
He met my mother, who was Jewish, at a work function. She was the daughter of a
regional manager. Within the year they were married, and then I came along.
They used to say I was the second great blessing of their life. The first was
to have escaped the war. My earliest memories are of playing upon Hampstead
Heath, threading daisies, half understanding conversations about ‘The Great War’
. Most of the people we knew had suffered loss, and even now the names of those
terrible battles conjure up a strange remembrance of warm summer days and other
people’s grief. You see, by some miracle (as my father used to say), the war
had passed us by while touching all around us. And so I grew up feeling
protected, as if God had carefully placed us beyond catastrophe. Until my
mother died on 17th August 1929.