Memento Mori

‘And she stood up on a chair and looked round her and said, “Gad! The place is stinking with royalty.” Remember we were terribly embarrassed, and —’

‘No, Charmian, no. You’ve got it wrong there. It was one of the Lilley Sisters who stood on a chair. And that was much later. There was nothing like that about Lydia May, she was a different class of girl.’

Mrs Pettigrew placed the two pills a little nearer to Charmian, but said no more about them. Charmian said, ‘I mustn’t exceed my dose,’ and shakily replaced them in the bottle.

‘Charmian, take your pills, my dear,’ said Godfrey and took a noisy sip from his coffee.

‘I have taken two pills already. I remember quite clearly doing so. Four might be dangerous.’

Mrs Pettigrew cast her eyes to the ceiling and sighed.

‘What is the use,’ said Godfrey, ‘of me paying big doctor’s bills if you won’t take his stuff?’

‘Godfrey, I do not wish to be poisoned by an overdose. Moreover, my own money pays for the bills.’

‘Poisoned,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, laying down her napkin as if tried beyond endurance. ‘I ask you.’

‘Or merely upset,’ said Charmian. ‘I do not wish to take the pills, Godfrey.’

‘Oh well,’ he said ‘if that’s how you feel, I must say it makes life damned difficult for all of us, and we simply can’t take responsibility if you have an attack through neglecting the doctor’s instructions.’

Charmian began to cry. ‘I know you want to put me away in a home.’

Mrs Anthony had just come in to clear the table.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Who wants to put you in a home?’

‘We are a little upset, what with one thing and another,’ said Mrs Pettigrew.

Charmian stopped crying. She said to Mrs Anthony, ‘Taylor, did you see my early tea-tray when it came down?’

Mrs Anthony seemed not to grasp the question, for though she had heard it, for some reason she felt it was more complicated than it really was.

Charmian repeated, ‘Did you see —’

‘Now, Charmian,’ said Godfrey, foreseeing some possible contradiction between Mrs Anthony’s reply and Mrs Pettigrew’s previous assertion. In this, he was concerned overwhelmingly to prevent a conflict between the two women. His comfort, the whole routine of his life, depended on retaining Mrs Anthony. Otherwise he might have to give up the house and go to some hotel. And Mrs Pettigrew having been acquired, she must be retained; otherwise Charmian would have to go to a home. ‘Now, Charmian, we don’t want any more fuss about your pills,’ he said.

‘What did you say about the tea-tray, Mrs Colston?’

‘Was there anything on it when it came down from my room?’ Mrs Pettigrew said, ‘Of course there was nothing on the tray. I replaced the pills you had left on it in the bottle.’

‘There was a cup and saucer on the tray. Mrs Pettigrew brought it down,’ said Mrs Anthony, contributing what accuracy she could to questions which still confused her.

Mrs Pettigrew started noisily loading the breakfast dishes on to Mrs Anthony’s tray. She said to Mrs Anthony, ‘Come, my dear, we ye work to do.’

Mrs Anthony felt she had somehow failed Charmian, and so, as she followed Mrs Pettigrew out of the door, she pulled a face at her.

When they were gone Godfrey said, ‘See the fuss you’ve caused. Mrs Pettigrew was quite put out. If we lose her —’

‘Ah,’ said Charmian, ‘you are taking your revenge, Eric.’

‘I am not Eric,’ he said.

‘But you are taking your revenge.’ Fifteen years ago, in her seventy-first year, when her memory had started slightly to fail, she had realized that Godfrey was turning upon her as one who had been awaiting his revenge. She did not think he was himself aware of this. It was an instinctive reaction to the years of being a talented, celebrated woman’s husband, knowing himself to be reaping continually in her a harvest which he had not sown.

Throughout her seventies Charmian had not reproached him with his bullying manner. She had accepted his new domination without comment until her weakness had become so marked that she physically depended on him more and more. It was then, in her eighties, that she started frequently to say what, in the past, she would have considered unwise: ‘You are taking your revenge.

And on this occasion, as always, he replied, ‘What revenge for what?’ He really did not know. He saw only that she was beginning to look for persecution: poison, revenge; what next? ‘You are getting into a state of imagining that all those around you are conspiring against you,’ he said.

‘Whose fault is it,’ she said with a jolting sharpness, ‘if I am getting into such a state?’

This question exasperated him, partly because he sensed a deeper sanity in it than in all her other accusations, and partly because he could not answer it. He felt himself to be a heavily burdened man.

Later in the morning, when the doctor called, Godfrey stopped him in the hall.

‘She is damn difficult today, Doctor.’

‘Ah well,’ said the doctor, ‘it’s a sign of life.’

‘Have to see about a home if she goes on like this.’

‘It might be a good idea, if only she can be brought round to liking it,’ said the doctor. ‘The scope for regular