‘May I introduce myself? We sit here every day, and we don’t even know each other’s names. I am Salomon Lachaise.’
The remark was addressed to both herself and Max Nightingale.
‘I thought you might like to join me for tea one afternoon.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
It struck Anselm as a rather peculiar request, though not unprecedented. A guest had arrived unannounced while he had been in London. He’d asked, in broken English, if Anselm, and only Anselm, would hear his confession. He’d said he’d say who he was afterwards. Brother Wilfred had left a note on Anselm’s door giving the time arranged — 8.15 p.m., forty-five minutes before Compline.
Anselm sat in the dark of the confessional, slightly uneasy He didn’t notice when the faint grating noise began. It was dispersed by the vast, empty nave and seemed to come from all around, but quietly, without definition, and yet coming closer. The sound of feet moved swiftly over the polished tiles. The door to the confessional opened. A man swore, stumbling on to the kneeler by the grille. A fluid heaving of breath, curiously familiar, rose and fell. The French voice jolted Anselm out of Larkwood on to a landing without a light:
‘I haven’t been in a confession box for nigh on fifty years.
‘We never got rid of them.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Sorry. Rather silly of me.’
‘I’m not here to confess my sins.’
‘There aren’t any others you can confess.’
‘I’ve come to reveal the sins of my church, and yours. And if you can still raise your hands in absolution after I’m done, you’re a braver monk than me. I’d rather leave it to God himself.’
‘Father Chambray,’ exclaimed Anselm. ‘How on earth did you get here?’
‘It took a lot of planning, at my age and in my condition. I could not leave it any longer. I’ve been following the trial and nothing of what I know has come out. I’ll stay for a few days and then I’ll go home. First, I’ve got a question for you. On your life, tell me: have they told you what happened in forty-four?’
‘They?’
‘Rome.’
‘No.’
‘Is that why you came banging on my door?’
‘Yes.’
Chambray stopped to think. He mumbled, ‘Just as I thought…’
Anselm leaned towards the grille. ‘What are you here to say?’
‘They know, and they’ve kept it quiet, even as the trial has opened up what that bastard did. But I told them. Everything. In forty-five.’ Chambray pulled himself off the kneeler and slumped back on a chair. Anselm squinted at the grill. There was nothing but shadow, black as a pit. The breathing grew calmer.
‘Now I’ll tell you. Because you, too, have been duped.’
‘How?’
‘Wait,’ he snapped, coughing. He paused, settling back. ‘They came in the middle of the night, towards the end of August 1944. We didn’t find out until the morning Chapter. The Prior, Father Pleyon, said we were going to hide them both until their escape from France was arranged. No explanations given.
A Nazi and a collaborator. Imagine that. In a place that smuggled Jewish children away from their grasping hands.’
A shadow seemed to move in the darkness towards the grille. Chambray closer, rasped, ‘To understand anything you have to look back … it’s the same here …’ The presence withdrew, leaving the harsh inflection of the last words.
‘It probably begins about 1930 with the election of a Prior, well before my time.’ He was tapping his fingers slowly against wood. ‘Priory lore had it down as a spat between Father Pleyon and a dark horse, Father Rochet. One an old aristocrat, the other a republican. Pleyon was known as “Le Comte” because he was a popular confessor with a few well-known royalists, and Rochet was “Le Sans-culotte” because he was ― always banging on about the Revolution, Rights of Man and all that. It was a Priory tradition to have nicknames.’
Anselm, sensing a softening with the opening of memory, asked, ‘What was yours?’
Chambray chuckled. “‘Le Parieur”, because I took bets on decisions made by the Prior.’
The thinning laughter turned to rumbling breath, in and out, in time to the soft tapping of old fingers. He found his thread:
‘There were two candidates: Le Comte was the favourite, with a simple but clever chap called Morel as a rank outsider:
Anselm knew the name. It lay engraved on a plaque on a Priory wall, commemorating an execution yet to come.
‘Things turned nasty. Rochet took against Le Comte, which surprised no one because he was from the other end of the pond. The shock was what he did. Everyone said you had to be careful with Rochet.’ The voice in the dark was confiding, educating. ‘He had some wild ideas, but there was always something in what he said. He saw connections in things most people missed. Read too much. So I’m told, anyway And looking back on his opposition to Le Comte, he had a crazy suspicion that could never have mattered. But then, ten years later, he was shown to have been right. At the time they just thought Rochet had gone one step too far.’
‘What did. he do?’
‘He disclosed that Le Comte had connections with Action Française and the Camelots du Roi,’ Father Chambray replied significantly
‘I see,’ breathed Anselm appropriately
‘Does that mean anything to you?’ His voice sharpened.
‘Sorry, no.
‘Lord…’ Chambray waited, gathering what patience he could find. ‘Extremists, wanting a restoration of the monarchy, with Jews and Freemasons shown the door. Rochet’s objection was that they represented the worst aspects of the Middle Ages.’
‘What did he mean?’
‘Well, I wasn’t there, but he meant antagonism to the Jews. The story goes that in the Chapter before the election Rochet said something like, “The Round Table of Christ cannot have a man in the seat of honour who is not a brother to the Jews.” And remember, the violence and the desecrations had already begun in Germany Within a couple of years Hitler would be Chancellor. As I’ve said, Rochet had a way of seeing things …’
‘What happened?’ asked Anselm.
‘Le Comte became Prior. Rochet had gone too far … and Pleyon got his revenge.
Anselm frowned in disbelief. Priors didn’t do things like that. But he listened.
‘Within the year a young girl from a nearby village died in childbirth. She never named the father. Rumour said it was Rochet, and on the strength of that, so I was told, Pleyon threw him out. He was sent to a parish in the capital.’
‘Was there anything to the rumour?’
‘Well, it seems he’d applied to leave the priesthood, but then changed his mind after the death … Anyway, Pleyon got rid of Rochet … and the community ousted Pleyon because a lot of monks thought the removal of Rochet was a settling of scores. That’s when I came, under the new Prior, Father Morel.’
‘So what happened to Rochet?’
‘We next heard from him just before the fall of France, in early 1940. He addressed us all in Chapter. I was only in simple vows but I was allowed to attend because of what he intended to say That was the only time I met him. He wanted to know if the Priory would join a smuggling ring to get Jewish children out of Paris if the need arose. Who do you think had doubts?’
‘Pleyon?’
‘Exactly All dressed up as reasonable enquiry, but there was little enthusiasm. Rochet had foreseen that and he came prepared. Pleyon asked if the ring had a name. It has, Rochet replied. What is it? asked le Comte. “The Round Table,” said Rochet. It was a slap across the face from old Sans-culotte. Le Comte didn’t have much to say after that. Prior Morel decided to join the scheme, we were all bound to silence and the children began to arrive. And then, in 1942, the pigs turned up and shot the Prior.’
‘How did they find out?’
‘Wait, I’m coming to that. After Morel’s death, Pleyon took over once more; it was a crisis, he was a strong man. And I ha
ve to say,’ the voice became lighter, searching, as if assailed by unwelcome generosity, ‘he led the community with enormous sensitivity. He was a changed man.’
‘And he was in place when Schwermann and Brionne arrived in 1944?’
‘Yes.’
Chambray had stopped his finger-drumming. He was tiring under the weight of memory. He continued:
‘After the execution there was nothing we could do to find out what had happened. We were in the Occupied Zone in the north; we had to wait until the war was over before we could make any enquiries. The opportunity arose the day Schwermann and Brionne turned up. We knew then that the Germans had fled Paris. I asked Pleyon if I could go as a visiting curate to Rochet’s parish, to see what I could find out. To my surprise he agreed. Arrangements were made with the Bishop and I left a few days later. By the time I got back Schwermann and his dog had gone, with new names taken from a song. This is what I found out.’
Chambray shuffled in his seat, leaning closer to the grille.
‘Rochet was a loner. No one knew of his past as a monk. Adored by his parish. Some said he drank — you know what I mean?’
‘I do.’
‘Many of his friends were Jews, though none survived the war. The Resistance knew he was up to something but had no idea what it was, so they distrusted him. A Communist, they said. According to the Resistance, The Round Table was broken in one day Most of the arrests took place simultaneously in the early afternoon of fourteenth July Rochet was picked up in the evening, drunk. One of the ring, Jacques Fougères, was taken that night at his own home, even though his family had already escaped. For some reason he stayed in Paris, as if waiting for something or someone. No one knows.’
Anselm did. He must have been waiting for Agnes Aubret. ‘The Resistance believed Rochet was the traitor. You see, he’d known Brionne from before the war. So the thinking was: Rochet told Brionne, who told Schwermann, and the Germans then arrested Rochet once they’d swept the floor:
‘But why would he do it? He had no reason.
‘Maybe he lost his grip when drunk. Destroying everything around him, good and bad. It happens. ‘
‘Yes, but I’m not persuaded. And I get the impression you’re not either.’
‘I’m just telling you what everybody else thought. I’ll tell you what I think in a minute. I came back to Les Moineaux and told Pleyon everything. Oh, he was ill at ease, especially when I told him I didn’t swallow the Resistance line on Rochet. I said it must have been someone else. All he did was nod. He told me he’d used diplomatic family connections to get Schwermann and Brionne into England. But then, and mark this well, I was bound to secrecy I was not to discuss what I knew or thought with anyone. He said he didn’t want speculation about Rochet to divide the community again.’
‘So if it wasn’t Rochet, who was it?’
The thick breathing rumbled as if it were far off, deep in a cave.
‘Who else could have sent them down the river?’ asked Anselm quietly
The reply came, drawn out, inexorably detached. ‘Pleyon. He betrayed The Round Table.’
‘That’s too convenient, replied Anselm instinctively
‘Think about it.’ Chambray’s voice rose, harder. ‘Why else would Schwermann and Brionne come to Les Moineaux? None of us knew them. How did they know that they would be safe, that the Prior would protect them? They came because they already knew he was the one who had betrayed the ring. He was in their power. If he did not do what they asked, they could reveal what he had done. And it was in his interests to help them. He got them out of the country before the reprisals got under way Don’t you see? Pleyon was a collaborator as well. He was saving his own skin.’
Anselm was captivated by the neatness of an argument he had failed to see. Chambray continued:
‘It all makes sense. Pleyon was the one who showed Rochet the door all those years ago; he was the one who had doubts about The Round Table scheme in the first place, and when I got back to the Priory after my stint in Paris, he bound me to secrecy …
‘But why should he bring about such a catastrophe?’
‘He didn’t want to. He didn’t realise what would happen. He thought they’d just get a warning. But he was wrong. And after the shooting of Prior Morel he was a changed man. Why?’
‘Remorse?’ asked Anselm.
‘Absolutely’
Chambray was right. Anselm sensed the hardening of loose data into an intractable judgment.
‘So it’s obvious now, isn’t it: Pleyon betrays the ring, thinking it will simply end the scheme — but he hasn’t foreseen the firing squad. He becomes a humbled, penitent man. But then, the war over, the two of them arrive, ghosts from his past, reminding him of what he did, claiming him as their brother. He’s trapped by what he’s done, and he uses his authority and influence to ensure they escape justice.’
He’s right, thought Anselm. That is the one explanation that meets all the questions. But now there was another enquiry.
‘You said that Rome knew everything?’
‘The lot. I wrote it down in 1945, despite Pleyon’s order, and sent it to the Prior General. He wrote back saying my report had been passed on to the Vatican. They did nothing. Absolutely nothing. And then Pleyon died of a heart attack a year or so later. I left the Priory in 1948 and haven’t been back since. I’ve never left the Church but I sit on the edge, neither in nor outside. They’ll find my body in the porch.’
Anselm groaned, those last words having struck him a blow he so fully understood, for there were many living on that line whom he would reach if he could.
Chambray struggled to his feet and pushed his way out of the box.
‘I’ll leave you a copy of what I sent to Rome. You can read it for yourself.’
Anselm called out, ‘Father, was it you who sent Schwermann’s false name to Pascal Fougères?’
The old man rasped, ‘No … I never learned what it was … but I remember the song — “A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.”‘
The breathing and shuffling moved slowly away, like that of a wounded animal, until the nave echoed to the sound of its parting. Then there came the opening of a great door, an implacable slamming from the in-rush of wind, and a silence reaching out to the one who had gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
1
Having spent the afternoon listening to an historian recount the exploits of The Round Table, Lucy left the court and made her way to Chiswick Mall for a conference organised by her father. On the tube she rehearsed the various interventions of Mr Bartlett, most of which seemed to be largely insignificant. But they left the impression of a man who cared about the detail, regardless of whether or not it helped his client’s case. He was fair, judicious and yielding. He helped his opponent. He helped the court. And no doubt the jury thought he was helping them in all his little ways. Turning her mind from that, Lucy anxiously thought of the other meeting proposed with such enthusiasm by Mr Lachaise as they had left the court. Upon enquiry, Max Nightingale had said he was a painter. Mr Lachaise had instantly suggested the three of them go together to see ‘Max’s work’ on Saturday afternoon. Lucy had been so completely unsettled by the innocence of his manner that she could not bring herself to refuse. But that was another day Tonight had to be endured first.
They all sat in the front room. Doctor Scott, the Senior Social Worker, a Regional Care Adviser from the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Freddie, Susan, Lucy and Wilma.
‘The reason why we’re all here,’ said Pam from Social Services, ‘is to discuss Agnes’ future.’
‘She hasn’t got one, ‘ said Wilma.
Pam blinked uncomfortably ‘We need to coordinate a care plan, to make sure Agnes is empowered to face the future in her own way
Doctor Scott winced. Freddie didn’t like it either, although probably for different reasons. He had his own scheme and Lucy saw it at once, before he spilled out his demands. He wanted professionals in (and, by implication, Wilma out)
. He wanted volunteer visitors from the MND Association to come round every day He wanted equipment loaned or bought. Anything and everything that would clean up the messiness of dying, although that word was studiously avoided. Freddie preferred to use convoluted expressions which, by their abstraction, focused all the more sharply on the reality he could not bring himself to name.
A potential structure of care (Pam’s phrase) was constructed. Freddie enthusiastically endorsed all the proposals, perhaps not quite understanding Pam’s reverent doxology that ‘empowerment was to do with having choices’.
The package (Pam’s phrase) was taken through to Agnes. She listened as Pam explained the options, Freddie making confirmatory interjections as she went along. When she’d finished, Agnes nodded towards her bedside table. Wilma fetched the alphabet card.
T-H-A-N-K-.Y-O-U
Pause.
V-E-R-Y
Pause.
M-U-C-H
Longer pause.
I
Pause.
O-N-L-Y
Pause.
W-A-N-T
Pause.
W-I-L-M-A
Freddie embarked upon an appeal for sense to prevail until professionally disengaged by Pam using low-key techniques. Back in the sitting room, she translated what ‘empowerment for choice’ actually meant. Exasperated, but in control, Pam said, ‘It’s her death, not yours. Let her go in her own way’ She was unrelenting and mercilessly firm.
Freddie, confused, said, ‘You don’t understand. I just don’t want to see her suffer.’ He couldn’t stay to discuss it any further. Overwhelmed, lie left brusquely, blinking quickly to mask the well of tears.
Pam gave her number to Lucy, saying she could call her at any time, night or day, ‘given what was to come’.
2
Mr Lachaise was already at court when Lucy took her seat the next morning. So was Max, who now figured in her head by his first name, an alarming mental shift that had occurred without formal approval. Mr Lachaise offered them both a mint. Max took one; Lucy did not.
The Sixth Lamentation Page 22