Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

On a rainy Sunday in January, Mrs Palfrey, the widow of Arthur, a colonial administrator, arrives by taxi at the Claremont Hotel on London's Cromwell Road. She is a tall, big-boned woman with a noble face who found the residential hotel advertised in a newspaper while staying with her daughter Elizabeth in Scotland. Her small room faces a white brick wall, its carpet worn and fireplace boarded up. Alone, she fights off despair, comparing herself to a prisoner left in a cell for the first time, and resolves to wear her fur cape to dinner to make a strong first impression.

Over the following days, Mrs Palfrey sorts her fellow guests into long-term residents and transients. The permanent residents are three elderly widows, Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Post, and Mrs Burton, and one old man, Mr Osmond, who dislikes female company. The chief daily ritual is the posting of the menu by the lift, which the residents pretend to examine casually though it structures their entire day. During a pre-dinner drink with Mrs Burton, Mrs Palfrey claims her grandson Desmond works at the British Museum and will soon visit. Mrs Arbuthnot warns that if they do not see him soon, they will think he does not exist.

Weeks pass and Desmond neither comes nor answers Mrs Palfrey's letters. She invents excuses for his absence, but the strain grows. She tries to contact old acquaintances, but neither a school friend nor a former Foreign Service contact materializes. She fears she is becoming like Miss Benson, a former resident who had no visitors and is now in hospital.

One afternoon, returning from the library with a book for Mrs Arbuthnot, Mrs Palfrey stumbles on the greasy pavement and falls. A young man named Ludovic (Ludo) Myers emerges from a basement flat, helps her inside, and bathes her bleeding knee. His room is spare: a bare table with books, curtains pinned together with safety pins. He explains that he spends his days in the Banking Hall at Harrods, writing his novel in its comfortable chairs to save on heating. Mrs Palfrey invites him to dinner at the Claremont, and he agrees. After she leaves, Ludo writes clinical notes about her appearance as material for the novel about old age he is writing.

Mrs Palfrey then tracks Ludo down at Harrods and asks him to pretend to be her grandson Desmond at the dinner, since Mrs Arbuthnot has assumed the guest is Desmond and Mrs Palfrey let the assumption stand. Ludo agrees enthusiastically. On Saturday evening, he arrives in his one dark suit and greets Mrs Palfrey with a light kiss on her cheek. He handles Mrs Arbuthnot's questions about the British Museum smoothly and eats with hungry concentration, which delights Mrs Palfrey. She feels she is doing something for him as he is doing something for her. Afterward, she gives him an envelope containing a five-pound note and a thank-you card. Back home, Ludo writes in a notebook headed "Exploration of Mrs Palfrey," noting her remark that residents are not allowed to die at the Claremont as a potential title for his novel.

Meanwhile, Ludo lives a separate life of loneliness. He writes duty letters to his mother, who lives with her lover, a man known as the Major, in Putney. At the launderette one evening, he meets Rosie, a young woman whose hostility slowly thaws into companionship.

Mrs Palfrey remains stiff from her fall. She walks in the nearby square, remembering her happy retirement with Arthur and reflecting that losing a husband after a long, perfect marriage is worse than losing one early. She knits a sweater for Ludo and walks to his basement to deliver it, but he is out. She leaves the parcel and struggles home, frightened by her increasing frailty.

Days later, Ludo turns up at the Claremont wearing the sweater and carrying violets. Mrs Palfrey is moved to the point of trembling. In the lounge, she introduces him as her grandson to Lady Swayne, a condescending aristocrat on her annual London visit, and Ludo handles the encounter smoothly. That night Mrs Palfrey lies awake savoring his earlier question: "Are they nice enough for you, I mean?" (80). Later, after a chance meeting at Harrods, Ludo invites her to supper at his flat. Over mismatched plates and a half bottle of wine, Mrs Palfrey reveals her deep loneliness. Ludo tells her that in a way, he needs her, and she blushes, not understanding he means as material for his novel. She privately resolves to leave him something in her will. He walks her home through drizzle, and she makes a grand entrance at the Claremont.

In full summer, Mrs Arbuthnot is forced to leave the Claremont. She has become incontinent, and the management has asked her to go. She departs for a nursing home called the Braemar, refusing Mrs Palfrey's offer to visit. Mr Osmond reveals the Braemar is a place where a cousin of his died. Mrs Palfrey resolves to keep going, memorizing poetry daily to train her mind.

One evening, Mrs Palfrey sees Rosie wearing the sweater she knitted, standing in Ludo's window, and walks on, breathless with jealousy. A new resident, Mrs de Salis, arrives and enlivens the Claremont with her candor. Then the real Desmond appears: a bespectacled young man already thinning on top, writing a book on Cycladic art, sent by his mother. Panicking, Mrs Palfrey hustles him out before anyone can compare him to Ludo.

Ludo reappears and confides that the Major has abandoned his mother after financial trouble. Mrs Palfrey hails a taxi and, before the door shuts, presses "Fifty pounds" (134) on him. She has broken her own rule about never touching capital, doing so for a woman she has never met.

At a Masonic Ladies' Night some weeks later, Mr Osmond proposes marriage to Mrs Palfrey, envisioning a cottage and cheese-and-wine parties. She is firm: "I shall never marry again" (167). She had one perfect marriage, and that suffices.

The residents learn from the Daily Telegraph that Mrs Arbuthnot has died. Ludo has disappeared from Mrs Palfrey's life, having taken a job as a waiter to repay her and help his mother. She writes insisting the money was a gift.

On a late-autumn afternoon, Mr Osmond asks if Mrs Palfrey's planned stroll is an invitation. She replies, "I'm afraid that it was not" (180). These are her last words to him. She hurries out and, going fast through the revolving doors, falls. Mrs Burton rushes to her side and dabs blood from her forehead.

Ludo arrives at the Claremont to find Mrs Palfrey gone. The real Desmond also appears, but Mr Osmond, believing Ludo is the true grandson, refuses to accept him. At the hospital, Ludo finds Mrs Palfrey in a ward, expecting no one. Her face changes when she sees him. He arranges a private room, brings her nightgowns and poetry book, and tucks the fifty pounds under her pillow. She asks him to recite Wordsworth's "Daffodils," which she can no longer remember. He recites it from the foot of her bed, filling gaps with improvised syllables. She sighs contentedly, murmuring "So much in common" (192), then drifts into confused memory, telling Ludo she remembers when he was a little boy hiding behind long red curtains and calling out for her, conflating him with the real Desmond of her past.

Back in his basement, Ludo writes the last words of his novel, titled They Weren't Allowed to Die There.

Elizabeth arrives from Scotland, but her mother is already dead. The ward Sister explains that Mrs Palfrey slipped away peacefully after her grandson read poetry to her. Sister praises Mrs Palfrey's manners, noting she always expressed gratitude, even for what she did not like. Elizabeth declines tea and leaves without thanking Sister, a contrast the nurse quietly notes. At the Claremont, the residents watch the Deaths column of the Daily Telegraph, but no notice of Mrs Palfrey appears. Elizabeth and her husband Ian have decided there is no one left who would be interested.