The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Fourteen

Alone at last in the first-floor sitting room overlooking the sea, the old man opened once more the letter from his wife, penned just before she died while he slept in a chair by her bed. She’d told him to read it every time the guilt threatened to overpower him.

My Dearest Victor

I’ve often watched you while you sleep. The bad times have even marked your peace. They’ve never really left you and I doubt if they ever will. But you must believe me: you acted for the best in the most difficult of times. 1 was right when I said all those years ago that sometimes there have to be secrets. What a relief it would be if a great wind would blow and sweep it all away! But that is not going to happen. For twenty-six years we’ve had each other and you could turn to me, and now, well, that is coming to an end. So this is what I have to say. Just look at Robert! Look at all his children! Look at them all! This is your testament. They only see the good man I married, even if the world comes to judge you one day out of hand. I know, and I bless the day I met you.

Your ever-loving

Squirrel

Pauline the squirrel: because she never threw anything out. He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket diary. The words had no effect. They never had done. It wasn’t that Victor didn’t see the wonder of his family He did. But each shining face was only a flickering candle against the endless shadow of slaughter he had known.

After his wife died Victor went on a binge. Not a single monumental blow-out but rather a gradual build-up of solitary chaotic sessions, a ritual that gathered pace and eventually left him flat on the floor almost every day He learned what only the gravely fallen know: there’s a sincerity to drinking, a bravery. It’s not an escape — that’s at the amateur level, carried out with newfound comrades, takeaways and taxis. It’s the opposite. It’s standing your ground, utterly alone, as the demons rise to dance and sneer.

In the end, Robert found out what was happening from the parish priest, Father Lacey who found Victor slumped in a confessional. Victor hadn’t eaten or washed for days. A meeting was called. Father Lacey said he knew of a good place, out in the country, but it was expensive. ‘You’ll have to face the grief, Dad,’ Robert implored, and Father Lacey added knowingly, with a stare, ‘along with your past .

All the family helped, once they were allowed to visit. The professionals involved said Victor hadn’t fully cooperated, implying he’d dodged about rather skilfully, but that he’d ‘learned a lot about himself’ and they’d been over various ‘coping strategies’. And so Victor came back to ‘normal life’. For most of the observers it was a matter of a grief under control, a man who’d found a way of living without his wife. Only Victor and his confessor, Father Lacey, knew of the demon legion sleeping out of sight.

Victor often returned to his wife’s letter, hoping the recitation of the lines might yet have some effect, like the workings of a spell that only required a solemn, heartfelt incantation. But he didn’t believe in magic. What about the fragile light of candles? Yes, he believed in those. He lit them every week in the side chapel for Robert. For — a gust of laughter suddenly burst through a door somewhere downstairs — Robert’s wife, Maggie, and the grandchildren, all five of them, two boys and three girls, all ‘grown and flown, to homes of their own’, as Robert liked to say Victor smiled. Two of them were married. Great-grandchildren had followed. The whole clan came to thirteen — a blessing of biblical proportions. Only, it wasn’t that simple, was it? He caught his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. Even when he smiled he couldn’t hide that ineffable, intractable sadness. Why was it that, after all these years, whenever he looked in a mirror he thought of Agnes and Jacques, her long thick hair and his dark beseeching eyes? And why oh why did their shades always part, with a moan, leaving him with another remembrance that would not be staunched? How could it be that even now, in his mid-seventies, he could not see himself without seeing Eduard Schwermann? Was it any wonder he could not explain to the children why there were no mirrors in granddad’s house?

Here, in Robert’s home, there were many of them, unforgiving windows into his soul, and that of his accomplice. He said under his breath:

‘Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.’

As they sat round the crowded, laden dining table on the night of his arrival, conversation turned, as Victor had anticipated, to the Schwermann case. In order to protect Stephen, the eldest great-grandchild, key terms had to be spelled out. He’d reached the dreadful age of four where listening and repetition went mercilessly hand in hand.

‘From all accounts he was a complete b—a—s—t—a—r—d,’ said Francis, Robert’s first son.

‘He’ll probably say they’ve got the wrong man,’ someone chipped in. Other voices turned over the material they’d all heard and read:

‘Oh no. Apparently there’s no doubt that he was there.’

‘Then what’s he going to say? He’s got to say something.’

‘Didn’t know what was going on, only obeying orders. It has to be one or the other.’

‘That’s always struck me as odd.’

‘What has?’

‘Well, where I work, even the cleaners get to know all the dirt.’

‘That’s an awful pun. Pass the chicken, please. ‘

‘It’s the same at our place. I don’t know how they find out because no one admits to telling them. At the end of the day, you can’t hide anything.’

‘It’s not chicken, it’s soya.

‘And you’d think “doing as you’re told” and “d-e-a-t-h c-a-m-p-s” don’t really belong in the same sentence. Not unless you’re mad.’

‘And he’s sane.

‘Either way you’re right, Francis; he’s a b—a—s—t—a—r—d.’

‘What’s that, Daddy?’ asked Stephen with a curiosity that, from experience, would not be easily deflected.

‘Nothing, son, nothing.’

‘Daddy, what are you talking about?’

‘A naughty man, that’s all. Now eat up.

The words nearly made Victor sick.

‘But Daddy …’

Victor heard no more. Although he couldn’t be sure, for he kept his eyes on his plate, he felt Robert’s gaze upon him, talkative Robert, who for some reason kept out of the conversation.

That ordeal was last night, his reticence passed off as old age worn out further by the delayed train from London. Now he was alone in the sitting room, waiting. There was no need to make an arrangement. Soon he would come. Repeating snatches from his wife’s letter, Victor walked over to the bay window of Robert’s much-loved home, The Coach House at Cullercoats — a rambling pile of creaking rooms on a low cliff between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay overlooking the old harbour. He could see the jagged black rocks collapsing over each other into the incoming tide, the great rush of metallic water, always cold, always bound to the sky, always seemingly inviting him to cross over, into the thin wisp of evening light where memory was left behind. Great fat gulls swooped under gusts of wind and then surrendered to the drift, floating high out of view.

God, bear me up, help me.

A fire, freshly made, crackled in the grate.

The door opened quietly He heard the soft approach of familiar steps. A hand rested on his shoulder. Now was the time. He would have to speak of things he’d vowed never to say

‘Dad…?’

‘Yes, son?’

‘Tell me what’s troubling you.’ He spoke almost in a whisper. ‘Come on, I’m a grandfather, you know’

Victor breathed deeply; his eyes scanned the silent, tumbling sea, the long threads of foam clinging on to light that vanished on the shore. Robert remained by his side, as if he were a boy again, and together they faced the vast, brightening darkness.

‘Son, I am not who you think I am. I am another man, someone I buried fifty years ago, after the war. Someone who, but for you, would have been better dead.’ .

No questions came. And, not seeing Robert or the confusion that must be clouding his eyes, Victor picked his way over all that might be said.

‘My name was Brionne. I was a police officer seconded by chance to the Gestapo:

Victor’s attention shifted to Robert’s hand. It was heavy upon him. I beg you, don’t take it away …

‘To some I was a collaborator … there was nothing I could do to stop …’ Now that simply wasn’t true, and he knew it. His voice trailed off. How much shall I say? If I go too far, I’ll go over the edge. It will all come out. I can’t… I can’t do that.

Victor tried again. ‘I worked as an assistant to a young German officer, Eduard Schwermann. He’s the one who’s claimed sanctuary in a monastery. You’ve read the papers … Francis talked of him last night.’

Victor lived each moment through that hand, his existence depending on the movement of someone else’s fingers.

‘Pascal Fougères, who found Schwermann, will almost certainly come looking for me …’ Again, his voice faltered on the threshold of complete disclosure. ‘Schwermann will also seek me out … I suspect there will be others … they’ll all want me for the trial.’

Victor felt the grip of panic. He told himself: you’ll be all right, you’ve already planned for this. When he left Les Moineaux he had a new identity; he was Victor Berkeley But that name was known to Schwermann and the monks. So when Victor got to England he changed it again, to Brownlow No one else knew. Again he said to the beating in his chest: you’ll be all right … but don’t wait around …

It was now completely dark outside. Tiny lights from fishing boats twinkled in the distance upon the hidden, brooding presence of the sea. The catch was out there somewhere in the deep, but they’d be found and decked by morning.

‘Robert, I cannot tell you any more. Perhaps one day things might be different. But for now, if you can, trust me. Trust me as you’ve never trusted anyone before. Believe me,’ Victor swallowed hard, reaching out for words that might slip through the gap between truth and deceit, ‘it has been the curse of my life that I ever knew that man.

Victor waited, his eyes closed, facing an abyss. Robert’s hand lay still upon him.

‘I have to hide,’ he said simply ‘I have to go where no one would think of looking for me, until it’s all over. Then I can bury Victor Brionne for the last time. And after that … I’ll be your father again … the man you have known.’ Tears filled his eyes, rising from a deep, ancient sorrow

Robert’s hand fell away

After a long moment, Victor heard these words, quietly spoken: ‘I don’t know Brionne. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still dead. He’s not my father and never was. You are. You were and always will be.’

Tramping footsteps and voices mingled on the stairs. It was time for a game of Consequences before the crackling fire.