The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Thirty-Nine

1

Lucy’s parents had arranged to collect their daughter on Sunday morning on their way back from a short break in Canterbury. Father, mother and daughter would then go to Chiswick Mall for an afternoon with Agnes.

The doorbell tore through the air twice. It was a buzzer more suited to the requirements of the fire brigade. Lucy could not hear the electric shriek without thinking urgency stood panting on the street. Her mother peeped her head round the door, eyelids aflutter. She stepped inside, commenting on Grandpa Arthur’s clock as if he were there, nodding, on the wall. Her father followed, handing Lucy a mug with a picture of a cathedral on its surface. ‘From the gift shop,’ he said.

‘Lovely glass,’ said Susan, turning round, ‘makes you think.’

Lucy snipped the door shut. When she joined them a moment later her mother was discreetly checking for dust; her father stood before ‘Sibyl’s Cave’.

‘It’s absorbing,’ he said. Lucy joined him; their eyes met and she understood. His daughter had a life of her own, choosing pictures, banging nails into walls, all the little things unknown to him.

‘Where did you find it?’ he asked cheerily

‘A friend gave it to me.’ The first two words almost dried her mouth. She did not expect to describe Max Nightingale in those terms, but having done so it could not be withdrawn. Instantaneously she thought of Pascal, the last time they’d met, and the old monk, known to Father Anselm, who’d died saying all that mattered were insignificant reconciliations.

‘He’s very generous,’ said Susan, adding, as if she’d peered inside an envelope, ‘assuming he’s a he.’

‘You’re right, said Lucy reaching for her coat. She moved into the hall, to a safe distance. ‘He’s a painter.’

‘An artist,’ called Susan encouragingly. ‘How lovely’

2

In times of joy or profound uncertainty Anselm always retreated to the small lake at the end of the bluebell walk, roughly halfway between the Priory and the Convent. He brought Conroy with him, who’d reached an impasse in the writing of his book. For a moment they looked across in silence towards the middle of the lake, where a stone statue of the Virgin Mary, smoothed by years of wind and rain, rose from the water, her arms open in endless submission. They climbed into a rowboat by a failing wooden landing stage and pushed off, to low groans from the black-green timbers.

The events of the previous year had increasingly brought to Anselm’s mind Tennyson’s ‘Morte d’Arthur’, large sections of which had been mercilessly thrust upon him at school. The lines often came back, like snippets of song, cuttings in the, mind. Looking at the shining levels of the lake Anselm said, ‘Sometimes I think of Sir Bedivere charged by his dying king to throw Excalibur into the place from whence it came.’

Conroy took his bearings and began a steady pulling of the oars.

‘He can’t obey Twice he lies. First, because he’s dazzled by its beauty. Next, because he asks a cracking good question: “Were it well to obey then, if a king demand an act unprofitable against himself?”‘

Conroy nodded knowledgably

‘So he lies. “What did you see or hear?” asks Arthur. “Just ripples and lapping.” But the king knows the answer isn’t true. He’s waiting anxiously for something outside the usual order of things.’

The oar-blades cut the surface of the lake.

“‘I’ll rise and kill you with my hands if you fail me this last time,” the king says, and the well-trusted knight runs for his very life to the shore and, with eyes shut, flings Excalibur far into the night. He’s obeyed but expects his old lie to come true. But something undreamed-of happens, at the very last moment. ‘

They were nearing the middle of the lake.

‘When he looks again, an arm clothed in white samite rises from the water and catches the hilt. Thrice it’s brandished, and drawn gently beneath the mere.’

Conroy rested and scratched his thick arms.

‘Overwhelmed, Bedivere runs back to tell the king what he’s seen. There the king lies, among the stones of a chapel ruin. He’s lost everything he cared about in this life. The Round Table is no more; its knights, man by man, having fallen under the sword. But the dream for which he hoped and waited has happened. The hand that gave him the sword has taken it back. His life has meaning. He does not die bewildered.’

Conroy pulled the oars through their locks, letting the boat gently turn and drift as it pleased.

‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Sir Bedivere,’ said Anselm. ‘He’s a bemused English empiricist, ill at ease with mysticism. And, rather unfairly he gets his head bitten off for keeping his feet on the ground:

Conroy made a pillow from his jumper, lodged it in the prow and lay back.

Anselm said, ‘As a boy I often used to wonder how Arthur would have died if Bedivere had come back and said, honestly this time, “Truly I saw nothing but water lapping on the crag. She did not come.

A slight wind threw ripples upon the lake, chasing shadows and reflections into a dark shiver. The boat turned in circles. Conroy was lying back, legs outstretched and arms crossed upon his chest. Unnoticed, the oars quietly slipped from their locks and bobbed away

‘“And God fulfils himself in many ways”,’ cited Conroy

‘Where’s that from?’ asked Anselm.

‘The same poem; part of the old king’s final testament, just before he dies as I’d like to die.’

‘How’s that?’

Conroy sat up, his face alight, mischievous. ‘In the arms of three beautiful weeping women.

3

Lucy and her parents sat at a table playing Scrabble in the small courtyard garden of Chiswick Mall. Agnes, propped up, watched from her bed through the open French windows.

Susan glared at the row of letters on her stand. Lucy leaned back to sneak a look: Q, F, X, L, B … She turned away, gratified. Her mother was choking without vowels. The game produced in Lucy a ruthless competitive urge that permitted minor infractions of the rules. It was her father’s turn. He put the small tablets carefully on the board:

Y-A-W

‘That’s not a word,’ said Susan petulantly

‘Is that a challenge?’ replied Freddie, his hand on the dictionary as if it were a gun.

‘No.’

Lucy studied her own predicament: Z, Q, K, 0, 5, 0, A. It was hopeless. ‘Would anyone like some tea?’

Her mother nodded fiercely.

Lucy passed through the French windows and sat by her grandmother’s side. She leaned forward and said, ‘What do you make of this lot?’ She recited her letters. Agnes thought for a moment while Lucy retrieved the alphabet card from the side of the bed. Agnes replied:

Z-O-O-K-S

Lucy said, doubtfully, ‘Are you sure?’

Agnes nodded with her eyelids.

‘Thanks.’

Lucy went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. A noise behind startled her. It was her father.

‘Anything wrong?’ she asked innocently

‘Lucy,’ he said gravely ‘I saw you on the news, in the back-ground, coming out of a court …

Lucy thrust both hands into her hair, disarranging the carefully placed grips and clips. Her father struggled to continue. ‘It’s to do with Gran, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Lucy not curtly or reluctantly but with mercy.

‘She knows that Nazi bastard, doesn’t she?’

‘Yes, Dad, she does.’

‘My God.’ He arranged his tie and rubbed an eyebrow, saying, ‘Will I ever know what happened?’

Without reflection but with something approaching passion, Lucy said, ‘Yes, you will, I promise, but it can’t be now’

‘All right.’ He spoke like a beggar on the street promised a sandwich instead of money. The reversal of power stung. She filled the pot with steaming water.