The Sixth Lamentation Read online

  ‘Of course not,’ said Lucy uncertainly Before she could draw her thoughts together, Agnes continued, with assumed cheerfulness, ‘Anyway, enough of that. Let’s have a cup of tea. ‘

  They moved awkwardly into the kitchen.

  ‘There’s always some rubbish on about now,’ said Agnes, moving towards the radio, touching a chair … and then a counter … and then the sink. She turned the control. Suddenly there was a sort of explosion. An orchestra was involved… and a jazz band. And someone, thought Lucy, listening carefully … is hitting a biscuit tin of broken glass.

  ‘Post-modern, you know,’ said Agnes, nodding gravely, ignoring the tension between them.

  Lucy made the tea and they sat nursing their mugs, their eyes frequently meeting. Lucy was going to raise the subject of professional help again whether Agnes liked it or not. But the glances from her grandmother made it clear she would not budge, she would make her own arrangements. And, as if providing a soundtrack to a silent film, an out-of-tune jazz band fought with an orchestra while someone had a whale of a time with a hammer.

  Lucy chose her moment when a languid, knowing voice ushered in the news at five o’clock. But Agnes outflanked her with a newfound passion for current affairs. She sat forward with a convincing display of concentration. The swift volley of headlines between broadcasters began but Agnes dismissed each new story with a pout before the introductions ended. After a few minutes, she signalled with her head to turn it off. A clatter of falling plates echoed from the dining room.

  ‘That blasted cat.’

  ‘Sounds post-modern to me,’ said Lucy, nodding gravely

  Agnes rose to investigate, touching a lamp—stand, a chair and the door on her way She wasn’t going to discuss the need for help any more that day

  Lucy was getting ready to leave when Agnes handed over the key to her Morris Minor, bought by Grandpa Arthur in 1963. She’d named it Duchess.

  ‘It’s no use to me any more.

  ‘But Gran—’

  ‘Take her. I’ve arranged the insurance. But treat her gently She’s a tired old bird.’

  Before Lucy could find words of thanks, Agnes produced a manila envelope. She said, ‘There’s a notebook inside. I want you to read it. But say nothing of what you learn. Not to anyone.

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  Lucy frowned.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Agnes. ‘I just want you to know more … about me’ — she hesitated, embarrassed — ‘before I die.’

  These last words fell on Lucy like a sword. Her composure slumped and, with rising tears, she turned quickly to go. By the vestibule door she caught her foot on a pile of newspapers. Lucy stared at them, as if they might speak.

  ‘The answer’s in the notebook,’ said Agnes, looking aside. ‘Don’t cry for me, please don’t cry’

  As Lucy turned the ignition she looked back to wave and saw Agnes with one hand on the doorframe. Her face was drawn and she looked terribly small and alone. Something had drained out of her.

  Cathy opened the door to her flat in Pimlico later that evening before Lucy could even ring the bell.

  ‘I’m just getting ready,’ said Cathy ‘Fancy a meal out?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  They walked into a sitting room of astounding chaos, clothes thrown everywhere, junk mail scattered like discarded handouts after a demonstration. The walls were covered with posters from various exhibitions.

  ‘A drink?’

  ‘No…’

  Cathy flopped on to a sofa and said: ‘What’s wrong?’

  The fact that they rarely saw each other somehow set Lucy free to say what she had said to no one else: ‘My grandmother’s going to die from a disease I’d never heard of until now It attacks your body but leaves the mind alone. In full throttle you just lie there unable to move or talk, blinking at the ceiling. You feel as if you’re going to choke to death but it doesn’t happen. That’s where you stay, right on the edge of dying, but you remain alive.’

  ‘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 C
hapter 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.

  From that day my father wanted to go back to France, away from every reminder of her. I wasn’t surprised because England had never become his home. He was always making comparisons, which showed he saw things from the outside. Even the milk was better in France. He began to tell me wonderful things about Paris, and I would go to sleep seeing bridges, a shining river and tables in the street lit by thousands of candles. We set sail in early 1931.

  I suppose he wasn’t to know He thought he would simply move back into his old bank. But those were hard times and no positions were available. I know that now. At the time I presumed we had landed on our feet. We lived in a nice flat, I did well at school and I wanted for nothing. I was especially good at the piano and my father bought me a monstrous upright for Christmas. Each week I went to see Madame Klein, my teacher, and each week I came home vowing never to see her again. She was a Jewish widow who lived in a magnificent apartment opposite Parc Monceau. My father told me she was one of the best piano teachers in Paris, and had once been a concert performer. That’s as maybe, I thought. Because every Saturday afternoon I climbed those stairs dreading the scowl that never left her face. I hated every second. I said she couldn’t even play For she nursed her right hand and only touched the keys with her left. My father laughed and sent me back each week. I have never written her name down before, and doing so makes me pause. I see her now as I saw her then, dressed in black silk with a vast coiffure of silver hair. She looks at me over quite useless glasses that seem to be part of her nose, her eyes impossible to read.