Remember Me

by Fay Weldon

  What was he hoping for? Is he so convinced that life is better than death?

  The AA man is sick. It is his first night on the job.

  ‘This is nothing,’ says the policeman, who had closed the staring eyes. ‘It’s when you find an eye looking up at you from a puddle—’

  The AA man is sick again. He is in his early twenties, and used to be in insurance, until made redundant under the last-in-first-out policy, and thereupon succumbed to the lure of the open road.

  The car is towed away. The policemen and the A.A. man depart. The moon shines calmly on, untouched, over the low sweep of the hills.

  The ambulance driver means to deposit the body at the Stortford General Hospital morgue, but arriving, finds their freezer unit is giving trouble, and proceeds to Custerley Mortuary. Here he has some difficulty in persuading the authorities (namely Arthur, the mortician, white-coated and wearing slippers but no socks, and seventy-five if he’s a day) to accept a body not strictly their business, and poorly documented at that. ‘It’s asking for trouble,’ says Arthur.

  It is Arthur’s assistant Clarence, a philosophy student on vacation, who belongs to a freer, less fearful generation who persuades his superior to relent. In any case Arthur wants to get back to bed.

  The body is decanted on to a trolley and wheeled in, sheet-covered. Again the sheet slips from the head. The moon shines through the windows. Madeleine’s eyes, open again, catch the light and glitter. Her face, drained of blood, smoothed out, is as beautiful as it has ever been.

  ‘Poor lady,’ says Clarence, and the eyes close momentarily, but it is only, presumably, the trolley’s jolting over the uneven ground that gives this effect of the dead being alive again. ‘No seat belt, I suppose,’ says Arthur, whose custom it is to greet cadavers with some grudging remark, not so much, one might charitably suppose, because he wishes to be disagreeable, as to make himself, as well as them, feel that to be dead is not so different from being alive.

  The police, meanwhile, have been doing their best to contact Jarvis. Madeleine always carries her marriage certificate, worn thin along the folds, in her handbag, together with the one affectionate letter from Jarvis she has ever received.

  The handbag is of battered crocodile. Hilary found it in a skip when out on a treasure hunt expedition with Jarvis and Lily, and hid it beneath her coat and took it home to Madeleine. And Madeleine made use of it, out of deference to Hilary and also, of course, in memory to the crocodile, slaughtered to gratify the rich and vain.

  The bell of the telephone extension by Jarvis and Lily’s bed has been switched to the off position. The instrument trembles fractionally as the contact is made, but no one answers. Sergeant Corvey cannot get through.

  Hilary lies sleepless in her bed. It’s spooky in here, she thinks, and she turns on the ceiling light to supplement the night-light. Jonathon whickers in his sleep, and reminds her of her guinea pig.

  Hilary sings.

  To his nest the eagle flies, O’er the hill the sunlight dies, Hush my darling, have no fear, For thy mother watches near.

  So’ sings Hilary softly to herself, remembering what she never knew. So sang Iris, once long ago. Hilary never met Iris. Iris died before she was born. ‘One of those people,’ as the six-year-old Hilary observed to her mother Madeleine, thus comforting her somewhat, ‘whose time for being alive was before ours.’ As if all the world, in life and death, was fair and properly regulated. Perhaps Hilary’s daughter will be able to say the same for Madeleine, and as calmly. Perhaps not.

  Philip and Margot are late to bed. Lettice, in some spasm of housewifeliness, has boiled up what remains of the chicken for stock, and gone to bed, and left the pan to boil dry. The stench of burnt bones and pitted saucepan fill the house. When the windows have been opened and the mess cleared, it is past two o’clock. Tiredness has passed; exhaustion has set in. Philip lies in bed, waiting for his wife to join him. Margot creams her face in the mirror.

  ‘I’m so ashamed,’ she says. ‘Writhing about on the floor like that.’

  ‘As well you might be. Well, never mind. It got us home.’

  ‘I didn’t think you wanted to leave. You seemed very happy.’

  ‘Nonsense. They’re perfectly dreadful people.’

  ‘What was wrong with me?’ she persists, although he has explained patiently, over and over again, that her symptoms, responding as they did to a harsh word and a slap, were hysterical and not functional, and best ignored and forgotten.

  ‘Jealousy,’ he remarks, driven to it by a mixture of exhaustion and irritation. ‘Perhaps you thought it was time you got a little attention.’

  Margot does not reply. She removes the cream from her face, stares into her own eyes as into a lover’s.

  Oh, I am the doctor’s wife, mother of the doctor’s children; I am used, put up with, ignored; I gather scraps from other people’s tables. I am the doctor’s wife, my husband’s wife, an only partly welcome guest; my husband’s adjunct, neither smart, nor beautiful, nor successful, but useful for filling up an empty seat between two males, useful in order to make the hostess shine. I am the doctor’s wife, fresh from a public humiliation I shall never forget, creaming my face before a mirror as I have done a thousand times before, seeing the detail not the whole, as plain girls quickly learn to do, and now, I find, the ageing woman.

  Margot stares into her eyes. Margot sings.

  To his nest the eagle flies, O’er the hill the sunlight dies—

  ‘Is that you singing?’ asks the doctor. ‘Couldn’t you come to bed? I can’t get to sleep until you do.’

  ‘Was I singing?’ Margot enquires, and realises, yes she was.

  ‘Hush my darling, have no fear …’ she goes on, but can’t remember what comes next—

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ says the doctor.

  Deep set brown eyes stare back at her from the mirror. They close, momentarily. Margot sees them do so. But how can you see eyes close, if they’re a reflection of your own?

  ‘Philip—’ says Margot, frightened.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ says the doctor. ‘Don’t you understand I’m tired.’

  Margot gets into bed beside him. She is stiff with an unfamiliar resentment. The doctor sleeps. He smells of tooth powder, she thinks. A musty, dusty, sickly smell. He who uses toothpaste. Margot sleeps.

  Again the telephone by the Katkin bed vibrates, unnoticed. Lily and Jarvis are locked in a languorous embrace, which took them from the bathroom, where Jarvis soaped Lily’s white body with creamy soap, up the stairs, where discomfort finally led them to their bed, where Lily all but fell asleep, and now lies on her side with him behind her, half way between waking and dreaming. He moves inside her, it seems, like a large fish in a tiny pool, importunate yet affectionate, pleasurable yet puzzling. All the same, the vision of Margot writhing on the floor, on her side, remains with Lily, holding her in the outer world. Her climax approaches, recedes; his arrives; hers evaporates. She is quite content.

  ‘What a waste of an evening,’ says Jarvis. ‘We could have spent all of it in bed.’

  Lily laughs, and stretches out her white hand to flick out the light. ‘The clock has stopped,’ she remarks. ‘I thought I’d wound it up yesterday.’ And so it has although she did. Jarvis picks up the telephone to dial TIM, and hears Sergeant Corvey’s voice addressing him. He is at first too confused to comprehend what is being said: it is the voice of accusation he hears, as he was accustomed to hearing it in his childhood—loud and reproachful and coming suddenly, thunder out of a blue sky, turning his life upside down. Hector his stepfather had a loud voice, and was given to shouting.

  ‘Who are you speaking to,’ enquires Lily in his other ear, spreading her limbs over his, naked and naughty—‘at this time of night? I know. It’s Madeleine. It’s Madeleine, isn’t it? She says her drains are blocked and she wants you over right how to fix them. Tell her she can’t have you. Tell her you’re mine.’ But Jarvis quietens her with his hand. He pushes her off
. What is Jarvis saying? Lily listens.

  ‘Stortford General Hospital? … What are you talking about? … Their freezer unit? … I’m not an electrician: I am an architect and it’s three in the morning … my wife is here beside me in bed … is this some kind of practical joke? … Madeleine Katkin? Madeleine? …’

  And Lily is pushed altogether aside, and Jarvis sits on the edge of the bed, head in hands, and Lily’s small white hands flutter against his turned back, brown, toughened, resolute against her, and her voice in the room where once Jarvis and Madeleine walked and talked, sounds plaintive and ridiculous and out of place.

  Madeleine dead?

  Oh, I am Lily, once the second wife, now the only wife. What is to become of me now? This was not what I meant at all. I married Jarvis, Madeleine’s husband: Am I to have the full weight of him upon me now? Jarvis, Lily’s husband: Lily, Jarvis’s one and only wife?

  The moon goes down behind banks of clouds: the first signs of morning can be seen in the sky.

  In Custerley mortuary the electric light is beginning to pale. Madeleine lies, sheet-covered, on her trolley. Arthur has pattered off home in his slippers. Clarence is in charge. Clarence sings: a lullaby. He can’t remember where he heard it, learnt it; Clarence’s mother was not the kind to sing lullabies. She worked as a waitress, at nights, leaving the home when his father came back. But he likes to think she would have, if she could.

  Hush my darling have no fear For thy mother watches near—

  Time passes.

  At six o’clock punctually, Goliath strides into the mortuary to relieve Clarence, who is more than ready for his breakfast. Whether through tradition, superstition or common politeness, the bodies of the dead are not left unattended. To devalue the dead, after all, is to devalue the living. At the same time, staffing problems here, as anywhere, are acute. Goliath is a West Indian lad, seventeen, and studying for A-levels in Art and History. From six in the morning until ten he caretakes in the mortuary, and does his homework the while. At ten he goes round the corner to school, where they are pleased to see him, late or not. From five to eight each evening Goliath trains for the school team in the local swimming baths. Then Goliath helps his father in his garage until midnight, when it’s time to go to bed. On Saturday nights Goliath takes out his girl: on Sundays Goliath goes to church with his family, to whom he is a credit (as he is to the school, the swimming team, his girlfriend, and the mortuary). Goliath is condescending towards Clarence, who clearly cannot manage his life, as his shaggy hair, red-rimmed eyes and frayed jeans indicate.

  ‘Singing?’ remarks Goliath now, reproachfully. ‘To my mind we owe the departed rather more respect than that.’

  ‘It quietens them,’ says Clarence, meaning to tease.

  ‘Prayer does that,’ says Goliath, alarmed, ‘not song. But if you don’t mind, we will discontinue this conversation. Discussion of the supernatural is not healthy; it dissolves one’s senses of the reality, and renders one more open to unhealthy extra-sensory experience.’

  ‘In other words,’ says Clarence, ‘if you see a ghost, don’t mention it.’

  ‘Quite,’ says Goliath, uneasily, and doesn’t add, ‘Why? Have you seen one?’ for fear of hearing an answer he’d rather not. Goliath enquires instead why Madeleine’s body has not been decanted from its trolley and placed in the appropriate wall unit.

  ‘Poor lady,’ says Clarence, unctuously. ‘She looks so beautiful with the moon upon her face. She will never feel it in life again.’

  ‘I am a Christian,’ says Goliath sternly, ‘and I believe in the immortality of the soul. What lies there upon the trolley is dust and ashes. The soul has flown.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ enquires Clarence, peering at Madeleine’s white, quiet face. ‘She might be temporarily gone, I grant you. Off visiting, here and there; one gets the feeling she is. Busy as a little bee she’s been, all night.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Goliath is uneasy now, as well he might be. He loosens his beautifully white collar with his fingers; pulls at the smooth black tie he always wears to work. As the morning light increases, so Goliath’s fine black face emerges out of the background and Clarence’s pale features lose their definition. It is clearly time for Clarence to go home: Goliath’s time has come. Clarence is a creature of the dusk, Goliath of the dawn.

  ‘The newly dead do go visiting,’ says Clarence firmly. I’m quite sure of it. They go off on a tour of their family and friends: they visit their nearest and dearest first; then the rest of their acquaintance in order of precedence. It can mean a lot of waiting about, if someone dies who is not very close, or not as close as you had hoped. You sometimes have to wait days, or even weeks before you feel their spirit come to touch yours. Then they make their peace and say goodbye, good night: and off they go wherever it is they go. After that, you stop feeling so irritated and impatient with them for dying, and begin to feel sorry about it, and presently forget them altogether. As for the dead, they lose interest in the living, in the same way as the living lose interest in the dead, and as you, Goliath, no doubt lose interest in a girl once you’ve had her.’

  Does Clarence believe what he’s saying? Clarence scarcely knows himself. The day after Clarence’s mother died of thrombosis—she had had varicose veins, from a life of so much standing about—Clarence had certainly felt the breath of her presence, and sensed the process of incorporation, so that later, he could stand at his mother’s graveside and feel not so much grief as exaltation. But perhaps Clarence imagined it? Perhaps it was Clarence’s way of denying loss? How is Clarence to know? In the meantime, he has clearly upset Goliath.

  ‘I am not in the habit of having girls,’ says Goliath stiffly. ‘I am in the habit of going steady, and that’s the difference between you and me.’

  All the same, after Clarence has left, Goliath, instead of decanting Madeleine’s body, as he is employed and paid to do, leaves it where it is, and sits and eats his breakfast sandwiches, first removing the ham his mother has put between the bread, for he has some aspiration to being converted to Judaism, in the hope of being able to battle on equal terms with a single-minded Jehovah rather than having to succumb, worshipfully and meekly, to the unchancy will of the Holy Trinity, as is his present obligation. Goliath finds himself singing.

  To his nest the eagle flies O’er the hill the sunlight dies,

  and stops himself. Goliath does not wish to behave like Clarence. Goliath has never been personally acquainted with death or suffered any great personal loss: youth and the cultivated health of his body, the surging of the blood in his veins on Saturday night, and of his heart on a Sunday morning as he lifts up his soul to the Creator, inclines him to notions of his own immortality, physical as well as spiritual. Well, he is young, and strong, and that is that.

  This morning Goliath cannot concentrate. He feels restless: Clarence, or something, has upset him. The air in the white-painted room is in some kind of turmoil. Goliath is accustomed to the company of the dead, but today he wishes to be gone: he wishes he was a schoolboy like any other, and not a paragon of both the children’s and the adults’ world; he waits impatiently for Arthur to arrive and relieve him of this noisy silence.

  What would Goliath hear, if he had ears to hear? He would hear the reproaches of women. What else? He knows them well, as do all the family of man. He heard them first on the day he was born. Listen; from the delivery room, where new life bursts, amidst grunts and groans, from old. ‘Oh how you hurt me, how you tear me, you beautiful boy, my love, my pride, my ruin. Ouch! You devil, monster!’ He will hear them, no doubt, on the day he dies. ‘Why are you going into that dark vale, why are you leaving me here all alone? What is your male death to my female misery? Devil! Monster! Deserter!’

  He knows them well; he knows them by heart. As he knows the cacophony of female neighbours, crowding, protesting, at the door of the wife-beater, the baby-batterer, the drunkard, the deserter. ‘Villain! Devil! Monster!’

  Goliath puts do
wn his book, goes to Madeleine, pulls back the sheet from her face. She is unsmiling, intent. She seems to listen. To what? The air is thick around her body, busy with complaint. Goliath senses it. Alive, it seems, Madeleine was nothing to the heavenly female host. Dead, at least she proves a point, becomes the focus of womanly discontent.

  Cover your ears, Goliath! The chorus is at it again. ‘Why is this woman dead? Who killed her? If she killed herself, who drove her to it? Some man! Who? You?’

  Goliath pulls the sheet back over Madeleine’s face, breathing deeply to steady his racing heart; goes back to his place at the table; re-opens his history book. Reason prevails. The dead are silent.

  Be quiet, Madeleine. Lie still. So you were wronged: so were a million, million others, dead and gone or on their way. You were wronged by women as much as men, you know you were. By your mother; by your friends; by your especial sisters, those sweet flowers, by Lily, by Poppy, by Iris, sending out their sickly perfume over the generations. Debilitating.

  And by Margot, housewife, unflowerlike, dumpy, powerful in her fertility, lying with Jarvis beneath a pile of damp and musty coats.

  Be quiet, Madeleine. Lie still. Let young Goliath turn the pages of his history book in peace. You came top in history once, when you were his age. You can afford to leave him alone. You can afford to leave them all alone. You had your patch of blue sky, your glimmer of sun, the awareness of your body as it took its nourishment, reproduced itself, and was finally destroyed. That’s all there is to any of it. Acknowledge your mortality.

  Lie still, forget, say your goodbyes and go.

  No.

  15

  SIX O’CLOCK IN THE morning. Who’s awake? Lily, loved by many in spite of herself.