Anselm looked at the worn keys, thinking of Dunstan’s fingers, hammering away year after year, forever reminded of that one fatal mistake. He thought of all he’d written afterwards. Why had he given the thing to Anselm? Because it represented the man more than the cravat? Probably, yes; but Anselm had another twinkling insight. He’d have to use it one day to write something important. Something Dunstan would have written if he’d not been arrested just this side of the Promised Land.
Epilogue
The Brandwells were not a family who would find it easy to accept help. Each of them, in different ways, had been let down by the people they’d trusted most. People they’d loved. So it was not surprising that they retreated among themselves where, according to Sanjay Kumar, no one looked to anyone else. They didn’t know where to begin. They didn’t know how they wanted it to finish. Too much had happened. There were too many different kinds of pain and betrayal. They each knew a journey lay before them – called the next day – but none of them could even begin to think how they might move forward together. A letter of thanks from Harry Brandwell gave Anselm an idea.
It had been written on a computer and printed off on thin paper. There were no spelling mistakes, because the spellcheck was infallible. The grammar was correct, but slightly odd because the computer’s suggested amendments hadn’t taken into account the fresh and direct manner of speech proper to a youth struggling to say difficult things. Something had been lost, there. The paper was smooth, without a single indentation. Harry had been climbing again with his uncle. He’d been to a concert with his grandfather. He’d gone bowling with his parents and Gutsy. But despite best intentions, everyone remained confused. They couldn’t get back to where they’d once been: known territory. They were stranded somewhere new. ‘Would you come and talk to them?’ he’d tapped. He meant turn up without invitation. He meant would he walk through the door and start bringing his family across the various divides. Help them find the words.
Anselm couldn’t do it. The task was too delicate. But he knew someone who could. Using Dunstan’s typewriter, Anselm banged out a letter on thick paper to Dr Clare Hawks, an old friend from way back. Even before she’d trained as a clinical psychologist, she’d had a certain eye for foundational questions. Not one to trouble with small talk, she’d sit down with a cup of tea and say, ‘Now, Anselm, tell me about your mother.’ Anyone who made tea before settling down to business would get on famously with Maisie Brandwell. And so Clare went to Clapham and she went to Leyborne Park. But only after chasing Justin first, because Justin more than anyone was likely to surrender to someone who wouldn’t give up; someone whose opening question would tickle him pink. Of course, Clare couldn’t tell Anselm how things were developing but he knew she remained involved. And that meant the family were talking. Clare was doing what she did best: joining people together; helping them find a narrative.
On something of a roll, Anselm wrote to Kester Newman. He’d left the Lambertines and gone back to PwC. Anselm had noted an appealing connection between Kester and Edmund. Edmund had confronted the bad in Dominic Tabley; Kester had only known the good. Anselm suggested they keep in touch. In fact … it was Clare’s idea. While they hadn’t even met, she thought they might help each other make sense of their different experiences; help each other come to some kind of global assessment, extending the narrative.
Having posted the letter, Anselm returned to his cell. He hit a few keys. He whacked the return lever. He nudged the space bar. Who else could he write to? He was enjoying this. And then, struck by a bright idea of his own, Anselm fed a fresh sheet of paper into the roller. He’d written two important letters, but there was a third to be knocked out, and anonymously. Just like Dunstan’s. With a similar intention.
Carrington’s hope was that, following the trial in London, people would come forward in Freetown. Something slightly different had happened. Since Tabley had admitted to the offending in West Africa during his interviews, questions had been asked at a very high level. The suppression of a scandal in the 1970s had become the subject of widespread and painful scrutiny. And the person who had to handle the onslaught of questions was, of course, George Carrington. But – thought Anselm, punching the keys – there was a need for greater transparency. Another investigation was required to throw a fresh light on the man whose morality and probity had been shredded like so much waste paper. There was a story to be told, too, about a dead monk who’d once written an anonymous letter to a journalist. And who better to undertake both tasks than Robert Sambourne?
But when Anselm got to the post office he stared across the counter and couldn’t let go of the brown envelope. This was the last thing Dunstan would have wanted. It was the last thing Carrington wanted. Blenching, Anselm said to himself, ‘You don’t always have to talk about everything.’ He backed away, stunned to acknowledge that he was to be the final and solitary holder of all the untold secrets. Moved by a humbling sense of privilege and responsibility, Anselm binned the letter and went back to Dunstan’s resting place among the aspens. Evening was falling. For a while he listened to the breeze in the branches overhead.
‘Everything that ought to be said has been said,’ Anselm confided. ‘Nothing remains hidden that ought to be brought into the light.’
Anselm listened to the leaves, and then he moved on. He could almost hear the sweet sound of the pipes. A tune about a wretch saved by grace.
WILLIAM BRODRICK was an Augustinian friar before leaving the order to become a lawyer and novelist. Winner of of the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award, he is the author of The Discourtesy of Death, The Day of the Lie, A Whispered Name, The Silent Ones, and two other novels featuring Father Anselm, which are also forthcoming from Overlook.
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