A Whispered Name (42 page)

‘Father
Moore wanted you to have these —’ Anselm held out the tags — ‘and it’s why I came
to Les Ramiers to find you.

‘These
are mine,’ he whispered. ‘This is who I was.’ He fumbled behind his tie.’
opening two shirt buttons. He reached inside and tugged out another cord and
other discs. Holding them up for Anselm, he said, ‘four-eight-eight-eight Pte
Joseph Flanagan. We swapped tags … because he knew no one would be looking
for him … ever.

3

After Lauds, Anselm joined
Mr Lindsay and Sabine.’ his granddaughter.’ for breakfast. Given the
circumstances, Anselm secured a room in the monastery by the kitchens, where
they would be guaranteed privacy and bounty.

Anselm
and the Prior at Larkwood had pretty much misunderstood every detail of importance.
John Lindsay had not led a tormented life at all: he’d married, had four
children, seen numerous grandchildren arrive and attended more weddings and
christenings that he could accurately calculate. He was a happy man. That said,
it had taken him fifty years before he could step into that clearing where Flanagan
had died. ‘My only remaining desire is to visit Inisdúr, where he was born. He
spoke of it all the time to Lisette. But that can never happen. It’s part of
the price.’

The brother
in charge of the kitchens nudged open the door with his foot and laid a platter
of meats and cheese on the table. A novice followed with fresh bread and a bowl
of fruit. Another monk brought hot steaming coffee.

The
plan had always been that Mr Lindsay would catch a boat from Boulogne when
Madame Papinau’s cousin had secured a passage to England. But the day following
Herbert Moore’s visit to the
estaminet,
she asked him to stay Not for a
few weeks, but for good. Étaples could become his home, she said. He could work
here, in the kitchens. The war would end one day He wouldn’t have to hide for
ever. Mr Lindsay didn’t have to think for long. He had no life in England, just
a borstal sentence, if he was caught. ‘But I don’t speak French,’ he stammered.
‘I’ll teach you,’ she promised. And she did — without a single formal lesson.
She just stopped speaking English.

‘She
never married again.” said Mr Lindsay his face soft with affection, ‘though
she changed. When I first came she was a cold and brittle woman, for all her
kindness. But she grew warm, over the years. One day she asked me to call her
Maminette. It was only after her death that I found this letter. Joseph wrote
it to her in his cell, hours before he was shot. She kept it in a drawer by her
bed.’ Mr Lindsay drew an envelope from his inner jacket pocket. ‘I bring it with
me every year. It’s as though she comes with me to see him..’

Written
on the front was one word: Lisette. Anselm opened the single sheet of paper
inside. There was a Gaelic phrase he didn’t understand — making it sacred and
secret. Written underneath it.’ rising across the lines, was a sort of desperate
afterthought, a plea that went to the heart of Flanagan’s purpose, as if he
hadn’t quite realised it himself until afterwards:

Keep hold of the
boy for a while. Teach him what you would have taught your son.

‘I first heard about
Louis, her son, on the day Mr Moore delivered the letter,’ said Mr Lindsay
taking it back. ‘I was listening at the door as they talked. She’d sent Louis
off to the war, as Mr Moore had sent Joseph off to the cellar. Both of them
were killed. I think my life changed when I heard that confession, because she
then sent Mr Moore back to his regiment — and he would have stayed in Étaples,
believe you me.

Sabine
poured the coffee. She evidently knew everything. It was part of her identity.
Her own life blood flowed from an execution. There was a blush to her skin as
though she felt what Lisette had felt — along with Joseph and the old man
around whom these events had turned. Anselm thought she might cry but the door
swung open and the novice brought in a rattling tray of jams arranged around a
single pot of English marmalade.

For
over a year Mr Lindsay lived like a prisoner, hiding in the house and never
going out, except at night and only into a small walled garden at the rear of
the premises. After ten minutes he was back in the cellar. During the day he
remained in the kitchen peeling potatoes and in the evening he sat in the
parlour listening to Lisette. She made him repeat words and phrases until her
ear was pleased, though he didn’t know what he’d been saying. And ever so slowly
a new world opened out before him — one that he could never have imagined. He
began to speak in a language that was, for him, pure. He’d never sworn in it.
He’d never robbed anyone with it. None of these sounds had ever been heard in a
court or a borstal. By the time the war ended, he was dreaming in French. He
walked on to the streets of Étaples a different man.

‘When I
was twenty-two, Maminette had a shock for me.’ Mr Lindsay checked the jams. ‘She
said I was a grown man, now, and I should go back to England and serve my
sentence. I knew she was right. What I’d done — who I’d been — hung round my
neck. So I did my time. And I’ve never looked back..’

‘But
what of “Doyle’s” two prisons sentences?’ asked Anselm. ‘Weren’t they around
your neck, too?’

‘Oh no,’
said Mr Lindsay both eyebrows raised high. ‘They were around Joseph’s. If I’d
claimed those back, he would have died for nothing.’ He opened a jar marked
Reine-Claude. ‘But it’s one of the reasons I could never return to England. I
was a deserter — I still am; it remains with me — and I didn’t deserve what the
others had fought and died for. There were plenty of boys my age who stuck it
out, and I ran away’

He
screwed the lid back on to the pot, not having taken any jam. And without
Anselm having to ask, he talked of his parents, that rascal Owen Doyle, and a
butcher called Albert Powick. Sabine took up the story.’ as if she’d been
there, and Anselm listened as from a distance, as he’d done in the woods, his
eyes on a mulberry tree.

The
next morning Père Sébastien, the Prior of Les Ramiers, drove Anselm to
Poperinghe, where he took the coach to Boulogne and the ferry to Folkestone. On
the train home he mused on sundry peculiarities: he’d come to the battlefields
of Flanders without visiting a single war cemetery; his sole pilgrimage had
been to the site of an execution; a copse of trees was known locally as
Flanagan’s Woods, but no one knew why; and John Lindsay a man whose only unfulfilled
desire was to visit Inisdúr, had never heard of Kate Seymour.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Time to go Home

Herbert went back to
Flanagan’s Woods frequently with a watering can, for he feared for the life of
the tree. Lisette Papinau never came to Oostbeke again — at least not to
Herbert’s knowledge. He’d waited on the anniversary of the shooting, wondering
if she might again walk solemnly along the road between the school house and
the trees, but it never happened. From this he deduced that her life had moved
on; that she had left her memorial, just as surely as Owen Doyle had left her,
and moved on also — back to England and an open future.

Over
the years Herbert grew in understanding. Of himself; and why he had come to Les
Ramiers and why he would stay His first painful lesson was the discovery that
for much of his life he’d lived outside himself, reacting to the multiplicity
of events, be they mundane or harrowing. In the silence of the monastery or out
working in the fields, he gradually noticed — with a new kind of terror — that
within himself he was quite hollow, and probably always had been. Without a jab
from the outside, he was nothing. He had no depth … none at least that he was
aware of Reluctantly fearfully Herbert began the journey inward, the voyage
that cannot be put into words or explained but only lived. And he made another
discovery: a richness of existence, intrinsic to his identity and true for all
humanity, whose depth was beyond the reach of any calamity.

Herbert
never tried to articulate the confidence that grew within him, but he noticed
that the closer he came to his final vows, the less he felt he had a ‘vocation’,
in the sense of an Office, or some-thing he had
to do.
He had simply set
about becoming
himself
Monk and man were one. The steady rhythm of life
at Les Ramiers had disclosed something basic to his humanity: he hungered for
something within reach and out of his reach; he looked to a Beyond that was
near and yet far; he sensed another place over the burning leaves, a green
Kingdom behind so many broken windows. Without wanting to study the anatomy of
association too closely Herbert obscurely linked this inner landscape with the
memory of Joseph Flanagan’s sacrifice, and the island of his birth, where the
land and the sea were one.

In the
spring of 1924 Père Lucien asked to see Herbert in the vegetable garden. The
Prior was attaching wire and posts to make a raspberry patch, despite the
designation of the location.

‘You
are due to take your final vows next year?’ said Père Lucien, his round face
uncharacteristically sad.

‘Yes,
if you think it fit,’ replied Herbert.

The
Prior wrapped wire around a post. ‘A few months ago I received a letter from
Les Moineaux in Burgundy They’re setting up a new foundation in England.
Suffolk. The Order is being asked for volunteers.’

‘No,
Father, please,’ said Herbert, his heart suddenly void. ‘I want to stay here,
this is my home.’

The
Prior stretched the wire to the next post and wrapped it tight. ‘It’s also been
a refuge, hasn’t it?’

Herbert
didn’t want to admit that Père Lucien was right. In a flash of painful
foreshortening, Herbert was back as a soldier by a pile of raked leaves.

‘I
think it’s time for you to go home, Herbert.’ The Prior waddled back to the
first post and unravelled some more wire off a spool. ‘Take your final vows in
a new monastery. You’ll lay its roots with your example. Maybe something great
will grow’

That
was the end of the conversation, for Gilbertines don’t say that much, unless
they work in the guesthouse; and Herbert recalled his first night at Les
Ramiers — suddenly precious now — when he’d read the maximum stay was for a
week, when he’d been warned that you can never escape into a cloister.

Chapter Fifty-Four

The community at Larkwood
gathered in the Chapter Room before Compline. A candle burned on a central
stand. Each of the monks drifted to their seat built into the circular wall of
stone. Everyone was present, save Sylvester. After a brief prayer the Prior
gave a summary of all that was known about Joseph Flanagan and his trial. He
then invited Anselm to take the floor. ‘This is the story Herbert never heard
of the man he’d always wanted to meet.’

Anselm
stood up.’ his arms hidden in opposing sleeves.

John Lindsay did not have
an auspicious start in life. His father was probably a merchant seaman from
Liverpool. Relationships were fluid and always bruising for Peggy, his mother.
She was found dead on Hornby docks. John ran off, leaving his four siblings to
a workhouse or an orphanage, he never did find out. Aged six, he would easily
have been swallowed by the primitive care system of the time, only he met Owen
Doyle playing by a railway shunting in Bolton. Owen, five years his elder,
brought John home to his dumbfounded mother and father. Though born in
Lancashire.’ both parents were from Irish families who’d migrated during the
Great Hunger of the previous century Nine other children shared the four rooms
where they lived. They found a corner for John and, in that tight but warm
space, he became Owen’s shadow At school they gave Mr Lever, the headmaster, a
run for his money though he grudgingly liked them both. Occasionally on a
Sunday after mass, he’d buy them sweets if their shoes were shiny and their
nails were clean.

Perhaps
all might have gone well for John. Maybe he’d have landed a warehouse job and
married one of Owen’s lively sisters. But Owen’s eyes turned red and swollen,
his skin became pale.’ and he coughed up blood into a rusted bucket. He died of
TB. And so did an infant sister. That was when John first began to rebel
against life: not after the death of his mother at the hands of some brutal
man, but after the slow, tortured decline of the boy who’d saved him; when he
learned that what you value most is only as strong as India paper. He started
petty thieving; and fighting. Mr Lever, the headmaster, tried to talk him
round, as did a priest, but there was a thrill in the disobedience, in the
anxiety of adults, in being a disappointment to good people. When he got older
Big Mr Doyle gave him a hiding with the belt from his trousers. But that didn’t
work. In truth, the family couldn’t look after him. They were grieving
themselves, for other children had died; and poverty can hamper loving. John
stopped irritating the police and began, instead, to seriously upset them. They
gave him a hiding, too.

‘This
is the boy who ran from court and joined the army in nineteen fifteen,’ said
Anselm. ‘Within a year he’d twice been sentenced to death. But on his third
approach he met Joseph Flanagan in no-man’s-land. It was a moment, I suspect,
more powerful for Flanagan than Lindsay There and then, while a battle raged,
he took the boy to a widow in Étaples whose own teenage son had been taken by
the war. And for that unwarranted leave of absence, Joseph Flanagan was
eventually tied to a chair and shot. Part of Herbert’s story and one he could
never tell, was that he helped put that chair in place. He was obedient to the
law and the circumstances of war but he nonetheless carried a burden of
responsibility for the rest of his life. That is what Herbert felt.’ I am sure.
And I’m also sure that he only discovered afterwards what Joseph Flanagan had
actually done and why He desperately tried to change the direction of the tide,
but he couldn’t. The tragedy among other tragedies is that the knowing
beforehand would have made no difference: Joseph Flanagan had committed a
capital crime at a capital moment.’