Memento Mori

‘Well, no,’ said Charmian, ‘I don’t. I have been sending Eric sums of money for some years, secretly, through Mrs Anthony who is our daily woman. But he is still spiteful. Of course he disapproves of my books.’

‘They are beautiful books,’ said Guy.

‘Eric doesn’t approve the style. I’m afraid Godfrey has never handled Eric tactfully, that is the trouble.’

‘Beautiful,’ said Guy. ‘I have just been re-reading The Seventh Child. I love particularly that scene at the end with Edna in her mackintosh standing at the cliff’s edge on that Hebridean coast being drenched by the spray, and her hair blown about her face. And then turning to find Karl by her side. One thing about your lovers, Charmian, they never required any preliminary discussions. They simply looked at each other and knew.’

‘That,’ said Charmian, ‘is one of the things Eric cannot stand.’

‘Eric is a realist. He has no period-sense, no charity.’

‘Oh my dear Guy, do you think these new young men read my books from charity?’

‘Not from indulgence and kindness. But charity elevates the mind and governs the inward eye. If a valuable work of art is rediscovered after it has gone out of fashion, that is due to some charity in the discoverer, I believe. But I say, without a period-sense as well, no one can appreciate your books.’

‘Eric has no charity,’ she said.

‘Well, perhaps it is just that he is middle-aged. The really young are so much pleasanter,’ said Guy.

She was not listening. ‘He is like Godfrey in so many ways,’ she said. ‘I can’t help remembering how much I had to shut my eyes to in Godfrey. Lipstick on his handkerchiefs —’

‘Stop feeling guilty about Godfrey,’ Guy said. He had expected a livelier meeting with Charmian. He had never known Charmian to complain so much. He wished he had not inquired after Godfrey in the first place. Her words depressed him. They were like spilt sugar; however much you swept it up some grains would keep grinding under your feet.

‘About your novels,’ he said. ‘The plots are so well-laid. For instance in The Seventh Child, although of course one feels that Edna will never marry Gridsworthy, you have this tension between Anthony Garland and Colonel Yeoville, and until of course their relationships to Gabrielle are revealed, there is every likelihood that Edna will marry one or the other. And yet, of course, all along one is aware of a kind of secret life within Edna, especially at that moment when she is alone in the garden at Neuflette, and then comes unexpectedly upon Karl and Gabrielle. And then one feels sure she will marry Gridsworthy after all, merely for his kindness. And really, right up to the last page one does not know Karl’s true feelings. Or rather, one knows them — but does he know them? I must admit, although I remembered the story well, I felt the same enormous sense of relief, when I read it again the other day, that Edna did not throw herself over the cliff. The suspense, the plot alone, quite apart from the prose, are superb.’

‘And yet,’ said Charmian, smiling up at the sky through the window, ‘when I was half-way through writing a novel I always got into a muddle and didn’t know where it was leading me.’

Guy thought: She is going to say — dear Charmian — she is going to say ‘The characters seemed to take on a life of their own.

‘The characters,’ said Charmian, ‘seemed to take control of my pen after a while. But at first I always got into a tangle. I used to say to myself,

Oh what a tangled web we weave

When first we practise to deceive!

Because,’ she said, ‘the art of fiction is very like the practice of deception.’

‘And in life,’ he said, ‘is the practice of deception in life an art too?’

‘In life,’ she said, ‘everything is different. Everything is in the Providence of God. When I think of my own life … Godfrey …

Guy wished he had not introduced the question of life, but had continued discussing her novels. Charmian was upset about Godfrey, that was plain.

‘Godfrey has not been to visit me yet. He is to come next week. If he is able. But he is failing. You see, Guy, he is his own worst enemy. He…’

How banal and boring, Guy thought, do the most interesting people become when they are touched by a little bit of guilt.

He left at five. Charmian watched him from the window being helped into his car. She was vexed with herself for going on so much about Godfrey. Guy had never been interested in her domestic affairs. He was such an amusing companion. The room, with its chintzes, felt empty.

Guy waved out of his car window, a stiff, difficult wave. It was only then that Charmian noticed the other car which had drawn up while Guy had been helped into his seat. Charmian peered down; it looked like Godfrey’s car. It was, and Godfrey was climbing out, in his jerky way. She supposed he had come on an impulse to escape Mrs Pettigrew. If only he could go to live in a quiet private hotel. But as he walked across the path, she noticed he looked astonishingly bright and healthy. She felt rather tired.

Guy Leet considered, as he was driven home, whether in fact he was enjoying that sense of calm and freedom that is supposed to accompany old age or whether he was not. Yesterday he had been an old, serene man. Today he felt younger and less peaceful. How could one know at any particular moment what one’s old age finally amounted to? On the whole, he thought, he must be undergoing the experience of calm and freedom, although it was not like anything he would have anticipated. He was, perhaps, comparatively untroubled and detached, mainly because he became so easily exhausted. He was amazed at Charmian’s apparent energy — and she ten years his senior. He supposed he must be a dear old thing. He was fortunate in possessing all his material needs, and now that Lisa’s will was being proved, he might possibly spend the winter in a really warm climate. And he had earned Lisa’s money. And he bore no grudge against Charmian for her ingratitude. Not many men would have married Lisa simply to keep her quiet for Charmian’s sake. Not many would have endured the secrecy of such a marriage, a mere legal bond necessary to Lisa’s full sensual enjoyment of her many perversions. ‘I ‘ye got to be married,’ she would say in that hoarse voice, ‘my dear, I don’t want the man near me, but I’ve got to know that I’m married or I can’t enjoy myself.’

Foolishly, they had exchanged letters on the subject, which might have upset his claim on Lisa’s money. He did not think Tempest’s suit would have succeeded, but it would have been unpleasant. But that eventuality had come to nothing. He would get Lisa’s money; he had earned it. He had given satisfaction to Lisa and safety to