Memento Mori

‘Mrs Anthony is late with tea,’ said Dame Lettie, moving her chair so that her back was turned to Charmian.

‘You must not sleep alone at Hampstead,’ said Godfrey. ‘Call on Lisa Brooke and ask her to stop with you for a few days. The police will soon get the man.

‘Lisa Brooke be damned,’ said Dame Lettie, which would have been an alarming statement if intended seriously, for Lisa Brooke was not many moments dead, as Godfrey discovered in The Times obituary the next morning.

THREE

Lisa Brooke died in her seventy-third year after her second stroke. She had taken nine months to die, and in fact it was only a year before her death that, feeling rather ill, she had decided to reform her life, and reminding herself how attractive she still was, offered up the new idea, her celibacy to the Lord to whom no gift whatsoever is unacceptable.

It did not occur to Godfrey as he marched into a pew in the crematorium chapel that anyone else present had ever been Lisa’s lover except himself. It did not even come to mind that he had been Lisa’s lover, for he had never been her lover in any part of England, only Spain and Belgium, and at the moment he was busy with statistics. There were sixteen people present. On first analysis it emerged that five were relatives of Lisa. Next, among the remaining eleven, Godfrey elicited Lisa’s lawyer, her housekeeper, the bank manager. Lettie had just arrived. Then there was himself. That left six, only one of whom he recognized, but all of whom were presumably Lisa’s hangers- on, and he was glad their fountain of ready cash had dried up. All those years of daylight robbery; and many a time he had told Lisa, ‘A child of six could do better than that,’ when she displayed one of the paintings, outrages, committed by one of her pets. ‘If he hasn’t made his way in the world by now,’ he had said, time and again, of old Percy Mannering the poet, ‘he never will. You are a fool, Lisa, letting him drink your gin and shout his poetry in your ears.

Percy Mannering, almost eighty, stood with his lean stoop as the coffin was borne up the aisle. Godfrey stared hard at the poet’s red-veined hatchet cheek-bones and thin nose. He thought, ‘I bet he’s regretting the termination of his income. They’ve all bled poor Lisa white …’ The poet was, in fact, in a state of excitement. Lisa’s death had filled him with thrilling awe, for though he knew the general axiom that death was everyone’s lot he could never realize the particular case; each new death gave him something fresh to feel. It came to him as the service began that within a few minutes Lisa’s coffin would start sliding down into the furnace, and he saw as in a fiery vision her flame-tinted hair aglow as always, competing with the angry tresses of the fire below. He grinned like an elated wolf and shed tears of human grief as if he were half-beast, half-man, instead of half-poet, half-man. Godfrey watched him and thought, ‘He must be senile. He has probably lost his faculties.’

The coffin began to slide slowly down the slope towards a gap in the wall while the organ played something soft and religious. Godfrey, who was not a believer, was profoundly touched by this ensemble, and decided once and for all to be cremated when his time came. ‘There goes Lisa Brooke,’ he said to himself as he saw the last tilt of the coffin. The prow, thought the poet, lifts, and the ship goes under with the skipper on board … No, that’s too banal, Lisa herself as the ship is a better idea. Godfrey looked round him and thought, ‘She should have been good for another ten years, but what can you expect with all that drink and all these spongers?’ So furiously did he glare about him that he startled the faces which caught his eye.

Tubby Dame Lettie caught up with her brother in the aisle as he moved with the others to the porch. ‘What’s the matter with you, Godfrey?’ Lettie breathed.

The chaplain was shaking doleful hands with everyone at the door. As Godfrey gave his hand he said over his shoulder to Lettie, ‘The matter with me? What d’you mean what’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you?’

Lettie, as she dabbed her eyes, whispered, ‘Don’t talk so loud. Don’t glare so. Everyone’s looking at you.’

On the floor of the long porch was a muster of flowers done up, some in tasteful bunches, one or two in old- fashioned wreaths. These were being inspected by Lisa’s relatives, her middle-aged nephew and his wife, her parched elder sister Janet Sidebottome who had been a missionary in India at a time when it was India, her brother Ronald Sidebottome who had long since retired from the City, and Ronald’s Australian wife who had been christened Tempest. Godfrey did not immediately identify them, for he saw only the row of their several behinds as they stooped to examine the cards attached to each tribute.

‘Look, Ronald, isn’t this sweet? A tiny bunch of violets — oh, see, it says, “Thank you, Lisa dear, for all those wonderful times, with love from Tony.”‘

‘Rather odd words. Are you sure —’Who’s Tony, I wonder?’

‘See, Janet, this huge yellow rose wreath here from Mrs Pettigrew. It must have cost her a fortune.’

‘What did you say?’ said Janet who did not hear well.

‘A wreath from Mrs Pettigrew. It must have cost a fortune.’

‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Janet, looking round. True enough, Mrs Pettigrew, Lisa’s old housekeeper, was approaching in her well-dressed confident manner. Janet, cramped from the card-inspection, straightened painfully and turned to meet Mrs Pettigrew. She let the woman grip her hand.

‘Thank you for all you have done for my sister,’ said Janet sternly.

‘It was a pleasure.’ Mrs Pettigrew spoke in a surprisingly soft voice. It was understood Janet was thinking of the will. ‘I loved Mrs Brooke, poor soul.’

Janet inclined her head graciously, firmly withdrew her hand and rudely turned her back.

‘Can we see the ashes?’ loudly inquired Percy Mannering as he emerged from the chapel. ‘Is there any hope of seeing them?’ At the noise he made, Lisa’s nephew and his wife jumped nervily and looked round.

‘I want to see those ashes if possible.’ The poet had cornered Dame Lettie, pressing his hungry demand. Lettie felt there was something unhealthy about the man. She moved away.

‘That’s one of Lisa’s artists,’ she whispered to John Sidebottome, not meaning to prompt him to say ‘Oh!’ and lift his hat in Percy’s direction, as he did.

Godfrey stepped backwards and stood on a spray of pink carnations. ‘Oh — sorry,’ he said to the carnations, stepping off them quickly, and then was vexed at his folly, and knew that in any case no one had seen him after all. He ambled away from the trampled flowers.

‘What’s that fellow want with the ashes?’ he said to Lettie.