Memento Mori

attention is so much better in a nursing-home, and I have known cases far more advanced than your wife’s which have improved tremendously once they have been moved to a really comfortable home. How are you feeling yourself?’

‘Me? Well, what can you expect with all the domestic worries on my shoulders?’ said Godfrey. He pointed to the door of the garden.. room where Charmian was waiting. ‘You’d better go on in,’ he said, being disappointed of the sympathy and support he had hoped for, and vaguely put out by the doctor’s talk of Charmian’s possible improvement in health, should she be sent to a home.

The doctor’s hand was on the door knob. ‘I shouldn’t worry too much about domestic matters,’ he said. ‘Go out as much as possible. Your wife, as I say, may buck up tremendously if we have to move her. It sometimes proves a stimulus. Of course, at her age … her resistance … but there’s a chance that she may still get about again. It is largely neurasthenia. She has extraordinary powers of recovery, almost as if she had some secret source …

Godfrey thought: This is his smarm. Charmian has a secret source, and I pay the bills. He said explosively, ‘Well, sometimes I feel she deserves to be sent away. Take this morning, for instance —’

‘Oh deserves,’ said the doctor, ‘we don’t recommend nursing homes as a punishment, you know.’

‘Bloody man,’ said Godfrey in the doctor’s hearing and before he had properly got into the room where Charmian waited.

Immediately the doctor had entered through the door so did Mrs Pettigrew through the french windows. ‘Pleasant for the time of year,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘Good morning, Mrs Colston. How do you feel today?’

‘We wouldn’t,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘take our pills this morning, Doctor, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘I did take them,’ said Charmian. ‘I took them with my early tea, and they tried to force me to take more at breakfast. I know I took them with my early tea, and just suppose I had taken a second dose—’

‘It wouldn’t really have mattered,’ he said.

‘But surely,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘it is always dangerous to exceed a stated dose.’

‘Just try to keep a careful check — a set routine for medicines in future,’ he said to Mrs Pettigrew. ‘Then neither of you will make a mistake.’

‘There was no mistake on my part,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘There is nothing wrong with my memory.

‘In that case,’ said Charmian, ‘we must question your intentions in trying to give me a second dose. Taylor knows I took my pills as I always do. I did not leave them on the tray.’

The doctor said as he took her pulse, ‘Mrs Pettigrew, if you would excuse us for a moment …

She went out with a deep loud weary sigh, and, in the kitchen, stood and berated Mrs Anthony for ‘taking that mad-woman’s part this morning’.

‘She isn’t,’ said Mrs Anthony, ‘a mad-woman. She’s always been good to me.

‘No, she isn’t mad,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘you are right. She’s cunning and sly. She isn’t as feeble as she makes out, let me tell you. I’ve watched her when she didn’t know I was watching. She can move about quite easily when she likes.’

‘Not when she likes,’ said Mrs Anthony, ‘but when she feels up to it. After all, I’ve been here nine years, haven’t I? Mrs Colston is a person who needs a lot of understanding, she has her off days and her on days. No one understands her like I do.’

‘It’s preposterous,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘a woman of my position being accused of attempts to poison. Why, if I was going to do that I should go about it a very different way, I assure you, to giving her overdoses in front of everybody.’

‘I bet you would,’ said Mrs Anthony. ‘Mind out my way,’ she said, for she was sweeping the floor unnecessarily.

‘Mind how you talk to me, Mrs Anthony.’

‘Look,’ said Mrs Anthony, ‘my husband goes on at me about this job now he’s at home all day, he doesn’t like me being out. I only do it for that bit of independence and it’s what I’ve always done my married life. But we can do on the pension now I’m seventy and the old man sixty-eight, and any trouble from you, let me tell you I’m leaving here. I managed her myself these nine years and we got on without you interfering and making trouble.’

‘I shall speak to Mr Colston,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, ‘and inform him of what you say.’

‘Him,’ said Mrs Anthony. ‘Go on and speak to him. I don’t reckon much of him. She’s the one that I care for, not him.’ Mrs Anthony followed this with an insolent look.

‘What do you mean by that exactly?’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘You work it out for yourself,’ said Mrs Anthony. ‘I’m busy with their luncheon.’

Mrs Pettigrew went in search of Godfrey who was, however, out. She went by way of the front door round to the french windows, and through them. She saw that the doctor had left and Charmian was reading a book. She was filled with a furious envy at the thought that, if she herself were to take the vapours, there would not be any expensive doctor to come and give her a kind talk and an injection no doubt, and calm her down so that she could sit and read a book after turning the household upside down.

Mrs Pettigrew went upstairs to look round the bedrooms, to see if they were all right and tidy, and in reality to simmer down and look round. She was annoyed with herself for letting go at Mrs Anthony. She should have kept aloof. But it had always been the same — even when she had been with Lisa Brooke — when she had to deal with lower domestics she became too much one of them. It was kindness of heart, but it was weak. She reflected that she had really started off on the wrong foot with Mrs Anthony; that, when she had first arrived, she should have kept her distance with the woman and refrained from confidences. And now she had lowered herself to an argument with Mrs Anthony. These thoughts overwhelmed Mrs Pettigrew with that sense of having done a foolish