The Sixth Lamentation

by William Brodrick

  Fingers gently peeled away my resistance

  To your charms. It was an epiphany

  I saw waving palms, rising dust, and yes,

  I even heard the stones cry out your name, Agnes. ‘

  Anselm paused at the end of the first verse. He looked over to Agnes. A faint pulse jerked behind her eyelids. Anselm resumed reading:

  ‘And then the light fell short.

  I made a pact with the Devil when the

  “Spring Wind” came, when Priam’s son lay bleeding

  On the ground. As morning broke the scattered

  Stones whispered ‘God, what have you done?’ and yes,

  I betrayed you both. Can you forgive me,

  Agnes?’

  At the words of confession she opened her eyes. Inflections of shadow seemed to move beneath her skin like passing cloud. Agnes lifted her hand to one side, exposing the white, soft palm. She turned to Anselm, who understood. He placed the letter on the bed and her hand lay tenderly upon it as though it were flesh.

  After a long moment Agnes looked to Lucy who walked around Anselm to pick up the second school notebook from the bedside table; then she reached for the alphabet card and placed it in position. Agnes said:

  F-A-T-H-E-R

  Pause.

  P-L-E-A-S-E

  Pause.

  W-I-L-L

  Pause.

  Y-O-U

  Pause.

  G-I-V-E

  Pause.

  T-H-I-S

  Pause.

  T-O

  Pause.

  M-R

  Pause.

  S-N-Y-M-A-N

  Anselm took the notebook offered to him by Lucy.

  Agnes continued:

  W-I-L-L

  Pause.

  Y-O-U

  Pause.

  B-U-R-Y

  Pause.

  M-E

  Pause.

  A-F-T-E-R

  Pause.

  I-M

  Pause.

  D-E-A-D

  Through his teeth, Anselm said, ‘Of course.’

  A-N-D

  Pause.

  N-O-T

  Pause.

  B-E-F-O-R-E

  There was something about the fall of light upon her lips that suggested a smile: with joy sorrow, acquiescence, loss, gratitude and farewell: each transparent inflection inhabiting the other. Anselm moved to the French windows and stepped outside, all but overcome by a stifled impulse to shout. He faced a small lawn in a courtyard garden that trapped sunlight between high, brick-red walls. On the far side, like someone lost, stood Salomon Lachaise, distraught.

  4

  Lucy left Father Anselm and returned to the living room; then Robert and Victor followed her down the short, narrow passage back to the half-open door. She stood aside to let them pass. Victor walked closely behind Robert, one arm round his waist, a hand upon his shoulder: a faithful mentor guiding a nervous protégé on to the stage at prize-giving — a boy frightened of applause, its roar, its power to dismantle what had been built in secret.

  The door swung open at Robert’s touch. On entering, Victor covered his mouth, defeated, and said, ‘Agnes, je te présent … ton fils…’

  Lucy stood transfixed by a miracle greater than any of the old school stories — manna in the desert, water from a rock or the parting of any waves — Agnes slowly raised her head and neck fully off the pillow In answer to the call, her face turned towards her son. As Lucy backed away astounded, she heard what to many might have been a sigh, a sudden loud breathing, at most a gathering of soft . vowels, but to her it carried the unmistakable shape of a name not uttered in fifty years: ‘Robert!’

  5

  After all the family had passed through to Agnes, Lucy stood alone by her grandmother’s bed, looking out through the open French windows. The thick, polished glass flashed in the sun, catching dark reflections of red brick; people, young and old, talked casually a hand in a pocket, a schooner twinkling; and tumbling upon the grass were the children, dressed in yellow and blue and green. Agnes gazed out upon them all. Lucy took in the drip and its serpentine tubing, sliding along the starched sheets to the back of a hand, its teeth hidden by cotton wool and a clean strip of antiseptic plaster. She ran her eye up her grandmother’s arm to her captivated face. Lucy tried to stamp down the heat of unassailable joy the wild fingers of fire: surely this was a time for kicking down the walls. But she couldn’t summon the rage: it lay dead in a yesterday. .

  Lucy kissed her grandmother’s forehead and then slipped outside towards the front garden, separated from the house by a quiet avenue. Crossing the road, she saw Father Anselm leaning on a wall, looking at the river. He must have nipped out the back way from the courtyard. Lucy thought she saw faint blue spirals of smoke rising by his head. But no, she concluded, a monk would never have a cigarette.

  They both leaned on the wall, watching boys pull oars out of time.

  Lucy said, ‘I’ve waited all my life for what’s happening now, although I never knew it.’

  Father Anselm flicked something from his fingers.

  ‘I could never have planned it,’ she continued, ‘because so much was hidden … but even if I’d known all there was to know, there was still no thing I could do … nothing I could say. We’re all so helpless.’

  They were both quiet, listening to the tidal lapping of the river. Lucy went on:

  ‘I’ve tried — several times — to talk through the mess I did know about, to unravel the misunderstandings, but that usually made things worse. And yet, now, the words work … as if they’ve come to life.’

  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.