Memento Mori

MEMENTO MORI

Muriel Spark

What shall I do with this absurdity —

O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to me

As to a dog’s tail?

W .B. YEATS, The Tower

 

 

 

 

 

O what Venerable and Reverend Creatures

did the Aged seem! Immortal Cherubims!

THOMAS TRAHERNE, Centuries of Meditation

 

 

 

Q.   What are the four last things to be ever remembered?

A.   The four last things to be ever remembered are Death, Judgement, Hell, and Heaven.

The Penny Catechism

 

 

 

 

 

ONE

Dame Lettie Colston refilled her fountain-pen and continued her letter:

One of these days I hope you will write as brilliantly on a happier theme. In these days of cold war I do feel we should soar above the murk & smog & get into the clear crystal.

The telephone rang. She lifted the receiver. As she had feared, the man spoke before she could say a word. When he had spoken the familiar sentence she said, ‘Who is that speaking, who is it?’

But the voice, as on eight previous occasions, had rung off. Dame Lettie telephoned to the Assistant Inspector as she had been requested to do. ‘It has occurred again,’ she said.

‘I see. Did you notice the time?’

‘It was only a moment ago.

‘The same thing?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the same. Surely you have some means of tracing —’

‘Yes, Dame Lettie, we will get him, of course.

A few moments later Dame Lettie telephoned to her brother Godfrey.

‘Godfrey, it has happened again.’

‘I’ll come and fetch you, Lettie,’ he said. ‘You must spend the night with us.’

‘Nonsense. There is no danger. It is merely a disturbance.’

‘What did he say?’

‘The same thing. And quite matter-of-fact, not really threatening. Of course the man’s mad. I don’t know what the police are thinking of, they must be sleeping. It’s been going on for six weeks now.

‘Just those words?’

‘Just the same words — Remember you must die — nothing more. ‘‘He must be a maniac,’ said Godfrey.

Godfrey’s wife Charmian sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical order which Godfrey had told her was better than no order at all, since she now had grasp of neither logic nor chronology. Charmian was eighty-five. The other day a journalist from a weekly paper had been to see her. Godfrey had subsequently read aloud to her the young man’s article:

.    . . By the fire sat a frail old lady, a lady who once set the whole of the literary world (if not the Thames) on fire … Despite her age, this legendary figure is still abundantly alive …

Charmian felt herself dropping off, and so she said to the maid who was arranging the magazines on the long oak table by the window, ‘Taylor, I am dropping off to sleep for five minutes. Telephone to St Mark’s and say I am coming.’

Just at that moment Godfrey entered the room holding his hat and wearing his outdoor coat. ‘What’s that you say?’ he said.