Memento Mori

‘You doubt.’

‘Of course, I doubt. In a court of law, my dear, I would with complete honesty deny the charge. But you know, I can’t affirm or deny anything that is within the range of natural possibility.

‘Alec, are you the man, or not?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If so, I am unaware of it. But I may be a Jekyll and Hyde, may I not? There was a recent case —’Because,’ she said, ‘if you are the culprit the police will get you.’

‘They would have to prove the deed. And if they proved it to my satisfaction I should no longer be in doubt.’

‘Alec,’ she said, ‘are you the man behind those phone calls?’

‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said.

‘Then,’ she said, ‘you are not the man. Is it someone employed by you?’

He did not seem to hear the question, but was watching Granny Barnacle like a naturalist on holiday. Granny Barnacle accepted his attention with obliging submission, as she did when the doctor brought the medical students round her bed, or when the priest brought the Blessed Sacrament.

‘Ask her how she is keeping,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘since you are staring at her.’

‘How are you keeping?’ said Alec.

‘Not too good,’ said Granny Barnacle. She jerked her head to indicate the ward dispensaries just beyond the door. ‘Time there was a change of management,’ she said.

‘Indeed yes,’ said Alec, and, inclining his head in final acknowledgement, which included the whole of the Maud Long Ward, returned his attention to Jean Taylor.

‘Someone,’ she said, ‘in your employ?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘In that case,’ she said, ‘the man is neither you nor your agent.’

When she had first met him, nearly fifty years ago, she had been dismayed when he had expressed these curious ‘doubts’. She had thought him perhaps a little mad. It had not occurred to her till many years later that this was a self-protective manner of speech which he used exclusively when talking to women whom he liked. He never spoke so to men. She had discerned, after these many years, that his whole approach to the female mind, his only way of coping with it, was to seem to derive amusement from it. When Miss Taylor had made this discovery she was glad they had never been married. He was too much masked behind his mocking, paternal attitude — now become a habit — for any proper relationship with a grown woman.

She recalled an afternoon years ago in 1928 — long after the love affair — when she had been attending Charmian on a week-end party in the country and Alec Warner was a fellow-guest. One afternoon he had taken Jean Taylor off for a walk — Charmian had been amused —’ to question her, as Jean was so reliable in her evidence.’ Most of their conversation she had forgotten, but she recalled his first question.

‘Do you think, Jean, that other people exist?’

She had not at once understood the nature of the question. For a moment she had wondered if his words might in some way refer to that love affair twenty-odd years earlier, and his further words, ‘I mean, Jean, do you consider that people — the people around us — are real or illusory?’ had possibly some personal bearing. But this did not fit with her knowledge of the man. Even at the time of their love relationship he was not the type to proffer the conceit: there is no one in the world but we two; we alone exist. Besides, she who was now walking beside this middle-aged man was herself a woman in her early fifties.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘Only what I say.’ They had come to a beech wood which was damp from a last night’s storm. Every now and then a little succession of raindrops would pelt from the leaves on to his hat or her hat. He took her arm and led her off the main path, so that for all her sober sense, it rapidly crossed her mind that he might be a murderer, a maniac. But she had, the next instant, recalled her fifty years and more. Were they not usually young women who were strangled in woods by sexual maniacs? No, she thought again, sometimes they were women of fifty-odd. The leaves squelched beneath their feet. Her mind flashed messages to itself back and forth. But I know him well, he’s Alec Warner. Do I know him, though? — he is odd. Even as a lover he was strange. But he is known everywhere, his reputation … Still, some eminent men have secret vices. No one ever finds them out; their very eminence is a protection.

‘Surely,’ he was saying, as he continued to draw her into the narrow, dripping shadows, ‘you see that here is a respectable question. Given that you believe in your own existence as self-evident, do you believe in that of others? Tell me, Jean, do you believe that I for instance, at this moment, exist?’ He peered down at her face beneath the brim of her brown felt hat.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she said, stopping still.

‘Out of these wet woods,’ he said, ‘by a short cut. Tell me, now, surely you understand what I am asking? It’s a plain question …’

She looked ahead through the trees and saw that their path was indeed a short cut to the open fields. She realized at once that his question was entirely academic and he was not contemplating murder with indecent assault. And what reason, after all, had she to suspect this? How things do, she thought, come and go through a woman’s mind. He was an unusual man.

‘I agree,’ she then said, ‘that your question can be asked. One does sometimes wonder, perhaps only half- consciously, if other people are real.’

‘Please,’ he said, ‘wonder more than half-consciously about this question. Wonder about it with as much consciousness as you have, and tell me what is your answer.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I think in that case, other people do exist. That’s my answer. It’s only common sense.’

‘You have made up your mind too quickly,’ he said. ‘Take time and think about it.’

They had emerged from the wood and took a path skirting a ploughed field which led to the village. There the