The Quality of Mercy (31 page)

‘Well, I hope you will tell him not to betray Czechoslovakia – at least not until I’ve learnt the language.’

Weaver chuckled. ‘You don’t need to learn the language. They all speak German, some French and a few speak English. You’ll be all right.’

‘They wouldn’t have me back in Vienna?’

‘Wouldn’t hear of it! You must have been doing something right. I’ve never heard Ribbentrop be so rude about anyone. In any case, Vienna’s a backwater now. You have to be one step ahead of Hitler. The Sudetenland is next, mark my words.’

‘Will we go to war over it?’

‘Over a few German-speaking Czechs joining the Reich? Certainly not.’

‘But if he takes over the whole country?’

‘He won’t – not yet, at least. He’s still got a lot to do in Austria.’

‘Jews to kill?’ Verity asked ironically.

Weaver was unperturbed. ‘I was sorry to hear about your Jew. Sounded an interesting man. What a bizarre way to die. Talking of Jews – your idea of getting us involved in the
Kindertransport
was inspired.
New Gazette
readers have been writing to us in their hundreds expressing their outrage at Hitler’s heartlessness and many are sending cheques and postal orders. And the photographs – very moving. This is the way to mobilize public opinion. A single photograph of a weeping child holding a teddy bear is worth a hundred of Winston’s speeches. That reminds me, he was talking to me about you the other day. He seems to think highly of you though I’m not sure why. I don’t know what you said to him at that dinner party. I thought you hated his guts. I counted on there being an almighty row.’

‘If that’s what you wanted, I think you made a mistake inviting Unity Mitford, Joe. Next to her, Mr Churchill seemed a moderate.’

‘So you are open to argument! I never would have thought it.’

‘Don’t tease, Joe. Of course I can be persuaded to change my opinions. I hadn’t met Mr Churchill until that evening and he wasn’t anything like I expected. He ought to be in the cabinet.’

Weaver looked at her in genuine amazement. ‘Well, fancy that! Our most notorious Communist makes common cause with the man who broke the General Strike! You’ll be telling me next you’re going to marry Edward.’

Verity tried not to blush and decided to make a determined effort to keep to the less dangerous subject of Churchill. ‘I’m not saying I agree with everything he does and says but, as far as the one big thing is concerned, he is right and almost every other politician is wrong.’

‘Hmm! Well, I’m going to throw you out now.’ He touched a bell under his desk. ‘You are flying from Croydon on Thursday. You go via Paris. Best not to go anywhere a German agent might kidnap you.’ He saw the look of disbelief on her face. ‘You can say I’m talking poppycock – I probably am but stranger things have happened. Think of what happened to your friend von Trott. By the way, have you heard anything from him?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘You count your lucky stars you got out of Vienna alive. It’s not only Henderson who hates your guts.’

Weaver’s secretary came in to say his car was waiting and to hand over to Verity her letters of accreditation and other necessary documents.

‘Can I give you a lift?’ he flung at her but, before she could ask him would he mind dropping her in Sloane Square, he had disappeared. She smiled at the secretary, whom she knew well. ‘I’d best get used to finding my own way, I suppose!’

By eight thirty she was in the Ritz being handed a note from her father. ‘A hundred apologies,’ it read, ‘but something has come up and I have to fly to Paris tonight. Tried to get you on the telephone but no answer. Have a very expensive dinner on me – with a friend if you have one. What about that nice man Corinth you treat so badly? Know you’ll understand. The same in your profession, I don’t doubt. Your loving father.’

Verity crumpled the sheet of paper in her hand and asked the attendant to return her cloak. With as much dignity as she could manage, she got into a taxi and returned to Cranmer Court. She sat on the edge of her bed cursing her father and all the men who had let her down. She then thought of Edward and burst into tears. She picked up the telephone and dialled his number. Of course she would marry him – the one man who had never let her down. It was Fenton who answered. His master was engaged and could not be disturbed. Was there a message? She said there was not. If there were, it was not one she could relay to Edward through his valet.

Feeling exceedingly sorry for herself, she lay on the bed, still in her Chanel dress, and cried like a little girl for the mother she had never known until, eventually, she slept.

14

As Edward reached the steps of Albany, he noticed a young woman. She had her back to him and was engaged in conversation with one of the porters. She turned and, to his surprise, he saw that it was Vera Gray. He was still in good spirits after his interview with Liddell so he raised his hat and greeted her cheerfully.

‘What are you doing in this part of the world, Miss Gray? Were you coming to see me?’

It crossed his mind that she might have developed an interest in him, which would be embarrassing, but when she spoke he realized this was not her motive in seeking him out.

‘I feel awful coming to see you unannounced, Lord Edward, but I thought I would take the chance that you might be in. I’ve just been visiting the Royal Academy.’

‘I’m delighted to see you. Come in and have a cup of tea or something stronger. I’m sure we deserve it.’

He ushered her into the drawing-room and set about making cocktails – a ritual of shaking and rattling he much enjoyed. He was talking lightly of trivial matters – asking about preparations for her uncle’s exhibition and how her own work was progressing – when she stopped him with a gesture and an odd noise somewhere between a sob and a gasp.

‘The truth is, Lord Edward, I have something to confess.’

‘To confess?’ Edward repeated, at a loss to know what she meant. ‘What is there to confess? If you mean about your uncle . . .’

‘I do mean about my uncle, yes.’ There was something desperate in her tone of voice as though she had nerved herself to say what she needed to say and could not bear to be prevented from speaking.

Edward poured out the cocktails, wondering whether whisky might not have been more appropriate, and sat down opposite her.

‘Now tell me what’s bothering you. Have you discovered something among your uncle’s papers to distress you?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. The fact is . . . I wanted to tell you that I killed him.’

‘My dear! No! I simply don’t believe it. You were the most loving niece a man could wish for. A daughter could not have cared for him better. What possible reason could you have for . . . for doing that?’

She put her cocktail down heavily on the table beside her chair, spilling much of it. She did not notice what she had done and continued to stare at Edward in mute horror.

‘There was a moment when I thought you had guessed why I did it. I killed him because I could not bear it to happen all over again.’

‘For what to happen all over again?’ It came to him in a flash. ‘You mean his depressions?’

She nodded her head slowly. ‘Not so much depressions this time but . . . well, at first he became forgetful. He forgot to eat or wash.’

‘He was still painting.’

‘How can I make you understand? He used to take his painting kit up to Tarn Hill and do exactly the same picture he had done before.’

‘But that was a tribute, or at least I thought it was, to the place where he had been happy – where he courted his wife.’

‘It began like that but towards . . . towards the end he did not know why he was painting that picture – except that it was the only one he
could
still paint. You see, he had done it so many times before that he didn’t need to think about it. His body took over.’

‘You mean he was going senile?’ Vera nodded. ‘Did you take him to a doctor . . .? Surely he wasn’t old enough to go senile? ’

‘The doctor said it was probably brought on by his breakdown during the war but I blame it on the ergot. He said my uncle would soon need full-time nursing and that I ought to make arrangements. I told him I couldn’t afford it. The doctor said, cool as anything, that it was my job. I was to be his nurse. I asked about putting him in a home. He said that, if I couldn’t afford nurses, I wouldn’t be able to afford a private hospital. I asked if there were any public ones and he looked at me as if I had asked for an abortion. He said coldly that no one would put a man like my uncle in a public hospital if they had ever seen inside one.’

‘So you killed him rather than see him deteriorate?’

‘I killed him to save my own sanity,’ she said bitterly. ‘I am so selfish! I just couldn’t face twenty or even thirty years trapped with someone who didn’t even know his own name . . . someone whose every need I had to see to . . . someone who could not even go to the lavatory on his own. That was what the doctor said I was faced with.’ Her voice became shrill as she relived her panic. ‘It wasn’t as if he was an old man and, you see, my childhood was given over to looking after him. You can’t imagine what it was like. I was his slave. I always had to be at his beck and call. When he was in one of his depressions, I was the only one who could soothe him. Twice I came back from school to find he had cut his wrists. When he was himself, he was the kindest man imaginable but, at the back of my mind, I always feared the black dog – that was what he called it – would come and spoil everything. And it always did.

‘As a child, the burden of it almost drove me mad. I couldn’t pay attention at school. I was naughty and even wild. The teachers despaired of me. I had very few friends and those I had I did not dare take home. As I got older, I saw my life slipping away. I had no boyfriends. Well, I didn’t mind that so much, but I wanted to paint and I couldn’t. I was stifled. I was always anxious, always looking for signs that the black dog was coming. Oh dear! I can’t explain it to someone like you who has never had to be at anyone’s beck and call. It’s a prison without bars but a prison nonetheless.’

‘What were the signs that your uncle was going to have one of his depressions?’

‘He would be angry for no good reason. Normally, he was the mildest of men. He stopped sleeping, and then he would have these nightmares.’ She shuddered. ‘You don’t want to hear all this. You must think I’m just trying to make excuses for what I did.’

‘These nightmares,’ Edward persisted, feeling instinctively that Vera needed to talk about what she had suffered, ‘what form did they take?’

‘I would hear him groaning in his sleep. You can’t imagine how frightening that was. Then the next night he would be shrieking. I would go and try to wake him but it was surprisingly difficult. Sometimes, if I woke him too suddenly, he became violent.’

‘He would hit you?’

‘Not deliberately. He would be dreaming he was at the front and his friends were being blown to pieces all around him. He would punch the air – as if he was fighting to escape some net.’

‘And when he woke?’

‘Then he would cry. In some ways that was worst of all. As a child, to find my uncle weeping like a baby . . . I would feel so helpless . . . so sad.’

‘And during the day?’

‘I would go off to school and, while I was out of the house, I knew he would be thinking about killing himself. He could not bear the idea of going to bed and suffering those nightmares again. He tried drink but that did not work. He hated whisky and, if he tried to make himself drunk, it just made him more suicidal. The only thing which helped then was ergot but, as you know, it has side effects. It gave him hallucinations and he couldn’t paint. In the end, I think the ergot brought on his dementia but, at the time, it was better than nothing.’

‘Weren’t there any friends you could call on?’

‘When I was very young there was Auntie May, as I called her – though I think she was really a cousin of some sort. She couldn’t cope with me or Uncle Peter. After that, there were some friends . . . painters for the most part, like Reg Harman. But they had their own lives to lead and my uncle was reclusive by nature. He made it difficult for his friends to help him.’

‘He didn’t teach or anything?’

‘He tried teaching but, unlike Reg, he wasn’t good at it. In the end, the Slade more or less sacked him.’

‘But things got better and then you were able to move to Lawn Road?’

‘Yes, as a new war loomed, Uncle Peter – in an odd way – became happier. He stopped having nightmares of the trenches. I thought he had recovered and it was all going to be all right. For the first time I had the freedom to live my own life, paint my own pictures. I have never been so happy as I was in my little flat – my own living space. Virginia Woolf said that all creative women – sorry, does this sound pretentious – anyway, she said we need a “room of one’s own” to escape domestic life for a few hours and she was right.

‘I knew it could not last but it was so brief . . . so very brief.’ Vera hung her head and mumbled. ‘I had been out of the cage for such a short time and suddenly – talking to that awful doctor – I realized that I would have to move back to the flat and look after him – maybe for years. I might die before him. I just . . . I just thought I couldn’t do it. I think of myself as a strong person but I knew I couldn’t go through with it.’

‘You couldn’t have found someone to help you . . .?’

‘I told you, there was no money and anyway, I would have felt guilty not looking after him myself. After all, he was a real artist and I’m . . . I’m a nobody. People would have said that he took me in as an orphan. Now it was my turn to care for him.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘Well, the weeks went by and I became more and more desperate. In the end, I decided to give him ergot – there was plenty left – a dose big enough to kill him.’ She faltered for the first time and Edward saw the tears running down her face. ‘I thought I would take him up to his favourite place and let him die where he was happiest. And so that was what I did. Only I forgot the palette knife he always used and Miss Browne found it in the studio.’

‘I remember. But why didn’t you tell her that you had opened his paintbox and the knife must have fallen out?’