William Brodrick - The Sixth Lamentation

Anselm thought of London occupied by foreign troops, the city cordoned off into sections while one ethnic group was arrested, packed into requisitioned buses and taken to a railway station. What would he have thought in time of war, watching the trains pull away into the night, always to the same destination? A bee drifted lightly over untouched tea and sandwiches, while paper serviettes fluttered in the breeze: the lazy motions of peacetime.

Max said, ‘I’m not suggesting he didn’t know about the killing… I just find it incredible, unimaginable.’

‘The incredible has a habit of disrupting the parts of our lives to which we’re most attached,’ said Father Andrew simply, adding, almost under his breath, ‘it’s why I became a monk.’

‘Did that make it credible?’ asked Max.

‘Not quite, but the old life became unimaginable.’ Father Andrew took off his glasses, revealing small red footprints on the sides of his nose. He polished the lenses and put them back on. ‘All I’m saying is this: you have to be very careful before you dismiss the unbelievable, if it taps you on the shoulder or kicks you in the face.’

Max beetled his brow and his eyes flickered. He said: ‘I’ve asked to see you because he mentioned something else that I think you should know, which is all the more unimaginable. It’s another kick in the face.’

He looked frankly at Father Andrew, having caught him with his own words. Involuntarily, Anselm saw the face of Monsignor Renaldi at the Cardinal’s shoulder, expressionless, noncommittal, but waiting, eternally waiting.

‘He says he did the opposite of what’s alleged against him. But he won’t say any more. He wants someone else to explain, someone who was there.’

‘Who?’ asked the Prior.

‘A Frenchman called Victor Brionne, though he’s now called something else. We’ve got a private detective on to it.’ He glanced from monk to monk. ‘Apparently it’s fairly easy if you know the name. And we do… it’s Berkeley’

‘Max,’ said Anselm, confidentially, ‘do you mind telling us if and when he’s found? Anything touching on the conduct of your grandfather is likely to have an effect on the Priory in due course.’

‘Yes… I’ll let you know’

Agnes and Lucy sat in the gathering dusk, two bowls lying empty upon the table.

‘When will Wilma move in?’ asked Lucy, sleepily

‘When she’s ready’

They could just about hear each other breathing if they cared to listen.

‘How will she know when to come?’

‘She’ll just know People like Wilma have a very different sense of time. Appointments, arrangements don’t mean anything. She doesn’t follow clocks. She just lives in each day’

Lucy rose and cleared the table. Agnes spoke out of the shade:

‘Forget Victor.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Lucy stopping arid looking down at her.

‘Nothing. It’s all right.’

Lucy put out her arm and Agnes took it with both hands, as if it were a railing. With a nod she dismissed further help, making her way towards the bathroom to get ready for bed. She walked deliberately, touching now to the right and then to the left, finding objects placed in position for the purpose. Lucy remained in the kitchen, hearing the click of a switch and the faint run of water, simple noises that begin and end the day; and, presumably, a life.

Lucy looked up. Agnes stood motionless, like an apparition, framed by the doorway in a long dressing gown and red furry slippers, a hand on each jamb. Evening light, all but gone, traced out her nose, a parted lip; and to Lucy it was as though Agnes had died and this was a final, wilful resurgence of flesh, a last insistent request to see Lucy just one more time before she fluttered into memory.

At that moment the hall clock struck the hour. Brass wheels turned, meshing intricately Time, no longer suspended, seemed to ground itself and move. They looked at one another across a divide, hearing the slow, brutal counting from afar taking slices off all that remained between them. Lucy and Agnes stood helpless, waiting.

‘Gran, please don’t go,’ said Lucy, in a voice from their quiet days in the back room when everyone else had left them to it.

‘I have to, Lucy Death is like the past. We can’t change either of them. We have to make friends with them both.’

Tears filled Lucy’s eyes to overflowing. Thunder groaned far off to the east and the room darkened abruptly, as though a great hand had fallen over the sun.

Storm clouds had quickly gathered over Larkwood and by late evening large drops of rain threw themselves in heavy snatches upon its walls. A wind was gathering strength, threatening to wrestle old trees through the night.

Anselm and Father Andrew sat either side of a great round window overlooking the cloister. Anselm gave a precis of all he’d learned since departing for Rome, situating the nature of the task that had been entrusted to him — the finding of Victor Brionne. The Prior listened intently

‘A pattern of sorts emerges,’ said Anselm in conclusion. ‘Monsignor Renaldi can only look to logic — the Priory must have known something of great importance, outweighing whatever Schwermann and Brionne may have done, otherwise they would never have helped them. And that is broadly supported by the oral tradition of the Priory, which remembers Schwermann was hidden because of some undisclosed noble conduct — something effectively repeated this afternoon by his grandson, who got it from the mouth of the person most intimately concerned: Father Andrew slowly repeated the troubling words, “‘He risked his life in order to save life”… it’s a crafted phrase, a jingle… it disguises as much as it displays.’

‘At least it gives us some idea as to why the monks at Les Moineaux helped him escape,’ said Anselm.

‘But why does he want the secret brought out into the open by Victor Brionne? Why not speak up for himself?’

‘The two of them belong together-’

‘As if they are two parts of the same, torn ticket,’ interjected the Prior. He added, ‘That was quick footwork, by the way, to get Max Nightingale to tell us when they’ve found him.’

Anselm wasn’t sure if that was a compliment. The Prior went on: ‘So what do you do now — wait?’

‘Not quite. A private detective can only open so many doors. Max’s candour is just one string to my bow’

‘You have another?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

Father Andrew fell into an abstraction and said, ‘Maybe one day they’ll make you a Cardinal.’

Later that night Anselm heard the bells for which he had longed; he sang psalms that named the motions of his soul; but, to his faint alarm, he did not find himself in quite the same place that he had left. Or rather, a slightly different person had come back to Larkwood, not entirely known, even to himself, and he didn’t know why

Lucy sat in the warm darkness of her flat wrestling with two emotions, each getting stronger, each slipping out of control.

She was losing her grandmother: the foundations of grief were being hewn out of rock. But at the same time, in another part of her soul she was gaining something. The fundamentals were already in place and she hadn’t noticed them in the making. Perhaps they’d been built years and years ago. But the result was that Lucy found herself intrinsically and terrifyingly receptive to Pascal Fougeres.

The phone rang. Reluctantly she lifted the receiver.

‘It’s me, Cathy’

‘Hi…’

‘Well, do you regret missing the Turkish bath?’

‘No.’

‘Ah.’

‘Honestly, he’s just an acquaintance. ‘‘Where did you go?’