The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Forty-Seven

1

Lucy met her father in the noble gardens of Gray’s Inn. As they entered, she pointed at the stone beasts on the gate columns. ‘Griffins,’ said her father knowledgably. ‘Protectors of paradise. Don’t they teach you anything about myths these days?’

His suit was crafted to his body immaculately creased and cut. In his own world, thought Lucy he was powerful and successful and wore the uniform of esteemed competence. When they found a bench, he dusted off dry particles of nothing with the back of a hand. Sitting like two lone strays at a matinee, each with their legs crossed, Lucy began the stripping of her father.

‘Dad, none of us are who we think we are.’

Her father, enjoying a tease, replied, ‘And I suppose no one else is who we think they are.

‘No, quite right.’ She cut through the smart cloth of known appearances to the soft epidermis. ‘It’s true of Gran’ — he looked suddenly wary — ‘and it is especially true of you.

Lucy explained to her father how he had been saved from Ravensbrück by Agnes, that he was born of unknown, murdered parents, from an unknown place, that they were buried no one knew where. And she told him Agnes was the mother of a son whom she’d lost, a son who had been found. He listened, entranced and dismayed, fingering the constricting knot of his tie. When Lucy had finished he sat stunned, as though waiting for the lights to come on in a theatre, the only one left in a curved, empty stall.

‘Do you know,’ he said faintly ‘I think she nearly told me once.

‘When?’

‘Years and years ago … before the rot set in … I was fifteen or sixteen and I gave her a mouthful about her silence’ — again he reached for his restricting collar — ‘I said she’d never cared, not even when I’d fallen as a boy and cut my knee.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Lucy

Her father sat upright, the movement of feet scuffing a gleaming shoe. He wiped his dry lips with a handkerchief and said, ‘Nothing, actually at first. But her face crumpled … in a way that 1 have never been able to forget … and just when I thought she was going to tell me something she was gone, into herself …’

‘She didn’t speak?’

He nodded, his face flushed and shining. ‘She said, “Oh Freddie, say anything about me but not that, not that:” He joined his hands in hopeless, abject supplication. ‘God, I have to see her … I have to tell her I’m sorry …’

The gardens of the Inn were due to close, their lunchtime access about to be withdrawn by edict of the Honourable Benchers. Like a stream of obedient refugees, young and old started threading their way towards the ornate gates. Lucy and Freddie followed suit. They walked back the way they had come, changed from who they were when they’d entered.

‘I had always thought, in some obscure way she did not want me.

These were words Lucy could hardly bear to hear. She looked down, fastening her attention on the measured crunching of fine gravel.

‘In one sense, I suppose that is true …

Lucy lowered her head further, her chin discovering a necklace given to her by him on her tenth birthday. She pressed hard against the warm gold chain as he spoke:

‘Isn’t life bloody awful sometimes. She could never have told me when I most wanted to know because I would not have understood. And now that I am old enough to understand she can’t tell me.’

Lucy forced the tiny links into the skin of her neck. He said:

‘I’d give anything to go back to that moment when her face fell, to tell her I didn’t mean it … but that is part of the hell — I did mean it … I did. I just wish I’d never said it. Unfortunately we have to live with what we’ve said, as well as what we’ve done.’

Reaching the gates, Lucy looked up. It seemed her father had aged, but the lines through his skin were yielding, well drawn. He was like a man who’d been well treated by an indulgent parole board. Yes, they would recommend his release; but so many years of imprisonment had passed that the spout within for exhilaration had rusted, clogged. They all watched him in a line, waiting for the bursting forth. He could only smile, shake hands, bow … mutter thanks.

He faced Lucy and said plainly, ‘There’s still enough time left to make a difference, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

They walked out into Field Court and the gates of paradise politely closed. Her father kissed her goodbye. Strange, thought Lucy: it was only since she’d told her father about the death of Pascal that intimacy of the kind they each wanted, had been restored between them. Glancing up at a mute griffin, Lucy could have sworn she saw the little beast breathe.

2

Anselm left Salomon Lachaise to the solitude of Larkwood and took a train to Newcastle. From there he took the rattling Metro to the coast where Robert Brownlow lived.

Anselm had made the arrangement with Maggie, who opened the door before he could knock. She led him anxiously to the foot of the stairs. Anselm told her not to worry and went up to join Robert in the lounge.

They stood at the window, looking out on Cullercoats Bay Down below on the beach was little Stephen, heaping sand with his father, Francis.

‘Francis is my eldest,’ said Robert. ‘Over there is Caroline, his wife, with the recent addition, Ian. He’s eleven months.’ A woman, evidently not used to the rigours of a sunny North-East afternoon, sat wrapped in an overcoat by an outcrop of rocks. The round, covered head of an infant protruded between the raised lapels.

‘I’ve got four other children. Two are married, both of them have kids. Altogether we come to thirteen. And now we re in pieces.’

They watched two generations shivering on the sand.

‘Robert,’ said Anselm, ‘you told me when we first met that Victor had died after the war:

‘As far as I was concerned, he had. That man was not my father. Victor Brownlow was. At least, that is what I wanted to believe, for their sake,’ he nodded towards the beach, ‘and for mine. But now, after watching him in court defending that man, it’s the other way round. My father has died and I find myself the son of Victor Brionne.’

Unseen by his father, little Stephen had begun to undress, his face set towards the frozen sea. Stephen’s mother, permanently alert, shooed her husband away back to his charge.

Anselm chose his words carefully. ‘Part of what you have said is true. Your father is dead.’

Robert turned, his brown eyes puzzled, not quite meshing with the bite of the words.

Anselm continued, ‘As you say, Victor Brionne is not your father. Nor is he now. He never was.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Robert.

‘You are the son of Jacques Fougères.’

Robert’s mouth fell slightly apart; he roughly drew a hand across his short, neat hair. ‘The man mentioned in the trial?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who had a child by Agnes Aubret?’

‘Yes.’

‘I am that child?’

‘Yes, Robert, you are.

He moved away from the light of the window, unsteadily towards a chair. Sitting down cautiously, he said, ‘Agnes Aubret … my mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who died in Auschwitz?’ His eyes began to flicker. He coughed, lightly

‘No. Robert, she is alive. She survived. She lives in London. She is very ill and will soon die.’

‘My God.’

‘It is a long and involved story,’ said Anselm, moving to

Robert’s side, ‘and Victor will tell you everything. All I want to say is this. You are alive today because he saved you. The price he paid was horrendous and he’s been paying ever since.’

‘Tell me a little more, anything …

Anselm briefly gave the outline of Victor’s chosen path, with its unforeseen penalty, and his further choices.

Fearful, like one trapped in the sand, the tide approaching, Robert said, ‘I’ll have to relive my whole life, right from the beginning, find myself … seek out… my father … seek out Victor.’ He stumbled over the changing references within simple words .

Anselm replied quickly with gentle insistence, ‘Robert, begin that journey with your mother; she already knows … and let Victor be your guide.’

Robert walked to the door and called out faintly ‘Maggie, come here, please …’

She came running up the stairs. As she entered the room Robert weakly extended his arms. She clasped his neck, exclaiming, ‘What’s happened, Robert? Tell me, tell me.’

Anselm strode outside into a sudden blustering, the long exhalations of the sea. Beneath a cupola of unremitting light he passed through a gate and found a cliff trail skirting the bay. He walked, his face averted to the wind, until, at a midpoint, he turned, squinting, and looked back: there was the house, etched into hard, shapeless cloud, the windows punched small and black; and there, below, on the beach, was little Stephen with tousled blond hair, piling up the wet sand … the carefree, joyous great-grandson of Agnes Aubret and Jacques Fougères.