Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  Dame Lettie sat in her dressing gown at dead of night and re-filled her fountain pen. While she did so she glanced at the page she had just written. She thought, How shaky my writing looks! Immediately, as if slamming a door on it, she put the thought out of sight. She wiped the nib of her pen, turned over the sheet and continued, on the back, her letter to Eric:

  …and so, having heard of your having been in London these past six weeks, your not having informed me, far less called, does, I admit, strike me as being, to say the least, discourteous. I had wished to consult you on certain matters relating to your Mother. There is every indication that we shall have to arrange for her to be sent to the nursing home in Surrey of which I told you when last I saw you.

  She laid down her pen, withdrew one of the fine hairpins from her thin hair, and replaced it. Perhaps, she thought, I should take an even more subtle line with Eric. Her face puckered in folds under the desk-lamp. Two thoughts intruded simultaneously. One was: I am really very tired; and the other: I am not a bit tired, I am charging ahead with great energy. She lifted the pen again and continued to put the wavering marks across the page.

  I have recently been making some slight adjustments in my own affairs, about which I could have wished to consult you had you seen fit to inform me of your recent visit to London.

  Was that subtle enough? No, it was too subtle, perhaps, for Eric.

  These minor adjustments, of course, have some bearing upon my Will. It has always seemed to me a pity that your cousin Martin, though doing so well in South Africa, should not be remembered in some small way. I would wish for no recriminations among the family after my passing. Your position is of course substantially unchanged, but I could wish you had made yourself available for consultation. You will recall the adjustments I made to existing arrangements after your cousin Alan fell on the field of battle….

  That is good, she thought, that is subtle. Eric had got out of the war somehow. She continued,

  I could have wished for discussions with you, but I am an old woman and quite realise that you, who are nearing the end of your prime, must be full of affairs. Mr. Merrilees is now drawing up the amended Will and I would not wish to further interfere with existing arrangements. Nevertheless, I could have wished to discuss them with you had you seen fit to present yourself during the six weeks of your recent stay in London, of which I did not hear until after your return.

  That ought to do it, she thought. He will come wheezing down from Cornwall as fast as the first train will carry him. If he is the guilty man he will know that I know. No one, she thought, is going to kill me through fear. And she fell to wondering again, who her enemy could be. She fell to doubting whether Eric had it in him…whether he had the financial means to employ an accomplice. Easier, she thought, for Mortimer. Anyway, she thought, it must be someone who is in my Will. And so she sealed and stamped her letter to Eric, placed it on the tray in the hall, took a tot of whisky and went to bed. Her head moved slowly from side to side on the pillow, for she could not sleep. She had caught a chill down there in the study. A cramp seized her leg. She had a longing for a strong friend, some major Strength from which to draw. Who can help me? she thought. Godfrey is selfish, Charmian feeble, Jean Taylor is bedridden. I can talk to Taylor, but she has not got the strength I need. Alec Warner…shall I go to see Alec Warner? I never got strength from him. Neither did Taylor. He has not got the strength one needs.

  Suddenly she sprang up. Something had lightly touched her cheek. She switched on the light. A spider on her pillow, large as a penny, quite still, with its brown legs outspread! She looked at it feverishly then pulled herself together to try to pick it off the pillow. As she put forth her hand another, paler, spider-legged and fluffy creature on the pillow where the bed-lamp cast a shade, caught her sight. “Gwen!” she screams. “Gwen!”

  But Gwen is sleeping soundly. In a panic Dame Lettie plucks at the large spider. It proves to be a feather. So does the other object

  She dropped her head on her pillow once more. She thought: My old pillows, I shall get some new pillows.

  She put out the light and the troubled movements of the head began again. Whom, she thought, can I draw Strength from? She considered her acquaintances one by one—who among them was tougher, stronger than she?

  Tempest, she thought at last. I shall get Tempest Sidebottome to help me. Tempest, her opponent in forty years’ committee-sitting, had frequently been a painful idea to Dame Lettie. Particularly had she resented Tempest’s bossy activeness and physical agility at Lisa’s funeral. Strangely, now, she drew strength from the thought of the woman. Tempest Sidebottome would settle the matter if anyone could. Tempest would hunt down the persecutor. Dame Lettie’s head settled still on the pillow. She would go over to Richmond tomorrow and talk to Tempest. After all, Tempest was only seventy. She hoped her idiotic husband Ronald would be out. But in any case, he was deaf. Dame Lettie turned at last to her sleep, deriving a half-dreamt success from the strength of Tempest Sidebottome as from some tremendous mother.

  “Good morning, Eric,” said Charmian as she worked her way round the breakfast table to her place.

  “Not Eric,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “We are a bit confused again this morning.”

  “Are you, my dear. What has happened to confuse you?” said Charmian.

  Godfrey sensed the start of bickering, so he looked up from his paper and said to his wife, “Lettie was telling me last night that it is a great aid to memory to go through in one’s mind each night the things which have happened in the course of the day.”

  “Why,” said Charmian, “that is a Catholic practice. We are always recommended to consider each night our actions of the past day. It is an admirable—”

  “Not the same thing,” said Godfrey, “at all. You are speaking exclusively of one’s moral actions. What I’m talking about are things which have happened. It is a great aid to memory, as Lettie was saying last night, to memorise everything which has occurred in one’s experience during the day. Your practice, which you call Catholic, is, moreover, common to most religions. To my mind, that type of examination of conscience is designed to enslave the individual and inhibit his freedom of action. Take yourself, for example. You only have to appeal to psychology—”

  “To whom?” said Charmian cattily, as she took the cup which Mrs. Pettigrew passed to her.

  Godfrey turned back to his paper. Whereupon Charmian continued the argument with Mrs. Pettigrew.

  “I don’t see that one can examine one’s moral conduct without memorising everything that’s happened during the day. It is the same thing. What Lettie advises is a form of—”

  Godfrey put down his paper. “I say it is not the same thing.” He dipped an oblong of toast in his tea and put it in his mouth.

  Mrs. Pettigrew rose to the opportunity of playing the peacemaker. “Now hush,” she said to Charmian. “Eat your nice scrambled egg which Taylor has prepared for you.”

  “Taylor is not here,” stated Charmian.

  “Taylor—what do you mean?” said Godfrey.

  Mrs. Pettigrew winked at him.

  Godfrey opened his mouth to retort, then shut it again.

  “Taylor is in hospital,” said Charmian, pleased with her clarity.

  Godfrey read from the newspaper, “‘Motling—’ are you listening, Charmian?—‘on 10th December at Zomba, Nyasaland; Major Cosmos Petwick Motling, G.C.V.O., husband of the late Eugenie, beloved father of Patricia and Eugen, in his 91st year.’ Are you listening, Charmian?”

  “Was he killed at the front, dear?”

  “Ah, me!” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  Godfrey opened his mouth to say something to Mrs. Pettigrew, then stopped. He held up the paper again and from behind it mumbled, “No, Zomba. Motling’s the name. He went out there to retire. You won’t remember him.”

  “I recall him well,” said Mrs. Pettigrew; “when his wife was alive, Lisa used to—”

  “Was he killed at the front?” said Charmian.


  “The front,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  “‘Sidebottome,’” said Godfrey, “are you listening, Charmian?—‘On 18th December at the Mandeville Nursing Home, Richmond; Tempest Ethel, beloved wife of Ronald Charles Sidebottome. Funeral private.’ Doesn’t give her age.”

  “Tempest Sidebottome!” said Mrs. Pettigrew, reaching to take the paper from his hand. “Let me see.”

  Godfrey withdrew the paper and opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it again. However, he said, “I am not finished with the paper.”

  “Well, fancy Tempest Sidebottome,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “Of course, cancer is cancer.”

  “She always was a bitch,” said Godfrey, as if her death were the ultimate proof of it.

  “I wonder,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “who will look after poor old Ronald now. He’s so deaf.”

  Godfrey looked at her to see more closely what she meant, but her short broad nose was hidden by her cup and her eyes stared appraisingly at the marmalade.

  She was, in fact, quite shocked by Tempest’s death. She had only a month ago agreed to join forces with the Sidebottomes in contesting Lisa Brooke’s will. Tempest, when she had learnt of Guy Leet’s hitherto secret marriage to Lisa, had been driven to approach Mrs. Pettigrew and attempt to make up their recent differences. Mrs. Pettigrew had rather have worked alone, but the heavy costs deterred her. She had agreed to go in with Tempest against Guy Leet on the grounds that his marriage with Lisa Brooke had not been consummated. They had been warned that their case was a slender one, but Tempest had the money and the drive to go ahead, and Mrs. Pettigrew had in her possession the relevant correspondence. Ronald Sidebottome had been timid about the affair—didn’t like raking up the scandal, but Tempest had seemed to have the drive. Tempest’s death was a shock to Mrs. Pettigrew. She would have to work hard on Ronald. One got no rest. She stared at the marmalade pot as if to fathom its possibilities.

  Godfrey had returned to his paper. “Funeral private. That saves us a wreath.”

  “You had better write to poor Ronald,” said Charmian, “and I will say a rosary for Tempest. Oh, I do remember her as a girl. She was newly out from Australia and her uncle was a rector in Dorset—as was also my uncle, Mrs. Pettigrew—”

  “Your uncle was not in Dorset. He was up in Yorkshire,” said Godfrey.

  “But he was a country rector, like Tempest’s uncle. Leave me alone, Godfrey. I am just telling Mrs. Pettigrew.”

  “Oh, do call me Mabel,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, winking at Godfrey.

  “Her uncle, Mabel,” said Charmian, “was a rector and so was mine. It was the thing we had in common. We had not a great deal in common, Mrs. Pettigrew, and of course as a girl she was considerably younger than me.”

  “She is still younger than you,” said Godfrey.

  “No, Godfrey, not now. Well, Mrs. Pettigrew, I do so remember our two uncles together and we were all staying down in Dorset. There was a bishop and a dean, and our two uncles. Oh, poor Tempest was bored. They were discussing the Scriptures and this manuscript called ‘Q.’ How Tempest was in a rage when she heard that ‘Q’ was only a manuscript, because she had imagined them to be talking of a bishop and she said out loud ‘Who is Bishop Kew?’ And of course everyone laughed heartily, and then they were sorry for Tempest. And they tried to console her by telling her that ‘Q’ was nothing really, not even a manuscript, which indeed it wasn’t, and I must confess I never understood how they could sit up so late at night fitting their ideas into this ‘Q’ which is nothing really. As I say poor Tempest was in a rage, she could never bear to be made game of.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew winked at Godfrey.

  “Charmian,” said Godfrey, “you are over-exciting yourself.” And true enough, she was tremulously crying.

  Chapter Nine

  Partly because of a reorganisation of the Maud Long Ward and partly because of Tempest Sidebottome’s death, Sister Burstead was transferred to another ward.

  She had been a protégée of Tempest’s, and this had mostly accounted for the management committee’s resistance to any previous suggestion that the sister could not cope with the old people’s ward. The committee, though largely composed of recently empowered professional men and women, had been in many ways afraid of Tempest. Or rather, afraid to lose her lest they should get someone worse.

  It was necessary for them to tolerate at least one or two remnants of the old-type committee people until they should die out. And they chiefly feared, in fact, that if Tempest should take offence and resign, she would be replaced by some more formidable, more subtle private welfare-worker and busybody. And whereas Tempest had many dramatic things to say in committee, whereas she was imperious with the matron, an opponent on principle of all occasions of expenditure, scornful in the extreme of physiotherapists and psychiatrists (everything beginning “psycho-” or “physio-” Tempest lumped together, believed to be the same thing, and dismissed)—although she was in reaction against the committee’s ideals, she was so to the point of parody, and it was for precisely this reason, because she so much demonstrated the errors of her system, that she was retained, was propitiated from time to time, and allowed to have her way in such minor matters as that of Sister Burstead. Not that the committee were not afraid of Tempest for other, less evident reasons; but these were matters of instinct and not openly admitted. Her voice in committee had been strangely terrifying to many an eminent though small-boned specialist, even the bossy young heavily-qualified women had sometimes failed to outstare the little pale pebble-eyes of the great unself-questioning matriarch, Mrs. Sidebottome. “Terrible woman,” everyone always agreed when she had left.

  “After the fifties are over,” said the chairman who was himself a man of seventy-three, “everything will be easier. This transition period…the old brigade don’t like change. They don’t like loss of authority. By the middle-sixties everything will be easier. We will have things in working order.” Whereupon the committee surrendered themselves to putting up with Tempest, a rock of unchanging, until the middle-sixties of the century should arrive, leaving behind her on the committee a Tempest-shaped vacuum which they immediately attempted, but had not yet been able to fill.

  In the meantime, as if tempting Providence to send them another Tempest, they transferred Sister Burstead, on the first of January, to another ward. That the old people’s ward was being reorganised provided a reasonable excuse, and Sister Burstead made no further protest.

  News of the transfer reached the grannies before the news of the reorganisation.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Granny Barnacle.

  She saw it before that week-end. A new ward sister, fat and forceful with a huge untroubled faceful of flesh and brisk legs, was installed. “That’s how I like them,” said Granny Barnacle. “Sister Bastard was too skinny.”

  The new sister, when she caught Granny Green absentmindedly scooping the scrambled egg off her plate into her locker, put her hands on her slab-like hips and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “That’s how I like them,” said Granny Barnacle. She closed her eyes on her pillow with contentment. She declared herself to feel safe for the first time for months. She declared herself ready to die now that she had seen the removal of Sister Bastard. She sprang up again from her pillow and with outstretched arm and pointing finger prophesied that the whole ward would now see the winter through.

  Miss Valvona, who was always much affected by Miss Barnacle’s feelings, consulted the stars: “Granny Barnacle—Sagittarius. ‘Noon period best for commencing longdistance travel. You can show your originality to-day.’”

  “Ho!” said Granny Barnacle. “Originality to-day, I’ll wear me britches back to front.”

  The nurses came on their daily round of washing, changing, combing and prettifying the patients before the matron’s inspection. They observed Granny Barnacle’s excitement and decided to leave her to the last. She was usually excitable throughout this
performance in any case. During Sister Burstead’s term of office, especially, Granny Barnacle would screech when turned over for her back to be dusted with powder, or helped out of bed to sit on her chair.

  “Nurse, I’ll be covered with bruises,” she would shout.

  “If you don’t move, Gran, you’ll be covered with bedsores.”

  She would scream to God that the nurses were pulling her arms from their sockets, she would swear by the Almighty that she wasn’t fit to be sat up. She moaned, whenever the physiotherapist made her move her fingers and toes, and declared that her joints would crack.

  “Kill me off,” she would command, “and be done with it.”

  “Come on, Gran, you’ve got to get exercise.”

  “Crack! Can’t you hear the bones crack? Kill me off and—”

  “Let’s rub your legs, Gran. My, you’ve got beautiful legs.”

  “Help, she’s killing me.”

  But at the best of times Granny Barnacle really liked an excuse for a bit of noise, it livened her up. In a sense, she gave vent to the whole ward’s will to shout, so that the others did not make nearly so much noise as they might otherwise have done. It was true some of the other grannies were loud in complaints, but this was mostly for a few seconds when their hair was being combed. Granny Green would never fail to tell the nurses after her hair was done:

  “I had a lovely head of hair till you cut it off,” although in reality there had been very little to cut off.

  “It’s hygiene, Granny. It would hurt far more when we combed it if your hair was long.”

  “I had a lovely head….”

  “Me, too,” Granny Barnacle would declare, especially if Sister Burstead had been within hearing. “You should have seen my head before they cut it off.”