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 Fougères and all the knights of The Round Table … Father Morel … Father Pleyon … Grandpa Arthur … Pascal Fougères …’ 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
On the ground. As morning broke the scattered
Stones whispered ‘God, 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 passing 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, gratitude and farewelclass="underline" 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 passage back to the half-open door. She stood aside to let them pass. Victor walked closely behind Robert, one arm round his waist, a hand upon his shoulder: a faithful mentor guiding a nervous protégé 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 présent … 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 passed through to Agnes, Lucy stood alone by her grandmother’s bed, looking out through the open French windows. The thick, polished glass 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 grass 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 unassailable 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.