The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

Margot shares a memory from February 1959. At age 28, Margot decides to leave Glasgow. Her mother died two years ago, and her father remained distant because of post-traumatic stress disorder. Margot found her isolated status as a “childless mother and a husbandless wife, a parentless daughter” both freeing and saddening (123). She journeyed to London in search of Johnny. At the police station, she struggled to fill out a missing person’s report because her husband was by then a virtual stranger to her. A lively blond woman named Meena sat beside Margot, listened to her story, and encouraged her not to let her husband define her any longer. She offered Margot a place to stay and then tossed the report in a rubbish bin.

The narrative returns to 2014. Upon reuniting with her friend in the Rose Room, Margot hugs Lenni tight. Lenni swears when she sees the quantity and excellence of the sketches and paintings that Margot has made in her absence. Pippa welcomes Lenni back, but Lenni finds it irritating when the art teacher, like other people she has encountered, wants “to know all the surgical details. Exactly how much you’re dying” (129). Lenni doesn’t describe the paintings and stories that she and Margot share that day because those creations are “secondary” in importance to the friends simply being side by side again (129).

Lenni views the patients as prisoners and the hospital staff as jailers, but New Nurse is an exception. Lenni reads an article about a harvest festival in a Christian magazine and decides to help Arthur with the hospital’s festival. When she asks Jacky to let her go to the chapel, however, the head nurse refuses. Lenni repeatedly reminds Jacky that she’s dying and starts crying, but Jacky retorts that Lenni creates more trouble than any other patient and calls security. A security guard named Sunny offers to take Lenni to the chapel, but Jacky insists that she return to her bed instead. Sunny lets Lenni lead the way and then informs Father Arthur that Lenni wants to see him. Arthur goes to Lenni. When she tells him about the article, he gently explains that the festival is in September and has already passed. Lenni thanks him for visiting her, and he replies, “[T]hat’s what friends are for” (139).

In March 1960, 29-year-old Margot lived with Meena in a dilapidated one-room apartment. Her father had died that winter, but every day felt like summer since she met Meena. Meena worked as a typist for a professor and claimed that the position allowed her to gather information about animal testing at the university. A friend of Meena’s helped Margot find work at the London Library. One evening, Margot smeared her mascara while preparing for a party, and Meena redid their makeup, painting flowers on both their faces, and shared a vibrant green bottle of pear liqueur with Margot. On the bus, an elderly woman tried to shame them for their whimsical makeup, but Meena laughed it off. At the party, Margot felt as though she was swimming, pleasantly buoyed by the alcohol. The women found an abused dog and set it free before stumbling home. Feeling sick, Meena hurried to the bathroom and asked Margot to distract her by telling her something that she didn’t know. In response, Margot told Meena that she loved her.

Back in 2014, New Nurse talks to Lenni about what happened with Jacky. When Lenni confirms that her interaction with Jacky made her cry, New Nurse looks as though she might cry because she has never seen Lenni shed tears before. Lenni asks New Nurse whether she yelled at Jacky. When New Nurse dodges the question, Lenni is annoyed and feigns exhaustion so that New Nurse will leave.

The next morning, Margot visits Lenni and, “since [they] tell each other everything” (151), confides that she’s in the hospital because something’s wrong with her heart. Lenni is surprised because she thinks Margot has “the nicest heart” (151). Margot is calm despite her terminal prognosis and gives Lenni a bright smile.

In 2013, 16-year-old Lenni and her father visited a consultant at Princess Royal Hospital while her father’s girlfriend, Agnieszka, sat in the waiting room. The consultant’s office overlooked a parking lot, and Lenni watched the cars rather than listening to the doctor’s explanations of “surgeries and stages and bones” (154). Lenni’s father listened to every word and went so gray and still that Lenni thought he wasn’t breathing.

In July 1964, Meena and a 33-year-old Margot were arrested in London after a failed attempt to free the lab mice at the medical school where Meena worked. Although Margot was seven years older than Meena, she looked up to the younger woman, considering Meena her “guide through London and through life” (155). However, Meena seemed out of her depth at the police station. She gave her name as Catherine Amelia Houghton, which Margot thought was an alias. The women were placed in separate cells, and Margot paced while pondering what the people back home would think of her current life. She suspected that they’d condemn her for making friends and having fun when she was “supposed to be in Scotland, grieving” (158). Meena’s employer dropped the charges, and the women were released. Margot asked Meena about her name. Meena laughed, surprised that Margot thought Meena Star was her birth name. The women had lived together for five years, and Margot asked what else she didn’t know about her. In response, Meena playfully called her an “idiot,” grabbed her shoulders, and kissed her. A man shoved past them, muttering an anti-gay slur.

Back in 2014. Lenni and Margot are a quarter of the way to their goal. Lenni feels a little daunted about whether she and Margot will have enough time and memories to complete another 75 pictures. All the same, reaching a total of 25 paintings seems “deliciously real” and [h]opeful” (164) to Lenni even though the paintings portray some of the most painful memories in their lives, such as the day Lenni received her terminal diagnosis and the beach where Johnny left Margot. Margot gently touches the painting of the pear liqueur Meena gave her and asks Lenni what’s next for them.

Lenni admires how peaceful Margot looks when she paints and waits patiently for her to share the memory she’s drawing since she “could wait for Margot’s stories forever” (166).

Margot recalls a sweltering August day in 1965. After the arrest, 34-year-old Margot changed her last name back to Macrae and stopped participating in activism with Meena and her friends, staying behind while the others went to free the animals at a farm near Sussex. Margot felt herself becoming “the old Margot, [...] pale, self-conscious” (167), fearful of participating in Meena’s cause. Margot closed her eyes and stuck a pin in a map. The pin landed on Henley-in-Arden, and she decided to go there when she must leave London one day.