The Sixth Lamentation

2

Anselm drove Salomon Lachaise to Long Melford, a town of Suffolk pink not far from Larkwood. Having parked they walked into Holy Trinity Church, a huge construction more like a cathedral, its magnificence built upon medieval piety and the wool trade. Salomon Lachaise removed his heavy glasses, squinting with wonder at the windows and the empty stone niches in the chantry, once the home of solemn apostles. They passed through a churchyard to the Lady Chapel.

‘This was a school after the Reformation,’ said Anselm, pointing to a children’s multiplication table on the wall. Salomon Lachaise quietly studied the enduring markings of long, long ago. He said, ‘It is a kind of mockery, but one cannot survive without shame.’ He pressed small hands deep into cardigan pockets, making them bulge. ‘It is something I could never tell my mother.’

‘Why?’

‘Her peace grew out of my being am ordinary boy doing his sums at school like all the others.’

Anselm said, ‘But why shame?’

‘Because you cannot escape the sensation that you have taken someone else’s place.’ He looked closely at the wall. ‘It’s like a debt to heaven.’

They stepped outside, back into the churchyard. Salomon Lachaise said, ‘When I was a boy my mother used to say that hell was the painless place where everything has been forgotten. ‘

‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’

‘It couldn’t be worse.’

‘Why?’

‘Because there’s no love. That’s why there is no pain.’

They walked beneath a milky sky shot with patches of insistent blue. Anselm looked up and asked, ‘Then what’s heaven?’

‘An inferno where you burn remembering all that should be remembered.’

3

Cathy and Lucy finally made it to the Turkish baths. There were three rooms linked by arches. Each got smaller and hotter than the one before. For twenty minutes they sat upon the white-tiled seats of the first chamber. Steam swirled around them. Their heads slowly fell under the weight of bone as strength drained away At a nod from Cathy they moved into the next phase of affliction; when Lucy thought she could bear it no more, Cathy gestured towards a small, empty compartment. None of the other users had been in there. The heat was overpowering. Lucy slumped in a corner, blinded by sweat, until she was so weak she could barely lift her limbs. Cathy leaned against the wall, her eyes tightly closed. Through the burning fog Lucy could just see the small scar upon the flushed cheek. It kept the lead, always a fraction redder.

Cathy slowly raised an arm, pointing to a swing-door adjacent to the entrance. ‘You first,’ she breathed.

Lucy staggered back, blinking rapidly, her eyes swimming from the sting of salt. She pushed through the door into a bright room by a small pool. Somehow she lay on a table.

‘That was hell,’ she said. ‘I’m never coming back as long as I live.’

‘It’s not over yet, love,’ said a deep voice. A woman with thick muscles appeared, armed with a huge lathered sponge. At its touch upon her toes Lucy howled. It was too much. The lightest contact was like merciless tickling. Lucy shrieked until she was hauled off and pushed towards a warm, gentle shower. When she emerged, the woman with the muscles gave her a shove and Lucy toppled into the pool of freezing water. When she surfaced she was ready to die. Death had lost its sting.

Lying on a padded leather divan, wrapped in a warm towel, Lucy had her first experience of transcendence. By her side on a small table was a mug of hot, sweet tea and a bacon sandwich. Cathy lay upon a parallel couch.

‘I believe in God,’ said Lucy

‘I’m told a bishop died of a heart attack in a place like this.’

‘No better surroundings.’

‘I don’t think he made it to the pool.’

‘He coughed it on the table?’

‘So it seems.

‘What a way to go.

Cathy reached for her sandwich and said, ‘Did you take my advice and invite the Frenchman out?’

‘I did, actually,’ replied Lucy

‘Where did you go?’

‘A monastery. ‘

Cathy chewed thoughtfully ‘Before that you had a meal in a crypt.’ She licked melted butter off a finger. ‘Where to next time?’

‘A pub, I suspect. ‘