‘He gave me absolution,’ Victor remembered, ‘but he refused to give me a penance. Keep talking to Pauline, he said. And I did. But her kidneys packed up and she died. That’s when I started drinking.’
All the family thought it was grief, which was true, but it was also the other burden he could no longer carry alone. He attended an expensive rehabilitation programme sorted out by Robert and found it completely humiliating — not because he was proud but because he could not disclose the reasons for his collapse.
‘They thought I was “avoiding the pain required to face the truth about myself”. I found that judgment distinctly unpalatable. It was, as with so much of my life, a hideous misunderstanding.’
They sat in silence until Anselm rose. He had a train to catch.
‘Robert will have to be told everything,’ Victor said, exhausted. ‘Difficult as that might be, the thought of it done is like… an accomplishment.’
‘I have already arranged to see him,’ said Anselm.
Cautiously, reflectively. Victor said, ‘It’s all been an inexplicable mix of misfortune and luck. But since I’m a religious man, I look to Providence. Only that rather complicates things, don’t you think? Because there’s no accounting for the graces received, set against what went wrong, without hindrance, for so long.’
Anselm didn’t have a reply for that particular observation.
2
Lucy met Father Anselm on the forecourt of Liverpool Street Station. She had wanted to see him before he went back to Larkwood Priory, to say thank you, and had duly rung him at St Catherine’s the night before. The monk stood behind his suitcase like one of those carved statues on the front of a cathedral, observing the passing world on its busy way to somewhere important. He saw her and raised a hand.
Lucy said, ‘I’m told it’s because of you I’m not going to be charged.’
‘That’s not strictly true,’ replied the monk. ‘Detective Superintendent Milby and I go back a long way He’d never have put you through the system if he could help it. But what you did was remarkably daft, wasn’t it?’
‘At the time I was watching myself,’ said Lucy. ‘It was as though the whole episode was part of a play and once I’d started writing the script I couldn’t stop. At last I was in control. I could choose the ending. But it was unreal. I just wanted to rehearse what it would be like and see it through to the end.’ She felt again the queasy warmth of guilt passed by ‘Detective Inspector Armstrong told me that, once cocked, the trigger was so light it could have gone off in my hand without me even touching it.’
‘And you would have killed the last knight of The Round Table,’ said Father Anselm, ‘the man who saved Robert. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’ The monk went on to give a short account of Victor’s true position in the weave of events. Horrified at the magnitude of her error, humbled and ashamed, Lucy said, ‘Someone must have been looking after me.’
‘I know what you mean,’ replied the monk pensively ‘That is a phrase upon which to ponder.’ He glanced at the departure board. ‘I’m afraid I have to go.
Lucy walked with him along the platform. ‘I must tell my father who he is.’
‘Yes… and I must tell Robert Brownlow whose son he is.’
Lucy felt the first stirrings of an idea that she knew would fulfil itself. She had a sense of festival, streamers, a family outing. Father Anselm stopped by the train door and said: ‘Did you know that Salomon Lachaise was saved by The Round Table?’
‘No.’ She thought of the gentleman who had become her friend, having at one definite point in the course of the trial sought her out, along with Max Nightingale. ‘And yet he didn’t sit with the other survivors.
The monk looked at her curiously ‘How strange. I didn’t realise that…’
Lucy’s idea took a firm shape:
‘I’d like to bring all these people together, before my grand-mother dies. They all belong in the same room.
Surprised agreement lit the monk’s face.
She said, ‘Would you come.’ Father?’
‘Thank you, and remember… I’m also a messenger from the past.’
A messenger: somehow, despite the long, unrelenting conspiracy of misfortune, a letter had been passed on, as by runners at night, despite the guns, despite the wire. It would be brought to Agnes just before she died.
A man in a tired uniform appeared, urging stragglers to get on board. The one remaining question fell from her lips as the door began to swing on its dirty hinge: ‘I wonder what Mr Lachaise said to Schwermann…’
‘Yes, I wonder,’ replied the monk.
The door banged shut. A loud whistle soared over the carriages. The train heaved forwards, clattering on the rails. The man in uniform walked quickly past, his job done. And Father Anselm, his face framed by a grimy square of glass, moved away.
Chapter Forty-Six
Salomon Lachaise said he wanted to come to Larkwood. He needed some time to be alone and asked if he might stay at The Hermitage. The Prior granted his permission. For three days the Priory’s guest wandered in the woods, along the stream and round the lake. Then, one morning, Anselm found a note in his pigeonhole. Salomon Lachaise would welcome a visit.
Anselm walked quickly through the fields after lunch. About two hundred yards from The Hermitage was a narrow wooden footbridge, without railings, spanning the stream. The small man sat upon the timbers. Silently, Anselm joined him. Their legs hung loose over the edge.
Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Do you remember, before the end of the trial, saying you had been one person with me while all the while you were another?’
‘Yes. You replied that that was true of all of us.’
‘Your memory serves you well.’
‘I wondered what you meant. ‘
‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to explain. But I will try. You know that I learned early on in my life that I was one of the few who had escaped… that my whole family had been taken away. I kept the memory of their names alive. I told you that I found peace in scholarship, that I owed the outset of my academic life to a survivor.’
‘Yes.’ I remember.’
For a short while Salomon Lachaise pondered the rush of water beneath his feet. He said, ‘My life changed on a bright, cold morning just after a lecture on feudal iconography I walked into the common room at the University and picked up a newspaper. A journalist had discovered that… that man… had found refuge in Britain after the war.’
‘Pascal Fougeres was the author?’
‘Yes. I decided to contact him, and told my mother. No, she said, dear God, no. Leave the past alone. I turned to Mr Bremer — I told you about him when we first met — the lawyer who had become my guide. He, too, had seen the article. He, too, advised me to get on with my life
… to forget what I had read.’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’
Salomon Lachaise proceeded in a low monotone. ‘I went to see Mr Bremer. I told him my mind was made up; I was going to join myself to those who were seeking that man. I asked for his support before I told my mother.’
‘You received it?’
‘No. It would be right to say he lost his professional detachment.’
‘Why?’
‘The article we had both read gave the name of the small town that man had come from…Wissendorf… Mr Bremer recognised it from his dealings with the lawyer retained by my benefactor. He made what I think is called a reasonable assumption of fact. My refusal to heed his advice forced him to tell me that the German lawyer acting on behalf of the “survivor” was the family solicitor for… that man.’
‘Schwermann was the… survivor?’ asked Anselm, aghast at the appropriation of the word.
‘Yes. And to think… I made my name in a field of learning that is known as the age of patronage.’
Salomon Lachaise watched his dangling feet, carefully trailing the soles of his shoes against the heavy pull of water. Blackened silver spurted either side at e
very sweeping touch.
Anselm said, tentatively ‘Why you?’
Very slowly Salomon Lachaise said, ‘I was the last child saved by The Round Table, taken to safety by Agnes Aubret just before her arrest.’
Anselm turned and scrutinised the face of his companion. It was a miracle of calm, a screen of chalk that would fall into powder if touched. Uncomprehending, Anselm said, ‘He must have seen your existence as a salving of conscience.’
‘My entire academic life rests upon contamination. Everything 1 have achieved rises from poison, bright flowers out of filth. I shall never practise my art again.
Anselm struggled to remonstrate, ‘But surely…’ He floundered, lacking conviction, for he knew that the most costly decisions are often not made — they happen.
‘I did not contact Fougeres and my mother thought that I had taken her advice. Shortly afterwards she died, peacefully. And while that brought grief, it set me free.’
‘To do what?’ Anselm had sensed something specific… something crucial.
‘Mr Bremer was a meticulous man, a keeper of detailed records which he never destroyed. By chance there had once been an error in the transfer of funds from the solicitor in Germany. to him. In sorting out the tangle he’d learned the name of the client. At my request he dug out his old papers and there it was… Nightingale.’
‘And you passed that on to Pascal Fougeres?’ asked Anselm.
‘Yes. When that man claimed sanctuary.’ I took early retirement and followed his route of escape, from Paris to Les Moineaux. I had an inkling he’d somehow taken the same route as my mother. Then I came here, to Larkwood. After that it was a matter of waiting for the outcome of the trial.’ He breathed deeply, like one bent over.’ preparing to heave a rock to one side. He said, ‘I waited for him to speak, to hear what he had to say to those he had robbed. But in the end he said nothing, and they freed him. He was exactly what he appeared to be, only the jury had a doubt. The moment I’d waited for had come… and I did not want it. I told an usher I wanted to see him and I gave my name.
Again he ran his feet upon the surface of the stream, watching the sweeping cuts in the silvery rush, opened up, now closed, then opened up again. Salomon Lachaise described how he was shown through to a room rather like a post office counter.
A window of thick glass lay seated in the wall. Beneath, on each side, was a wide sill — a table passing through the divide — and a chair.
‘A door opened and suddenly there he was. For a long while I just looked at him, each line upon his face, the nails upon his fingers. He raised a hand, putting it against the glass.’
Schwermann had spoken first across the divide:
‘I didn’t realise it was you, in the woods…’
‘Yes.’
‘I can hardly believe that you are here, that you have come. Gratitude and fearful wonder loosened his drawn features.
‘Yes, I have come.
‘How did you find out?’
‘I am here, that is all that matters.’
‘I managed to save you, do you know that?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘After I got away and had enough money I had you traced.’ I gave what I could, I’ve followed your success…’ The appeal sought recognition, appreciation.
‘Yes, I understand that.’
‘I’ve had a family… a daughter… a grandson, but through all these years I have never forgotten you… I have thought of you, wondering how you have grown.
‘Yes, I am sure.
‘You were one of the reasons my life was worth anything.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now, when all the others have gone, it is you that has come to see me… I am overwhelmed…’
Perhaps it was the crippling tension of the moment, perhaps it was his saturation in culture, but in a flash Salomon Lachaise suddenly remembered a devastating passage from Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas towers triumphant over the fallen Turnus, a man of great strength, having defeated him in single combat; Aeneas raises his sword to carry out the execution, but Turnus pleads for his life, for the sake of his father; Aeneas checks the fall of his arm and hesitates… but then his eye catches the belt of Pallas, a trophy upon the shoulder of Turnus… Pallas, his dearest friend, slain without mercy…
Salomon Lachaise said, his voice cracked and low: ‘What of the others, my mother’s family the thousands, the sons and daughters-’
‘There was nothing I could do.’
‘You did a great deal:
The old man wheedled, as if for the hundredth time, ‘I had no choice.’
‘Yes, you did. You have forgotten too much.’
‘Please, Salomon, listen… can’t you forgive…’ The pleading became a wail.
‘I do not have that power. And neither does God. It belongs to those you abandoned. Now hear me.
Schwermann became instantly still, as though his heart had ceased to beat. He simply breathed, a functioning suddenly foreign to his waiting, expectant body Salomon Lachaise stood up and said: ‘I raise in my hands the dust from which you were made and I cast it to the wind. May you never be remembered, either under the sun or at its setting.’
He turned away from the dividing glass. And from the prisoner on the other side, soon to be freed, came the sound of a withered, resentful moan.
Salomon Lachaise had finished speaking. The wild chase of water beneath their feet grew loud. Anselm repeated what he’d read in the papers:
‘The police found capsules in two of his jackets, sewn into the same corner below the left pocket, with a loose thread ready to be pulled when needed.’
‘So I understand.’
‘Presumably they were taken out and put back after every visit to the dry cleaner’s.’
‘Yes, I expect you are right.’
Anselm thought of the private ritual, the unpicking and the sewing up over the years, the constant preparedness to escape a judgment imposed by anyone other than himself. Before Anselm could pursue his reflections, Salomon Lachaise said, with closing authority: ‘I shall never talk of him again.’
As at a signal, they both clambered on to their knees and stood, Anselm helping his companion gain balance. Strolling back to The Hermitage, Anselm said, ‘What will you do now?’
‘Travel. I want to keep moving. I have no commitments, no dependants.’
‘You’ll remain in Geneva?’
‘Yes. As much as I have left the University, it remains something of a home. Anyway’ — he smiled brightly — ‘I intend to arrange a small exhibition of young Max’s paintings. Have you seen them?’
‘No.’
‘You should. They possess alarming innocence. I shall try to use the ignominy of his background to his advantage. Otherwise it will remain a curse.
‘That is kind.’
‘Nothing done for pleasure is kind.’
They reached The Hermitage shack, and Anselm made to amble back to the Priory. Pointing at the open door, Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Can you join me for a final glass of port? I never go anywhere without a bottle.’
They sat on wobbling wooden chairs, sipping in silence, until Anselm said, ‘Would you like to meet Agnes Aubret?’
Salomon Lachaise, with tears in his eyes, could not reply.
Chapter Forty-Seven
1
Lucy met her father in the noble gardens of Gray’s Inn. As they entered, she pointed at the stone beasts on the gate columns. ‘Griffins,’ said her father knowledgably. ‘Protectors of paradise. Don’t they teach you anything about myths these days?’
His suit was crafted to his body immaculately creased and cut. In his own world, thought Lucy he was powerful and successful and wore the uniform of esteemed competence. When they found a bench, he dusted off dry particles of nothing with the back of a hand. Sitting like two lone strays at a matinee, each with their legs crossed, Lucy began the stripping of her father.
‘Dad, none of us are who we think we are.’
Her father,
enjoying a tease, replied, ‘And I suppose no one else is who we think they are.
‘No, quite right.’ She cut through the smart cloth of known appearances to the soft epidermis. ‘It’s true of Gran’ — he looked suddenly wary — ‘and it is especially true of you.
Lucy explained to her father how he had been saved from Ravensbruck by Agnes, that he was born of unknown, murdered parents, from an unknown place, that they were buried no one knew where. And she told him Agnes was the mother of a son whom she’d lost, a son who had been found. He listened, entranced and dismayed, fingering the constricting knot of his tie. When Lucy had finished he sat stunned, as though waiting for the lights to come on in a theatre, the only one left in a curved, empty stall.
‘Do you know,’ he said faintly ‘I think she nearly told me once.
‘When?’
‘Years and years ago… before the rot set in… I was fifteen or sixteen and I gave her a mouthful about her silence’ — again he reached for his restricting collar — ‘I said she’d never cared, not even when I’d fallen as a boy and cut my knee.’
‘What did she say?’ asked Lucy
Her father sat upright, the movement of feet scuffing a gleaming shoe. He wiped his dry lips with a handkerchief and said, ‘Nothing, actually at first. But her face crumpled… in a way that 1 have never been able to forget… and just when I thought she was going to tell me something she was gone, into herself…’
‘She didn’t speak?’
He nodded, his face flushed and shining. ‘She said, “Oh Freddie, say anything about me but not that, not that:” He joined his hands in hopeless, abject supplication. ‘God, I have to see her… I have to tell her I’m sorry…’
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