The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

  He flicked the three-quarter-filled sheet of paper down over the typewriter keys as Nancy put the tray by the side of the table.

  Billy looked at the tray and said, ‘That’s not Dundee.’

  ‘Madeira. We’ve run out of Dundee. What’s so special about it anyway?’

  Pleased with himself, ready to include her marginally in his euphoria, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what’s so special about it. A man has a fancy for something. He doesn’t know where it comes from. But he has it and it means a lot to him. Same goes for a woman, too. You don’t have to be able to explain it. You just know you like it.’

  Nancy stepped away from him before he could run his hand up her skirt and said, ‘You don’t have to wave a flag when you fancy yourself. It’s all over your face. Up here since just after two, typing away, and a week gone by since you came back here swearing and cursing with the cold from a trip to the North Lobb. It’s all right. I’m not asking any questions.’

  ‘You’d get no answers. But hear this, whatever it is, I get a bonus. Fifty quid. What about a few nights in Bristol?’

  Nancy said, ‘ I’ll ask Mum. Maybe she’d like to come too.’

  ‘Oh, sure. Bring her along. We can always push her over the Suspension Bridge when we get there.’

  Nancy grinned. Moving to the door she paused and said, her mood changing swiftly, ‘If it is who I think, then I’m sorry about it. She’s a nice lady. Not like some that come in the shop that I could name.’

  Billy said, ‘Niceness is nothing to do with it. Everyone is people and people, God help us, well … they’re just unpredictable. I could tell you things that would make your hair stand on end—’

  But Nancy wanted to be told nothing. She had gone. Billy took a mouthful of Madeira cake and went back to his typing. The bonus would come all right, but there’d never be a weekend in Bristol so long as that tough old mother of hers was around. Right, now where was he?

  He began to type again.

  On 27th inst. followed subject to car park at 4 p. m. but she did not park car and took old military road between dunes and golf course and Lobb marshes. I followed on foot and from high dune observed progress. Subject parked outside cottage on marsh owned and occupied by one Maxie Dougall.

  He paused. Lord knows what had got into them. They took no damned trouble to hide a thing. Like a couple of kids … just like a couple of kids who’ve just discovered what they’ve got it for. Well, he wished her joy, he really did, and she’d better make the most of it because for certain there was trouble coming to her.

  Margaret lay on the big, old-fashioned bed, the patchwork cover pulled up under her armpits, covering her breasts and leaving her shoulders bare. Outside a half-gale, strengthening towards full force every minute, was roaring in from the sea. Now and again it shook the cottage, rattling the door and windows, setting the curtains pulsing gently from the draughts that came through the ill-fitting frames. The big curtain which divided the long room had been pulled partly back so that she could see the table at the far end. It was set with a white cloth which she had brought down to the cottage and with Maxie’s cutlery and crockery. On the hearthstones of the fire stood an uncorked bottle of claret which she had taken from the small cellar which Bernard kept at home. Neither she nor Maxie drank much, but tonight was a celebration for she was going to stay with him until the morning for the first time.

  Through the open doorway she could hear him, busy in the kitchen and whistling to himself. She had come to him in late afternoon and they had made love while the gale had risen around them, made love as though their, passion drew some strength from the wildness of the wind itself.

  Lying now while Maxie prepared the evening meal, refusing to let her help in any way, she tried in the calm which possessed her body and mind to recognize the woman she had so quickly become. Her hunger for him matched his own for her, they were starvelings let loose at a banquet. Her delight in him was his delight in her. She had not known she could be so uncaring, or had so much wildness in her, nor so much frankness of body and speech. But it had all been there, waiting for him to draw it from her. They were like children, every wild instinct dragooned too long, who were now turned out to the rich acres of a joyful liberty arrived at last.

  In her mind Bernard was rejected. She lived only for Maxie. She made some small concessions to discretion, but they were few. For days now she had looked nowhere but towards Maxie, had lived only when he was with her, had dreamed while he was away. There was neither care nor caution in her. She wanted no one but him, no time but when he was with her; wanted no satisfaction except his satisfaction and carried not even the pale ghost of a memory of Bernard or her past life when Maxie was with her, covering her with his hard brown body. Discretion had fled before the changing delights of being with him. Two days ago in the afternoon, he had taken her at high tide to watch the great flocks of waders and sea-birds, forced from their feeding grounds by the rising waters, wheel in vast cohorts through the air as they came inland to the marshland to roost and work the ditch-cut land, to settle in head-to-the-wind phalanxes and wait for the turn of the tide. Knots, dunlin, redshank, curlews, sanderlings, black-headed gulls and widgeon, teal and shelduck … she had leaned back against his chest, watching them through his glasses as he pointed them out. Then, as she had turned to ask him some question, hunger for her had shadowed his eyes. Without a care for the world around, he had pulled her down to the dune grasses and he had taken her, quickly and fiercely.

  Maxie came into the room now from the kitchen. Wearing only shirt and trousers, he padded barefoot across the room and stood beside her. Smiling down at her, he bent slowly and kissed her lips and then pulled the patchwork quilt away with a flick of his hand so that she lay naked.

  ‘Everything’s ready, girl, except the steaks. They’ll take five minutes. Up with you, that’s an order.’

  Teasing him, she said, ‘I don’t want to eat. I just want to stay here. I want you here with me.’

  He bent quickly, rolled her over and smacked her bare behind.

  ‘Up.’

  Without another look at her, he moved back to the kitchen. But she went with him in his mind. His woman, naked freely to his eyes, his woman to take and to order, to do with as he willed. He had known it would happen one day, had sat in this place and imagined it, and now saw it in truth.

  Chapter Five

  Bernard Tucker finished changing for his weekend in Wiltshire. His small case, already packed, lay on the bed. In the street one of the official cars was waiting for him.

  He took his keys from the dressing-table, pocketed them, patted his suit to make sure that he had his wallet, and then strapped on his gold wristlet watch. It was a specially adapted wrist watch which contained a tape-recording device on which he could register conversations and his own personal observations. He took a last look at himself in the full-length mirror. On the scales that morning he had turned twelve stone. A couple of pounds to the bad. Gone were the days when he had been all bone and muscle, could eat like a horse without putting on weight, go nights without sleep and still face the new day bright-eyed. Life was re-shaping him. He was built for desk work now, not bridge work.

  Although he was surprised, he gave no sign of it when he found Quint in the back of the car.

  As the car drove off, Quint said, ‘Warboys told me to come. Something for you to read in the train.’ He handed Bernard an envelope.

  Quint looked at his watch. ‘ You’re leaving it a little fine, aren’t you, for that train?’

  Bernard shook his head. ‘No. I’m not catching it. I checked your times. The whole journey can be repeated two hours later. It won’t make any difference the other end.’

  Quint smiled to himself. Trust nothing, trust nobody. The precaution, he knew, was not directed against any lack of faith in him. It was just a routine act live and work long enough with Warboys and Tucker and the thing was commonplace. He should have expected it. His only consolation now was that he had shown
no surprise, made no question of the re-adjustment. He said, ‘You’ve got two hours to waste.’

  ‘Tell the driver to take me to the Constitutional. I’ll have lunch there.’

  Quint leaned forward and re-directed the driver.

  Not caring much, certainly not annoyed, Bernard accepted the fact that his intention of making the driver stop at Grainger’s in the Euston Road – so that he could go in with the excuse of buying cigarettes and see if there was any mail for him from William Ankers – had to be abandoned. He was more and more convinced, anyway, that he was wasting his money on the Ankers service.

  The car dropped Bernard at the bottom of St James’s Street. He went into the club, left his case with the hall porter, and then telephoned Margaret. He held the calling tones for some time, but there was no reply. He put the receiver down and went into the bar for a drink. Never once had he ever called Margaret from his flat. Calls could be checked and traced. Margaret knew the address of his flat, but she never wrote to him there or telephoned him. It had been eight years since she had last been in London. In the past he had made explanations and had invented excuses for the anonymity that surrounded his London life. Now, and for many years past, she docilely accepted any dictate he issued. They lived their own lives. Usually he telephoned her when he was coming home, but if he could not get her he just turned up.

  He tried Margaret’s number again after lunch, but there was still no reply. There was no real curiosity in him about her.

  Sitting in his train he thought about her for a while before opening Warboys’ letter. It was no good telling himself that she had trapped him with her stupid, immature scare of being pregnant. Without that, in the state of mind he had known then, he would have married her. He knew perfectly well now, that he had been looking for some gesture – not complete – that would betray him into a total rejection of the work into which Warboys had drawn him. There had been an early period when he had hated it, and yet had been unable to control his pride in his very real capacity for the work. Marrying Margaret, giving himself, as it then seemed, the impossible task of keeping his marriage secret had been all the defiance he could muster, a substitute for a frankness of decision which could not be drawn from his nature. He had wanted to be found out, and cast out. Had handed the choice to fate. Against all odds fate had cherished and compounded his deceit. And now … well, he was glad that it had been so. He wanted Warboys’ place, and the places beyond it. Ambition thrived, concealed in him. The only casualty had been Margaret. She had failed him by not being the means of a wanted escape. She should have had the spirit, if not the need, long ago to have deceived him, to have found some retired Army type, some widowed businessman, someone of her own class for whom her money would have been a real help. Then – without rancour – they could have been quietly divorced in one of the county courts, their names lost in a long list of others, attracting no publicity.

  He dismissed Margaret from his mind and opened Warboys’ letter.

  It read:

  There is something in the air suddenly and it has made the PM anxious. This may have got through to the Wiltshire end. If it has humour it and – to save me premature badgering – stay away from town and assess your findings. I don’t want to see or hear from you until you bring your report to me on Tuesday at noon. I have an appointment with the PM at half-three. There could be another side to this, one that does not use kid gloves. I don’t care a damn about the PM’s ditherings, but I will not have this Dept made a target for mud-slinging.

  Bernard was unmoved. At a few rare times in the past they had touched this kind of work. Nobody liked it, least of all Warboys. He knew that the man was only marginally concerned with self-interest and his hopes of a knighthood. The Department had a curious ethic, but it was a sincere and powerful one. That the Duke could be sound he was prepared to accept. It would have been impossible to find anyone on the Department’s staff who felt the same about the newspaper proprietor involved.

  He walked down the corridor to the toilet, burnt the letter over the lavatory bowl and flushed the ashes away.

  For the next three hours he resigned himself to the tedium of branch railway lines and the changing of trains. At Salisbury station there was a notice on a blackboard by the exit which read: Commander Tucker. Car – BOU 151 M – waiting.

  He went out and found the car, and a young man standing by it. As they drove off, Bernard thanked him for waiting.

  The driver laughed. ‘His Grace’s instructions. If a party’s not on the train arranged, wait two more, and then they must fend for themselves.’

  ‘Does that go for him, too?’

  ‘Not likely. You wait until the last train, or else.’

  At Vigo Hall he was looked after by the butler who explained that the Duke was pheasant shooting and would be back for dinner at eight.

  He was shown up to his room where a gas-fire burned cherry-red, making the place tolerably warm. He told the butler that he would unpack his own things, and refused the offer of tea since, as it was well past six o’clock, he preferred the alternative of a drink. The drinks were laid out on a small stand at the side of the dressing-table.

  When the butler had gone he poured himself a whisky and soda and examined the room. It was large and solidly furnished with a mahogany bed, a massive wardrobe and chest of drawers and an oak dressing-table that rocked a little on the uneven floorboards when touched. The bathroom, partitioned off the main room, was small and narrow. The bath was deep, standing on wrought-iron ball and claw legs, and one of the old-fashioned water taps had leaked gently for years, leaving a long scar of rust mark on the enamel below it.

  Bernard unpacked, reaching occasionally for his drink, and then sat by the fire to finish it. Outside it was dark. He had seen little of Vigo park as they came up the driveway and of the building had only an impression of heavy grey walls.

  As he got up to get himself another drink, there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Lady Cynthia Melincourt came in. He recognized her at once from her photographs. She was a tall woman in her late thirties with a long, thin, almost masculine face and a slight stoop to her narrow shoulders. She introduced herself, and, seeing the glass in his hand, she said, ‘I’ll join you. This place is always bloody freezing.’ She nodded at the gas-fire. ‘That denotes your ranking. Benson has been told by father obviously that you must be cosseted. We live in a barracks that’s falling down around our ears. If you want anything like comfort you have to pull your rank.’

  As he poured whisky for her he wondered whether her initial run of chatter came from nervousness or from loneliness. She sat down in the spare chair by the fire, collapsing her long length into it and pushing her feet close to the warmth. She wore a green pullover above a red shirt, and wrinkled corduroy trousers tucked into the tops of short rubber boots.

  ‘Been working,’ she said, seeing his eyes run over her. ‘There’s an old walled garden at the back of the chapel. As a penance for something I’ve forgotten or for the greater glory of God, I don’t know, I’ve decided to restore it single-handed. Look—’ she put down her glass and spread her hands, ‘—tough as leather. I can pull nettles now without feeling them. Would I be flagellating myself?’

  ‘You could be enjoying yourself, Lady Cynthia.’ He liked her and was amused by her but – and no power could undermine his training – he was by no means ready to accept his first impression of her.

  She shook her head. ‘That’s too simple. Enjoyment you can buy in any market.’ She paused, eyeing him, then drew generously at her whisky, and went on, ‘So you’re the man brother Bobby could never keep out of his letters. He thought the world of you. You liked him, or did he bother you?’

  Bernard laughed. ‘No, he didn’t bother me. And everyone liked him … so much that he never had far to look when he got into trouble. It was a bad day for all of us when he went.’

  ‘It’s a good epitaph. So … you’re the cloak-and-dagger man. Oh, don
’t look so surprised. I don’t know anything about you but I know my father.’ She stood up. ‘When he is up to something he is always good-tempered because he is delighted at the prospect of mischief. And when he describes someone as being “ a highly placed civil servant” with almost a touch of reverence in his voice instead of saying “some idiot of a desk wallah from the Foreign Office” then I look for all the signs of another of his little charades. A boring little one-act bit of nonsense entitled “The Power behind the Throne”. He won’t worry you, Commander, but watch him. He attracts disaster like a damp wall does moss. My brother liked you. You were good to him.’ She made a mock curtsy. ‘For that, I owe you my frankness, for which you do not have to thank me.’

  Bernard said, ‘Thank you. Some time, too, you must finish telling me about your walled garden.’

  There were five of them at dinner, well spaced, almost uncomfortably remote around the long table. The only light came from the candelabra on the table. The Duke sat at the head. He was a small man, his black dress-tie twisted askew from the jerking of his head as he turned, birdlike, from one face to another, dark eyes missing nothing, a ready aggressiveness waiting in him to question any opinion that differed from his own. He was jockey-sized and, Bernard knew, had been a well-known amateur steeplechase rider in his young days. Lady Cynthia, in a rust-red gown that left her bony shoulders free, sat at the end of the table, lost almost in the waving shadows thrown by the candle-light. She said little, but Bernard could see that her attention was on the servants and the food. She knew her role from her father and, from long domination by him, was – in company at least – reduced of any importance. Felixson, the newspaper proprietor, a youthful forty, bland-faced, clothes immaculate, onyx links and buttons to his shirt, talked too much. This clearly riled the Duke, who had to make a more than seigneurial effort to seize the platform for himself at times.