‘You were right,’ said Anselm to the Prior.
‘In what way?’
‘Brack’s world. It’s a dangerous place. I wish I’d never been there. I wish I’d never tried to understand these people, the Bracks and Frenzels. You can’t get close without losing something essential to yourself. They’re leeches on your soul, they suck and suck and then excrete your best intentions in some dark corner.
He was sitting on an old piano stool. The Prior faced him, the sleeves of his habit rolled up, the scapular tucked into his belt. But for the accent, distilled from the Clyde and the Lark, he’d have stepped straight out of a Turgenev short story. In his hands was a large axe.
‘You were right,’ repeated Anselm. His tone had changed from lament to accusation. ‘I grubbed around buying information from a man who chewed up people’s lives over a bottle of Bollinger. Why did you let me go?’
‘I thought you wanted to help John,’ replied the Prior, reasonably ‘Perhaps John more than Roza.’
‘I did. I went to Warsaw for him. He asked me for help.’
‘With good reason, it seems.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ The Prior seemed to test the weight of the axe, letting it swing like a pendulum. ‘I get the impression you wanted to give one kind of help and you’re discomfited to find you’ve been asked for another. But that’s what happens when you grasp someone’s outstretched hand: you don’t know what will happen once you start to pull.’
Relatively speaking, the Prior had been unmoved by the revelation of John’s betrayal. There’d been a lifting of an eyebrow; a slight tilt of the head as if to acknowledge that a Lebanon cedar had just crashed through the main Dorter window. But he wasn’t overly troubled by the glass on the floor and the fault in the exposed grain. These were his woods, he seemed to say He knew all about trees and why they fell. And how to cut them down, too. He tapped the axe on the ground.
‘When someone asks for assistance, Anselm, you count the dangers, you eye up the risks, and you take precautions. And then you help. You don’t count and appraise so as to take the preventative measure of leaving. You stay. You reach out, perhaps with fear in your heart, knowing that you, too, might fall.’
‘Why did he ask me to go?’ mumbled Anselm, not quite hearing the Prior’s rebuke. ‘He knew I’d find out about his mother. He knew I’d find out that he’d worked with Brack. He even gave me Brack’s old number as if he wanted me to give him a call to talk over the life and times of agent CONRAD. Why not tell me himself, outright?’
‘Because there’s more to John’s story than a betrayal. His life is more than a list of facts. Perhaps there is too much to tell, too much to reveal, too much to explain; because he’s lost to simple declarations. In those circumstances, the lost man doesn’t want to talk, he wants to be found. He wants his friend to find him. He wants him to learn everything along the way so that when they finally meet a discussion can take place, one that is deep and honest and true.’
I want you to coax them out of the dark, John had said. Failing that, bring them kicking and screaming into the light. Rough or smooth, give them a helping hand.
Anselm studied the Prior’s contracted features, the squared shoulders, the rolled up sleeves.
‘Just how much do you know?’ he asked, quietly knowing the Prior wouldn’t answer, seeing him once more at his friend’s side, long ago, listening intently to mumbled confidences.
‘Enough to be sure that John needs a helping hand. As, in fact, do I.’
He nodded towards a pile of mature, dry wood stacked high against one wall. It reached the split central beams which ran to the other side of the shed where they met another pile of timber — the green stuff, fresh cut and still heavy with sap. Anselm gingerly pulled free a log and stood it upright on the block, mindful that this partnership between the old and new almost certainly held up the roof. Large flakes of snow drifted through the open door. There was a faint, freezing breeze.
‘It was immense,’ said Anselm, standing back, hands in his habit pockets.
‘What was?’ To aim, the Prior tapped the centre of the log three times with the blade of the axe.
‘His deception. Look at his public life, his entire social existence. He wrote a dissertation applauding political values he doesn’t hold, ideas that he doesn’t accept. He teaches them now He basks in the reflected glory of every thinker whose mind he managed to pick. He’s held in awe in the senior common room because he tramped over the intellectual killing fields and came back with his mind intact.’
The Prior brought the axe down and the wood huffed and gave way.
I defended your reputation in the High Court, thought Anselm, looking at the two halves. Did you think me a fool? I stood by you and fought your corner, despite the destruction of a journal, the reluctance of a witness and a total absence of coherent instructions.
‘I’m sorry, I think you’re wrong,’ Anselm said, dragging aside the split wood and pulling free another log. He held it between his arms, leaning back against the pile, challenging the Prior’s belief in John’s willingness to be exposed; his need to be helped along the way ‘He didn’t want to be found by his friend. He hoped I’d go to Warsaw and find nothing. And, in fact, there was nothing to be found; the file was empty. I could easily have given up and come back empty-handed. And he’d have been reassured that there was nothing over there waiting to blow up in his face. That’s what he really wanted to know Remember, Roza had told him about the files. She’d said it was only a matter of time before the informer was flushed out by some lawyer or journalist interested in the Shoemaker. He needed to know what was inside the Polana file to see if he was safe.’
The Prior was listening but he didn’t reply Gilbertines were like that. He had nothing else to say so he said nothing. Anyway he was keen to get on, nodding strained gratitude when Anselm finally placed the wood on the block.
‘And I wasn’t the only one he used,’ murmured Anselm. ‘There were others.’
The Prior tapped the log three times.
That reluctant witness: John had urged her to come to London. Why? Because he loved her? Or because he knew that sooner or later the press might look a little closer at the circumstances of his expulsion from Warsaw; that he might be accused; that he might have need of a respectable dissident to preserve his standing. She refused when he tried to use her. And the day he was vindicated, she walked out of his life.
The axe fell and the wood splintered.
‘He gave me hints for years,’ continued Anselm. Without his former caution he yanked out the next victim for the block. ‘He smoked Russian cigarettes. He wore East German trainers.’
The Prior humphed and the log cracked and fell, divided.
‘Worst of all, he played games with Roza.’ Anselm was talking to the pile of dry wood. He spent a long time choosing the next branch. He paused while pulling it free. ‘She was begging him to make a confession, to come on side, and help her bring Brack to court. To vindicate himself by himself. What did he do? He called up the naive lawyer who’d done the magic last time around. Someone with his head in the clouds. Someone who wouldn’t know the meaning of a Zeha trainer if it vanished up his backside. I just don’t understand. I can’t-’
‘Here.’
‘What?’
‘Take this.’
Anselm seemed to wake. The Prior was holding out the axe. His round glasses, repaired at both ends with a paperclip, caught the wintry afternoon light. Snow was creeping timidly into the shed. The Prior’s breath fogged in the cold air.
‘Let the head do all the work.’