1.
The day before Agnes" first and last reunion with her family it rained: a bombarding, cruel inundation that bled the sky. Bloated cloud hung low, shrouding high-rise flats and sharp steeples. For once Lucy didn"t want to be on her own. She rang Cathy and asked if she could stay the night.
Lucy took the tube to Pimlico and dashed through the puddles, her head bent into her chest. By the time she got to Cathy"s flat she was drenched. After a bath, she wrapped herself in a large, warmed towel. When she padded into the sitting room she saw takeaway cartons lined up on a tray Cathy looked up and said, "Mongolian. Honestly"
Lucy noticed the absence of make-up. Cathy looked younger, like she"d been at Cambridge but without the confident aggression. Outside, the rain thumped upon dull, empty pavements; and, as the night fell, Lucy told Cathy what would happen the next day. Cathy listened, moving food around her plate with tiny flicks of a fork. It was in the telling that Lucy had another idea. While they were preparing for bed, she stuck her head around the bathroom door and said, "Would you like to meet someone?"
"Who?"
"A man."
"I need a bit more than that."
"He knows how to use a pallet knife."
"Set it up."
Lucy lay awake, longing for the wind and rain to be reconciled, or at least to put off their fight for another day. The weather was going to wreck the plans for the morrow. While she worked out an alternative strategy sleep crept upon her by surprise. When Lucy woke the next morning, weak sunshine stole between a gap in the curtains and lit the wall with a shaft of subdued flame. Throwing open the window, she listened with grat.i.tude to the silent work of heat upon water, a union that always recaptured the first freshness of things.
After breakfast, Lucy abandoned the trousers and top she"d bought the day before and dressed in one of Cathy"s smart conversation-stoppers: a navy blue dress with hand-painted enamel b.u.t.tons. Standing on the doorstep Cathy warned, "If you stain that, I"ll weep."
Lucy caught a glint of tears.
"I hope everything goes fine," Cathy said.
2.
Freddie had organised the reception at Agnes" flat. A trellis table was set up in the back courtyard, covered with plates, laden trays, gla.s.ses, plastic cups, bottles of Bollinger, Manzanilla and ghastly fizzy drinks for children. It was lavish, and Wilma said he"d gone mad. The guests arrived for two o"clock: Salomon Lachaise; Victor Brionne; Robert and Maggie Brownlow, with their five children, and their children; Father Anselm; and Father Conroy who moved round the living room quietly spinning threads among them all.
Stepping slightly forward, Lucy gave words of welcome and then abandoned everything she had planned to say Instead she said, "I would simply like to remember the names of those who, for reasons we all know, cannot join us." She raised her gla.s.s, speaking with unaffected ceremony." Father Rochet and Madame Klein ... Jacques Fougeres and all the knights of The Round Table ... Father Morel ... Father Pleyon ... Grandpa Arthur ... Pascal Fougeres ..." Lucy turned instinctively to her father, willing him to take the torch.
"And I thank heaven, said Freddie, moving towards the open door, within earshot of Agnes, "that among us there is someone who almost lost herself saving others. Friends, to my mother."
They all sipped in silence. Unseen by all save Lucy Wilma deftly wiped a surface. After the toast, parents surrept.i.tiously produced toys, strategically laying them on the ground like bait to trap wild beasts.
The plan was this: each guest, after seeing Agnes, would knock on the door through which they had come, as a signal to the next, and then go out into the back garden through the French windows. The drawing of a single curtain secured privacy for each meeting. When he was ready Lucy took Salomon Lachaise to Agnes.
The small man was dressed in an elegant suit with new shoes. He walked stiffly his hands meshed. Lucy led him through the open door and then withdrew, watching his reverent approach. She heard his deep, compa.s.sionate voice: "Madame Embleton, we have met once before, when I was a boy..."
Lucy shut the door. For a moment she stood still, straining to catch a word, as Agnes had once done with Madame Klein and Father Rochet. Then she turned away as his voice rose.
She came back to the living room exhausted, and marvelled at the smooth ministrations of Father Conroy. After a while there came a faint knock, and Lucy threw a glance at Father Anselm.
3.
Agnes was elevated by pillows with the alphabet card on her lap. The drip stood tall, like a hiding guard, its tubes and bags clothed by a flag of linen. She wore a green silk blouse and red cashmere cardigan. The colours threw a faint diaphanous sheen on to the skin around her neck. Illness, resplendent and spoiling, could not take away her radiance. There were two chairs by the bed, with a vase of flowers on the table. Beside the vase lay a small school notebook. A light breeze gently flapped the curtain upon the open French window like bunting on a seaside stall.
Agnes" blue eyes fixed on Anselm. Emotion pierced his throat and he swallowed hard against a blade. Deathbed scenes, he thought; the last chance to say something sensible, something honest, to wrap it all up. But not here, not now He shuddered: this wasn"t death; that had been and gone, long ago, routed; this was life. He sat down, shaking, and took out a brown, brittle envelope. Lucy sat beside him as he withdrew a single sheet of paper.
"Agnes," he began, "I was handed this by Mr Snyman. He told me Jacques had given it to him before he was arrested, hoping it might be brought to you if, by some unimaginable chance, you survived the coming night."
Through a simple dilating movement of the eyes, Agnes told him to read. Her breathing began to catch hesitantly; fine, curved lashes slowly fell, remaining shut. At the raising of a single, trembling finger, Anselm began reading, in French: "April"s tiny hands once captured Paris As you once captured me: infant Trojan Fingers gently peeled away my resistance To your charms. It was an epiphany I saw waving palms, rising dust, and yes, I even heard the stones cry out your name, Agnes. "
Anselm paused at the end of the first verse. He looked over to Agnes. A faint pulse jerked behind her eyelids. Anselm resumed reading: "And then the light fell short.
I made a pact with the Devil when the "Spring Wind" came, when Priam"s son lay bleeding On the ground. As morning broke the scattered Stones whispered "G.o.d, what have you done?" and yes, I betrayed you both. Can you forgive me, Agnes?"
At the words of confession she opened her eyes. Inflections of shadow seemed to move beneath her skin like pa.s.sing cloud. Agnes lifted her hand to one side, exposing the white, soft palm. She turned to Anselm, who understood. He placed the letter on the bed and her hand lay tenderly upon it as though it were flesh.
After a long moment Agnes looked to Lucy who walked around Anselm to pick up the second school notebook from the bedside table; then she reached for the alphabet card and placed it in position. Agnes said: F-A-T-H-E-R.
Pause.
P-L-E-A-S-E.
Pause.
W-I-L-L.
Pause.
Y-O-U.
Pause.
G-I-V-E.
Pause.
T-H-I-S.
Pause.
T-O.
Pause.
M-R.
Pause.
S-N-Y-M-A-N.
Anselm took the notebook offered to him by Lucy.
Agnes continued: W-I-L-L.
Pause.
Y-O-U.
Pause.
B-U-R-Y.
Pause.
M-E.
Pause.
A-F-T-E-R.
Pause.
I-M.
Pause.
D-E-A-D.
Through his teeth, Anselm said, "Of course."
A-N-D.
Pause.
N-O-T.
Pause.
B-E-F-O-R-E.
There was something about the fall of light upon her lips that suggested a smile: with joy sorrow, acquiescence, loss, grat.i.tude and farewell: each transparent inflection inhabiting the other. Anselm moved to the French windows and stepped outside, all but overcome by a stifled impulse to shout. He faced a small lawn in a courtyard garden that trapped sunlight between high, brick-red walls. On the far side, like someone lost, stood Salomon Lachaise, distraught.
4.
Lucy left Father Anselm and returned to the living room; then Robert and Victor followed her down the short, narrow pa.s.sage back to the half-open door. She stood aside to let them pa.s.s. Victor walked closely behind Robert, one arm round his waist, a hand upon his shoulder: a faithful mentor guiding a nervous protege on to the stage at prize-giving - a boy frightened of applause, its roar, its power to dismantle what had been built in secret.
The door swung open at Robert"s touch. On entering, Victor covered his mouth, defeated, and said, "Agnes, je te present ... ton fils..."
Lucy stood transfixed by a miracle greater than any of the old school stories - manna in the desert, water from a rock or the parting of any waves - Agnes slowly raised her head and neck fully off the pillow In answer to the call, her face turned towards her son. As Lucy backed away astounded, she heard what to many might have been a sigh, a sudden loud breathing, at most a gathering of soft . vowels, but to her it carried the unmistakable shape of a name not uttered in fifty years: "Robert!"
5.
After all the family had pa.s.sed through to Agnes, Lucy stood alone by her grandmother"s bed, looking out through the open French windows. The thick, polished gla.s.s flashed in the sun, catching dark reflections of red brick; people, young and old, talked casually a hand in a pocket, a schooner twinkling; and tumbling upon the gra.s.s were the children, dressed in yellow and blue and green. Agnes gazed out upon them all. Lucy took in the drip and its serpentine tubing, sliding along the starched sheets to the back of a hand, its teeth hidden by cotton wool and a clean strip of antiseptic plaster. She ran her eye up her grandmother"s arm to her captivated face. Lucy tried to stamp down the heat of una.s.sailable joy the wild fingers of fire: surely this was a time for kicking down the walls. But she couldn"t summon the rage: it lay dead in a yesterday. .
Lucy kissed her grandmother"s forehead and then slipped outside towards the front garden, separated from the house by a quiet avenue. Crossing the road, she saw Father Anselm leaning on a wall, looking at the river. He must have nipped out the back way from the courtyard. Lucy thought she saw faint blue spirals of smoke rising by his head. But no, she concluded, a monk would never have a cigarette.
They both leaned on the wall, watching boys pull oars out of time.
Lucy said, "I"ve waited all my life for what"s happening now, although I never knew it."
Father Anselm flicked something from his fingers.
"I could never have planned it," she continued, "because so much was hidden ... but even if I"d known all there was to know, there was still no thing I could do ... nothing I could say. We"re all so helpless."
They were both quiet, listening to the tidal lapping of the river. Lucy went on: "I"ve tried - several times - to talk through the mess I did know about, to unravel the misunderstandings, but that usually made things worse. And yet, now, the words work ... as if they"ve come to life."
The water rippled across the stones below, endlessly smoothing them.
Father Anselm said, "There is a kind of silence that always prevails, but we have to wait."
They both turned and walked back to the house. Lucy said, "I"m going to introduce Max Nightingale to an old girlfriend of mine. I suspect they"ll get on."
"Someone did that to me once," said the monk, smiling, "and look what happened."