Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

‘But, all the same,’ she said, ‘we’re all the same.

But there was Miss Marjorie Pettigrew. Miss Pettigrew’s appearance and bearing attracted me with a kind of consolation. I learned that she had been at Watling for about six months and from various hints and abrupt silences I gathered that she was either feared or disliked. I put this down to the fact that she wasn’t a neurotic. Usually, neurotics take against people whose nerves they can’t jar upon. So I argued to myself; and that I myself rather approved of Miss Pettigrew was a sign that I was a different sort of neurotic from the others.

Miss Pettigrew was very tall and stick-like, with very high shoulders and a square face. She seemed to have a lot of bones. Her eyes were dark, her hair black; it was coiled in the earphone style but she was not otherwise unfashionable.

I thought at first she must be in Retreat, for she never spoke at mealtimes, though she always smiled faintly when passing anything at table. She never joined the rest of the community except for meals and prayers. She was often in the chapel praying. I envied her resistance, for though I too wanted solitude I often hadn’t the courage to refuse to join the company, and so make myself unpopular like Miss Pettigrew. I hoped she would speak to me when she came out of her Retreat.

One day in that first week a grand-looking north-countrywoman said to me at table, nodding over to where Miss Pettigrew sat in her silence,

‘There’s nothing wrong with her at all.’

‘Wrong with her?’

‘It’s pretence, she’s clever, that’s it.’

By clever she meant cunning, I realized that much.

‘How do you mean, pretence?’ I said.

‘Her silence. She won’t speak to anyone.

‘But she’s in Retreat, isn’t she?’

‘Not her,’ said this smart woman. ‘She’s been living here for over six months and for the past four she hasn’t opened her mouth. It isn’t mental trouble, it is not.

‘Has she taken some religious vow, perhaps?’

‘Not her; she’s clever. She won’t open her mouth. They brought a doctor, but she wouldn’t open her mouth to him.’

‘I’m glad she’s quiet, anyhow,’ I said. ‘Her room’s next door to mine and I like quietness.’

Not all the pilgrims regarded Miss Pettigrew as ‘clever’. She was thought to be genuinely touched in the head. And it was strange how she was disapproved of by the Cloisters, for they were kind — only too intrusively kind — towards obvious nervous sufferers like me. Their disapproval of Miss Pettigrew was almost an admission that they believed nothing was wrong with her. If she had gone untidy, made grotesque faces, given jerks and starts and twitches, if she had in some way lost their respect I do not think she would have lost their approval.

I began to notice her more closely in the hope of finding out more about her mental aberration; such things are like a magnet to neurotics. I would meet her crossing the courtyard, or come upon her kneeling in the lonely Lady Chapel. Always she inclined her coiled head towards me, ceremonious as an Abbess greeting a nun. Passing her in a corridor I felt the need to stand aside and make way for her confident quiet progress. I could not believe she was insane.

I could not believe she was practising some crude triumphant cunning, enduring from day to day, with her silence and prayers. It was said she had money. Perhaps she was very mystical. I wondered how long she would be able to remain hermited so within herself. The monks were in a difficult position. It was against their nature to turn her out; maybe it was against their Rule; certainly it would cause a bad impression in the neighbourhood which was not at all Abbey-minded. One after another the monks had approached her, tactful monks, sympathetic, firm and curious ones.

‘Well, Miss Pettigrew, I hope you’ve benefited from your stay at the Abbey? I suppose you have plans for the winter?’

No answer, only a mild gesture of acknowledgement.

No answer, likewise, to another monk, ‘Now, Miss Pettigrew, dear child, you simply can’t go on like this. It isn’t that we don’t want to keep you. Glory be to God, we’d never turn you out of doors, nor any soul. But we need the room, d’you see, for another pilgrim.’

And again, ‘Now tell us what’s the trouble, open your heart, poor Miss Pettigrew. This isn’t the Catholic way at all. You’ve got to communicate with your fellows.’

‘Is it a religious vow you’ve taken all on your own? That’s very unwise, it’s …’

‘See, Miss Pettigrew, we’ve found you a lodging in the town…’

Not a word. She was seen to go weekly to Confession, so evidently she was capable of speech. But she would not talk, even to do her small bits of shopping. Every week or so she would write on a piece of paper, ‘Please get me a Snowdrop Shampoo, 1s. 6d. encl.’ or some such errand, handing it to the laundry-girl who was much attached to her, and who showed me these slips of paper as proudly as if they were the relics of a saint.

‘Gloria, are you coming for a walk?’

No, I wasn’t going for a trudge. It was my third week. Squackle-wackle was becoming most uninteresting.

I sat by my window and thought how happy I would be if I wasn’t waiting uncertainly for a telephone call. I still have in mind the blue and green and gold of that October afternoon which was spoiled for me at the time. The small ginger man with his dark green cloak slipping off his shoulders crossed the grass in the courtyard below. Two lay brothers in blue workmen’s overalls were manipulating a tractor away in the distance. From the Lady Chapel came the chant of the monks at their office. There is nothing like plainsong to eternalize a memory, it puts a seal on whatever is happening at the time. I thought it a pity that my appreciation of this fact should be vitiated by an overwhelming need for the telephone call.

I had hoped, in fact, that the ginger man had crossed the courtyard to summon me to the telephone, but he disappeared beneath my window and his footsteps faded out somewhere round the back. Everything’s perfect, I told myself; and I can’t enjoy it. Brown, white and purple, I distinguished the pigeons on the grass.

Everyone else seemed to be out of doors. My room was on the attic floor, under the dusty beams of the roof. All along this top floor the rooms were separated by thin partitions which allowed transit to every sound. Even silent Miss Pettigrew, my immediate neighbour, could not lie breathing on her still bed without my knowing it. That afternoon she too was out, probably over in the chapel.

The telephone call was to be from Jonathan, my very best friend. I had returned from my coffee session in the town that morning to find a letter from him which had been delayed in the post. ‘I’ll ring you at 11.30, he had written, referring to that very day. It was then past twelve. At eleven-thirty I had been drinking coffee with unutterable Squackle-wackle and Jennifer.

‘Has there been a call for me?’ I inquired.

‘Not that I know,’ said the secretary vaguely. ‘I’ve been away from the phone all morning, of course, so there may have been, I don’t know.’

Not that there was anything important to discuss with Jonathan; the idea was only to have a chat. But at that moment I felt imperatively dependent on his voice over the telephone. I stopped everyone, monks and brothers and pilgrims. ‘Did you take a telephone message for me? I should have received a very urgent call. It should have come at eleven-thirty.’

‘Sorry, I’ve been out,’ or ‘Sorry, I haven’t been near the phone.’

‘Doesn’t anyone attend to your telephone?’ I demanded.

‘Hardly ever, dear. We’re too busy.