The Quality of Mercy by David Roberts Page B

is very therapeutic,’ Adrian said, trying to be soothing.
    ‘Yes, it is, but it was simpler than that. I think, as time passed, he began to forget. He was beginning to forget everything.’ She laughed nervously. ‘I mean,’ she seemed to correct herself, ‘he began to forget the past. That was good, of course. To tell the truth, I’d heard enough of his war memories.’
    Verity looked at her curiously and, catching her glance, saw that she thought she had revealed rather too much.
    ‘I was very glad for him, of course. The horrors of the war, which had almost unhinged him, faded. He stopped having nightmares. There were so many nights when I heard him screaming. When I was younger, I put my fingers in my ears and hid under the bedclothes but later on I used to go into his room and try to soothe him.’ She shuddered. ‘The sight of him writhing in a tangle of sheets, sweating like a . . . It almost broke my heart.’
    ‘It must have been awful,’ Verity said with feeling. ‘Adrian said you were an orphan . . .?’
    ‘Yes. It was very Victorian. Bleak House is a favourite of mine. I can so easily identify with the Jarndyce children. You remember the wards of court who went to live with their cousin?’
    Verity had not read Bleak House and looked puzzled. Seeing she had to explain a little more, Vera continued, ‘My parents died in a railway accident when I was a baby. My uncle and aunt, who had no children of their own, took me in.’
    ‘I see, but your aunt . . .’
    ‘She died a year or two after. I don’t remember her. I wish I did.’
    ‘So your uncle had to look after you alone? That was brave of him.’
    ‘Yes, wasn’t it? He ought to have put me in orphanage. For a time, he had an old woman to look after me – a cousin of his – but we didn’t really get on. I must have been a very tiresome child.’
    ‘But you repaid the debt to your uncle a hundred times,’ Adrian said. ‘You were the light of his life. You looked after him and kept him sane.’
    Vera looked surprised at his vehemence and he started to apologize. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that but he told me so himself.’
    ‘Did he really? I wish he had told me,’ she said wistfully.
    ‘But you must have known?’
    ‘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