William Brodrick - The Sixth Lamentation

‘We’re agreed.’

They stood. ‘I have to go,’ said the monk, ‘I’ve another appointment. You’re always welcome to spend some time at Larkwood.’

‘I’m not sure I believe anything.’

‘You don’t have to.’

With that he held out his hand, suddenly reserved. They shook, and then she watched him disappear among the suits and briefcases.

Anselm slipped down a side street to an Italian restaurant from which Roddy had been banned in 1975. Salomon Lachaise was waiting for him. Anselm apologised for being late.

‘How’s the trial progressing?’

‘This morning we’ve had a specialist on Resistance operations in Paris telling us about The Round Table. She’s thirty-eight, authoritative in relation to the many documents of the period, but she wasn’t there. It is as I anticipated. There are so few left from that time. Now is the era of the expert.’

Anselm poured them each a glass of wine from a carafe. Salomon Lachaise said, ‘She finished with an account of how Father Rochet and Jacques Fougeres died at Mauthausen. It wasn’t, as for so many others, through the weight of stones in the quarry, or by hanging, or by having the dogs set upon them. A guard beat Father Rochet with a lash. Fougeres intervened. At gunpoint they were forced onto the electric fencing. They walked arm in arm, watched by a silent, starving crowd.’

The delightful ritual of shared eating suddenly lost its simplicity.

‘The Defendant brought about the end of The Round Table,’ said Salomon Lachaise, ‘although we are not told how he learned of its work. His subsequent diligence attracted a personal commendation from Eichmann; not, I think, an accolade I would send home to my mother.’

‘No,’ said Anselm.

‘The evidence is given with due ceremony,’ said Salomon Lachaise. ‘The scribes bend over their pages, writing down what is said as though nothing should be lost.’

The waiter came with bread and then vanished, as if his job were done.

‘But at times I wonder if the evidence is just a palimpsest, and we’ll never find out what’s lying beneath the words.’

A kind of resentment burned Anselm’s stomach. He didn’t want to play a part in the devastation of other people’s hope by being the one who forced Victor Brionne into court. Unable to bear that thought he said, by way of distraction, ‘Have you spoken to any of the other observers?’

‘No.’

‘There are two young people, a man and a woman, who go every day’ Anselm described them.

‘Yes, I know who you mean. They sometimes sit either side of me.’

‘You sit between two extremes. They’ve even met privately, on the day Pascal Fougeres was killed. The man is Max Nightingale, a grandson of the Defendant.’

Salomon Lachaise stiffened and snapped his fingers. ‘I thought

I recognised him. The lad was there in the woods, by the lake when you and I first met…’ He seemed caught off-guard by a kind of wonder.

‘The woman is the granddaughter of Agnes Embleton. She was a member of The Round Table. She’s dying. Why no statement was taken from her defeats me.

‘The names of the smuggling ring were read out this morning. That one was not among them.’

‘At that time she was called Aubret.’

Before Salomon Lachaise could reply the raddled waiter reappeared, his eyes fixed on the passing world outside the window He delivered, in something approaching a song, what seemed like the entire contents of the menu. They listened with awe, like a claque. When he’d finished Salomon Lachaise said, ‘Thank you very much indeed, but I have to leave.’ Turning to Anselm he said, regretfully, ‘The court reconvenes in ten minutes.’

‘It’s my fault, I’m so sorry.

‘No, no. We will do this another time.’ He bowed slightly and left, running as if the building were on fire. Anselm surveyed the table, his appetite gone. He’d chosen this restaurant because it had been a favoured place in his days at the Bar when blessed by an accidental victory. He’d now brought to it a subtle type of failure. That was not something to celebrate. With due ceremony he ate the bread and drank the wine, and quietly slipped out.

Lucy sat in the public gallery, absorbed by Father Anselm’s words. They repeated themselves in a jumble, as though she were swiftly scanning radio stations, catching partial trans-. missions. A letter from Jacques Fougeres… Mr Snyman… Victor Brionne… Agnes… Pascal… death… reconciliation… and that the evidence to come might disappoint her. It was an unusual thing to say, reminiscent of what Myriam Anderson had said about another possible grieving, over the death of a final hope. Her reflection was disturbed by a quiet cough.

‘May I introduce myself? We sit here every day, and we don’t even know each other’s names. I am Salomon Lachaise.’

The remark was addressed to both herself and Max Nightingale.

‘I thought you might like to join me for tea one afternoon.’

It struck Anselm as a rather peculiar request, though not unprecedented. A guest had arrived unannounced while he had been in London. He’d asked, in broken English, if Anselm, and only Anselm, would hear his confession. He’d said he’d say who he was afterwards. Brother Wilfred had left a note on Anselm’s door giving the time arranged — 8.15 p.m., forty-five minutes before Compline.

Anselm sat in the dark of the confessional, slightly uneasy He didn’t notice when the faint grating noise began. It was dispersed by the vast, empty nave and seemed to come from all around, but quietly, without definition, and yet coming closer. The sound of feet moved swiftly over the polished tiles. The door to the confessional opened. A man swore, stumbling on to the kneeler by the grille. A fluid heaving of breath, curiously familiar, rose and fell. The French voice jolted Anselm out of Larkwood on to a landing without a light:

‘I haven’t been in a confession box for nigh on fifty years.

‘We never got rid of them.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘Sorry. Rather silly of me.’

‘I’m not here to confess my sins.’

‘There aren’t any others you can confess.’

‘I’ve come to reveal the sins of my church, and yours. And if you can still raise your hands in absolution after I’m done, you’re a braver monk than me. I’d rather leave it to God himself.’

‘Father Chambray,’ exclaimed Anselm. ‘How on earth did you get here?’

‘It took a lot of planning, at my age and in my condition. I could not leave it any longer. I’ve been following the trial and nothing of what I know has come out. I’ll stay for a few days and then I’ll go home. First, I’ve got a question for you. On your life, tell me: have they told you what happened in forty-four?’

‘They?’

‘Rome.’

‘No.’

‘Is that why you came banging on my door?’

‘Yes.’

Chambray stopped to think. He mumbled, ‘Just as I thought…’

Anselm leaned towards the grille. ‘What are you here to say?’

‘They know, and they’ve kept it quiet, even as the trial has opened up what that bastard did. But I told them. Everything. In forty-five.’ Chambray pulled himself off the kneeler and slumped back on a chair. Anselm squinted at the grill. There was nothing but shadow, black as a pit. The breathing grew calmer.

‘Now I’ll tell you. Because you, too, have been duped.’

‘How?’

‘Wait,’ he snapped, coughing. He paused, settling back. ‘They came in the middle of the night, towards the end of August 1944. We didn’t find out until the morning Chapter. The Prior, Father Pleyon, said we were going to hide them both until their escape from France was arranged. No explanations given.