The Quality of Mercy (12 page)

‘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 on 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.’

Georg knew very well what it was – a tiny drawing by Albrecht Dürer made on his visit to Venice in 1505. It was a sketch of a woman of exquisite beauty with melancholy eyes dressed in Venetian costume – unquestionably a preliminary sketch for a famous painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Georg’s father had been given it by his father at his bar mitzvah and it had hung over his desk as long as Georg could remember. In the end, he was prevailed upon to take it. Hitler hated Vienna and the Viennese Jews in particular. It was in Vienna that he had failed as an artist and had been laughed out of the Academy of Fine Arts. The first thing he intended to do was to strip the Viennese Jews of every art treasure they possessed. He would begin with the Rothschilds but Himmler’s long arm would search out even the humblest Jew with treasures to seize.

With tears and prayers, Georg had finally parted from his parents and he was still dazed and grief-stricken. He knew he should look ahead and not dwell on the past. Of course, he could never forget his life in Vienna but he could at least make a future for himself in England as his father had begged him to do. So now, in London, he looked about him but he did not much like what he saw. London was so drab and the people so smug. He went to two Jewish refugee centres and came away determined to have nothing to do with them. He was not one of those poor lost souls. He could make it on his own. If only English cooking wasn’t so bad!

5

It was a relief to Georg and to Verity when they departed for Mersham. As Verity had assumed, Edward had asked – or rather informed – his brother that Adrian was also to be a weekend guest and so it was arranged. Georg was to take the train with Fenton, Edward’s valet, and the luggage. Edward was to drive Adrian and Verity in the Lagonda to the memorial meeting for Peter Gray and then go on to Mersham.

Edward had known Adrian as long as he had known Verity. It had been at a party in the painter’s flat that he had tracked her down after their fateful meeting the night of General Craig’s murder at Mersham almost three years before. Adrian had watched with concern Verity’s refusal to accept Edward’s love and return it. It was true they were an odd couple but he was convinced they belonged together. Both his friends were private and prickly and Adrian tried not to make the mistake of asking either of them when they were going to accept this. He had broken his rule and wondered if he had been foolish to allow himself to lecture Verity while they waited for Georg’s train at Victoria. He comforted himself with the feeling that she had been receptive. She certainly had not told him to mind his own business as she might have done a few months earlier.

The Lagonda swept out of London and into a countryside already showing signs of spring. Daffodils and primroses coloured the hedgerows and, with the hood down and the wind blowing, Edward began to feel more relaxed. He liked Adrian, though it was a standing joke between them that he could not abide his paintings, and Verity seemed calmer and quieter. It was comforting to be with someone who knew what he felt for Verity – how complicated it was loving someone who rejected marriage on principle and always put her work before her affections. Had Verity not been in the car, he and Adrian might have had one of those terse but loaded exchanges which was the closest men of Edward’s class got to baring their hearts to their friends.

When they reached the top of Tarn Hill, they followed an unmade-up track until they saw three or four cars and, just beyond, a small gathering of people wrapped in winter coats, collars raised against the wind and holding on to their hats.

‘This must be where Gray parked his car,’ Edward remarked as he brought the Lagonda to a halt beside an ancient Austin.

‘He could quite easily lug his easel and so on over there,’ Verity said, pointing to where the little group had gathered.

‘I must say,’ he shouted, removing his hat which the wind tried to sweep off his head, ‘the view is stunning but it must often have been too cold to paint.’

‘And how did he stop his easel blowing away?’ Verity shouted against the wind, clutching her hat to her head.

‘There must have been something about this view which made him want to be here whatever the discomfort,’ Adrian agreed.

In fact, the memorial meeting was held in something of a hollow and some ragged trees gave further protection so at least they could hear what was said and read.

Rather to Edward’s surprise, Adrian was one of three of Gray’s friends who had been asked to talk of what they valued in him as a man and a painter. Edward was impressed and wished he had known the man Adrian evoked so vividly. Vera read a poem by Tennyson – ‘Crossing the Bar’, which had been a favourite of her uncle’s – and an old friend of his, a man called Reginald Harman, Edward gathered from Adrian, read part of a sermon by John Donne. Then, making sure the ashes would not blow into the faces of the mourners, Vera tipped her uncle’s remains into the wind and Edward was moved – despite not having known him – and felt that a spirit had been freed.

They stood for a minute in silence, heads bowed, and Edward thought how the war had wounded a whole generation – some in the flesh, many in the soul. Now, another war threatened and new wounds were being inflicted. He prayed for his nephew Frank who might soon be called upon to fight a second war against perverted Prussian militarism. Verity closed her eyes and thought of Georg Dreiser, exiled from his country by evil men, and asked that he might find peace in his new home.

As the three of them turned to walk back to the Lagonda, Vera came up to Verity and Edward to thank them for coming.

‘I’m afraid my uncle did not have many friends. Adrian – you were one – but I think, if he had known both of you, he would have trusted you. By the way, may I introduce you to one of his oldest friends, Reginald Harman.’