William Brodrick - The Sixth Lamentation

‘I have to go,’ said Lucy The approval of her father flowered in a smile. Phone calls during meals were not encouraged. It had been one of Darren’s specialities, done on purpose.

The call ended, and Lucy’s father said, ‘Dreadful things those. Who was that?’

‘Just a friend.’ The barricade on her private life appeared. Her father scouted around for an opening, looking for light between the slats: ‘How’s your study getting along?’

‘Not so bad.’ The phrase sealed a gap. Lucy had detected the true meaning beneath her father’s question: ‘You made a hash of Cambridge so please don’t fail again.’ She thought: fail who? You or me? Who do you really think lost out in my growing up? Shocked by her own charity she answered: we both did, terribly and she suddenly wanted to touch him. She took her father’s empty plate and laid it on hers. When were they ever going to forget the past? Why were they cursed to remember everything?

Her mother came into the room, hands on her hips, her face fallen: ‘I’m afraid there’s lots of lumps in the custard.’

‘Oh God, not again,’ said her father as he reached out for Susan’s hand.

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.’

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. ‘

Lucy met Pascal on a wet pavement outside Sibyl’s Cave on a Friday night. She said, ‘It’s seething.’

‘We’ll be all right: He rubbed his hands confidently, as if about to spin a couple of dice down the felt. He winked and Lucy bridled. She couldn’t split the gesture from scaffolds and whistling beery cheek. He said, ‘I have a good feeling about this.’

Pascal had obtained Max Nightingale’s phone number from Father Anselm. The meeting was set up. Apparently he’d been keen. When Pascal had told Lucy she’d felt a sharp, churning disgust. ‘Good,’ she’d said.

Lucy yanked at the pub door, releasing from the bright hallway a gasp of heat and noise. The lounge was packed with competition, professionals loudly shedding the pressures of work. They glanced into a small smoking room. Thick blue swirls hung above the tables like belchings from so many garden fires. Empty glasses stood in tight crowds. A young girl in a short black skirt pushed past gripping a damp cloth. They forced their way towards the veranda entrance. Pinned to a jamb was a forbidding notice: Private Party. Through the window panel Lucy saw suits, legs crossed while standing, wine glasses pressed to the chest: the boss was leaving. Pascal pulled her by the arm towards the debating room.

The appetite for argument was on the wane — young bloods were heading for the bar or home, leaving disparate clusters of older men. Where were the women? thought Lucy Her gaze shifted and she saw Max Nightingale sitting in a corner. On the table was a black motorcycle helmet. It stared at Lucy and she thought of an empty, severed head. They joined him, pulling up chairs.

‘Who’s Sibyl?’ asked Max Nightingale. Lucy noticed dark grime beneath his nails: a trace of his grandfather’s dirt. Catching her glance he said, ‘Paint. I’ve been painting.’

‘Papered cracks?’

‘No, pictures.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sibyl?’ he repeated.

Pascal said, ‘She’s the maim player in a tragic myth, a mystic who pushed off death and spent centuries in a cave. She wrote out riddles on leaves but left them to the mercy of the wind.’

Max Nightingale stared back blankly ‘I thought she was the landlord.’

Lucy laughed, against the will to scoff… she who hadn’t known either.