The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Fifteen

1

‘I won’t be going into hospital at all. I want to die here.’

‘But you can’t. ‘

‘I can and I will. This is my home. This is where I’ll die.’

Lucy sank her nails into her thighs, as if they were party of her father’s neck. Susan fiddled with the buttons on her blouse. This was the inevitable confrontation between mother and son. They had all gathered at Chiswick Mall that afternoon, at Freddie’s instigation, to deal with the question ‘my mother won’t face’.

Agnes walked deliberately across the room as if she had a pile of books on her head. She flopped confidently into her usual chair by the bay window

‘Mother, your legs are giving way more often, you— ‘I know’

‘—need a wheelchair—’

‘I know’

‘Getting in and out will not be straightforward.’ ‘No.’

‘You already need help with washing.’

‘Freddie-’

‘Before long, there are going to be problems with feeding, talking, moving—’

‘Freddie,’ said Agnes, her voice rising and the muscles on her face beginning to contort.

‘The house will need cleaning, sheets washed, bedclothes changed—’

‘Freddie- ‘

‘—what about going to the toilet—’

‘FREDDIEEeeeeeee!’ Agnes’ cry became a strange howl, rising and trailing off. She heaved with a sort of anguished laughter, tears gathering in her eyes, her thin hands shaking uncontrollably

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ snapped Lucy, running towards her. Agnes waved her away, angrily, her mouth locked wide open.

Freddie pulled at his hair, saying sorry over and over again. Agnes was trying to say something by hand gesture, her head thrown back while she moaned.

Lucy could barely contain her anger. ‘Just read this, will you? Go on, read it.’ She reached over to the bureau and handed her father a piece of paper. Agnes had written an explanation:

Sometimes I laugh or cry or wail for no reason. Please ignore me while it lasts. It will stop soon. Thank you.

Lucy took the paper back. Agnes was quiet now No one said anything. Susan made some tea.

Agnes sipped from old china, the tinkling saucer held beneath. The cup was so fragile that sunlight passed through its clay, tracing the outline of frail fingers on the other side.

‘Freddie, don’t worry. It’s difficult for all of us. But I’ve made my mind up,’ said Agnes kindly

Freddie moved to speak. He was resolute, as if he too had made up his mind. He was going to press his point. Lucy felt a flash of anger and confusion. There was such a dreadful mix of motives and concerns. Yes, Agnes was going to deteriorate, and planning was necessary. But there was another powerful drive, and that was Freddie’s reluctance, if not refusal, to become ensnared in day-in day-out nursing care. The illness was creeping up on all of them. Lucy could see her father’s terror. He wasn’t capable of giving Agnes what she needed, he could not carry the strain of intimate dependence on him. And now he was feeling rising desperation, shifting from right to left as if routes of escape were closing down. Lucy saw all this internal squirming, while her father sat stock-still on the settee, his hands on his knees as if for a school photograph. And she loathed it, in him and in herself.

‘I won’t need your help. None of you need worry about that:

Freddie immediately spilled a lie: ‘We’re not worried, we want to help. It’s just that we’ve got to be practical. All of us.’

‘I’ve already planned everything, Freddie.’

No one knew what to say The question they were all asking themselves didn’t need to be asked. Agnes nodded at her tea cup, wanting more. ‘And a chocolate finger, please, Lucy’ Freddie relaxed a little with the promise of relief. And, hating herself for it, so did Lucy

‘I’ve spoken to Social Services. As and when it becomes necessary, carers will come each day to help with washing and dressing. They’ll provide appliances “subject to budget” and I can get all sorts of toys from the hospital or Trusts. There really is nothing to worry about.’

Susan was still fiddling with the buttons on her blouse when she spoke. ‘I don’t want you being cared for by strangers. ‘It’s not right. You need your family I want to help, if you don’t mind, I really do. I’ll do anything you like — I can cook, clean up, I can … do anything … give me the chance, can’t you?’

Agnes was visibly moved. Lucy had always felt Agnes valued Susan’s confused attempts to establish normal relations with her mother-in-law It cost her so much, and always without reward. Susan, like Lucy wanted things to be different, and in her own way had kept on trying.

‘Thank you, Susan, there’s plenty of time, yet, for both of us. Of course you can help.’

Freddie, ashamed, ran for the line: ‘But all this isn’t enough, is it? I mean, it’s not just about bits of help at certain times of the day What about the nights? You’re going to be needing’ — Freddie hesitated, the corner flag was in view — ‘twenty-four-hour-a-day assistance,’ and then he dived, full length, ‘from people who know what they’re doing.’

He was pale. He’d finally said it. He’d said he couldn’t and wouldn’t become a nurse, or move in, or take Agnes to his own home.

‘That’s right, Freddie, and I’ve sorted it all out.’

For the second time, no one knew what to say Lucy, incredulous, guessed immediately The question fell out of Freddie’s mouth: ‘How? In what way?’

Agnes put down her saucer, and then the cup, and then the biscuit, saying, ‘I’ve asked Wilma to move in.

Freddie, rigid again, almost stopped breathing.

2

It seemed it was going to be a day of arguments. After her mother and father had left, Lucy urged Agnes to give a statement to the police.

‘If I get involved, replied Agnes, ‘your father will have to know everything. I don’t want that. His life with me has been hard enough.’ She spoke without a trace of self-pity. ‘It would be too much to ask of him.’

‘What would?’

‘To understand me more than he understands himself.’

‘But if he knew what was done to you, and how you saved him—’

‘Lucy you forget, I also failed him.’ She raised a hand to stop any protestation. ‘That can’t be changed, even by forgiveness. I used to blame myself, but after I met Wilma I realised things couldn’t have been otherwise. But that only makes the remorse all the more insupportable.’ Her features became still and extraordinarily beautiful, like a rapt child at a pantomime, and she said, ‘In a way I lost Freddie as well. I could not bear to lose the little I have left.’

Agnes had a way of saying dreadful things with complete simplicity, as if she were commenting on the wallpaper. Unless one inhabited a similar inner landscape it was quite impossible to reply Even Lucy came up against these awful flashes of tranquillity, where one would expect to find anguish, when she could only look upon her grandmother from a distance with a sort of shocked reverence.

Outside the window rain began to fall, bouncing off the pavement, gathering the litter, washing stray cuttings from tidy gardens, and Agnes, serene, reached for the newspaper by her side, saying, ‘There’s a documentary tonight on The Round Table.’ She paused. ‘One of the contributors is Pascal Fougères. I’m worried he might mention me … the family will not have forgotten …’ Her eyes reached out to Lucy. ‘You’ll have to stay ‘

‘All right then, if I must.’

‘You must.’

Lucy regarded her grandmother and became almost cold with apprehension. Impulsively, with sudden terror, she said, ‘Does it make any difference to you?’

Agnes looked up, mildly surprised, and said, ‘Of course it does.’

‘No, Gran,’ Lucy replied, squirming, prickling with intimacy, ‘I mean, does it matter that I’m not your own blood?’ She flushed hot; sweat tingled across her back and neck.

Agnes dropped the paper. With coruscating simplicity she said, ‘It has made you utterly irreplaceable.’

The documentary had been constructed in such a way as to follow the steps of Pascal Fougères through a tragic moment in history. To her amazement, Lucy found her sensibilities dozing, sluggish, as she watched the footage of German soldiers surveying Paris with the lazy contentment of ownership. She could not rouse the naked fear they must have represented. Anodyne war films and comedies about silly Nazis had tamed them, even in Lucy’s eyes.

The narrator described how Fougères, a foreign correspondent for Le Monde, had inadvertently come across a cryptic memo recently declassified in the United States. The document briefly reported the capture and release of a young German officer by British Intelligence. The journalist immediately recognised the name for it was Schwermann who had been responsible for the breaking of a Resistance network and the death of its leader — Pascal’s great—uncle, Jacques. The viewer was taken back to the time of Occupation, when Jacques, with other students, formed The Round Table. On the day the Star of David had become compulsory apparel, Jacques had worn his own star, marked ‘Catholique’, outside the Gestapo offices on Avenue Foch. He had been arrested and interned in Drancy for two weeks. But that had not discouraged the young protester.

‘The Round Table continued with its work,’ said Pascal, his face filling the screen, dark-eyed and pensive, ‘but it was broken by Schwermann within the month. They were all deported. None survived.’

Schwermann escaped from France after the war and made his way to England, along with a Frenchman, Victor Brionne, who had been based in the same department of the Gestapo. They did so under false identities that had never been discovered. All this, and no more, was set out in the terse memo the young journalist had been fortunate enough to find. He publicised his findings, expecting a strong reaction throughout Great Britain. It caused a brief outcry somewhere on the third or fourth pages and then became yesterday’s news. Attempts to trace Schwermann through official channels floundered. Meanwhile, back in France, a consortium of interested parties had been formed and the case against the fugitive Nazi was painstakingly constructed. The decisive breakthrough came when Pascal Fougères received a letter, anonymous and tantalisingly brief, disclosing the false name under which Schwermann was hiding: Nightingale.

The narrator, interviewing Fougères, asked about the Frenchman whose whereabouts were still unknown. Pascal replied, ‘Victor was Jacques’ best friend and, as with so many others, the war split them apart. He fled, I think, because he’d been trapped by circumstances. He was just an ordinary policeman but ended up at Avenue Foch.’ He smiled, as if cracking a joke: ‘I doubt whether it would have been a good idea to trade arguments with the Resistance after the Germans had gone.

As for Schwermann, said the narrator with a level voice, he had found sanctuary in a monastery.

Lucy turned off the television. It was dark outside and the rain was still falling, lightly but interminably She said, ‘You weren’t mentioned.’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t realise Jacques had been the one who set up The Round Table.’

‘That’s not how I remember it.

Lucy reflected further about Pascal Fougères. ‘He’s got no idea what Victor Brionne did to you and Jacques … and the others.’

‘No,’ replied Agnes, distracted. She smoothed a wrinkle in the fabric on the arm of her chair. Her eyes narrowed as if trying to make out a figure in the dark, half seen, familiar but receding from view

‘I wonder who wrote that letter … giving the name?’

‘Yes, I wonder …’ Agnes stared into the shadows, still calmly smoothing the material.