Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  “You have made up your mind too quickly,” he said. “Take time and think about it.”

  They had emerged from the wood and took a path skirting a ploughed field which led to the village. There the church with its steep sloping graveyard stood at the top of the street. Miss Taylor looked over the wall at the graveyard as they passed it. She was not sure now if his words had been frivolous or serious or both; for, even in their younger days—especially during that month of July 1907 at the farmhouse—she had never really known what to make of him, and had sometimes felt afraid.

  She looked at the graveyard and he looked at her. He noted dispassionately that her jaw beneath the shade of the hat was more square than it had ever been. As a young woman she had been round-faced and soft; her voice had been extremely quiet, like the voice of an invalid. In middle age she had begun to reveal, in appearance, angular qualities; her voice was deeper; her jaw-line nearly masculine. He was interested in these factors; he supposed he approved of them; he liked Jean. She stopped and leaned over the low stone wall looking at the gravestones.

  “This graveyard is a kind of evidence,” she said, “that other people exist.”

  “How do you mean?” he said.

  She was not sure. Having said it, she was not sure why. The more she wondered what she had meant the less she knew.

  He tried to climb over the wall, and failed. It was a low wall, but still he was not up to it. “I am going on fifty,” he said to her without embarrassment, not even with a covering smile, and she remembered how, at the farmhouse in 1907, when he had chanced to comment that they were both past their prime, he being twenty-eight and she thirty-one, she had felt hurt and embarrassed till she realised he meant no harm by it, meaning only to point a fact. And she, catching this habit and tone, had been able to state quite levelly, “We are not social equals,” before the month was over.

  He brushed the dust of the graveyard wall from his trousers. “I am going on fifty. I should like to look at the gravestones. Let’s go in by the gate.”

  And so they had walked among the graves, stooping to read the names on the stones.

  “They are, I quite see, they are,” he said, “an indication of the existence of others, for there are the names and times carved in stone. Not a proof, but at least a large testimony.”

  “Of course,” she said, “the gravestones might be hallucinations. But I think not.”

  “There is that to be considered,” he said so courteously that she became angry.

  “But the graves are at least reassuring,” she said, “for why bother to bury people if they don’t exist?”

  “Yes, oh precisely,” he said.

  They ambled up the short drive to the house where Lettie, who sat writing at the library window, glanced towards them and then away again. As they entered, Lisa Brooke with her flaming bobbed head, came out. “Hallo, you two,” she said, looking sweetly at Jean Taylor. Alec went straight to his room while Miss Taylor went in search of Charmian. On the way, various people encountered and said “Hallo” to her. This party was composed of a progressive set; they would think nothing of her walk with Alec that summer of 1928 even though some remembered the farmhouse affair of 1907 which had been a little scandal in those days. Only a brigadier, a misfit in the party who had been invited because the host wanted his advice on dairy herds, and who had passed the couple on their walk, later enquired of Lettie in Miss Taylor’s hearing, “Who was that lady I passed with Alec? Has she just arrived?” And Lettie, loathing Jean as she did, but wishing to be broad-minded, replied, “Oh, she’s Charmian’s maid.”

  “Say what you like about that sort of thing, the other domestics won’t like it,” commented the brigadier, which was, after all, true.

  And yet, Jean Taylor reflected as she sat with Alec in the Maud Long Ward, perhaps it was not all mockery. He may have half-meant the question.

  “Be serious,” she said, looking down at her twisted arthritic hands.

  Alec Warner Looked at his watch.

  “Must you be going?” she said.

  “Not for another ten minutes. But it’ll take me three-quarters of an hour across the parks. I have to keep fairly strictly to my times, you know. I am going on eighty.”

  “I’m relieved it’s not you, Alec—the telephone calls…”

  “My dear, this has come from Lettie’s imagination, surely that is obvious.”

  “Oh no. The man has twice left a message with Godfrey. ‘Tell Dame Lettie,’ he said, ‘to remember she must die.’”

  “Godfrey heard it too?” he said. “Well, I suppose, in that case, it must be a lunatic. How did Godfrey take it? Did he get a fright?”

  “Dame Lettie didn’t say.”

  “Oh, do find out what their reactions were. I hope the police don’t catch the fellow too soon. One might get some interesting reactions.” He rose to leave.

  “Oh, Alec—before you go—there was something else I wanted to ask you.”

  He sat down again and replaced his hat on her locker.

  “Do you know Mrs. Sidebottome?”

  “Tempest? Ronald’s wife. Sister-in-law of Lisa Brooke. Now in her seventy-first year. I first met her on a boat entering the Bay of Biscay in 1930. She was—”

  “That’s right. She is on the Management Committee of this hospital. The sister in charge of this ward is unsuitable. We all here desire her to be transferred to another ward. Do you want me to go into details?”

  “No,” he said. “You wish me to talk to Tempest.”

  “Yes. Make it plain that the nurse in question is simply overworked. There was a fuss about her some time ago, but nothing came of it.”

  “I cannot speak to Tempest just yet. She went into a nursing home for an operation last week.”

  “A serious one?”

  “A tumour on the womb. But at her age it is, in itself, less serious than in a younger woman.”

  “Oh well, then you can’t do anything for us at present.”

  “I shall think,” he said, “if I know anyone else. Have you approached Lettie on the subject?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He smiled, and said, “Approach her no more. It is a waste of time. You must seriously think, Jean, of going to that home in Surrey. The cost is not high. Godfrey and I can manage it. I think Charmian would be joining you there soon. Jean, you should have a room of your own.”

  “Not now,” said Miss Taylor. “I shan’t move from here. I’ve made friends here, it’s my home.”

  “See you next Wednesday, my dear,” he said, taking his hat and looking round the ward, sharply, at each of the grannies in turn.

  “All being well,” she said.

  Two years ago, when she first came to the ward, she had longed for the private nursing home in Surrey about which there had been too much talk. Godfrey had made a fuss about the cost, he had expostulated in her presence, and had quoted a number of their friends of the progressive set on the subject of the new free hospitals, how superior they were to the private affairs. Alec Warner had pointed out that these were days of transition, that a person of Jean Taylor’s intelligence and habits might perhaps not feel at home among the general aged of a hospital.

  “If only,” he said, “because she is partly what we have made her, we should look after her.”

  He had offered to bear half the cost of keeping Jean in Surrey. But Dame Lettie had finally put an end to these arguments by coming to Jean with a challenge, “Would you not really, my dear, prefer to be independent? After all, you are the public. The hospitals are yours. You are entitled…” Miss Taylor had replied, “I prefer to go to hospital, certainly.” She had made her own arrangements and had left them with the daily argument still in progress concerning her disposal.

  Alec Warner had not liked to see her in this ward. The first week he had wanted her to move. In misery she had vacillated. Her pains were increasing, she was not yet resigned to them. There had been further consultations and talking things over. Should she be moved to
Surrey? Might not Charmian join her there eventually?

  Not now, she thought, after Alec Warner had departed. Granny Valvona had put on her glasses and was searching for the horoscopes. Not now, thought Miss Taylor. Not now that the worst is over.

  At first, in the morning light, Charmian forgave Mrs. Pettigrew. She was able, slowly, to walk downstairs by herself. Other movements were difficult and Mrs. Pettigrew had helped her to dress quite gently.

  “But,” said Mabel Pettigrew to her, “you should get into the habit of breakfast in bed.”

  “No,” said Charmian cheerfully as she tottered round the table, grasping the backs of chairs, to her place. “That would be a bad habit. My morning cup of tea in bed is all that I desire. Good morning, Godfrey.”

  “‘Lydia May,’” said Godfrey, reading from the paper, “‘died yesterday at her home in Knightsbridge six days before her ninety-second birthday.’”

  “A Gaiety Girl,” said Charmian. “I well remember.”

  “You’re in good form this morning,” Mrs. Pettigrew remarked. “Don’t forget to take your pills.” She had put the bottle beside Charmian’s plate. She now unscrewed the cap and extracted two pills which she laid before Charmian.

  “I have had my pills already,” said Charmian. “I had them with my morning tea, don’t you remember?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “you are mistaken, dear. Take your pills.”

  “She made a fortune,” Godfrey remarked. “Retired in 1893 and married money both times. I wonder what she has left?”

  “She was before my time, of course,” said Mabel Pettigrew.

  “Nonsense,” said Godfrey.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Colston, she was before my time. If she retired in 1893 I was only a child in 1893.”

  “I remember her,” said Charmian. “She sang most expressively—in the convention of those times you know.”

  “At the Gaiety?” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “Surely—”

  “No, I heard her at a private party.”

  “Ah, you would be quite a grown girl, then. Take your pills dear.” She pushed the two white tablets towards Charmian. Charmian pushed them back and said, “I have already taken my pills this morning. I recall quite clearly. I usually do take them with my early tea.”

  “Not always,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “Sometimes you forget and leave them on your tray, as you did this morning, actually.”

  “‘She was the youngest of fourteen children,’” Godfrey read out from the paper, “‘of a strict Baptist family. It was not till her father’s death, that, at the age of eighteen she made her début in a small part at the Lyceum. Trained by Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving, she left them however for The Gaiety where she became the principal dancer. The then Prince of Wales—’”

  “She was introduced to us at Cannes,” said Charmian, gaining confidence in her good memory that morning, “wasn’t she?”

  “That’s right,” said Godfrey, “it would be about 1910.”

  “And she stood up on a chair and looked round her and said, ‘Gad! The place is stinking with royalty.’ Remember we were terribly embarrassed, and—”

  “No, Charmian, no. You’ve got it wrong there. It was one of the Lilly Sisters who stood on a chair. And that was much later. There was nothing like that about Lydia May, she was a different class of girl.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew placed the two pills a little nearer to Charmian, but said no more about them. Charmian said, “I mustn’t exceed my dose,” and shakily replaced them in the bottle.

  “Charmian, take your pills, my dear,” said Godfrey and took a noisy sip from his coffee.

  “I have taken two pills already. I remember quite clearly doing so. Four might be dangerous.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew cast her eyes to the ceiling and sighed.

  “What is the use,” said Godfrey, “of me paying big doctor’s bills if you won’t take his stuff?”

  “Godfrey, I do not wish to be poisoned by an overdose. Moreover, my own money pays for the bills.”

  “‘Poisoned,’” said Mrs. Pettigrew, laying down her napkin as if tried beyond endurance. “I ask you.”

  “Or merely upset,” said Charmian. “I do not wish to take the pills, Godfrey.”

  “Oh well,” he said, “if that’s how you feel, I must say it makes life damned difficult for all of us, and we simply can’t take responsibility if you have an attack through neglecting the doctor’s instructions.”

  Charmian began to cry. “I know you want to put me away in a home.”

  Mrs. Anthony had just come in to clear the table.

  “There,” she said. “Who wants to put you in a home?”

  “We are a little upset, what with one thing and another,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  Charmian stopped crying. She said to Mrs. Anthony, “Taylor, did you see my early tea-tray when it came down?”

  Mrs. Anthony seemed not to grasp the question, for though she had heard it, for some reason she felt it was more complicated than it really was.

  Charmian repeated, “Did you see—”

  “Now, Charmian,” said Godfrey, foreseeing some possible contradiction between Mrs. Anthony’s reply and Mrs. Pettigrew’s previous assertion. In this, he was concerned overwhelmingly to prevent a conflict between the two women. His comfort, the whole routine of his life, depended on retaining Mrs. Anthony. Otherwise he might have to give up the house and go to some hotel. And Mrs. Pettigrew having been acquired, she must be retained; otherwise Charmian would have to go to a home. “Now, Charmian, we don’t want any more fuss about your pills,” he said.

  “What did you say about the tea-tray, Mrs. Colston?”

  “Was there anything on it when it came down from my room?”

  Mrs. Pettigrew said, “Of course there was nothing on the tray. I replaced the pills you had left on it in the bottle.”

  “There was a cup and saucer on the tray. Mrs. Pettigrew brought it down,” said Mrs. Anthony, contributing what accuracy she could to questions which still confused her.

  Mrs. Pettigrew started noisily loading the breakfast dishes on to Mrs. Anthony’s tray. She said to Mrs. Anthony, “Come, my dear, we’ve work to do.”

  Mrs. Anthony felt she had somehow failed Charmian, and so, as she followed Mrs. Pettigrew out of the door she pulled a face at her.

  When they were gone Godfrey said, “See the fuss you’ve caused. Mrs. Pettigrew was quite put out. If we lose her—”

  “Ah,” said Charmian,. “you are taking your revenge, Eric.”

  “I am not Eric,” he said.

  “But you are taking your revenge.” Fifteen years ago, in her seventy-first year, when her memory had started slightly to fail, she had realised that Godfrey was turning upon her as one who had been awaiting his revenge. She did not think he was himself aware of this. It was an instinctive reaction to the years of being a talented, celebrated woman’s husband, knowing himself to be reaping continually in her a harvest which he had not sown.

  Throughout her seventies Charmian had not reproached him with his bullying manner. She had accepted his new domination without comment until her weakness had become so marked that she physically depended on him more and more. It was then, in her eighties, that she started frequently to say what, in the past, she would have considered unwise: “You are taking your revenge.”

  And on this occasion, as always, he replied, “What revenge for what?” He really did not know. He saw only that she was beginning to look for persecution: poison, revenge; what next? “You are getting into a state of imagining that all those around you are conspiring against you,” he said.

  “Whose fault is it,” she said with a jolting sharpness, “if I am getting into such a state?”

  This question exasperated him, partly because he sensed a deeper sanity in it than in all her other accusations, and partly because he could not answer it. He felt himself to be a heavily burdened man.

  Later in the morning, when the doctor called, Godfrey stopped him in the hall.<
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  “She is damn difficult to-day, Doctor.”

  “Ah well,” said the doctor, “it’s a sign of life.”

  “Have to see about a home if she goes on like this.”

  “It might be a good idea, if only she can be brought round to liking it,” said the doctor. “The scope for regular attention is so much better in a nursing home, and I have known cases far more advanced than your wife’s which have improved tremendously once they have been moved to a really comfortable home. How are you feeling yourself?”

  “Me? Well, what can you expect with all the domestic worries on my shoulders?” said Godfrey. He pointed to the door of the garden-room where Charmian was waiting. “You’d better go on in,” he said, being disappointed of the sympathy and support he had hoped for, and vaguely put out by the doctor’s talk of Charmian’s possible improvement in health, should she be sent to a home.

  The doctor’s hand was on the door knob. “I shouldn’t worry too much about domestic matters,” he said. “Go out as much as possible. Your wife, as I say, may buck up tremendously if we have to move her. It sometimes proves a stimulus. Of course, at her age…her resistance…but there’s a chance that she may still get about again. It is largely neurasthenia. She has extraordinary powers of recovery, almost as if she had some secret source….”

  Godfrey thought: This is his smarm. Charmian has a secret source, and I pay the bills. He said explosively, “Well sometimes I feel she deserves to be sent away. Take this morning for instance—”

  “Oh deserves,” said the doctor, “we don’t recommend nursing-homes as a punishment, you know.”

  “Bloody man,” said Godfrey in the doctor’s hearing and before he had properly got into the room where Charmian waited.

  Immediately the doctor had entered through the door so did Mrs. Pettigrew through the french windows. “Pleasant for the time of year,” she said.

  “Yes,” said the doctor. “Good morning, Mrs. Colston. How do you feel to-day?”

  “We wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “take our pills this morning, Doctor, I’m afraid:”