Max Nightingale looked deeply bored.
The stranger said, ‘Have any of you read the Narnia books?’
While Pascal and Max Nightingale seemed irritated at the interruption, Lucy was relieved. It was an interlude in a difficult meeting, that was all. Pascal could ask about Brionne’s name after the discussion was over. There was no rush. She said, ‘I’ve read them, several times. ‘
He smiled winningly and cried, ‘But you haven’t tried talking to a lion, have you? It’s just a myth about good and evil and the lion wins.
Lucy noticed Pascal’s face darkening with a sort of expectation.
The stranger said, ‘There’s no difficulty in that instance because there are no facts, it’s just fiction. But what happens when fact and fiction mix?’ He raised his glass. ‘Let’s take the Holocaust, for example.’
Lucy shivered at his serene manner, the use of charged language without reverence.
He smiled, saying, ‘How much is fact and how much is fiction?’
‘Let’s go,’ said Pascal, standing up.
‘Am I the voice of temptation in your wilderness?’ he pouted.
Lucy glanced at Max. He had paled and seemed unable to respond. She rose, picking up her coat. The straps of her rucksack were tangled round her feet. Her purse fell out, coins rolling under the table. A number of people close to them turned at the noise. An old man nearby grimaced and pulled himself up, his head inclined towards Pascal and his tormentor.
‘Come on,’ snapped Pascal.
‘Let’s take the Schwermann trial, said The Don, supremely relaxed. ‘He might be convicted. But who’ll question the old fairy tales?’
‘Lucy, please, come on,’ said Pascal.
The old man lumbered over and grabbed the Don’s shoulder, tugging at the cloth. He shouted, ‘.I’ve had enough of you, clear off. Go on, get out. ‘
The Don stumbled to his feet, his smile suddenly twisted with suppressed rage. ‘Get your hands off me, you ignorant—’
‘I’m not scared of y-your sort,’ the old man stuttered, raising a shaking fist.
From the other side of the room someone yelled, ‘Dad? What the hell … ?’
Max and Pascal rose quickly, moving round the table. The old man pulled harder, his fist drawing back. Suddenly, with a look of ecstasy, The Don swung his arm in a sweeping, imperious arc and struck the old man across the face. At the same time Pascal lunged forward, trying to come between the two men. Then Lucy gasped. Pascal slipped and tumbled over. He spun to one side, falling. His left arm caught the edge of a table, his body twisted and there was a sickening thud. Pascal groaned, like one asleep, rolling his head from side to side. Both arms lay limp upon the floor. Lucy covered her face, staring at him through shaking fingers. A thin wail broke out of her that wouldn’t stop. She could only see one of Pascal’s feet, the rest of him now surrounded by people on their knees while others pushed tables and chairs to one side.
An ambulance came. All Lucy could remember afterwards were the colours. Green sheets, a red blanket, shiny chrome bars on the stretcher, yellow jackets and pale, white faces. Someone took her hand. An arm went around her shoulder. There was no sound any more, either from her or all around. It was as though she was wrapped in great puffs of cotton wool, and she floated in a vacuum, deep inside her head.
The last thing she saw before being led outside into the night air was the place where Pascal’s head had come to rest. A small but thick smudge of blood shone at the base of a rather vulgar table leg, ornate metalwork curving down to a small iron globe.
Lucy was brought home by a woman police officer at three in the morning. Alone in her flat, still surrounded by a heavy, numbing insulation, she saw a flashing light on her answer machine. Her body moved towards it and pressed a button.
‘It’s me, Cathy,’ drawled a voice into the darkness. ‘I tried you on your mobile without success and I now confidently entertain certain suspicions. So, what did you do this time? Bell-ringing? Call me sometime.’
4
Morning light danced across the hills around Larkwood. Captivated, Anselm opened the windows of his cell. He sat quietly, preparing himself for Lectio Divina, but started at a distraction: footsteps moved swiftly on the corridor outside, growing louder. It was peculiar because monastic comportment for bade anything that might disturb the spirit of recollection, and it was unheard of at that hour, even in the breach. A knock struck his door. Anselm rose, turning the handle with apprehension.
Brother Jerome had a clutch of newspapers under his arm. It was his task to read diverse reports and opinions from Left and Right and distil them into a balanced news bulletin to be read out during lunch. He had evidently just collected the papers from reception. Without saying anything he pointed to a passage on the front page of a national. Pascal Fougères had been taken to Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith. He had died shortly afterwards from a brain haemorrhage sustained during a fall. The accident had occurred, it seemed, when he intervened in a quarrel about the last war. Police sources said an investigation was under way
Anselm shut his door and slumped on to a chair. With his mind’s eye he described Leviathan rising out of a boiling sea, arching high into a red sky dripping water like rain.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The cottage on Holy Island was more of a manor, having many rooms and a large, windswept garden leading down to a stone wall built by hands that knew a craft fast becoming scarce. Immediately beyond lay an intimate, curved shoreline of green and black boulders, some round but others angulated despite the endless blandishments of the sea. From the bathroom Victor could see the deep pink sandstone ruins of a Priory, hollowed by wind and rain; from where he slept he looked out upon Lindisfarne Castle, cut against a pale sky joined as one to the high crag from which it rose, reaching out to the Northern Lights. Beyond lay Broad Stones and, further, Plough Rock, and then the bare, flat, silent sea.
‘You should be safe here,’ said Robert. They had walked to the north end of the island, overlooking Emmanuel Head.
Victor nodded.
‘I told him what you told me, that Victor Brionne died after the war; and I told him what I told you, that someone else married my mother. I told him the truth. If anyone comes asking questions about you, they’ll be told you’re dead.’
Victor stood once more upon the lip of an abyss. There could be no further discussion. It would have been better if Robert had not gone to the Priory, for he had become a tiny link between Victor and whoever might still want to find him. But he was trying to help his father and that was all that mattered. Robert wasn’t to know that Victor had changed his name a second time. No one knew that, so the chances of anyone looking for Victor Berkeley being led to Victor Brownlow were remote. Perhaps he had been precipitate in disclosing anything to Robert at all. Maybe he should have taken the risk and carried on as if nothing had happened, living his life on the ground he’d laid over the past. But with Schwermann unmasked, the desire to hide had been irresistible; and, despite the burden of secrecy, he’d wanted to tell Robert at least who he had been, to let Robert in, ever so slightly, on the scourge that had laid waste to his father.
Brownlow: Victor liked the name and always had done. It had been an inspired choice.
They turned and walked back, arm in arm, to ‘Pilgrim’s Rest’, Robert’s holiday cottage. A cold sea wind, wet with spray hustled them along. And, with a sadness first born when he was a boy Victor thought of Jacques, and now Pascal Fougères, whom he had never met and who had wanted to find him. They should have been able to meet as friends and bridge the years, but a great gulf had been fixed between them. Victor followed Robert through the garden gate and thought angrily: