Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  Tempest turned round in her chair. “Hush, Mr. Mannering.” she said, tapping Percy on the shoulder.

  Percy looked at her and roared, “Ha! Do you know what you can tell Satan to do with Dye-lan Thomas’s poetry?” He sat back to observe, with his two-fanged gloat, the effect of this question, which he next answered in unprintable terms, causing Mrs. Pettigrew to say, “Gracious!” and to wipe the corners of her mouth with her handkerchief. Meanwhile various commotions arose at the other tables and the senior waitress said, “Not in here, sir!”

  Godfrey’s disgust was arrested by fear that the party might now break up. While everyone’s attention was still on Percy he hastily took a couple of the cellophane-wrapped cakes from the top tier of the cakestand, and stuffed them into his pocket. He looked round and felt sure no one had noticed the action.

  Janet Sidebottome leaned over to Mrs. Pettigrew. “What did he say?” she said.

  “Well, Miss Sidebottome,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, meanwhile glancing at herself sideways in a glass on the wall, “as far as I could comprehend, he was talking about some gentleman indelicately.”

  “Poor Lisa,” said Janet. Tears came to her eyes. She kissed her relatives and departed. Lisa’s nephew and his wife sidled away, though before they had reached the door they were summoned back by Tempest because the nephew had left his scarf. Eventually, the couple were permitted to go. Percy Mannering remained grinning in his seat.

  To Godfrey’s relief Mrs. Pettigrew refilled his cup. She also poured one for herself, but when Percy passed his shaking cup she ignored it. Percy said, “Hah! That was strong meat for you ladies, wasn’t it?” He reached for the teapot. “I hope it wasn’t me made Lisa’s sister cry,” he said solemnly. “I’d be sorry to have made her cry.” The teapot was too heavy for his quivering fingers and fell from them on to its side, while a leafy brown sea spread from the open lid over the tablecloth and on to Godfrey’s trousers.

  Tempest rose, pushing back her chair as if she meant business. She was followed to the calamitous table by Dame Lettie and a waitress. While Godfrey was being sponged, Lettie took the poet by the arm and said, “Please go.” Tempest, busy with Godfrey’s trousers, called over her shoulder to her husband, “Ronald, you’re a man. Give Dame Lettie a hand.”

  “What? Who?” said Ronald.

  “Wake up, Ronald. Can’t you see what has to be done? Help Dame Lettie to take Mr. Mannering outside.”

  “Oh,” said Ronald, “why, someone’s spilt their tea!” He ogled the swimming tablecloth.

  Percy shook off Dame Lettie’s hand from his arm and, grinning to right and left, buttoning up his thin coat, departed.

  A place was made for Godfrey and Mrs. Pettigrew at the Sidebottomes’ table. “Now we shall have a fresh pot of tea,” said Tempest. Everyone gave deep sighs. The waitresses cleaned up the mess. The room was noticeably quiet.

  Dame Lettie started to question Mrs. Pettigrew about her future plans. Godfrey was anxious to overhear this conversation. He was not sure that he wanted Lisa Brooke’s housekeeper to look after Charmian. She might be too old or too expensive. She looked a smart woman, she might have expensive ideas. And he was not sure that Charmian would not have to go into a home.

  “There’s no definite offer, of course,” he interposed.

  “Well, Mr. Colston, as I was saying,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “I can’t make any plans, myself, until things are settled.”

  “What things?” said Godfrey.

  “Godfrey, please,” said Lettie, “Mrs. Pettigrew and I are having a chat.” She slumped her elbow on the table and turned to Mrs. Pettigrew, cutting off her brother from view.

  “What is your feeling about the service?” said Tempest.

  Godfrey looked round at the waitresses. “Very satisfactory,” he said. “That older one handled that Mannering very well, I thought.”

  Tempest closed her eyes as one who prays for grace. “I mean,” she said, “poor Lisa’s rites at the crematorium.”

  “Oh,” said Godfrey, “you should have said funeral service. When you said the service, naturally I thought—”

  “What do you feel about the cremation service?”

  “First rate,” said Godfrey. “I’ve quite decided to be cremated when my time comes. Cleanest way. Dead bodies under the ground only contaminate our water supplies. You should have said cremation service in the first place.”

  “I thought it was cold,” said Tempest. “I do wish the minister had read out poor Lisa’s obituary. The last cremation I was at—that was Ronald’s poor brother Henry—they read out his obituary from the Nottingham Guardian, all about his war service and his work for SSAFA and Road Safety. It was so very moving. Now why couldn’t they have read out Lisa’s? All that in the papers about what she did for the Arts, he should have read it out to us.”

  “I quite agree,” said Godfrey. “It was the least he could have done. Did you make a special request for it?”

  “No,” she sighed. “I left the arrangements to Ronald. Unless you do everything yourself…”

  “They always get very violent about other poets,” said Ronald. “You see, they feel very personal about poetry.”

  “Whatever is he talking about?” said Tempest. “He’s talking about Mr. Mannering, that’s what he’s on about. We aren’t talking about Mr, Mannering, Ronald. Mr. Mannering’s left, it’s a thing of the past. We’ve gone on to something else.”

  As they rose to leave Godfrey felt a touch on his arm. Turning round he saw Guy Leet behind him, his body crouched over his sticks and his baby face raised askew to Godfrey’s.

  “Got your funeral-baked meats all right?” said Guy.

  “What?” said Godfrey.

  Guy nodded his head towards Godfrey’s pocket which bulged with the cakes. “Taking them home to Charmian?”

  “Yes,” said Godfrey.

  “And how is Charmian?”

  Godfrey had partly regained his poise. “She’s in wonderful form,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he said, “to see you having such a difficult time. Must be terrible not being able to get about on your own pins.”

  Guy gave a high laugh. He came close to Godfrey and breathed into his waistcoat, “But I did get about, dear fellow. At least I did.”

  On the way home Godfrey threw the cakes out of his car window. Why did one pocket those damned things? he thought. One doesn’t need them, one could buy up every cake-shop in London and never miss the money. Why did one do it? It doesn’t make sense.

  “I have been to Lisa Brooke’s funeral,” he said to Charmian when he got home, “or rather, cremation.”

  Charmian remembered Lisa Brooke; she had cause to remember her. “Personally, I’m afraid,” said Charmian, “that Lisa was a little spiteful to me sometimes, but she had her better side. A generous nature when dealing with the right person, but—”

  “Guy Leet was there,” said Godfrey. “He’s nearly finished now, bent over two sticks.”

  Charmian said, “Oh, and what a clever man he was!”

  “Clever?” said Godfrey.

  Charmian, when she saw Godfrey’s face, giggled squeakily through her nose.

  “I have quite decided to be cremated when my time comes,” said Godfrey. “It is the cleanest way. The cemeteries only pollute our water supplies. Cremation is best.”

  “I do so agree with you,” said Charmian sleepily.

  “No, you do not agree with me,” he said. “R.C.’s are not allowed to be cremated.”

  “I mean, I’m sure you are right, Eric dear.”

  “I am not Eric,” said Godfrey. “You are not sure I’m right. Ask Mrs. Anthony, she’ll tell you that R.C.’s are against cremation.” He opened the door and bawled for Mrs. Anthony. She came in with a sigh.

  “Mrs. Anthony, you’re a Roman Catholic, aren’t you?” said Godfrey.

  “That’s right. I’ve got something on the stove.”

  “Do you believe in cremation?”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t
really much like the idea of being shoved away quick like that. I feel somehow it’s sort of—”

  “It isn’t a matter of how you feel, it’s a question of what your Church says you’ve not got to do. Your Church says you must not be cremated, that’s the point.”

  “Well, as I say, Mr. Colston, I don’t really fancy the idea-”

  “‘Fancy the idea’…It is not a question of what you fancy. You have no choice in the matter, do you see?”

  “Well, I always like to see a proper burial, I always like—”

  “It’s a point of discipline in your Church,” he said, “that you mustn’t be cremated. You women don’t know your own system.”

  “I see, Mr. Colston. I’ve got something on the stove.”

  “I believe in cremation, but you don’t—Charmian, you disapprove of cremation, you understand.”

  “Very well, Godfrey.”

  “And you too, Mrs. Anthony.”

  “O.K., Mr. Colston.”

  “On principle,” said Godfrey.

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Anthony and disappeared.

  Godfrey poured himself a stout whisky and soda. He took from a drawer a box of matches and a razor blade and set to work, carefully splitting the slim length of each match, so that from one box of matches he would eventually make two boxfuls. And while he worked he sipped his drink with satisfaction.

  Chapter Four

  The reason Lisa Brooke’s family arranged her post-funeral party at a tea-shop rather than at her small brick studio-house at Hampstead was this. Mrs. Pettigrew, her housekeeper, was still in residence there. The family had meanwhile discovered that Lisa had bequeathed most of her fortune to Mrs. Pettigrew whom they had long conceived as an unfortunate element in Lisa’s life. They held this idea in the way that people often are obscurely right, though the suspicions that lead up to their conclusions are faulty. Whatever they suspected was the form that Mrs. Pettigrew’s influence over Lisa took, they hoped to contest Lisa’s will if possible, on the grounds that Lisa, when she made it, was not in her right mind, and probably under undue influence of Mrs. Pettigrew.

  The very form of the will, they argued, proved that Lisa had been unbalanced when she made it. The will had not been drafted by a lawyer. It was a mere sheet of writing paper, witnessed by the charwoman and her daughter a year before Lisa’s death, bequeathing her entire fortune “to my husband if he survives me, and thereafter to my housekeeper, Mabel Pettigrew.” Now Lisa, so her relatives believed, had no husband alive. Old Brooke was long dead, and moreover Lisa had been divorced from him during the Great War. She must have been dotty, they argued, even to mention a husband. The sheet of paper, they insisted, must be invalid. Alarmingly, their lawyers saw nothing invalid on the face of it; Mrs. Pettigrew was apparently the sole beneficiary.

  Tempest Sidebottorae was furious. “Ronald and Janet,” she said, “should inherit by rights. We’ll fight it. Lisa would never have mentioned a husband had she been in her right mind. Mrs. Pettigrew must have had a hold on Lisa.”

  “Lisa was always liable to say foolish things,” Ronald Sidebottome remarked.

  “You’re a born obstructionist,” Tempest said.

  Hence, they had felt it cautious to avoid the threshold of Harmony Studio for the time being, and had felt it equally cautious to invite Mrs. Pettigrew to the tea-shop.

  Dame Lettie was explaining this to Miss Taylor, who had seen much in her long service with Charmian. Dame Lettie had, unawares, in the past few months, slipped into the habit of confiding in Miss Taylor. So many of Lettie’s contemporaries, those who knew her world and its past, had lost their memories or their lives, or were away in private homes in the country; it was handy having Miss Taylor available in London to discuss things with.

  “You see, Taylor,” said Dame Lettie, “they never did like Mrs. Pettigrew. Now, Mrs. Pettigrew is an admirable woman. I was hoping to persuade her to take on Charmian. But of course with Lisa’s money in prospect, she does not intend to work any longer. She must be over seventy, although of course she says…Well, you see, with Lisa’s money—”

  “She would never do for Charmian,” said Miss Taylor.

  “Oh really, I feel Charmian needs a firm hand if we are to keep her at home. Otherwise she will have to go into a nursing home. Taylor, you have no conception how irritated poor Godfrey gets. He tries his best.” Dame Lettie lowered her voice. “And then, Taylor, there is the lavatory question. Mrs. Anthony can’t be expected to take her every time. As it is, Godfrey attends to the chamber pots in the morning. He isn’t used to it, Taylor, he’s not used to that sort of thing.”

  In view of the warm September afternoon Miss Taylor had been put out on the balcony of the Maud Long Ward where she sat with a blanket round her knees.

  “Poor Charmian,” she said, “darling Charmian. As we get older these affairs of the bladder and kidneys do become so important to us. I hope she has a commode by her bedside, you know how difficult it is for old bones to manage a pot.”

  “She has a commode,” said Dame Lettie. “But that doesn’t solve the daytime problem. Now Mrs. Pettigrew would have been admirable in that respect. Think what she did for poor Lisa after the first stroke. However, Mrs. Pettigrew is out of the question because of this inheritance from Lisa. It was ridiculous of Lisa.”

  Miss Taylor looked distressed. “It would be tragic,” she said, “for Mrs. Pettigrew to go to the Colstons’. Charmian would be most unhappy with the woman. You must not think of such a thing Dame Lettie. You don’t know Mrs. Pettigrew as I do.”

  Dame Lettie’s yellow-brown eyes focused as upon an exciting scene as she bent close to Miss Taylor. “Do you think,” she enquired, “there was anything peculiar, I mean not right, between Mrs. Pettigrew and Lisa Brooke?”

  Miss Taylor did not pretend not to know what she meant. “I cannot say,” she said, “what were the habits of their relationship in former years. I only know this, and you yourself know, Dame Lettie, Mrs. Pettigrew was very domineering towards Mrs. Brooke in the last eight or nine years. She is not suitable for Charmian.”

  “It is precisely because she is domineering,” said Lettie, “that I wanted her for Charmian. Charmian needs a bully. For her own good. But anyway, that’s beside the point, Mrs. Pettigrew does not desire the job. I understand Lisa has left her practically everything. Now Lisa was very comfortable as you know, and—”

  “I would not be sure that Mrs. Pettigrew will in fact inherit,” insisted Miss Taylor.

  “No, Taylor,” said Dame Lettie, “I’m afraid Lisa’s family do not stand a chance. I doubt if their advisers will let them take it to court. There is no case. Lisa was perfectly sane to the day she died. It is true Mrs. Pettigrew had an undesirable influence over Lisa, but Lisa was in her right mind to the end.”

  “Yes, it is true Mrs. Pettigrew had a hold on her.”

  “I wouldn’t say a hold, I would say an influence. If Lisa was fool enough—”

  “Quite, Dame Lettie. Was Mr. Leet at the funeral, by any chance?”

  “Oh, Guy Leet was there. I shouldn’t think he will last long. Rheumatoid arthritis with complications.” Dame Lettie recalled, as she spoke, that rheumatoid arthritis was one of Miss Taylor’s afflictions, but, she thought, after all she must face the facts. “Very advanced case,” said Dame Lettie, “he was managing with great difficulty on two sticks.”

  “It is like wartime,” Miss Taylor remarked.

  “What do you say?”

  “Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.”

  She is wandering in her mind and becoming morbid, thought Dame Lettie.

  “Or suffering from war nerves,” said Miss Taylor.

  Dame Lettie was annoyed, because she had intended to gain some advice from Miss Taylor.

  “Come now, Taylor,” she said. “You are talking like Charmian.”

  “I must,” said Miss Taylor, “h
ave caught a lot of her ways of thought and speech.”

  “Taylor,” said Lettie, “I want to ask your advice.” She looked at the other woman to see if she was alert. “Four months ago,” she said, “I began to receive anonymous telephone calls from a man. I have been receiving them ever since. On one occasion when I was staying with Godfrey, the man, who must have traced me there, gave a message for me to Godfrey.”

  “What does he say?” said Miss Taylor.

  Dame Lettie leant to Miss Taylor’s ear and, in a low tone, informed her.

  “Have you told the police?”

  “Of course we have told the police. They are useless. Godfrey had an interview with them too. Useless. They seem to think we are making it up.”

  “You will have thought of consulting Chief Inspector Mortimer who was such a fan of Charmian’s?”

  “Of course I have not consulted Mortimer. Mortimer is retired, he is close on seventy. Time passes, you know. You are living in the past, Taylor.”

  “I only thought,” said Miss Taylor, “that Inspector Mortimer might act privately. He might at least be helpful in some way. He always struck me as a most unusual—”

  “Mortimer is out of the question. We want a young, active detective on this job. There is a dangerous lunatic at large. I know not how many people besides myself are endangered.”

  “I should not answer the telephone, Dame Lettie, if I were you.”

  “My dear Taylor, one can’t be cut off perpetually. I still have my Homes to consider, I am not entirely a back number, Taylor. One must be on the phone. But I confess, I am feeling the strain. Imagine for yourself every time one answers the telephone. I never know if one is going to hear that distressing sentence. It is distressing.”

  “‘Remember you must die,’” said Miss Taylor.

  “Hush,” said Dame Lettie, looking warily over her shoulder.

  “Can you not ignore it, Dame Lettie?”

  “No, I cannot. I have tried, but it troubles me deeply. It is a troublesome remark.”