The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Forty-Three

1

The foreman was a young woman in her mid-thirties, wearing narrow glasses that insinuated bookish gravity. She wore black but her skin was paper-white. Upon hearing the first verdict, Lucy lost all memory of the previous questions and replies; they were swallowed up by her final, irrevocable judgment:

‘Not guilty.’

The tidy phrase was hardly spent before a most awful collective gasp arose from one side of the courtroom. The survivors and their relatives who had watched the whole process of the trial, mute but concentrated, broke out in an agony of protest. Lucy released a shuddering sound, horribly similar to a laugh. She turned to Mr Lachaise. He sat still, with a repose wholly alien to the moment. His hand reached out to Lucy’s. They were joined like father and daughter.

The other counts on the indictment were read out. Each received the same verdict: ‘Not guilty.’

Lucy sat in a trance out of time, hearing words but unable to link them coherently. She could not dispel the image of Agnes, lying absolutely still, defenceless, consumed by silence. Everyone stood as Mr Justice Pollbrook left the Bench. And then from all around came echoing shuffles and bangs as though the court was being dismantled by stagehands impatient for home. The clatter became erratic, less insistent, and then faded.

‘Excuse me, it’s time to go.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Lucy stirring. The court and public gallery were empty, except for herself and Mr Lachaise. She was still holding his hand.

‘It’s time to go. I have to lock up,’ said the usher, pointing like a curator towards the door.

Lucy stood. Mr Lachaise withdrew his pipe and thumbed the bowl reflectively.

‘You can’t use that in here,’ said the usher officiously.

‘Indeed not. It’s just an old habit to occupy the hands.’ With a warm glance he said, ‘Go now, Lucy. ‘

She had always liked his accent and the engaging depth of his voice, like churning wet gravel. As she pushed open the swing doors she heard him ask:

‘Would you be so kind as to do me a small favour …?’

Then they closed.

Standing in Newgate Street, the presence of Agnes all around, suffusing metal, stone and cloud, Lucy hailed a taxi. ‘Hammersmith,’ she said woozily

2

Anselm left Victor Brionne, knowing he would continue to drink but knowing there was little he could do to hold him back. Victor — he could call him nothing else — had urged Anselm to tell Agnes about Robert. It was a secret that could not be withheld from the little time she had remaining.

Anselm left shortly before 5 p.m. He dropped into a newsagent, drawn by the blaring of a radio from behind a curtain over the back room. He leafed through a paper, waiting for the news on the hour. The shock verdict delivered in the trial led a series of other items, culminating in the shock transfer of a football player. Two shocks, one at either end.

Anselm walked out, dazed, and looked around. It was a lovely dusty, sunny day and there were children playing in the street.

3

The front door was slightly ajar. Wilma must have popped out. Lucy walked purposefully through to Agnes’ room. She kissed her forehead. It was warm and smooth, scented by baby oil —one of Wilma’s gentle ministrations. Lucy took both of her grandmother’s hands and said, ‘Gran, they’ve set him free. It’s all over.’

For a while Agnes did not respond. Her eyelids blinked slowly. Then her head swung to one side, arching backwards. From her mouth, stretched open, came a thin squealing exhalation of air that Lucy thought would never end.

In one scalding flash Lucy saw the snapshots of a lifetime —the catastrophic loss of a child; the death camps; the rescue of Freddie and Elodie, crowned with failure; the cost of silence; a remorseless, stripping illness; exclusion from the trial; and finally when there was little left to take away the vindication of the man she could, but would not, condemn.

The front door snapped shut. Wilma was back.

Lucy, completely detached from her actions, not fully knowing what she was doing, opened the bedside cupboard, searching for the revolver wrapped in a duster. She placed it with the four rounds of ammunition in her rucksack. Agnes, still trapped in a silent howl, tried to clutch at Lucy her head flopping from side to side.

‘Don’t worry, Gran. I know what I’m doing. This is for Victor Brionne. I’m not going to get into any trouble,’ said Lucy calm and reassuring, like a nurse.

‘Would you mind explaining what is going on, madam?’ said Wilma from the wings.

Lucy ran out, sweeping up the keys for the Duchess.

4

The radio from the newsagent blasted out an old Elvis hit about a woman, impolitely called a hound dog, who cried incessantly Anselm set off for Manor House tube station, the singer’s name having reminded him of a confession he’d once heard. The unseen face behind the grille had leaned forward, saying darkly fearfully ‘Do you realise, Father … Elvis is an anagram for “Lives” … but also Evils” … the fiend is everywhere.’ Anselm had said ‘God is “dog” spelt backwards… the hound of heaven will protect you.’ And the man had gone away healed.

Upon an impulse, Anselm patted his right-hand pocket, perhaps because it was lighter than it had been. The iron keys to St Catherine’s. He’d left them on the armrest. Irritated, he began to retrace his steps. But there was no rush: Victor was going nowhere.

5

Lucy had written down Victor Brionne’s address as he gave it with wavering self-pity to the court. Holmleigh Road, Stamford Hill. The words had mesmerised her, for they signified a home and garden — providing a life free of care on the other side of escape. She parked a few doors down, her eye on the neatly painted window frames. Night settled upon her conscience. She opened her bag and unrolled the duster. She pushed open the chamber and fed in the cartridges. Her hands moved quickly professionally. She watched them, marvelling at their adroit purposefulness, their separation from her. She walked at a pace, before the light came back and she lost her nerve. Reaching the door, she struck it hard three times. It swung slowly back. Brionne appeared, slightly swaying on his feet.

‘Yes?’

‘I am the adopted granddaughter of Agnes Aubret. I want to talk to you.

He stared at her through maudlin tears. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lucy Embleton.’

‘Come in, but ignore the mess. I’m just beginning a bad patch.’

She hated the lurching intimacy of drink, the promise of unwanted confidences. And she hated him. She said, ‘That doesn’t bother me.’

‘You’re very kind,’ he replied, retreating into the gloom. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Lucy, shutting the door and flipping down the lock. ‘I won’t be staying that long.’

6

Anselm rounded the corner, back into Holmleigh Road. The verdict lay upon his mind, pressing down like a migraine. By a low wall a cluster of young Hasidic Jews, bearded men in black suits and wide hats, stood talking animatedly; inside a house, Anselm glimpsed a number of women gesticulating.

Passing quickly round them, not wanting to hear their conversation, Anselm moved on towards Victor’s home, further up the road.

As he approached the gate through which he had passed only a short while before, Anselm heard a voice from behind:

‘Excuse me, Father, but could you spare a word …’

7

‘I know exactly what you did to Agnes,’ said Lucy at length. Brionne nodded.

‘I know what you did to her child.’ He nodded again, his eyes widening.

‘And I know what you did at the trial.’

He moved towards a bottle and back, seeing it was empty.

‘Agnes will die within the month. I would like you to die first.’

‘How would you like me to oblige?’

‘I have a gun.

‘That was very thoughtful of you.’

Lucy opened her bag and took out Grandpa Arthur’s revolver. She cocked the hammer. ‘It’s already loaded.’

‘Do you propose to do it yourself?’

‘No.’ She stretched from her seat and handed it to Brionne. ‘I intend to sit here telling you every detail I know about Agnes, everything I know about my father, and everything about myself — and I will go on until you either shoot me or yourself.’

Brionne held the gun with a look of dark, drunken fascination. Gingerly he raised the barrel, his eyes glazed and black. He bit a cracked lip and a spurt of blood ran on to his chin.

‘I suggest you go now.’

8

‘Father,’ said a thin woman, walking down the path from an open front door, ‘I saw you passing and, well, I wondered if you could say a prayer for a special intention.’ She wore a head-scarf and florid apron, the combination redolent of wartime courage: wives on their knees scrubbing doorsteps, despite the nightly visits of German bombers.

‘Of course,’ said Anselm, retracing a few steps. Every street was the same, he thought: hidden behind each small facade was a universe of disappointment and hope.

‘We don’t see our kind here very often,’ she said, nodding significantly at Anselm’s habit and tilting her head down the road towards the other kind.

‘I see,’ said Anselm. A bitter, foreign urge to slap the bony face warmed him like a flush of blood.

‘I’m Catholic, of course, like your good self.’

‘I’m sorry but I’m an Anglican,’ lied Anselm, his hand rising, the palm open; he put it on the gate.

‘Oh,’ she replied, discomfited, pushing stray dyed hairs under the scarf’s fold. ‘That must be nice.’

‘It is.’

‘Lovely Well, then.’

‘You have a special intention?’

‘Well, I won’t trouble you, it’s just one of the family playing up … won’t go to Mass … not a problem for your sort …

Anselm heard the clip of a gate and looked round. To his amazement there was Lucy wavering on the pavement, her hands loose by her side. He ran, exclaiming, ‘Are you all right? What are you doing here?’

Dreamily Lucy looked aside to the bay window Anselm swiftly followed her drugged gaze: towards Victor, swaying uncertainly the barrel of a gun pointing at his face. Anselm rushed for the door, throwing his full bodyweight against the lock. He bounced back, mocked by strength. Wildly he struck it again, as though its tongues and grooves had given out all the needless griefs he’d ever known. And then, across a pause in the hammering, came a deafening short crack. Lucy cried out, like at a birth. Anselm held his breath until the tightness in his chest pushed out an oath. The woman in the apron and scarf scampered indoors to ring the police.