The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Nine

The first notebook of Agnes Embleton.

14th April 1995.

Of course, in the first weeks and months of my living with Madame Klein, I knew nothing of her past, nor what she did when she went out with her husband’s violin.

On my first night I was sent to have a bath and packed off to bed. I thought she could not possibly know how I felt to have lost my father. I was wrong. She eased my way through routine and piano practice. Three times a day: when I got up, before I could think, after lunch before going back to school, and every evening. She sat by me or in the corner, groaning loudly at my mistakes. She had a string of pupils. None of them paid (I later found out) and she was horrible to them all. It was through music that I got to know her, not words. I’ve never been one for talking, maybe that’s where it comes from. She used to say, ‘Your ears are more important than your mouth.’ And Father Rochet would add his bishop was of much the same opinion.

It was about a year later, 1935 or thereabouts, that Madame Klein started to host musical evenings every Sunday The same people came each week. Those who had come by night, as my child’s eye had seen them, returned, along with some others brought by Father Rochet. Six families from his parish and a couple of rather vocal atheists (‘My strays,’ he would say). It was the same with the Jewish group — some were devout believers, others weren’t. The first evening was stilted to say the least but that gradually lessened as the weeks passed, as we all listened to the same music. We were an audience of families providing the performances ourselves. That is how I met Jacques and Victor.

15th April.

Jacques’ father, Anton Fougères, was a great friend of Father Rochet. Anton played the piano with an enthusiasm unsupported by talent. His wife, Elizabeth, sang. She was quite good, actually Apart from Jacques, they brought with them a man called Franz Snyman. He was a refugee, about Jacques’ age, who had been introduced to them by Father Rochet. Originally Mr Snyman’s family had come from South Africa, but business interests had taken them abroad. In three generations they had fled from Romania to Germany to France. He’d lost both parents along the way His father had been killed in Kishinev. They’d moved to Gunzenhausen. His mother had been beaten to death in a campaign for ‘Jew-free’ villages. Aged fourteen, he had made his way to the Saar, where a non-Jew family friend had offered him a roof. Then the Saar became part of Germany so off he’d moved again, coming to Paris on his own. Where he’d lodged with Mr and Mrs Fougères. He always dressed in a suit. Perhaps that is why we called him ‘Mr Smyman’, rather than using his first name — it was a kind of affectionate, mischievous respect. He was a superb cellist and he and I played a lot of duets together. Jacques had an elder brother, Claude, who lived near the Swiss border. I don’t recall much about him. All I know is that after the fall of France he became a vocal supporter of Vichy and Pétain. There’s nothing so strange as families.

I must now turn to Victor. He’s played an important part in my life. Victor’s father, Georges, was married to Anton Fougères’ second cousin. But there’d been an almighty row between Anton and Georges, and the two families hadn’t spoken for years. The Fougères family were committed Republicans, whereas Georges was a Monarchist. Another member of the Brionnes had even been a ‘Camelot du Roi’. They were a Royalist youth movement, and I’ll tell you about them later for it touches on Victor. And, I suppose, Father Rochet. Suffice it to say, Anton Fougères disapproved and that was that. A major rift.

Victor, however, went to the same school as Jacques and they were best friends. He spent as much time at Jacques’ house as he did at home. So Victor had to pull the wool over his parents’ eyes whenever he went to visit the Fougères. He once said it was perfect training ground for a spy

Same day

In due course I found myself more with Jacques and Victor than anyone else at our musical evenings. They sought me out and I began to expect it and to want it. Even then, at that early stage, I knew I was coming between them. It seems to be the role of a girl, to split the covenant between two boys. It often happens. But I was only sixteen and they were scarcely older. At that stage there were no choices to be made. Looking at things from their beginnings we were all innocent then, even Victor, making our clumsy way forward, away from childhood. We became a threesome and I lay upon a dais in the middle, fêted on either side. I led the pranks and they got into trouble on my behalf. My hair fell long over my shoulders and I would cast the whole lot to the wind, as if it was necessary Victor once caught me on camera, in full swing, but I never saw the picture. I wonder what happened to it?

16th April.

These gatherings went on each week, right up to 1940. In the summer we would go on picnics, driven by Father Rochet in a roaring bus. The exhaust was held in place by an old coat-hanger. Madame Klein was not allowed behind the wheel. She’d sit towards the back, shouting at him to go down driveways into private gardens and houses, always with that violin on her lap. For her damaged hand could draw the bow I see her mow, standing by the Seine, somewhere between Poissy and Villennes, playing dreadfully to the river. To think, she was taken away, beaten and gassed. And I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.

17th April.

I did very well at the piano and entered lots of competitions. Madame Klein, who never cried, wept every time I won. She said it was a complete catastrophe. When I gained a scholarship she made so much noise she was asked to leave the auditorium. So off I went to the Conservatoire in 1937. Madame Klein arranged a few classes under Yvonne Lefebure at the École Normale, where I played for Cortot, but he didn’t think much of me. For what it’s worth I didn’t think much of him either, and neither did Madame Klein. Too many wrong notes. And it is those happy memories that bring me back to Jacques and Victor.

18th April.

Father Rochet once said, ‘Those boys are sword and scabbard.’ Jacques was short and slightly stooped, pressed in on himself by ideas, his dark eyes strangely timid for someone always ready for an argument. That was his problem really By nature withdrawn, things he thought wrong dragged him outwards, uncomfortably, into the light. I always thought he was rather like a rabbit in the middle of the road: blinded by injustice and unable to back down. He said very little but his face disclosed the constant workings of his mind. I think that is what drew me to Jacques, the absence of words.

Now, imagine him with Victor standing like a general, his hands behind his back, firing off frivolities to whoever would listen, hooting playfully at Jacques’ indignations. He winked a lot at the spectators. He was very careful with words and that rather sums him up. Beneath the badinage lay caution and a calculating brain. He always saw both sides of a problem and you never quite knew which side he was going to take. Sword and scabbard. Which was which?

Same day

I’m not sure when the parting of the ways began. Perhaps it was the day Jacques’ father called me ‘Guenevere’. With that one word he named where we stood on the stage. One of the more unfortunate things about late adolescence is that you understand the part you’re playing without being able to appreciate the likely consequences. You see, in a way I led Victor on, and I knew it. For anyone else this was just a part of growing up. But for me, the whole shebang got caught up with the war, when heroes were needed before their time and when my stumblings became the stuff of tragedy

It wasn’t me who made the choice that set us apart. It was Jacques. By then he was studying Classics at the Sorbonne. He turned up once ‘by chance’ at the Conservatoire and I showed him Chopin’s death mask and a cast of Paganini’s long pointed fingers. He said something about relics in Saint Eugene across the road. When I told Madame Klein that night about our meeting, her eyes narrowed and after a long pause she said, ‘I think you should go for him,’ and I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ A week later I saw him at a recital when I hadn’t said I was playing. Shortly afterwards, by an old bookstall where the shelves were fastened to the outside wall, he muttered, ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’ But he couldn’t get the words out. I had to put various suggestions to him. He shook his head mournfully after each one. Eventually he looked away from me and grimaced, ‘I think I might be attached to you.’ I felt nothing. But I woke the next morning with a fountain spurting from the pit of my stomach.

19th April.

Victor must have known, but he said nothing. Maybe because we never spelled it out he never took it seriously Remember, words were very important to him. If something hadn’t been reduced to language he didn’t understand it. And, appropriately writing that sentence reveals how careless I was. For Victor wrote poems for me and I should have taken him, of all people, at his word. They were lofty with plenty of classical allusions, making them sufficiently impersonal to be safe. I kept them in a book. I should have told him to stop, but I didn’t. You see, on the face of it we were a trio, and I didn’t want to cut Victor off. But lurking within that laudable sentiment was the truth — a reluctance to give up the attention he gave me. Against myself I encouraged him, ever so slightly, but I did it without really meaning it. It’s called vanity.

I told Jacques that Victor was just showing off. Our failure to speak up became a sort of conspiracy of pleasure between us, in the secret kept from Victor who blindly carried on. I remember the three of us looking over the waters of Launette to the Isle of Poplars at Ermonville. Victor recited something about Euterpe’s aching soul before Rousseau’s empty tomb. Jacques and I listened, watching creamy clouds drift across the sky, making his words our own. But I knew Victor wrote them for me. Maybe Jacques did as well.

And there you have it. Jacques and I, and Victor soon to be disappointed. That was the beginning of the end.

Same day

And all the while something else was under way The weekly musical gatherings, the summer outings, had brought us all together and we grew up side by side. Through the keyhole, after everyone had gone one Sunday might, I could see them. Father Rochet finishing off the bottles. Madame Klein at the table, telling him not to drink too much. But each of them looking very pleased with themselves. Looking back, I can see it was the beginning of The Round Table. Father Rochet was calling together his knights for when the time was right.