Brionne closed his eyes as a heavy silence cramped the room. ‘I didn’t know we were going to arrest Agnes until we got there, because I thought she was still at Parc Monceau. The flat door was broken open from when they’d come for Madame Klein. We sat there and waited. I can’t describe the rest.’ He smoked, repeatedly drawing in thick draughts. ‘We took her child and she screamed at me, a scream that pierces time. Then Schwermann knew I was involved in The Round Table. I never saw Agnes again. That is my last memory of her. A nurse took the boy to an orphanage.’
Brionne became eerily still, as though he’d quietly died. He said, ‘Three days later, he called me in. He placed the typed interrogation record on the left side of his desk, disclosing all the names of The Round Table. Then he produced two convoy deportation lists for Auschwitz, each with a string of names … including Agnes and her child. At the bottom was a space to be signed by the supervising officer, the one who ticks them on to the cattle truck. He put those on the right-hand side. “Sit down,” he said. “You have a choice.”
‘I sat down. “If you sign these documents,” he said, “you may keep the child. If you refuse he will see Auschwitz, and you will be shot.”‘ Victor stared at the bottle on the floor, now almost empty. ‘I signed everything.’ A thin laugh expelled a gust of smoke. ‘The irony of it struck me at the time: by writing my name I became the one who had betrayed The Round Table, just after I’d removed the proof that it was someone else—remember? I’d just given the draft to Jacques ‘father, Anton Fougères.’ He drained his mug in long gulps. ‘One thing happened next that I have never forgotten — I heard him being sick in the toilet. I collected the boy from an orphanage that afternoon and took him home to my mother. He was one of nine. The other eight were deported the next day. I cannot tell you what it was like to walk away with one of them.’
‘Robert?’
‘Yes.’
‘Robert is Agnes’ son?’
‘Yes.’ Brionne placed a shaking hand over his face. ‘Schwermann supervised the departure of the convoy that took Agnes away. Afterwards, he kept the original list signed by me and placed an unsigned duplicate on file. As for Robert, he did the same thing, covering the deportation himself so that no questions were asked as to the child’s whereabouts. The only difference was that no duplicate list was made. To tie the knot, he got a friend at Auschwitz to mess about with their records to make them consistent.’
‘Why?’
‘He told me that if the Germans lost the war, the public records would confirm that he’d saved a child when he’d got the chance.’
‘So what?’
‘I said that … and he replied that if ever he had to fight for his life, it could be the one thing that might save him from the gallows.’
Brionne left the room. Anselm heard him swill his face in a rush of water. He spoke from the kitchen, coming back to his worn chair. ‘He read a lot of Goethe. “Du musst herrschen und gewinnen, oder dienen und verlieren,” he told me later. “You must either conquer and rule or lose and serve.” A very German apology. For the rest of the time I knew him he sweated profusely.’
The enormity of Anselm’s wilful credulity towered over him. He’d guessed Schwermann was blackmailing Brionne because of the documents given to Max, but that didn’t mean Brionne had done anything to induce the blackmail. It was simple logic.
‘From then on, he often used to say “Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.” I was part of him and he was part of me, two souls dwelling within one breast. I was the one who would have to tell the tale of his heroism. I was the one who could procure his escape, using The Round Table structure to his advantage. And, in due course, I did. When it became clear the war was over, I took him to Les Moineaux.’
‘But neither of you were known to the community,’ said Anselm.
‘Father, just because they did not know me does not mean I did not know them. I told Father Pleyon, the Prior, that I was “Bedivere” and I was welcomed. And then I had to put that saintly man in the same position Schwermann had put me, which was ghastly because he had been the monk responsible for running the operation at the Priory.’
‘Father Pleyon?’
‘Yes.’
Anselm remembered Chambray referring to the doubts raised by Father Pleyon when the smuggling operation was first put to the community, and he saw at once the wise stewardship of Prior Morel — he had given the main job to a man with his eyes on the risks, rather than the enthusiast. And then Anselm glimpsed something he had never considered … he remembered Father Pleyon’s report to Rome … it was Pleyon who had ensured that Rochet met the Fougères family…
‘I told him if he couldn’t hide us, yes, a Nazi would be caught and hanged. But so would I. And the boy Schwermann had spared would learn the terrible truth about his own history. But if he assisted our escape, well, the child would be spared, a second, final time. The boy would grow, freed from the past, and some good would be salvaged from so much evil. And Schwermann? He would have been saved for the sake of a child, the least in this life but the greatest in the Kingdom. There was poetry in that. Father Rochet would have liked it.’ Brionne lit another cigarette. He passed one to Anselm.
‘Father Pleyon asked if he could write a report to Rome, explaining what had happened. I agreed. Robert was hidden in the convent as a refugee and I saw him every day until our passage was prepared for England.’
Anselm gave a moan of self-recrimination. Father Chambray had misunderstood every detail and Anselm had devoured the conclusions, principally because Rome had tried to hide them.
Brionne said, ‘When Schwermann was recognised on a train, as we were leaving Paris, he led them to me, one carriage further along. I was interviewed by a young officer, much the same age as me. I looked him in the eye and told him the same thing: Schwermann would hang, but what about the boy sitting on the bench outside? He was a brave man. He let us go.
The young Captain Lawson who could not remember anything when pressed by DI Armstrong, thought Anselm.
‘I built a new life for Robert,’ said Brionne. ‘He married, had children … but I was always waiting for Schwermann to be exposed, because I knew he’d come looking for me.’
‘So you went into hiding when he turned up at Larkwood Priory?’ asked Anselm.
‘Yes. And I would have stayed there if you hadn’t asked me if Pascal Fougères had died for nothing.’
‘But Victor, why didn’t you reveal what had happened?’
‘I wanted to, but when I stood there, in the witness box, I couldn’t do it. I looked at Schwermann. I looked at the survivors. And I looked at Robert. I hadn’t been able to tell him anything before seeing the police. How could I explain to him that I’m not his father? How do I prove that I didn’t put his mother on the train for Auschwitz? That I didn’t betray all her friends, and my own? Only Father Rochet knew I’d been a secret member of The Round Table and he’s dead.’
‘But Robert knows you, loves you; he would have believed you.
‘Father, you forget something.’ His voice was steady uncompromising, detached. ‘I was trapped as a collaborator for the rest of the war. It was the price for Robert’s survival. I couldn’t tell him that. So when I took the oath in court, I told the truth, even though no one understood the actual meaning of what I said. It’s contemptible.’
The swift consumption of wine had taken its toll. Brionne licked his lips; his head began to loll, suddenly dropping now and again off its axis. He spoke as though about to weep. ‘And the irony of it is that afterwards, when I stood with Robert in the street, I knew I’d lost him because he thought I’d lied.’ He let out a great sigh. ‘And all the while Agnes, his mother, my dear friend, was alive, here in London, and I could have condemned Schwermann in her name … It is too much, too much …’