The Chapter moved swiftly on to deal with a dispute about the work rota.
Anselm continued to wrangle. Edmund? He doesn’t speak to anyone in the monastery, never mind the world… how can he handle an investigative journalist? Wilf? He’s timid to the point of paralysis…
The Chapter ended: the monks filed out to their cells for the time allotted to Lectio Divina; the Prior did the same; and Anselm stood in the cloister smarting at the rejection.
Over the next few weeks the lawyers came and the Press made their enquiries. Wilf apprehensively led the first group to the Old Foundry by the lake but never let his curiosity off the leash. Edmund gave interviews to the second lot but told them nothing of significance, not even about the monastic life. As a consequence, no one in the Priory or the outside world gleaned any information other than that which had already been released. In recognising this outcome, Anselm beheld the astuteness of his Prior.
Anselm only saw Schwermann once, while taking a walk by the lake after his afternoon session in the bottling plant. The elderly fugitive was sitting on a stool, painting. The brush flashed across the paper while he urbanely chatted to his personal protection officer. The weeks turned to months and still Schwermann did not leave. The investigation continued and the Prior became increasingly brittle. But he did not confide in Anselm about what the Priory should do if it transpired allowing Schwermann to stay had been a mistake. There were difficult issues to handle, involving Rome, the Home Office and the media. Anselm wanted to remonstrate. The Prior was deliberately wasting the skills he had to offer. Anselm’s mind teemed with exhortations from scripture and the Early Church Fathers (which he’d eventually read) to the effect that lights should not be put under bushels, talents shouldn’t be buried in fields, a monk should be given work suited to his powers and capabilities, and so on. However, Anselm was also obedient and said nothing to the Prior; and the Prior did what he knew was wise and said nothing to Anselm — until the day Anselm had a devastating encounter with a stranger by the lake; the day the fax came from Rome.
Chapter Six
Grandpa Arthur’s old wall clock struck midnight. The German bullet had probably been a stray, but it came through an open window, tore past Grandpa Arthur’s head just as he took off his helmet and smashed into the central glass panel of the wall-mounted wooden clock. The pendulum swung out of the way and back again, as if nothing had happened. The dull clunk of the ticking continued softly, as before, while Captain Embleton lay shaking on the ground, wetting himself like a baby
Grandpa Arthur had always said there was a moral in there about Providence, but he didn’t know what it was. He brought the clock home with its missing panel and hole in the back and never let it wind down. It was a sort of companion, holding time to a measured tempo and giving assurance that troubled times always pass. It had only stopped once: the day after he died. That was when Lucy had burst into tears, and Agnes had simply said: ‘The pendulum’s stopped swinging.’ She never wound it up again.
When Lucy left home after the row with her parents, Agnes gave her the clock, saying, ‘Here’s an old friend. Wind him up every morning, like Arthur did.’ It had sprung to life at the first turn of the key It was as though Grandpa was nearby, out of sight.
Lucy smiled at the front cover of the school notebook. From old habit and the embedded obedience of a diligent pupil,
Agnes had carefully printed her name along the dotted line, ready for her work to be handed in and marked. The text was in pencil, with a crafted yet fluid hand, the kind that used to be taught by severe masters and perfected in detention. There were no corrections. The swift strokes imperceptibly became a voice, and Lucy could hear Agnes speaking to her in a way she never had before. She read without pausing to rest. Grandpa Arthur’s wall clock ticked and softly chimed the half-hours. The night traffic rolled on, like the distant moan of the sea. The pendulum swung and the tiny bells trembled, as if stirred. from sleep.
Lucy put the notebook to one side. She was unable to move. Her eyes swam out of focus. Eventually she stumbled into the kitchen. From behind the microwave she fished out a packet of Camel, bought the same day Darren had left her to go back to the wife and kids she hadn’t known about. She’d thrown them unopened across the room when she’d got back from the corner shop. Lucy lit up her first cigarette on the gas cooker, singeing her eyebrows. Sitting on the floor of the living room with a side plate for an ashtray, she smoked and grimaced, calmed by the sudden punch of nicotine.
In reading her grandmother’s story a kaleidoscope had turned, and almost everything Lucy knew about Agnes had tumbled out of place and fallen into a new configuration. Memories of peculiar things her grandmother had said and done in the past, making sense now, burst across her mind. Like that shopping trip after Christmas to the Army and Navy store in Victoria Street. They’d walked across the piazza facing Westminster Cathedral as the sound of the choir had filtered through the open doors. Agnes had suddenly turned and gone inside. She’d sat at the back for something like half an hour. Mosaics had glittered in the distance, and a boy’s voice had spiralled between pillars that rose to hold the darkness overhead. As they were leaving Agnes had said cheerlessly, ‘The Feast of the Holy Innocents. ‘
‘What’s that, Gran?’
‘The remembering of a great slaughter. After the birth of Christ, King Herod wanted him killed. He didn’t know where he was so he ordered the massacre of all children under the age of two.’
‘How many was that?’
‘Two thousand.’
‘What about the one they were after?’
‘Warned beforehand, by an angel. The family escaped.’
‘Why not warn all the others?’
‘A very good question.’
Lucy looked at her gran enquiringly ‘How do you know all that?’
‘A decent education.’
‘Do you believe any of that stuff? God, angels, three wise men?’
Agnes hadn’t replied immediately She’d slipped her moorings, as she was prone to do when loosened by an unspoken memory. ‘Sometimes I think it’s homesickness. But you can’t get back.’
Lucy hadn’t taken the matter further, but Agnes’ remarks had stayed in her mind. Now she understood.
During her third cigarette, lolling but seasick on rising waves, she ran for the toilet and vomited. Lucy faced the mirror. She studied her black hair, the colourless oval face, the translucent skin, those dark lashes that always got her into trouble. She was a stranger to herself.
Lucy made a large mug of tea with two heaped teaspoons of sugar, to help swallow the unpalatable. Her mind turned bitterly to Schwermann, who lay protected in a monastery, and to Victor Brionne, the man of fine words, the collaborator who’d betrayed Agnes. But how did he get away after the war? Who on earth could have wanted to help a man deaf to the cries of children?
She poured the tea down the sink and made her way back to bed, knowing that a different person would see the morning. Her old self had closed her eyes for ever. Lucy glanced at the notebook lying open on the floor. What has happened, she thought, in my growing up that I can read such things and not even cry?
Chapter Seven
The first notebook of Agnes Embleton.
3rd April 1995.
Dear Lucy, I have just seen the face of the man who took away my life, on the very day Doctor Scott said I was going to die. I sensed that months ago, when the voices and faces of my youth came back, like rooks coming home. I should have known Schwermann would turn up as well.
I would have liked to talk to you about me, and my childhood friends, but I’m not able. Soon I’ll be gone and I do not want their memory to go with me. The time has come for you to know everything.
