Memento Mori

by Muriel Spark

  “But you don’t mind the telephone calls!” he shouted. “You don’t care about them at all.”

  “Oh yes, I do, I do. I can’t put up with them any longer.”

  “She does mind them,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  “But you don’t need to answer the phone,” he shouted.

  “Oh but every time the telephone rings I feel it must be him.” Charmian gave a little shudder.

  “She feels so bad about the telephone,” said Mrs. Pettigrew.

  He knew he could not refute their words.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What surprised me, I must confess,” Alec Warner said to Miss Taylor, “was that, for a moment or two, I felt positively jealous. Olive, of course, was a friendly type of girl, and most conscientious in giving me all the information she could gather. I shall miss her. But the curious thing was this pang, this envy of Ronald, my first reaction to the news. Not that Olive, at any time, would have been my type.”

  “Did you make a note of your reaction?”

  “Oh, I made a note.”

  I bet he did, thought Miss Taylor.

  “Oh, I made a note. I always record these surprise deviations from my High-Churchmanship.”

  His “High-Churchmanship” was a figure of speech he had adopted from Jean Taylor when, at some buoyant time past, she had applied it to him, merely on account of the two occasions when he had darkened the doors of a church, to observe, with awe and curiosity, a vicar of his acquaintance conducting the service of evensong all by himself in the empty building; Alec’s awe and curiosity being directed exclusively towards the human specimen with his prayer book and splendid persistence in vital habits.

  “Granny Green has gone,” said Miss Taylor.

  “Ah yes, I noticed a stranger occupying her bed. Now what was Granny Green?”

  “Arterio-sclerosis. It affected her heart in the end.”

  “Yes, well, it is said we are all as old as our arteries. Did she make a good death?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were asleep at the time,” he said.

  “No, I was awake. There was a certain amount of fuss.”

  “She didn’t have a peaceful end?”

  “No, not peaceful for us.”

  “I always like to know,” he said, “whether a death is a good or bad one. Do keep a look out.”

  For a moment she utterly hated him. “A good death,” she said, “doesn’t reside in the dignity of bearing but in the disposition of the soul.”

  Suddenly he hated her. “Prove it,” he said.

  “Disprove it,” she said wearily.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “I’ve forgotten to ask how you are keeping. How are you keeping, Jean?”

  “A little stronger, but the cataract is a trouble.”

  “Charmian is gone to the nursing home in Surrey at last. Would you not like to join her there?”

  “Godfrey is left alone with Mrs. Pettigrew, then.”

  “You would like to be with Charmian, surely.”

  “No,” she said.

  He looked round the ward and up to the noisy end. There the senile cases were grouped round the television and so were less noisy than usual, but still emitting, from time to time, a variety of dental and guttural sounds and sometimes a whole, well-intentioned speech. Those who were mobile would occasionally leave their chairs and wander up the ward, waving or talking to the bedridden. One tall patient poured herself a beaker of water and began to raise it to her lips, but forgetting the purpose before the act was accomplished, poured the water into another jug; then she turned the beaker upside down on her head so that a little water, left in the beaker, splashed over her forehead. She seemed pleased with this feat. On the whole, the geriatrics were keen on putting objects on their heads.

  “Interesting,” said Alec. “The interesting thing is, senility is somewhat different from insanity. The actions of these people, for instance, differ in many particulars from those of the aged people whom I visit at St. Aubrey’s Home in Folkestone. There, some of the patients have been mad most of their lives. In some ways they are more coherent, much more methodical than those who merely turn strange in their old age. The really mad old people have had more practice in irrational behavior, of course. But all this,” said Alec, “cannot be of much interest to you. Unless one is interested in gerontology, I cannot see that their company, day and night, can be pleasant to you.”

  “Perhaps I’m a gerontologist at heart. They are harmless. I don’t mind them, now. Alec, I am thinking of poor Godfrey Colston. What can have possessed Charmian to go away just when her health was improving?”

  “The anonymous telephone calls were worrying her, she said.”

  “Oh no. Mrs. Pettigrew must have forced her to go. And Mrs. Pettigrew,” said Miss Taylor, “will most certainly make Godfrey’s remaining years a misery.”

  He reached for his hat. “Think over,” he said, “the idea of joining Charmian in the nursing home. It would so please me if you would.”

  “Now Alec, I can’t leave my old friends. Miss Valvona, Miss Duncan—”

  “And this?” He nodded towards the senile group.

  “That is our memento mori. Like your telephone calls.”

  “Goodbye then, Jean.”

  “Oh Alec, I wish you wouldn’t leave just yet. I have something important to say, if you will just sit still for a moment and let me get my thoughts in order.”

  He sat still. She leaned back on her pillow, removed her glasses, and dabbed lightly with her handkerchief at one eye which was inflamed. She replaced her glasses.

  “I shall have to think,” she said. “It involves a question of dates. I have them in my memory but I shall have to think for a few minutes. While you are waiting you may care to speak to the new patient in Granny Green’s bed. Her name is Mrs. Bean. She is ninety-nine and will be a hundred in September.”

  He went to speak to Mrs. Bean, tiny among the pillows, her small toothless mouth open like an “O,” her skin stretched thin and white over her bones, her huge eye-sockets and eyes in a fixed infant-like stare, and her sparse white hair short and straggling over her brow. Her head nodded faintly and continuously. If she had not been in a female ward, Alec thought, one might not have been sure whether she was a very old man or a woman. She reminded him of one of his mental patients at Folkestone, an old man who, since 1918, had believed he was God. Alec spoke to Mrs. Bean and received a civil and coherent answer which came, as it seemed, from a primitive reed instrument in her breast-bone, so thin and high did she breathe, in and out, when answering him.

  He stepped over to Miss Valvona, paid his respects, and heard from her his horoscope for the day. He nodded to Mrs. Reewes-Duncan, and waved to various other occupants of the ward familiar to him. One of the geriatric set came and shook hands with him and said she was going to the bank, and, having departed from the ward, was escorted back by a nurse who said to her, “Now you’ve been to the bank.”

  Alec carefully watched the patient’s happy progress back to the geriatric end, reflected on the frequency with which the senile babble about the bank, and returned to Jean Taylor who said:

  “You must inform Godfrey Colston that Charmian was unfaithful to him repeatedly from the year after her marriage. That is starting in the summer of 1902 when Charmian had a villa on Lake Geneva, and throughout that year, when Charmian used often to visit the man in his flat in Hyde Park Gate. And this went on throughout 1903 and 1904 and also, I recall, when Charmian was up in Perthshire in the autumn—Godfrey could not leave London at the time. There were also occasions at Biarritz and Torquay. Have you got that, Alec? Her lover was Guy Leet. She continued to see him at his flat in Hyde Park Gate through most of 1905—up to September. Listen carefully, Alec, you are to give Godfrey Colston all the facts. Guy Leet. So she gave him up in the September of 1907, I well remember, I was with them in the Dolomites, and Charmian became ill then. You must remember Guy is ten years younger than Charmian. Then in 1
926 the affair began again, and it went on for about eighteen months. That was about the time I met you, Alec. Guy wanted her to leave Godfrey, and I know she thought of doing so quite often. But then she knew Guy had so many other women—Lisa Brooke, of course, and so on. Charmian couldn’t really trust Guy. Charmian missed him, he did so amuse her. After that she entered the Church. Now I want you to give these facts to Godfrey. He has never suspected Charmian, she managed everything so well. Have you got a pencil on you, Alec? Better write it down. First occasion, 1902—”

  “You know, Jean,” he said, “this might be serious for poor Godfrey and Charmian. I mean, I can’t think you really want to betray Charmian after all those years.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said, “but I will, Alec.”

  “Godfrey probably knows already,” he said.

  “The only people who know about this are Charmian, Guy, and myself. Lisa Brooke knew, and in fact she blackmailed Charmian quite cruelly. That was when Charmian had her nervous breakdown. And in fact the main reason Guy married Lisa was to keep her quiet, and save Charmian from the threat of scandal. It was never a proper marriage, but, however, as I say, Guy did marry Lisa for Charmian’s sake. I will say that for him. Of course, Guy Leet did have charm.”

  “He still has charm,” said Alec.

  “Has he? Well, I don’t doubt it. Now, Alec, write this down, will you?”

  “Jean, you would regret it.”

  “Alec, if you won’t give Godfrey this information I shall have to ask Dame Lettie to do so. She would make the matter far more unpleasant for Charmian. I see it is necessary that Godfrey Colston should stop being morally afraid of Charmian—at least it is worth trying. I think, if he knows of Charmian’s infidelity he won’t fear any disclosures about his. Let him go and gloat over Charmian. Let him—”

  “Charmian will be shocked. She trusts you.” He put the case for the opposition, but she knew he was stirred and excited by her suggestion. He had never, in the past, hesitated to make mischief if it served his curiosity: now he could serve her ends.

  “There is a time for loyalty and a time when loyalty comes to an end. Charmian should know that by now,” she said.

  He looked at her curiously as if to find in her face something that he had previously overlooked, some latent jealousy.

  “The more religious people are, the more perplexing I find them. And I think Charmian would be hurt by your action.”

  “Charmian herself is a religious woman.”

  “No, only a woman with a religion.” He had always found it odd that Miss Taylor, having entered the Church only to please Charmian, should have become the more addicted of the two.

  He made notes of the information Miss Taylor gave to him. “Make it clear,” she said, “that this is a message from me. If my hands were in use I would write to him myself. Tell him from me he has nothing to fear from Mrs. Pettigrew. Poor old man.”

  “Were you ever jealous of Charmian?” he said.

  “Of course I was,” she said, “from time to time.”

  Alec was wondering as he wrote down the details of Charmian’s love affair, if Godfrey Colston would be agreeable to taking his pulse and temperature before and after the telling. On the whole, he thought not. Guy Leet had been obliging in this respect, but then Guy was a sport. Still, one might try.

  “You know, Taylor,” said Dame Lettie, “I do not feel I can continue to visit you. These creatures are too disturbing, and now that I am not getting my proper sleep my nerves are not up to these decrepit women here. One wonders, really, what is the purpose of keeping them alive at the country’s expense.”

  “For my part,” said Miss Taylor, “I would be glad to be let die in peace. But the doctors would be horrified to hear me say it. They are so proud of their new drugs and new methods of treatment—there is always something new. I sometimes fear, at the present rate of discovery, I shall never die.”

  Dame Lettie considered this statement, uncertain whether it was frivolous or not. She shifted bulkily in her chair and considered the statement with a frown and a downward droop of her facial folds.

  Miss Taylor supplied obligingly: “Of course the principle of keeping people alive is always a good one.”

  Dame Lettie glanced along the ward at the geriatrics who were, at that moment, fairly docile. One old lady sat up in her cot singing a song or something; a few were being visited by relatives who spoke little but for the most part simply sat out the visiting time with their feeble forebears, occasionally breaking the silence with some piece of family news, spoken loudly into the half-comprehending faces, and accepting with blank calm the response, whether this were a cluck or a crow, or something more substantial. The rest of the geriatric patients were grouped at the television corner, watching and commenting. Really, there was nothing one could complain of in them.

  But Lettie had been, in any case, jittery beyond the usual when she arrived. She had not answered Miss Taylor’s greeting, but had scraped the bedside chair closer to Miss Taylor and started talking immediately.

  “Taylor, we all went to see Mortimer. It was utterly futile—”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Warner told me yesterday—”

  “Quite useless. Mortimer is not to be trusted. The police are, of course, shielding him. He must have accomplices—one of them is apparently a young man, another a middle-aged man with a lisp, and then there is a foreigner, and also—”

  “Chief Inspector Mortimer,” said Miss Taylor, “always used to seem to me rather sane.”

  “Sane, of course he’s sane. I am not saying he isn’t sane. I made the great mistake, Taylor, of letting him know I had remembered him in my will. He always appeared to be so helpful on the committees, so considerate. But I see now, he has been a schemer. He did not expect me to live so long, and he is using these methods to frighten me to death. Of course I have now taken him out of my will, and I took steps to make this fact known to him, hoping his persecution would then cease. But now, in his rage, he has intensified his efforts. The others who receive the anonymous calls are merely being used as a blind, a cover, you see, Taylor, a blind. And Eric, I believe, is working in with him. I have written to Eric, but have received no reply, which alone is suspicious. I am their main objective and victim. Now, a further development. A few weeks ago, you remember I arranged to have my telephone disconnected.”

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Taylor, closing her eyes to rest them.

  “Well, shortly after that, as I was going to bed, I could swear I heard a noise at my bedroom window. As you know, my window looks out on the…”

  Dame Lettie had, in the past few weeks, got into the habit of searching the house every night before going to bed. One could not be too careful. She searched the house from top to bottom, behind sofas, in cupboards, under beds. And even then there were creaks and unaccountable noises springing up all over the place. This nightly search of the house and the garden took three-quarters of an hour, by the end of which Dame Lettie was in no condition to deal with her maid’s hysterics. After a week of this routine Gwen had declared the house to be haunted and Dame Lettie to be a maniac, and had left.

  Thus, Dame Lettie was not in the mood for the geriatrics when she visited Miss Taylor in the Maud Long Ward.

  “I suppose,” ventured Miss Taylor, “you have informed the police of your suspicions. If someone is trying to get into the house, surely the police—”

  “The police,” Dame Lettie explained with long-tried emphasis, “are shielding Mortimer and his accomplices. The police always stick together. Eric is in with them. They are all in it together.”

  “Perhaps a little rest in a country nursing home would do you good. All this must be very exhausting.”

  “Not me,” said Dame Lettie. “Oh no, Taylor, no nursing home for me while I have my faculties and am able to get about on my feet. I am looking for another maid. An older woman. They are so difficult to come by, they all want their television.” She looked over to the senile patients gathered ro
und their television receiver. “Such an expense to the country. An abominable invention.”

  “Really, in cases like theirs, it is an entirely suitable invention. It does hold their attention.”

  “Taylor, I cannot come here again. It is too distressing.”

  “Go away for a holiday, Dame Lettie. Forget about the house and the phone calls.”

  “Even the private detective whom I employed is in league with Mortimer. Mortimer is behind it all. Eric is…”

  Miss Taylor dabbed her sore eye under her glasses. She wanted to close her eyes, and longed for the bell to ring which marked the end of the visiting hour.

  “Mortimer…Mortimer…Eric,” Dame Lettie was going on. Miss Taylor felt reckless.

  “In my belief,” she said, “the author of the anonymous telephone calls is Death himself, as you might say. I don’t see, Dame Lettie, what you can do about it. If you don’t remember Death, Death reminds you to do so. And if you can’t cope with the facts the next best thing is to go away for a holiday.”

  “You have taken leave of your senses, Taylor,” said Dame Lettie, “and I can do no more for you.” She stopped at the outer office and, demanding to speak to the ward sister, registered her opinion that Miss Taylor was off her head and should be watched.

  When Gwen had left Dame Lettie’s employment she quite understandably told her boy friend all about the nightly goings-on, how the mad Dame would go round the house, poking into all the cupboards and corners, and the garden, poking into the shrubberies with an electric torch, no wonder her eyesight was failing.

  “And she wouldn’t let me tell the police,” said Gwen. “She doesn’t trust the police. No wonder, they’d have laughed at her. Oh, but it gave me the creeps because when you’re looking for noises, you keep hearing them all over the house and you think you see shapes in the darkness, and half the time it was herself I bumped into in the garden. Oh, but that house is just about haunted. I couldn’t stand it a minute longer.”