The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Seventeen

1

Anselm and the Prior of Notre-Dame des Moineaux strolled over neat lawns between graceful horse chestnuts to the memorial plaque on the medieval refectory wall. The Gilbertines had taken over an old Benedictine Abbey in the seventeenth century. And so it was that the same Rule had been read on the same spot for eight hundred years.

‘This is where he was shot. We commemorate it every year.

A small tablet of stone recorded the name of Prior Morel above an inscription taken from the Prologue to The Rule: We shall persevere in fidelity to his teaching in the monastery until death.

The Prior was a short, stocky man with a rounded back, as if his spine were strapped to a hidden tool of penance. He stood arched over his folded hands, solemn and still.

‘It was a most simple operation,’ said the Prior, taking Anselm by the arm and turning away ‘Children were brought here in twos or threes during the day and placed in the orphanage run by the nuns. We had our own printing press, turning out false identification papers, baptismal certificates and the like. The children would then move with couriers into the Occupied Zone and down to Switzerland, hopefully to be reunited with their parents at some point in the future. Frontier guides would take them over. As you know, it was tragically betrayed.’

‘By someone unknown?’

‘Yes. But whoever it was didn’t know very much. When the Gestapo came, no searches were carried out. Not even the orphanage. They just shot the Prior.’

‘Why were the children smuggled here on their own?’ asked Anselm, dreading the answer.

‘Adults are hard to hide, and easily found, and children were liable to give away their hiding place. But here in broad daylight, among others, their chance of survival was higher. That is one of the terrible things about this whole episode. The parents were desperate. They chose separation from their infants because they were certain it was only a matter of time before they themselves were arrested.’

‘We’ve no idea, have we, Father?’

‘None at all. And do you know what I find most moving? The knights of The Round Table were students. It was the young saving the still younger from the adults.’

They walked on, momentarily distracted by the growling engine of an old tractor.

‘Unfortunately’ resumed the Prior, ‘there’s no one left from that time, so all we have are stories handed on by monks with unreliable memories.’

‘Do you mind telling me?’

‘Not at all. Come, we’ll walk along part of the escape route. The railway line has gone but it’s a pathway now It is a place charged with the actions of the past.’

They left the Abbey grounds and took the lane to the abandoned station. On the flanks stood endless regiments of vines, thickly woven over low hills, touching the resplendent skies of Burgundy

‘One of the problems,’ said the Prior, ‘was that the smuggling operation relied completely on trust. All the knights knew each other. They knew this place. The risk of betrayal is nowhere more grave than at one shared table.’

‘Can you tell me anything about Father Rochet?’ asked Anselm.

‘By all accounts he was a most gifted man — well read, with a passion for medieval literature — but his life here collapsed in disgrace.’

‘How?’

‘It has never been substantiated, but it was said he formed … shall we say, an attachment to a young girl in a nearby village. She died in childbirth and it was said Rochet was the father. The rumour was not entirely fanciful. He had apparently asked to be laicised, but he withdrew his application after the death. He was moved out to a parish in the city … a very broken man. He only came back to propose The Round Table. It is touching that he should later lose his life saving children.’

In that one dreadful sentence Anselm glimpsed an untold epic. He pursued the other questions he had prepared. ‘How were Schwermann and Brionne known to the Priory in the first place?’

‘They weren’t. Both men arrived as complete strangers.’

‘And yet they were concealed even after the execution of Father Morel,’ said Anselm, with the hopeless puzzlement of one gathering scattered jigsaw pieces.

‘And now we come to the most disturbing mystery of all.’ The Prior recounted the oral history carefully, making sure the terms used were accurate. ‘Father Pleyon, the Prior of the day, decided both men would be hidden. All he would say was that Schwermann had risked his life to save life.’

‘Save life?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Only the Prior knew the answer to the riddle. But one thing is certain: whatever he was told persuaded him that Schwermann and Brionne should be spared. He never explained himself and died with his secret untold.’

Anselm looked down at the black sleepers sunk deep into the path, all that remained of the old railway line that had carried the children to Les Moineaux. He said, ‘I assume the whole community knew about The Round Table — is that right?’

‘There was no other way Some of these children didn’t speak French. They were German.’

‘How many people would have known?’ asked Anselm.

‘About sixty. But if you’re thinking one of them betrayed The Round Table, you’re probably wrong. Remember, the Gestapo were ill-informed. If it was someone from here the children would have been found, and the nuns hiding them would have shared in the retribution.’

‘I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort,’ lied Anselm.

‘Well, I do, occasionally So I wouldn’t blame you.

Their conversation turned to lighter things: the ‘Ontological Argument’, the shortage of vocations and the acting ability of Eric Cantona. Suddenly, the Prior changed subject:

‘Father Anselm, you will appreciate the emergence of Schwermann has caused us considerable anxiety. This Priory is revered as a place that served the spirit of resistance. Every time an old man is exposed for crimes against humanity in France I shiver. Is it him? Is he going to point to us? We have no explanation to offer. And now it’s happened. As soon as he opens his mouth the Priory will be drowned. Memories of the Occupation are raw and great stones are still being turned over.’ He paused, suddenly troubled. ‘We’ve already had one visitor.’

‘Who?’ asked Anselm instinctively

‘A survivor, one of the children. He asked me a terrible question.’

‘Yes?’

‘He said, “Could it be that one of Herod’s servants once rested within your walls?” I told him I didn’t understand. Afterwards, I realised I should have said “No” … because my confusion was a sort of admission. He was a most unnerving man.’

Anselm pictured Salomon Lachaise posing a question to a man who could not answer without discovering his own shame. ‘I’ve met him. He came to Larkwood.’

‘Oh Lord … us, and then you … he must know everything.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Anselm uncertainly ‘He told me he was the son of the Sixth Lamentation.’

‘After the Five of Jeremiah?’

‘Yes… I think he meant the Holocaust.’

They walked in silence until the Prior said, ‘I hope you find Victor Brionne, for the sake of my community and for the sake of Larkwood: He stopped, surveying the treetops with shaded eyes. ‘I think you should talk to Mère Hermance,’ he said. ‘She was here at the time. But be warned. She’ll make you buy a box of biscuits.’

2

Cathy Glenton had persuaded Lucy to have a Turkish bath after a particularly tedious lecture on the demise of the novel.

‘It’s an awful place,’ she said, ‘run by two former wrestlers from Lancashire. A husband and wife team.’

‘What do you do?’ asked Lucy horrified.

‘There are three rooms, each getting hotter than the one before, and when you’ve sweated yourself silly you lie on a table and one of the wrestlers washes you down. Then you dive into a pool of freezing water. ‘‘It sounds like hell.’

‘It is … but then comes paradise. You wrap yourself in a massive warm towel and lie on a couch for as long as you like eating bacon sandwiches and sipping hot, sweet tea. There’s nothing like it this side of the grave.’

They were just about to leave Cathy’s flat when Lucy’s mobile rang. It was Pascal Fougères.

‘Would you be interested in having a minor role in the preparation of the trial?’

‘Pardon?’ she replied, incredulous.

He went on, ‘It’s not much, believe me. I’m a sort of liaison officer between the lawyers here and those with an interest in the case back in France. It means I have small practical jobs to do for the prosecution. I’m sure you could help… with a stapler, or something. Look,’ he hesitated, ‘are you free now?’

‘Yes,’ said Lucy with muffled joy She lowered the mobile and said, ‘I’m really sorry, Cathy, but I’ll have to cry off.’

Cathy nodded through her disappointment while Lucy sorted out a time and place with Pascal. When she’d finished, Cathy said, ‘I hear the heavy tread of a man.

‘Not quite,’ replied Lucy, acutely self—conscious.

‘Name?’

‘Pascal.’

‘French?’

‘Yes… but it’s not like that.’

‘I know It never is.’

‘Truly’

‘Does he have a spare friend interested in a beautiful mind?’

‘I’ll ask.’

An hour later Lucy met Pascal outside the National Portrait Gallery. Traffic swept behind them in surges, down into Trafalgar Square. Crowds, maddened by maps and itineraries, jostled on the pavement, looking for the next sight. Pascal took Lucy’s hand and they stepped out of the bustle into the mute halls of captured faces. They walked from room to room watched by Audrey Hepburn, Paul McCartney and lots more. Talking in long snatches, they leaned towards each other, looking around.

‘Are you still a journalist?’ asked Lucy

‘Sort of. After I found that memo I gave up my job on Le Monde. They give me lots of freelance work so I survive. And you?’

‘Student … second time round.’

‘Pushy parents first time?’

‘Sort of.’ She thought of Darren, who’d made that specific judgement with hostility, noticing how from Pascal’s mouth the question carried the promise of understanding. Without doubt the time would come when she would explain, but not now She continued, ‘Pascal, I’ve been thinking about our last conversation. I don’t understand why you want Brionne so much for the trial. What about all the other evidence?’

Pascal said, ominously, ‘This trial is going to be about what the victims remember as much as what Schwermann did.’

They left the gallery and joined the crowds walking round to Nelson’s Column. The naval commander towered above them, safe, as they walked through a sea of fat, scratching pigeons.

‘Do you ever wonder how Schwermann and Brionne got out of Paris in the first place?’ asked Lucy

‘Frequently’

‘I mean, where did they go, and who would want to put them on the road with new names?’

‘No one knows. One minute they’re both at Avenue Foch, then four months later they’re in the hands of British Intelligence with new identities and a story that got them into England. Sometimes I think of the Touvier case.

‘What’s that?’

‘Basically he was an old-school Catholic hidden for years after the war by his own kind.’

‘A collaborator?’

‘Yes. He was head of the Milice Intelligence Network for Savoy’

‘Protected by the Church?’

‘It’s more involved than that, but he was hidden in a monastery. So I do wonder in my wilder moments if the Church could have been involved … but it’s so unlikely Hiding a Frenchman, maybe, but an SS officer? That stretches even my imagination.’

He looked down at the demented scavenging of the birds and said, ‘Are you hungry?’

Half and hour later they were eating at a small table in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

‘Funny place for a restaurant,’ said Pascal.

3

The convent was situated half a kilometre from the Priory. The orphanage had long since closed and the school buildings were now a diocesan youth centre. Anselm had seen it all before. Hordes of champing, over-sexed youths arriving in transit vans, closely supervised by impossibly confident chaplains and teachers, all of whom deserved the Croix de Guerre.

Mère Hermance had worked in the laundry during the war. She was lodged upon a wicker chair in the convent gift shop, recalling the good old days when religious life was hard. Anselm had to drag her towards the subject of his visit.

‘Oh, yes, Father, it was a terrible time, terrible. I saw poor Prior Morel fall like a rag doll. I waited for him to get up. There were three children hiding in the orphanage.’ She smiled, as only the very old can; intimating an acceptance of things that once could not be accepted.

‘Do you remember the two men who stayed at the Abbey in 1944?’ asked Anselm gently

‘I do, yes, but not much. In those days religious life was lived as it should be. You didn’t talk to men unless you had to.’

Anselm nodded in firm agreement.

‘I never spoke to either of them,’ she said. ‘We were told it was as secret as the confessional. We were used to that sort of thing. But I do remember one thing, Father—’

Mère Hermance broke off to answer the phone. The shop was open from three to five… the biscuits were handmade … by the young ones with nothing better to do … fifty francs … very well worth it … goodbye. She put the phone down arid carried on as if no interruption had occurred: ‘When I came here as a novice in 1937 there were thirty-nine sisters. The Prioress at the time was a dragon. Her father had been in the army and …’

Anselm listened patiently for ten minutes or so before he cracked and reminded her of what she had been about to say .

‘Oh yes, that’s right. He came to the orphanage almost every day’

‘Who did?’ pressed Anselm.

‘One of the young men we were hiding. He talked and played with four or five little German boys and girls. Those were the last Jewish children to come here. Their parents had fled Germany to France, only to be hunted all over again. They saved their children and then perished. He was a good fellow to visit those poor dears. One of them never spoke and had the deepest brown eyes you have ever seen.

‘Do you remember which one came?’

The phone rang again. The nun listened distractedly, once more delivering pat lines on the quality of biscuits and the weakness of the young. She put the receiver down. ‘As I was saying, the Prioress was a dragon—’

‘Mère Hermance, the young man, do you recall which one?’

She looked darkly into the past, into the presence of a banished fear. ‘I think it was the German.’

Unfolding a large starched handkerchief, she wiped her eyes. ‘It was a terrible time, Father, a terrible, terrible time.’