Part 8 (2/2)

'The Saviour sent the lot of them into a herd of pigs grazing on the fat of the land.'

'That's right,' remembered Agnes. 'The demons were called ”Legion” because there were so many of them: Father Rochet had likened them to the German army in France, just as the Roman legions had occupied Palestine.

'They charged over a cliff into a lake and drowned,' said Wilma with great satisfaction. 'And the poor young man was returned to his family'

Oh yes, that's it, thought Agnes. Father Rochet had said there were plenty of pigs, but no cliff, and as yet, no Messiah. 'So we have to act while we wait,' he'd said.

'Did I say who this was addressed to?' breathed Agnes, weakened by a new, unexpected certainty.

'No.'

'Go back to the beginning them, please.' She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up an old friend.

'Dear-'

Chapter Fourteen.

Alone at last in the first-floor sitting room overlooking the sea, the old man opened once more the letter from his wife, penned just before she died while he slept in a chair by her bed. She'd told him to read it every time the guilt threatened to overpower him.

My Dearest Victor I've often watched you while you sleep. The bad times have even marked your peace. They've never really left you and I doubt if they ever will. But you must believe me: you acted for the best in the most difficult of times. 1 was right when I said all those years ago that sometimes there have to be secrets. What a relief it would be if a great wind would blow and sweep it all away! But that is not going to happen. For twenty-six years we've had each other and you could turn to me, and now, well, that is coming to an end. So this is what I have to say. Just look at Robert! Look at all his children! Look at them all! This is your testament. They only see the good man I married, even if the world comes to judge you one day out of hand. I know, and I bless the day I met you.

Your ever-loving Squirrel Pauline the squirrel: because she never threw anything out. He folded the paper and put it back in his pocket diary. The words had no effect. They never had done. It wasn't that Victor didn't see the wonder of his family He did. But each s.h.i.+ning face was only a flickering candle against the endless shadow of slaughter he had known.

After his wife died Victor went on a binge. Not a single monumental blow-out but rather a gradual build-up of solitary chaotic sessions, a ritual that gathered pace and eventually left him flat on the floor almost every day He learned what only the gravely fallen know: there's a sincerity to drinking, a bravery. It's not an escape - that's at the amateur level, carried out with newfound comrades, takeaways and taxis. It's the opposite. It's standing your ground, utterly alone, as the demons rise to dance and sneer.

In the end, Robert found out what was happening from the parish priest, Father Lacey who found Victor slumped in a confessional. Victor hadn't eaten or washed for days. A meeting was called. Father Lacey said he knew of a good place, out in the country, but it was expensive. 'You'll have to face the grief, Dad,' Robert implored, and Father Lacey added knowingly, with a stare, 'along with your past .

All the family helped, once they were allowed to visit. The professionals involved said Victor hadn't fully cooperated, implying he'd dodged about rather skilfully, but that he'd 'learned a lot about himself' and they'd been over various 'coping strategies'. And so Victor came back to 'normal life'. For most of the observers it was a matter of a grief under control, a man who'd found a way of living without his wife. Only Victor and his confessor, Father Lacey, knew of the demon legion sleeping out of sight.

Victor often returned to his wife's letter, hoping the recitation of the lines might yet have some effect, like the workings of a spell that only required a solemn, heartfelt incantation. But he didn't believe in magic. What about the fragile light of candles? Yes, he believed in those. He lit them every week in the side chapel for Robert. For - a gust of laughter suddenly burst through a door somewhere downstairs - Robert's wife, Maggie, and the grandchildren, all five of them, two boys and three girls, all 'grown and flown, to homes of their own', as Robert liked to say Victor smiled. Two of them were married. Great-grandchildren had followed. The whole clan came to thirteen - a blessing of biblical proportions. Only, it wasn't that simple, was it? He caught his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. Even when he smiled he couldn't hide that ineffable, intractable sadness. Why was it that, after all these years, whenever he looked in a mirror he thought of Agnes and Jacques, her long thick hair and his dark beseeching eyes? And why oh why did their shades always part, with a moan, leaving him with another remembrance that would not be staunched? How could it be that even now, in his mid-seventies, he could not see himself without seeing Eduard Schwermann? Was it any wonder he could not explain to the children why there were no mirrors in granddad's house?

Here, in Robert's home, there were many of them, unforgiving windows into his soul, and that of his accomplice. He said under his breath: 'Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust.'

As they sat round the crowded, laden dining table on the night of his arrival, conversation turned, as Victor had antic.i.p.ated, to the Schwermann case. In order to protect Stephen, the eldest great-grandchild, key terms had to be spelled out. He'd reached the dreadful age of four where listening and repet.i.tion went mercilessly hand in hand.

'From all accounts he was a complete b-a-s-t-a-r-d,' said Francis, Robert's first son.

'He'll probably say they've got the wrong man,' someone chipped in. Other voices turned over the material they'd all heard and read: 'Oh no. Apparently there's no doubt that he was there.'

'Then what's he going to say? He's got to say something.'

'Didn't know what was going on, only obeying orders. It has to be one or the other.'

'That's always struck me as odd.'

'What has?'

'Well, where I work, even the cleaners get to know all the dirt.'

'That's an awful pun. Pa.s.s the chicken, please. '

'It's the same at our place. I don't know how they find out because no one admits to telling them. At the end of the day, you can't hide anything.'

'It's not chicken, it's soya.

'And you'd think ”doing as you're told” and ”d-e-a-t-h c-a-m-p-s” don't really belong in the same sentence. Not unless you're mad.'

'And he's sane.

'Either way you're right, Francis; he's a b-a-s-t-a-r-d.'

'What's that, Daddy?' asked Stephen with a curiosity that, from experience, would not be easily deflected.

'Nothing, son, nothing.'

'Daddy, what are you talking about?'

'A naughty man, that's all. Now eat up.

The words nearly made Victor sick.

'But Daddy ...'

Victor heard no more. Although he couldn't be sure, for he kept his eyes on his plate, he felt Robert's gaze upon him, talkative Robert, who for some reason kept out of the conversation.

That ordeal was last night, his reticence pa.s.sed off as old age worn out further by the delayed train from London. Now he was alone in the sitting room, waiting. There was no need to make an arrangement. Soon he would come. Repeating s.n.a.t.c.hes from his wife's letter, Victor walked over to the bay window of Robert's much-loved home, The Coach House at Cullercoats - a rambling pile of creaking rooms on a low cliff between Tynemouth and Whitley Bay overlooking the old harbour. He could see the jagged black rocks collapsing over each other into the incoming tide, the great rush of metallic water, always cold, always bound to the sky, always seemingly inviting him to cross over, into the thin wisp of evening light where memory was left behind. Great fat gulls swooped under gusts of wind and then surrendered to the drift, floating high out of view.

G.o.d, bear me up, help me.

A fire, freshly made, crackled in the grate.

The door opened quietly He heard the soft approach of familiar steps. A hand rested on his shoulder. Now was the time. He would have to speak of things he'd vowed never to say 'Dad...?'

'Yes, son?'

'Tell me what's troubling you.' He spoke almost in a whisper. 'Come on, I'm a grandfather, you know'

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