Iris by John Bayley

letter, walk round the block, go shopping in the car. Something urgent, practical, giving the illusion of sense and routine. The Reverend Sydney Smith, a benevolent clergyman of Jane
Austen’s time, used to urge parishioners in the grip of depression who appealed to him for help, to ‘take short views of human life – never further than dinner or tea’. I
used to quote this to Iris, when troubles began, as if I was recommending a real policy, which could intelligibly be followed. Now I repeat it sometimes as an incantation or joke, which can raise a
laugh if it is accompanied by some horsing around, a live pantomime of ‘short views’ being taken. It is not now intended to be rationally received, but it gets a smile anyway.
    That is something to be tried for all the time. It transforms her face, bringing it back to what it was, and with an added glow that can seem almost supernatural. The Alzheimer face has been
clinically described as the ‘lion face’. An apparently odd comparison but in fact a very apt one. The features settle into a leonine impassivity which does remind one of the King of
Beasts, and the way his broad expressionless mask is represented in painting and sculpture. The Alzheimer face is neither tragic nor comic, as a face can appear in other forms of dementia: that
would suggest humanity and emotion in their most distorted guise. The Alzheimer face indicates only an absence: it is a mask in the most literal sense.
    That is why the sudden appearance of a smile is so extraordinary. The lion face becomes the face of the Virgin Mary, tranquil in sculpture and painting with a gravity that gives such a smile its
deepest meaning. Only a joke survives, the last thing that finds its way into consciousness when the brain is atrophied. And the Virgin Mary, after all, presides over the greatest joke of the lot,
the wonderful fable made up, elaborated, repeated all over the world. No wonder she is smiling.
    The latest smile on Iris’s face seems to come from association with another Mary. Trying to cheer her up one day I thought of an inane childhood rhyme, forgotten for years.
    Mary had a little bear
    So loving and so kind
    And everywhere that Mary went
    You saw her bear behind.
    Iris not only smiled – her face looked cunning and concentrated. Somewhere in the deserted areas of the brain old contacts and impulses became activated, wires joined up. A significance
had revealed itself, and it seems only to work with jokes, particularly silly jokes, which in the days of sanity would have been received with smiling but slightly embarrassed forbearance. Iris
always mildly disliked and avoided what used to be called vulgar or risqué jokes. Maybe the innocence of the bear rhyme pleased her – who can say what subtle feelings and distinctions
from the past can be summoned back to her mind by something as childish – but perhaps as touching too – as the bear rhyme? My own memory had retained it despite my conscious wishes,
which is something that often happens. I could recall now the small boy at school – I secretly thought him rather repulsive but was too polite to say so – who told me the rhyme with a
knowing air of complacency, sure that it would be a hit with me. I resolved on the spot to forget it at once, but here it was back again.
    When I quoted Byron’s certainly very memorable line about the old Greek hero Miltiades, Tyrant of the Chersonese and victor at the Battle of Marathon, I thought involuntarily again of
Maurice Charlton, and the enchanted lunch on that hot summer day. He had been this fabulous young Greek scholar, before he had become a medical doctor. No doubt Iris had admired him, as she had
admired all high skill and learning. And had he been going to attempt seduction that warm afternoon, a project thwarted by his own courtesy in acceding to her suggestion that I should come along
too? I had no idea, and still have none. Clueless as I still was I did know by then that Iris