The Last Judgement

‘It may well be,’ the Canadian woman interrupted, ‘if this picture was a factor in Arthur’s death. He’d been trying to find out about his father for the last couple of years. Ever since my mother died.’

‘Why since then?’

‘Because that was when he got his parents’ letters. She’d never passed them on. She and Dad didn’t want to rake up the past. They felt that Arthur had enough to deal with—’

Flavia held up her hand. ‘From the beginning...?’ she suggested.

‘Very well. Arthur came to Canada in 1944, after a long voyage via Argentina. He’d been evacuated from France when his parents felt it was too dangerous for him to stay. How they got him out I’m not sure. He was only four when he arrived, and didn’t remember much. All he could recall was being told by his mother to be good, and everything would be all right. And being cold, hidden in the backs of lorries and carts as he crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, then a long boat ride to Buenos Aires, then moving from person to person until he was shipped off to Canada and my parents. He was frightened all the time. My parents agreed to take him in. Family and business connections. I think the idea was to look after him until peace came, then he’d go home. But peace did come, and both his parents were dead.’

‘What happened to his mother?’

She held up her hand to stop her. ‘I’ll come to that.’ She paused to gather her thoughts, then restarted. ‘He had no family of any real sort who wanted him, and so my parents adopted him legally. Gave him their name, and tried to erase everything that had happened. Pretend it never had happened.

‘Psychologists now say it’s the worst thing you can do. That was not what they thought then. My parents were good people; they consulted everybody about what to do for the best. But children should know who they are and where they come from. They can deal better with unpleasant truths they know than with phantasms. In Arthur’s case he constructed an entire fantasy world to fill out the gaps in his knowledge. His father was a great man. A hero, killed in battle defending France. He had maps showing where his father had fought, where he’d fallen surrounded by mourning comrades. Where he’d died in the arms of his devoted and loving wife. He discovered the truth when he was ten. An impressionable age. Perhaps the worst possible moment.’

‘And that truth was...?’

‘That truth was that his father was a traitor, a Nazi sympathizer and a murderer, who had spied on and betrayed members of the Resistance to the occupation forces in 1943. His wife, Arthur’s own mother, was one of the people whom he betrayed. She was arrested and apparently executed without his doing a thing to save her. When he was exposed he fled the country, then came back after the Liberation. But he was recognized and arrested, and hanged himself as the case against him was being prepared. He didn’t even have the courage to face his trial.

‘How Arthur discovered this I don’t know. And I can’t even begin to guess how some of his fellow pupils at the local school found out. But they did, as kids do, and tormented him. Children are often cruel, and this was 1950, when the memory of the war was still strong. Arthur’s life was sheer hell and there was not much we could do. It was uncertain whom he hated more: his father for what he did, his fellow pupils for persecuting him, or us for concealing it. But from about then all he wanted to do was leave. Get out of the small town where we lived, get out of Canada, and go away.

‘He managed it when he was eighteen. He went to university, then got a job in America. He never lived in Canada again, and never really had much contact with any of us afterwards, except for the occasional letter and phone call. As he grew older I think he accepted more that my parents had done their best; but family life, of any sort, he could never take. He never married; never even had any serious relationship with anyone, as far as I know. He wasn’t strong enough or confident enough. Instead he got on with living and making a success of himself. In work at least, he succeeded.’

‘And then your mother died?’

She nodded. ‘That’s right. Two years ago, and we had to clear out her house. A sad job; all those years of papers and documents and photographs, all to be got rid of. And there was the will, of course. There wasn’t much; my parents had never been rich, but they still treated Arthur as though he was their son, as they always had, even though he’d gone his own way. I think he was grateful for that; he appreciated the effort, even though he couldn’t respond. He came back for the funeral, then stayed to help me clear out the house. We’d always got on well. I think that I was as close to him as anyone ever was.’