The Quality of Mercy Read online

‘Yes, of course I did,’ she said, pulling herself together. ‘But it is nice to be told,’ she could not resist adding, her voice regretful, almost bitter.

  Verity felt she knew what Vera had suffered.

  ‘My mother died when I was born,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and my father was so busy – he is a lawyer, you know, a very fine one – that I hardly ever saw him when I was a child and I see him even less now that I’m so often out of the country. I think I know what it must have been like for you to be an orphan.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Vera said. ‘I’m still so upset. You mustn’t think I did not love my uncle. We adored each other. It was just that he could be a bit of a burden. And now, of course, I regret we didn’t talk more about important things.’

  Verity looked at Vera with pity. She had been entrusted to a succession of nannies and had been lonely but that was surely preferable to being a sick man’s nurse. It suddenly came back to her like a sharp pain how much she had wanted a mother when she was a child – how much she had envied other children. She shook herself mentally. It had given her strength to do the job she was doing – at least that was something to be thankful for.

  ‘He began to forget the war and his . . . his injury?’ she prompted Vera.

  ‘Of course, when he was reminded of it – when he saw a friend from those days or read a book about the war he started to . . . I don’t know . . . to have that look I recognized. I particularly dreaded November the eleventh. He refused to parade at the Cenotaph. He said he wasn’t worthy.’

  ‘What would he do if he did feel depressed?’ Verity asked, perhaps tactlessly.

  ‘After I moved out, you mean?’

  Verity nodded.

  ‘He’d telephone me. I made him put in a telephone when I moved to Lawn Road so I could check on him.’ She laughed. ‘He made such a fuss. Said he didn’t need new-fangled instruments and that he had managed quite well without one but I insisted and he was glad of it, I know. When he felt down he would ask me to go round . . .’ she hesitated, ‘or he’d take off for Tarn Hill. He had an old Bullnose Morris in which he travelled about the country . . .’

  ‘I am very sorry, Miss Gray,’ Adrian put in, seeing that she was becoming distressed. ‘It must have been an awful shock for you. We would very much like to come to the memorial meeting if we won’t be intruding.’

  ‘Not at all. Everyone is welcome.’

  Verity thought she was about to say something else but had checked herself.

  Over lunch, Verity passed on to Adrian what Edward had told her about the discovery of Peter Gray’s body at Broadlands.

  ‘Gray was a very good painter,’ he said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Very dark, in the manner of Paul Nash. As Vera was saying, his war experience had left him . . . what shall I say . . . ?’

  ‘Shell-shocked?’ Verity suggested.

  ‘Yes, but that’s not the half of it. Or rather it’s not very helpful to say he had shell shock. It’s as vague as saying he was mad. I was going to say his suffering made his paintings more powerful. They have a depth to them which I can never hope to achieve.’

  It was one of the things Verity liked about Adrian – his genuine modesty. She had an idea. ‘Mersham isn’t very far away from Tarn Hill and I know Edward will want to come and pay his respects. Why don’t you and I spend the night there and the three of us can go to the memorial meeting together? Would Charlotte like to come?’

  It amused Adrian that Verity was sure enough of Edward not to have the least doubt that she and her friends would be welcome guests of his brother. It seemed not to occur to her that she might be overstepping the line.

  ‘I would be very pleased to come if the Duke doesn’t mind but Charlotte is trying to finish a novel and the publishers are chasing her. I think they fear that any novel published just when war breaks out will sink like a stone.’

  ‘You think war is that close?’ Verity asked, interestedly.

  ‘I don’t know – probably. Isn’t that what you think? Despite what I said to you about being grateful for every day of peace, we have been expecting it for so long now that I really think it will be a relief when it’s finally declared.’

  Verity’s mind went back to Gray’s death. It didn’t some-how smell right to her.

  ‘Do you know what happened to him to drive him . . . well, mad?’

  ‘What sent Gray off his rocker? He told me once – he didn’t like talking about it . . . understandably. He said he had refused officer training because he wanted to be with the men. He had been in France from September 1916. In October 1917, when they were being very heavily shelled, two of his officers were killed in front of him. He remembered helping to pick up the bodies, or rather the pieces he could find, but nothing more. He had some sort of fit. He had no recollection of being sent down the line or being in hospital in France. He was shipped back to England. In the military hospital in Brighton, he was alternately depressed and violent. On one occasion, he attacked a doctor and twice tried to kill himself. He felt rage at having been so abused, he told me, by events he could not control. I also got the feeling that he felt guilty for having survived when so many of his friends had been killed.

  ‘He was lucky enough to find a doctor – Captain Hubert Norman, his name was – who traced the source of his madness back to before the war. As a child, he had suffered a bad bout of pneumonia and had pains in his head and felt that life was not worth living. Anyway, thanks to Norman, he recovered after a fashion and found in painting a way of overcoming his depression. Every now and again though he would have another attack. He was very angry at the Ministry of Pensions which defined people like him – ordinary servicemen, not officers, of course – as “post-war inefficients”. He was labelled a “psychiatric casualty of war”. One forgets but people like Gray were officially termed “harmless lunatics”. He, at least, was spared being “segregated” – in other words locked up in an asylum where the mentally ill would be “free of all responsibility”, as the authorities put it. You can imagine that the condition of most of those shut up in institutions away from their family and friends quickly deteriorated.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Very exclaimed. ‘It makes me feel quite ashamed. So, after the war . . .?’

  ‘Gray had a bad knock in 1919 when his wife died of influenza like so many millions of others. He was left without his strongest support and with the responsibility of bringing up Vera on his own. An old aunt or cousin of his came to help but he hinted that she wasn’t much use. He had a bad relapse in 1921 and was sent to Storthes Hall Asylum in Yorkshire for “Insane Ex-Service Men”. I visited him there once. It was an awful place. If you weren’t depressed when you went in, you certainly were when you came out. What he saw there made Gray a bitter opponent of locking people away without proper psychiatric care just to get them out of the way. I remember he said he was frequently punished for not showing due deference to the doctors and for “putting on airs”.

  ‘I don’t know what the rights and wrongs of it were. No doubt he was a difficult patient. Vera says she’s sure everything was done with the best intentions. I think the truth is that Storthes Hall was a kind of failed Craiglockhart – that excellent hospital where they did pioneering work on shell-shocked troops. Sassoon’s written about it. Now it was different. Gone was the urgency of the war but the patients were still treated as failed soldiers. There was now no battlefront to which these men were to be returned. Anyway, Storthes Hall was eventually wound up in 1931 and the inmates sent to other asylums or hospitals.

  ‘I know Gray regularly visited friends from Storthes at a place called Brookwood in Surrey. It was one of the mental hospitals to which patients from Storthes were sent. I knew when he had been because he always came back sane but very depressed. It was very hard for Vera. She hardly had a life of her own. That was why it was such a wonderful thing when she was able to move away – not far but the physical separation was the important thing. There was never much money – Gray had a tiny pension from the army
– but Lawn Road is a sort of co-operative and she pays very little rent.’

  ‘Did Gray sell his pictures?’ Verity asked.

  ‘Not many. They were too repetitive. The view from Tarn Hill doesn’t have quite the same fascination for others as it has . . . had for him. Just recently, however, I gather he was being “discovered” and getting quite good prices.’

  Verity had been listening intently as she chewed at her lamb chop. She suddenly started and looked at her watch. ‘Oh God! I must go. I’m meeting my refugee at Victoria in half an hour. I almost forgot.’

  ‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Adrian said gallantly.

  ‘Would you really? I’d be so grateful. Edward was going to come but he telephoned this morning to say he couldn’t make it. I don’t know why but I feel a bit nervy about the whole thing. I’m not used to having someone to look after.’

  ‘I thought he was going to stay at Mersham?’

  ‘Yes, in due course, but he’s staying with me in Cranmer Court for a day or two at least. He has to get a job and that means being in London and he can’t afford to stay anywhere half decent. He wasn’t able to take any money out of Austria. He’s been staying with a Jewish refugee group in Switzerland while his papers to come here were finalized.’

  ‘How good’s his English?’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘I’ve got a friend at the BBC. I think they are looking for people to broadcast to Europe in the event of war. I could put him in touch.’

  ‘Oh, would you, Adrian? That would be marvellous. He’s very intelligent.’

  Adrian paid the bill and they got a taxi in Charlotte Street. ‘I’m so jumpy,’ Verity confessed. ‘What if he doesn’t find a job? What if he hangs around and I can’t get rid of him?’

  ‘Hold on, Verity. You’ve done a good thing and there’s no point in getting jittery about it. From what you tell me, he’ll find his feet soon enough. Think of the thousands of Jews who don’t speak English or French and don’t have friends abroad to guarantee them. They won’t find it easy to reach safety.’

  ‘You think I did right? I always said in Spain that, as I was a reporter, I ought not to get emotionally involved. I mean, I saw so many poor starving people – children as young as three begging in the streets. I had to harden myself against all that suffering or I could not have done my job.’

  ‘I understand but this is different. Your reporting has convinced us – most of us, anyway – that Germany is doing what no civilized country has ever done. The murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people means we have to do what we can, however little, to help. Am I wrong?’

  ‘You are right but it’s so difficult to think clearly. I’m so selfish. I want to help but I can’t bear the idea of having my liberty circumscribed. That’s why I know I would be a bad mother. I’d abandon my children and be destroyed by guilt.’

  ‘Don’t torture yourself.’ Adrian laughed. ‘You’re no monster. You just have what most people would say are male priorities.’

  The train was late, of course, and they sat in the tearoom at Victoria drinking watery coffee. They considered going to the news cinema in the station but Verity said she had had a bellyful of bad news and did not want more.

  ‘By the way, Adrian, how’s Basil? I gather that toad of a man lodges my dog with you when he’s in London.’ She laughed to show she was joking ‘I’m so grateful. I hope he isn’t too much of a handful.’

  ‘Well, he is rather large for London. He spends most of his time at Mersham which is what he needs – somewhere to romp around. Our little house isn’t nearly big enough but I must say I’ve grown rather fond of him.’

  ‘Why Adam had to give me such a large dog! Maybe he thought it had to be big to fill the gap he would leave.’

  ‘Oh Verity!’ Adrian exclaimed, seeing her distress. ‘Look, it’s against all my principles but may I give you some advice?’

  ‘As long as you don’t expect me to take it,’ she replied, managing a smile. ‘Anyway, I know what you are going to say – forget Adam and appreciate what I’ve got in Edward.’

  ‘That’s just it. It’s got through your thick skull at last, has it? Anyone with half a brain can see you love him so why not accept it and make him happy? He doesn’t deserve to be messed around and if he gets fed up and you lose him . . . well, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’

  ‘Golly, Adrian, I’ve never heard you so serious.’

  ‘I am serious. The fact is I care about you – we both do – and it makes Charlotte cross to see you looking elsewhere for something which is staring you in the face.’

  Verity made a moue and said, ‘Point taken. I’ve been thinking along the same lines if you must know. Now, let’s change the subject. You don’t want me to cry, do you? I’ve noticed that the one thing guaranteed to embarrass a man is for him to be seen making a girl cry in public.’

  At last the train was signalled and they congregated with a crowd of other anxious-looking people on the platform.

  Georg was one of the last passengers to alight and, when he saw Verity, he smiled with relief. She was shocked at his appearance and had difficulty in returning his smile. He seemed to have lost weight. He was very white and his face had an unhealthy pallor. His eyes were bright but set in dark circles and his voice was gentle yet resonant. He had with him only a small suitcase which he refused to let Adrian carry. His overcoat was shabby and had evidently been slept in. He was deferential and, though obviously relieved to be at his journey’s end, clearly fearful and homesick. Adrian, for the first time, began to understand what it was to be a refugee – dependent on the charity of strangers.

  Georg bowed and made to kiss Verity’s hand but changed his mind at the last moment. He merely said how grateful he was that she had come to meet him. Adrian, listening to his dark velvet voice, decided he might indeed be a natural broadcaster.

  Verity, dismayed and a little scared, was glad Adrian had come with her. In London, this shabby, lost soul was nothing like the confident young man she had met in Vienna and had pictured striding down the platform to meet her. Her heart sank as she realized what she had taken on and she fussed over Georg to hide her anxiety, which made him all the more embarrassed as he sensed her unease.

  The next couple of days were difficult for both of them. Georg, as Verity had feared, was rather a burden despite making every effort to be invisible. He slept in her spare room and did not wake up – or at least get up – until she had left for the New Gazette but she was always aware of his presence which irked her though she knew she was being unreasonable.

  His presence was just one of the things which made her fretful. It was taking more time than she had hoped for Lord Weaver to secure her papers of accreditation so she could return to Vienna. It made her restless and irritable to be stuck in London while history was being made. Adrian took it upon himself to take Georg about and show him the sights. He had never been to London and together they went to the Tower, the National Gallery and the Zoo. This last proved to be a mistake because the animals in their cages seemed to depress him. He was worrying about his parents and wrote to them though without much hope of a reply.

  On the Friday they were to go to Mersham, Georg became visibly agitated. He told Verity that he had some important information for the British Government which he would exchange for help in getting his family out of Vienna. He wouldn’t expatiate on the nature of this information except that it concerned weaponry. Verity informed Edward who tried to get him an interview with a Foreign Office friend who, he thought, might be able to help. The friend had already left London for the weekend and it was agreed that the meeting would take place the following week. She remembered what Owen Coombs had said about wanting to capture Georg for the Party but decided that her first loyalty was to her country. If Georg had anything of interest to say, he must say it first to one of Edward’s friends in the Foreign Office.

  Georg professed himself satisfied with the plan but he remained o
n edge, reading the papers avidly and listening to the news on the wireless whenever he could. He could not understand why the British seemed so uninterested in the Anschluss and complained to Adrian about British complacency.

  ‘You believe the English Channel will protect you from invasion. It won’t.’ Angrily, he smacked his copy of The Times. ‘You are worried about the flood of Jewish refugees – I notice it is always “a flood” – instead of taking it as a warning of what is to come. And you are not really interested in what is happening to the Jews in the new Reich.’

  It was not easy, Adrian explained, for ordinary English people to understand what it meant to be a refugee. Quite simply, they had no experience of it. The French, the Russians, the Czechs and the Poles all knew what it was like to have their country invaded and to have to run for their lives leaving everything behind. The English did not.

  Georg’s anxiety about his parents was fuelled by guilt. He was safe in England and they were in imminent danger of being sent to a concentration camp. He had to get them out before it was too late and to ignore what he knew in his heart to be the truth – his parents would never leave their home until they were removed by force. When he had gone to say goodbye to his mother and father it was a final leave-taking. His father was frail after his time in prison and seemed fatalistic about the future.

  ‘Your mother and I are too old to start a new life in a new country. You go, my boy. You have your whole life in front of you. We shall stay and hope to be ignored.’

  Georg’s mother wanted to give him money but he knew he would be searched at the frontier and, if he was found trying to smuggle money out of the country, he might be turned back or sent to a prison camp.

  ‘Well then, take this,’ she said and pressed into his hand a small parcel – not more than three inches square and an inch thick.

  ‘I can’t take this,’ he protested.

  ‘Yes, you can . . . you must. It will be stolen or destroyed if it stays here. You can sell it when you get to England. It is all we have to give you.’