Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  “Ah but Granny, it was her second stroke. There’s always a second, you know.”

  “Sister done it with her bad temper.”

  On learning that Sister Burstead had neither been dismissed nor transferred to another ward but was to return on the following day, Granny Barnacle gave notice to the doctor that she refused further treatment, was discharging herself next day, and that she would tell the world why.

  “I know my bloody rights as a patient,” she said. “Don’t think I don’t know the law. And what’s more, I can get the phone number of the newspaper. I only got to ring up and they come along and want to know what’s what.”

  “Take it easy, Granny,” said the doctor.

  “If Sister Bastard comes back, I go,” said Granny Barnacle.

  “Where to?” said the nurse.

  Granny Barnacle glared. She felt that the nurse was being sarcastic, must know that she had spent three months in Holloway prison thirty-six years ago, six months twenty-two years ago, and subsequently various months. Granny Barnacle felt the nurse was referring to her record when she said “Where to?” in that voice of hers.

  The doctor frowned at the nurse and said to Granny Barnacle, “Take it easy, Granny. Your blood pressure isn’t too good this morning. What sort of a night did you have? Pretty restless?”

  This speech unnerved Granny Barnacle who had indeed had a bad night.

  Granny Trotsky, who had so far recovered that the bed-screen had been removed, had been uttering slobbery mutters. The very sight of Granny Trotsky, the very sound of her trying to talk as she did at this moment, took away Granny Barnacle’s nerve entirely.

  She looked at the doctor’s face, to read it. “Ah doc, I don’t feel too bloody good,” she said. “And I just don’t feel easy with that bitch in charge. I just feel anything might happen.”

  “Come, come, the poor woman’s overworked,” he recited. “We all like to be of help if we can and in any way we can. We are trying to help you, Granny.”

  When he had gone Granny Barnacle whispered over to Miss Taylor, “Do I look bad, love?”

  “No, Granny, you look fine.” In fact, Granny Barnacle’s face was blotched with dark red.

  “Did you hear what doc said about my blood pressure? Do you think it was a lie, just so’s I wouldn’t make a fuss?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “For two pins, Granny Taylor, I’d be out of that door and down them stairs if it was the last thing I did and—”

  “I shouldn’t do that,” said Miss Taylor.

  “Could they certify me, love?”

  “I don’t know,” said Miss Taylor.

  “I’ll tell the priest.”

  “You know what he’ll say to you,” said Miss Taylor.

  “Offer it bloodywell up for the Holy Souls.”

  “I daresay.”

  “It’s a hard religion, Granny Taylor. If it wasn’t that my mother was R.C. I would never of—”

  “I know a lady—” It was then Miss Taylor had said, rashly, “I know a lady who knows another lady who is on the management committee of this hospital. It may take some time but I will see what I can do to get them to transfer Sister Burstead.”

  “God bless you, Granny Taylor.”

  “I can’t promise. But I’ll try. I shall have to be tactful.”

  “You hear that?” said Granny Barnacle to everyone in the ward. “You hear what Granny Taylor’s goin’ to do?”

  Miss Taylor was not very disappointed with her first effort at sounding Dame Lettie. It was a beginning. She would keep on at Dame Lettie. There was also, possibly, Alec Warner. He might be induced to speak to Tempest Sidebottome who sat on the management committee of the hospital. It might even be arranged without blame to dreary Sister Burstead.

  “Didn’t your Dame promise nothing definite then?” said Granny Barnacle.

  “No, it will take time.”

  “Will it be done before the winter?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Did you tell her what she done to Granny Duncan?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You should of. Strikes me you’re not on our side entirely, Granny Taylor. I seem to remember that face somehow.”

  “Whose face?”

  “That Dame’s face.”

  The difficulty was, Miss Taylor reflected, she could not feel the affair to be pre-eminently important. Sometimes she would have liked to say to the grannies, “What if your fears were correct? What if we died next winter?” Sometimes she did say to them, “Some of us may die next winter in any case. It is highly probable.” Granny Valvona would reply, “I’m ready to meet my God, any time.” And Granny Barnacle would stoutly add, “But not before time.”

  “You must keep on at your friend, Granny Taylor,” said Granny Duncan, who, among all the grannies, most irritated Sister Burstead. Granny Duncan had cancer. Miss Taylor often wondered if the sister was afraid of cancer.

  “I seem to remember that Dame’s face,” Granny Barnacle kept on. “Was she ever much round Holborn way of an evening?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Miss Taylor.

  “She might be an old customer of mine,” said Granny Barnacle.

  “I think she had her papers sent.”

  “Did she go out to work, this Dame?”

  “Well, not to a job. But she did various kinds of committee work. That sort of thing.”

  Granny Barnacle turned over the face of Dame Lettie in her mind. “Was it charity work you said she did?”

  “That kind of thing,” said Miss Taylor. “Nothing special.”

  Granny Barnacle looked at her suspiciously, but Miss Taylor would not be drawn, nor say that Dame Lettie had been a Prison Visitor at Holloway from her thirtieth year until it became too difficult for her, with her great weight and breathlessness, to climb the stairs.

  “I will keep on at Dame Lettie,” she promised.

  It was Sister Burstead’s day off, and a nurse whistled as she brought in the first supper tray.

  Granny Barnacle commented in a hearty voice,

  “A whistling woman, a crowing hen,

  Is neither fit for God nor man.”

  The nurse stopped whistling and gave Granny Barnacle a close look, dumped the tray and went to fetch another.

  Granny Trotsky attempted to raise her head and say something.

  “Granny Trotsky wants something,” said Granny Duncan.

  “What you want, Granny?”

  “She is saying,” said Miss Taylor, “that we shouldn’t be unkind to the nurses just because—”

  “Unkind to the nurses! What they goin’ to do when the winter—”

  Miss Taylor prayed for grace. Is there no way, she thought, for them to forget the winter? Can’t they go back to making their wills every week?

  In the course of the night Granny Trotsky died as the result of the bursting of a small blood-vessel in her brain, and her spirit returned to God who gave it.

  Chapter Five

  Mrs. Anthony knew instinctively that Mrs. Pettigrew was a kindly woman. Her instinct was wrong. But the first few weeks after Mrs. Pettigrew came to the Colstons’ to look after Charmian she sat in the kitchen and told Mrs. Anthony of her troubles.

  “Have a fag,” said Mrs. Anthony, indicating with her elbow the packet on the table while she poured strong tea. “Everything might be worse.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew said, “It couldn’t very well be worse. Thirty years of my life I gave to Mrs. Lisa Brooke. Everyone knew I was to get that money. Then this Guy Leet turns up to claim. It wasn’t any marriage, that wasn’t. Not a proper marriage.” She pulled her cup of tea towards her and thrusting her head close to Mrs. Anthony’s, told her in what atrocious manner and for what long-ago reason, Guy Leet had been incapable of consummating his marriage with Lisa Brooke.

  Mrs. Anthony swallowed a large sip of her tea, the cup of which she held in both hands, and breathed back into the cup while the warm-smelling steam spread comfortingly over her nose. “
Still,” she said, “a husband’s a husband. By law.”

  “Lisa never recognised him as such,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “No one knew about the marriage with Guy Leet, until she died, the little swine.”

  “I thought you says she was all right,” said Mrs. Anthony.

  “Guy Leet,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “He’s the little swine.”

  “Oh, I see. Well the courts will have something to say to that, dear, when it comes up. Have a fag.”

  “You’re making me into a smoker, Mrs. Anthony. Thanks, I will. But you should try to cut them down, they aren’t too good for you.”

  “Twenty a day since I was twenty-five and seventy yesterday,” said Mrs. Anthony.

  “Seventy! Gracious, you’ll be—”

  “Seventy years of age yesterday.”

  “Oh, seventy. Isn’t it time you had a rest then? I don’t envy you with this lot,” Mrs. Pettigrew indicated with her head the kitchen door, meaning the Colstons residing beyond it.

  “Not so bad,” said Mrs. Anthony. “He’s a bit tight, but she’s nice. I like her.”

  “He’s tight with the money?” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  Mrs. Anthony said, “Oh very,” swivelling her eyes towards her companion to fix the remark.

  Mrs. Pettigrew patted her hair which was thick, dyed black and well cut, as Lisa had made her wear it. “How old,” she said, “would you say I was Mrs. Anthony?”

  Mrs. Anthony, still sitting, pushed back in her chair the better to view Mrs. Pettigrew. She looked at the woman’s feet in their suède black shoes, her tight good legs—no veins, her encased hips and good bust. Mrs. Anthony then put her head sideways to regard, from an angle of fifteen degrees, Mrs. Pettigrew’s face. There were lines from nose to mouth, a small cherry-painted mouth. Only the beginnings of one extra chin. Two lines across the brow. The eyes were dark and clear, the nose firm and broad. “I should say,” said Mrs. Anthony, folding her arms, “you was sixty-four abouts.”

  The unexpectedness of Mrs. Pettigrew’s gentle voice was due to her heavily-marked appearance. It was gentler still as she said to Mrs. Anthony, “Add five years.”

  “Sixty-nine. You don’t look it,” said Mrs. Anthony. “Of course you’ve had the time and money to look after yourself and powder your face. You should of been in business.”

  In fact, Mrs. Pettigrew was seventy-three, but she did not at all look the age under her make-up.

  She drew her hand across her forehead, however, and shook her head slowly. She was worried about the money, the court case which would probably drag on and on. Lisa’s family were claiming their rights too.

  Mrs. Anthony had started washing up.

  “Old Warner still in with her,” she said, “I suppose?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “He is.”

  “It takes her off my hands for a while,” said Mrs. Anthony.

  “I must say,” Mrs. Pettigrew said, “when I was with Lisa Brooke I used to be asked in to meet the callers. I mixed with everyone.”

  Mrs. Anthony started peeling potatoes and singing.

  “I’m going in,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, rising and brushing down her neat skirt. “Whether she likes it or whether she doesn’t, I’d better keep my eye on her in any case, that’s what I’m here for.”

  When Mrs. Pettigrew entered the drawing-room she said, “Oh, Mrs. Colston, I was just wondering if you were tired.”

  “You may take the tea-things away,” said Charmian.

  Instead Mrs. Pettigrew rang for Mrs. Anthony, and, as she piled plates on the tray for the housekeeper to take away, she knew Charmian’s guest was looking at her.

  Charmian said to Mrs. Anthony, “Thank you, Taylor.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew had met Alec Warner sometimes at Lisa Brooke’s. He smiled at her and nodded. She sat down and took a cigarette out of her black suède bag. Alec lit it. The clatter of Mrs. Anthony’s tray faded out as she receded to the kitchen.

  “You were telling me…?” Charmian said to her guest.

  “Oh yes.” He turned his white head and grey face to Mrs. Pettigrew. “I was explaining the rise of democracy in the British Isles. Do you miss Mrs. Brooke?”

  “Very much,” said Mabel Pettigrew, blowing out a long puff of smoke. She had put on her social manner. “Do continue about democracy,” she said.

  “When I went to Russia,” said Charmian, “the Tsarina sent an escort to—”

  “No, Mrs. Colston, just a moment, while Mr. Alec Warner tells us about democracy.”

  Charmian looked about her strangely for a moment, then said, “Yes, continue about democracy, Eric.”

  “Not Eric—Alec,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  Alec Warner soothed the air with his old, old steady hand.

  “The real rise of democracy in the British Isles occurred in Scotland by means of Queen Victoria’s bladder,” he said. “There had, you know, existed an idea of democracy, but the real thing occurred through this little weakness of Queen Victoria’s.”

  Mabel Pettigrew laughed with a backward throw of her head. Charmian looked vague. Alec Warner continued slowly as one filling in the time with his voice. His eyes were watchful.

  “Queen Victoria had a little trouble with the bladder, you see. When she went to stay at Balmoral in her latter years a number of privies were caused to be built at the backs of little cottages which had not previously possessed privies. This was to enable the Queen to go on her morning drive round the countryside in comfort, and to descend from her carriage from time to time, ostensibly to visit the humble cottagers in their dwellings. Eventually, word went round that Queen Victoria was exceedingly democratic. Of course it was all due to her little weakness. But everyone copied the Queen and the idea spread, and now you see we have a great democracy.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew laughed for a long time. Alec Warner was gazing like a bird-watcher at Charmian, who plucked at the rug round her knees, waiting to tell her own story.

  “When I went to Russia,” said Charmian, looking up at him like a child, “the Tsarina sent an escort to meet me at the frontier, but did not send an escort to take me back. That is so like Russia, they make resolutions then get bored. The male peasants lie on the stove all winter. All the way to Russia my fellow-passengers were opening their boxes and going over their belongings. It was spring and…”

  Mrs. Pettigrew winked at Alec Warner. Charmian stopped and smiled at him. “Have you seen Jean Taylor lately?” she said.

  “Not for a week or two. I have been away to Folkestone on my research work. I shall go to see her next week.”

  “Lettie goes regularly. She says Jean is very happy and fortunate.”

  “Lettie is—” He was going to say she was a selfish fool, then remembered Mrs. Pettigrew’s presence. “Well, you know what I think of Lettie’s opinions,” he said and waved away the topic with his hand.

  And as if the topic had landed on Charmian’s lap, she stared at her lap and continued, “If only you had discovered Lettie’s character a little sooner. If only…”

  He rose to leave, for he knew how Charmian’s memory was inclined to wake up in the past, in some arbitrary year. She would likely fix on those events, that year 1907, and bring them close up to her, as one might bring a book close to one’s eyes. The time of his love affair with Jean Taylor when she was a parlour-maid at the Pipers’ before Charmian’s marriage, would be like last week to Charmian. And her novelist’s mind by sheer habit still gave to those disjointed happenings a shape which he could not accept, and in a way which he thought dishonest. He had been in love with Jean Taylor, he had decided after all to take everyone’s advice. He had therefore engaged himself to Lettie. He had broken the engagement when he came to know Lettie better. These were the facts in 1907. By 1912 he had been able to contemplate them without emotion. But dear Charmian made the most of them. She saw the facts as a dramatic sequence reaching its fingers into all his life’s work. This interested him so far as it reflected Charmian, though not at all so far as it affecte
d himself. He would, nevertheless, have liked to linger in his chair on that afternoon, in his seventy-ninth year, and listen to Charmian recalling her youth. But he was embarrassed by Mrs. Pettigrew’s presence. Her intrusion had irritated him, and he could not, like Charmian, talk on as if she were not present. He looked at Mrs. Pettigrew as she helped him on with his coat in the hall, and thought, An irritating woman. Then he thought, A fine-looking woman, and this was associated with her career at Lisa’s as he had glimpsed it at intervals over twenty-six years. He thought about Mabel Pettigrew all the way home across two parks, though he had meant to think about Charmian on that walk. And he reflected upon himself, amazed, since he was nearly eighty and Mrs. Pettigrew a good, he supposed, sixty-five. “Oh,” he said to himself, “these erotic throes that come like thieves in the night to steal my High Churchmanship!” Only, he was not a High Churchman it was no more than a manner of speaking to himself.

  He returned to his rooms—which, since they were officially described as “gentleman’s chambers,” he always denied were a flat—off St. James’s Street. He hung his coat, put away his hat and gloves, then stood at the large bow window gazing out as at an imposing prospect, though in reality the window looked down only on the side entrance to a club. He noted the comings and goings of the club porter. The porter of his own chambers came up the narrow street intently reading the back page of an evening paper. With his inward eye, Dr. Warner, the old sociologist, at the same time contemplated Old Age which had been his study since he had turned seventy. Nearly ten years of inquisitive work had gone into the card indexes and files encased in two oak cabinets, one on either side of the window. His approach to the subject was unique; few gerontologists had the ingenuity or the freedom to conduct their investigations on the lines he had adopted. He got about a good deal; he employed agents; his work was, he hoped, valuable; or would be, one day.

  His wide desk was bare, but from a drawer he took a thick bound notebook and sat down to write.

  Presently he rose to fetch the two boxes of index cards which he used constantly when working at his desk. One of these contained the names of those of his friends and acquaintances, who were over seventy, with details of his relationship to them, and in the case of chance encounters, the circumstances of their meeting. Special sections were devoted to St. Aubrey’s home for mental cases in Folkestone where, for ten years, he had been visiting certain elderly patients by way of unofficial research.