wind, until, at a midpoint, he turned, squinting, and looked back: there was the house, etched into hard, shapeless cloud, the windows punched small and black; and there, below, on the beach, was little Stephen with tousled blond hair, piling up the wet sand… the carefree, joyous great-grandson of Agnes Aubret and Jacques Fougeres.
Chapter Forty-Eight
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 gratitude 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 buttons. 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, glasses, 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 glass, 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 surreptitiously 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, compassionate 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
