Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  “Oh, short hair is cooler when one is in bed,” Granny Taylor, whose hair had really been long and thick, and who actually preferred it short, would murmur to herself.

  “Let’s give you a nice wave to-day, Granny Barnacle.”

  “Oh, you’re killing me.”

  On the day of the new sister’s arrival, Granny Barnacle and her obvious excitement having been left to the last, it was found, when her turn came, that she was running a temperature.

  “Get me out of bed, love,” she implored the nurse. “Let’s sit up to-day, seeing Bastard’s gone.”

  “No, you’ve got a temperature.”

  “Nurse, I want to get up to-day. Get me a will-form, there’s a bob in my locker, I want to make a new will and put in the new sister. What’s her name?”

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy Locket,” shrieked Granny Barnacle, “lost her—”

  “Lie still, Granny Barnacle, till we make you better.”

  She submitted after a fuss. Next day, when they told her she must keep her bed she protested louder, even struggled a little, but Miss Taylor in the opposite bed noticed that Granny Barnacle’s voice was unusually thin and high.

  “Nurse, I’m going to get up to-day. Get me a will-form. I want to make a new will and put in the new sister. What’s her name?”

  “Lucy,” said the nurse. “Your blood pressure’s high, Gran.”

  “Her last name, girl.”

  “Lucy. Sister Lucy.”

  “Sister Lousy,” screamed Granny Barnacle. “Well, she’s going in my will. Give me a hand….”

  When the doctor had gone she was given an injection and dozed off for a while.

  At one o’clock, while everyone else was eating, she woke. Sister Lucy brought some milk custard to her bed and fed her with a spoon. The ward was quiet and the sound of grannies’ spoons tinkling on their plates became more pronounced in the absence of voices.

  About three o’clock Granny Barnacle woke again and started to rave in a piping voice, at first faintly, then growing higher and piercing. “Noos, E’ning Noos,” fluted the old newsvendor. “E’ning pap-ar, Noos, E’ning Stan-ar, E’ning Stah Noos an Stan-ar.”

  She was given an injection and a sip of water. Her bed was wheeled to the end of the ward and a screen was put round it. In the course of the afternoon the doctor came, stayed behind the screen for a short while, and went.

  The new ward sister came and looked behind the screen from time to time. Towards five o’clock, when the few visitors were going home, Sister Lucy went behind the screen once more. She spoke to Granny Barnacle, who replied in a weak voice.

  “She’s conscious,” said Miss Valvona.

  “Yes, she spoke.”

  “Is she bad?” said Miss Valvona as the sister passed her bed.

  “She’s not too well,” said the sister.

  Some of the patients kept looking expectantly and fearfully at the entrance to the ward, whenever anyone was heard approaching, as if watching for the Angel of Death. Towards six o’clock came the sound of a man’s footsteps. The patients, propped up with their supper trays, stopped eating and turned to see who had arrived.

  Sure enough, it was the priest, carrying a small box. Miss Valvona and Miss Taylor crossed themselves as he passed. He went behind the screen accompanied by a nurse. Though the ward was silent, none of the patients had sharp enough ears, even with their hearing-aids, to catch more than an occasional humming sound from his recitations.

  Miss Valvona’s tears dropped into her supper. She was thinking of her father’s Last Sacrament, after which he had recovered to live a further six months. The priest behind the screen would be committing Granny Barnacle to the sweet Lord, he would be anointing Granny Barnacle’s eyes, nose, mouth, hands and feet, asking pardon for the sins she had committed by sight, by hearing, smell, taste and speech, by the touch of her hands, and by her very footsteps.

  The priest left. A few of the patients finished their supper. Those who did not were coaxed with Ovaltine. At seven the sister took a last look behind the screen before going off to the dining-room.

  “How is she now?” said a granny.

  “Sleeping nicely.”

  About twenty minutes later a nurse looked behind the screen, went inside for a moment, then came out again. The patients watched her leave the ward. There she gave her message to the runner who went to the dining-room and, opening the door, caught the attention of the ward sister. The runner lifted up one finger to signify that one of the sister’s patients had died.

  It was the third death in the ward since Miss Taylor’s admittance. She knew the routine. “We leave the patient for an hour in respect for the dead,” a nurse had once explained to her, “but no longer than an hour, because the body begins to set. Then we perform the last offices—that’s washing them and making them right for burial.”

  At five past nine, by the dim night-lamps of the ward, Granny Barnacle was wheeled away.

  “I shan’t sleep a wink,” said Mrs. Reewes-Duncan. Many said they would not sleep a wink, but in fact they slept more soundly and exhaustedly that night than on most nights. The ward lay till morning still and soundless, breathing like one body instead of eleven.

  The reorganisation of the Maud Long Ward began next day, and all patients declared it a mercy for Granny Barnacle that she had been spared it.

  Hitherto, the twelve beds in the Maud Long Ward had occupied only half of the space in the room; they had been a surplus from another, larger, medical ward, comprised mainly of elderly women. The new arrangement was designed to fill up the remaining half of the Maud Long Ward with a further nine elderly patients. These were to be put at the far end. Already, while the preparations were still in progress, this end of the ward was referred to among the nurses as the “geriatric corner.”

  “What’s that word mean they keep saying?” Granny Roberts demanded of Miss Taylor.

  “It’s to do with old age. There must be some very old patients coming in.”

  “We supposed to be teen-agers, then?”

  Granny Valvona said, “Our new friends will probably be centenarians.”

  “I didn’t catch—just a minute till I get the trumpet right,” said Granny Roberts, who always referred to her small hearing fixture as the trumpet.

  “See,” said Granny Green, “what they’re bringing in to the ward.”

  A line of cots was being wheeled up the ward and arranged in the new geriatric corner. These cots were much the same as the other hospital beds, but with the startling difference that they had high railed sides like children’s cots.

  Granny Valvona crossed herself.

  Next, the patients were wheeled in. Perhaps this was not the best introduction of the newcomers to the old established set. Being in varying advanced states of senility, and also being specially upset by the move, the new arrivals were making more noise and dribbling more from the mouth than usual.

  Sister Lucy came round the grannies’ beds, explaining that they would have to be patient with these advanced cases. Knitting needles must not be left lying about near the geriatric corner, in case any of the newcomers should hurt themselves. The patients were not to be alarmed if anything funny should occur. At this point the sister had to call a nurse’s attention to one of the new patients, a frail, wizened, but rather pretty little woman, who was trying to climb over the side of her cot. The nurse rushed to settle the old woman back in bed. The patient set up an infant-like wail, yet not entirely that of a child—it was more like that of an old woman copying the cry of an infant.

  The sister continued addressing the grannies in confidential tones. “You must try to remember,” she said, “that these cases are very advanced, poor dears. And don’t get upset, like good girls. Try and help the nurses by keeping quiet and tidy.”

  “We’ll soon be senile ourselves at this rate,” said Granny Green.

  “Sh-sh,” said the sister. “We don’t use that word. They are geriatric cases.”

  W
hen she had gone Granny Duncan said, “To think that I spent my middle years looking forward to my old age and a rest!”

  Another geriatric case was trying to climb over the cot. A nurse bustled to the rescue.

  “A mercy,” said Granny Duncan, “poor Granny Barnacle didn’t live to see it. Poor souls—Don’t you be rough with her, Nurse!”

  The patient had, in fact, pulled the nurse’s cap off and was now clamouring for a drink of water. The nurse replaced her cap, and while another nurse held a plastic beaker of water to the old woman’s lips, assured the ward, “They’ll settle down. The moving’s upset them.”

  After a stormy night, the newcomers did seem quieter next morning, though one or two made a clamour in the ordinary course of conversation, and most, when they were helped out of bed to stand shakily upheld for a moment by the nurse, wet the floor. In the afternoon a specialist lady and an assistant came with draught-boards which she laid on the floor beside four of the new patients who were sitting up in chairs, but whose hands were crippled. They did not protest when their socks and slippers were removed and their feet manipulated and rubbed by the younger woman. Their socks and slippers were replaced and they seemed to know what to do when the draught-boards were set in front of their feet.

  “Look, did you ever,” said Granny Valvona. “They’re playing draughts with their feet.”

  “I ask you,” said Granny Roberts, “is it a bloody circus we are here?”

  “That’s nothing to what you’ll see in Geriatrics,” said the nurse proudly.

  “A blessing poor Granny Barnacle wasn’t spared to see it.”

  Miss Taylor absorbed as much of the new experience as she could, for the sake of Alec Warner. But the death of Granny Barnacle, her own arthritic pains, and the noisy intrusion of the senile cases, had confused her. She was crying towards the end of the day, and worried lest the nurse should catch her at it, and perhaps report her too sick to be wheeled down next morning to the Mass which she and Miss Valvona had requested for the soul of Granny Barnacle who had no relatives to mourn her.

  Miss Taylor dropped asleep, and waking in the middle of the night because of her painful limbs, still pretended to sleep on, and went without her injection. At eleven o’clock next morning Miss Valvona and Miss Taylor were wheeled into the hospital chapel. They were accompanied by three other grannies, not Catholics, from the Maud Long Ward who had been attached to Granny Barnacle in various ways, including those of love, scorn, resentment and pity.

  During the course of the Mass an irrational idea streaked through Miss Taylor’s mind. She dismissed it and concentrated on her prayers. But this irrational idea, which related to the identity of Dame Lettie’s tormentor, was to return to her later again and again.

  Chapter Ten

  “Is that Mr. Godfrey Colston?” said the man on the telephone.

  “Yes, speaking.”

  “Remember you must die,” said the man.

  “Dame Lettie is not here,” he said, being flustered. “Who is that speaking?”

  “The message is for you, Mr. Colston.”

  “Who is speaking?”

  The man had hung up.

  Though Godfrey was still tall, he had seemed to shrink during the winter, to an extent that an actual tape-measure would perhaps not confirm. His bones were larger than ever; that is to say, they remained the same size as they had been throughout his adult life, but the ligaments between them had gradually shrunk, as they do with advancing age, so that the bones appeared huge-grown. This process had, in Godfrey, increased rapidly in the months between the autumn of Mrs. Pettigrew’s joining his household and the March morning when he received the telephone call.

  He put down the receiver and walked with short steps into the library. Mrs. Pettigrew followed him. She herself was looking healthier and not much older.

  “Who was that on the phone, Godfrey?” she said.

  “A man…I can’t understand. It should have been for Lettie but he definitely said it was for me. I thought the message—”

  “What did he say?”

  “That thing he says to Lettie. But he said ‘Mr. Colston, it’s for you, Mr. Colston.’ I don’t understand….”

  “Look here,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, “let’s pull ourselves together, shall we?”

  “Have you got the key of the sideboard on you?”

  “I have,” said Mabel Pettigrew. “Want a drink?”

  “I feel I need a little—”

  “I’ll bring one in to you. Sit down.”

  “A stiff one.”

  “Sit down. There’s a boy.”

  She came back, spritely in her black dress and the new white-streaked lock of hair among the very black, sweeping from her brow. Her hair had been cut shorter. She had painted her nails pink and wore two large rings which gave an appearance of opulent ancient majesty to the long wrinkled hand which held Godfrey’s glass of brandy and soda.

  “Thanks,” said Godfrey, taking the glass. “Many thanks.” He sat back and drank his brandy, looking at her from time to time as if to see what she was going to do and say.

  She sat opposite him. She said nothing till he had finished. Then she said, “Now, look.”

  She said, “Now, look. This is all imagination.”

  He muttered something about being in charge of his faculties.

  “In that case,” she said—”in that case, have you seen your lawyer yet?”

  He muttered something about next week.

  “You have an appointment with him,” she said, “this afternoon.”

  “This afternoon? Who—how…?”

  “I’ve made an appointment for you to see him at three this afternoon.”

  “Not this afternoon,” said Godfrey. “Don’t feel up to it. Draughty office. Next week.”

  “You can take a taxi if you don’t feel up to driving. It’s no distance.”

  “Next week,” he shouted, for the brandy had restored him.

  However, the effects wore off. At lunch Charmian said,

  “Is there anything the matter, Godfrey?”

  The telephone rang. Godfrey looked up, startled. He said to Mrs. Pettigrew, “Don’t answer.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew merely said, “I wonder if Mrs. Anthony has heard it? I bet she hasn’t.”

  Mrs. Anthony’s hearing was beginning to fail, and she had obviously not heard the telephone.

  Mrs. Pettigrew strode out into the hall and lifted the receiver. She came back presently and addressed Charmian.

  “For you,” she said. “The photographer wants to come to-morrow at four.”

  “Very well,” said Charmian.

  “I shan’t be here, you know, to-morrow afternoon.”

  “That’s all right,” said Charmian. “He does not wish to photograph you. Say that four o’clock will be splendid.”

  While Mrs. Pettigrew went to give the message, Godfrey said, “Another reporter?”

  “No, a photographer.”

  “I don’t like the idea of all these strangers coming to the house. I had a nasty experience this morning. Put him off.” He rose from his seat and shouted through the door, “I say, Mrs. Pettigrew, we don’t want him coming here. Put him off, will you?”

  “Too late,” said Mrs. Pettigrew, resuming her place.

  Mrs. Anthony looked round the door.

  “Was you wanting something?”

  “We did hope,” said Mrs. Pettigrew very loudly, “to have our meal without interruptions. However, I have answered the telephone.”

  “Very good of you, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Anthony, and disappeared.

  Godfrey was still protesting about the photographer. “We’ll have to put him off. Too many strangers.”

  Charmian said, “I shall not be here long, Godfrey.”

  “Come, come,” said Mrs. Pettigrew. “You may well last another ten years.”

  “Quite,” said Charmian, “and so I have decided to go away to the nursing home in Surrey, after all. I understand the arrangements th
ere are almost perfect. One has every privacy. Oh, how one comes to appreciate privacy.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew lit a cigarette and slowly blew the smoke in Charmian’s face.

  “No one’s interfering with your privacy,” Godfrey muttered.

  “And freedom,” said Charmian. “I shall have freedom at the nursing home to entertain whom I please. Photographers, strangers—”

  “There is no need,” said Godfrey desperately, “for you to go away to a home now that you are so much improved.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew blew more smoke in Charmian’s direction.

  “Besides,” he said, glancing at Mrs. Pettigrew, “we can’t afford it.”

  Charmian was silent, as one who need not reply. Indeed, her books were bringing in money, and her small capital at least was safe from Mrs. Pettigrew. The revival of her novels during the past winter had sharpened her brain. Her memory had improved, and her physical health was better than it had been for years in spite of that attack of bronchitis in January, when a day and a night nurse had been in attendance for a week. However, she still had to move slowly and was prone to kidney trouble.

  She looked at Godfrey who was wolfing his rice pudding without, she was sure, noticing what he was eating, and she wondered what was on his mind. She wondered what new torment Mrs. Pettigrew was practising upon him. She wondered how much of his past life Mrs. Pettigrew had discovered, and why he felt is necessary to hush it up at all such costs. She wondered where her own duty to Godfrey lay—where does one’s duty as a wife reach its limits? She longed to be away in the nursing home in Surrey, and was surprised at this longing of hers, since all her life she had suffered from apprehensions of being in the power of strangers, and Godfrey had always seemed better than the devil she did not know.

  “To move from your home at the age of eighty-seven,” Godfrey was saying in an almost pleading voice, “might kill you. There is no need.”

  Mrs. Pettigrew, having pressed the bell in vain, said, “Oh, Mrs. Anthony is quite deaf. She must get an aid,” and went to tell Mrs. Anthony to fetch her tea and Charmian’s milk.

  When she had gone, Godfrey said,