The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

  He kept the box by him while he had breakfast. He was by himself. The Duke and Felixson had breakfast in their rooms. Sir Harry had parted company from him at the end of the lake and had gone off for a walk in the park. Bernard guessed that the man would have no appetite for food.

  He sent up a message to the Duke. They met in the Duke’s study an hour later. Felixson was there, too.

  Bernard put the box file on the top of the Duke’s desk. Felixson sat on the window seat and the Duke stood with his back to the large stone fireplace in which a couple of logs burned on a bed of white ash.

  Nodding at the box the Duke asked, ‘That the stuff?’

  Bernard nodded. ‘He left it with me last night. I’ve been through it all.’

  ‘And?’ The Duke half-turned and prodded one of the logs with his foot.

  ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s all authentic.’

  Felixson began to rise. ‘Let’s have a look at it then.’

  Bernard put his fingertips on the box and shook his head. ‘ Sorry. No. My brief is that I was to let no one else see it. I’ve got to work up a detailed report on it, to put it in chronological shape and to lay it all out so that it can be summarized in readable terms. Then I hand it over to the head of my department. So far as His Grace and yourself are concerned I have one instruction: to let you know whether the goods offered are authentic, will produce the result you want, and – a corollary you’ve both stressed personally to me, though it was also part of my brief – whether Sir Harry was selling from genuine motives. I’m sure you understand that I can’t go one inch outside that brief.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Duke. ‘So tell us.’

  ‘It’s authentic. It’ll do everything you want.’

  ‘And Sir Harry?’ Felixson came round the desk and stood, his eyes on the box file.

  ‘I spoke with him this morning. I’ll put a précis of his personal and political reasons for his act in my report. But you can set your minds at rest. He’s not planting anything on you which, to be graphic, will go off in your faces. He’s using you, yes, but in order to destroy an organization which he knows, in its present, distorted form, is a grave danger to this country.’

  Felixson made a move as though to say something, but the Duke shook his head.

  ‘There’s no need for any more. Thank you, Commander. And thank God it really is all that we want. Now, I suppose you’d like a room somewhere so that you can get down to this report in peace?’

  Bernard shook his head.

  ‘No thank you, your Grace. I’d like a car in an hour’s time to take me to the station.’

  ‘But why can’t you do it here?’ asked Felixson, his eyes going from Bernard to the box file. ‘ Nobody’s going to interfere with you.’

  Bernard shook his head. ‘Sorry. I just have to follow my instructions.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Duke. ‘Damn it, Felixson, this is nothing to fool around with. You’re not going to see or be told anything until the right time comes. The Commander has his instructions. Just be content with what you’ve got. The stuff’s good and so is Sir Harry.’

  Bernard had expected one of the estate staff to drive him into Salisbury. But it was Lady Cynthia, who explained that she wanted to go into the town to do some Saturday morning shopping.

  On the way in she said, ‘You’re a man who believes in very short weekend visits, Commander. I should have liked to have seen more of you.’

  ‘Ask me again some time, Lady Cynthia. I’ll make amends. Perhaps when you’ve finished restoring your walled garden.’

  She left him on the platform for the London train. When she was gone Bernard took a sheet of paper from his pocket and studied a list of train connections he had worked out for himself some weeks before.

  Chapter Six

  That afternoon they had driven in her car up on to the moor. For two or three hours they had walked together, her binoculars slung around her neck. Although Margaret had walked the moors and the beaches many times before, it was only now with Maxie that she was realizing how little she had seen. He could pick out with his naked eye things which to begin with she had trouble in pin-pointing through her glasses, the dappled form of a deer lost against the background of dead bracken, the faint, dark crescent of one of the coast peregrine falcons sliding between the clouds thousands of feet up, and the white rump flirt of a stonechat flicking from gorse bush to boulder on a valley side. He lent her his eyes and brought new delights to hers. Just, she thought, as he had taken her and given himself to her and awakened and enriched her body and spirit. He had shown her the plum-and-grey beauty of the flocks of fieldfares, the military echelons of golden plover standing head to wind on the sheep-bitten grass, and the boldly blazoned back of a jack-snipe a moment or two before it took flight from the heather almost at their feet.

  Coming back she had made a detour and shown him the house which she owned on the banks of a small river that flowed down from the moor. Although he seldom asked her direct questions about herself, her past life, and never anything about Bernard, he said then, ‘For God’s sake, love, why do you live where you do now when you could live here?’

  ‘I think I might have done. But Bernard didn’t like it.’ She had not told him that she let it fully furnished and that the present tenants were soon leaving.

  He grinned. ‘There’s times – not many – when a woman should override her man.’

  Then without any sense of forcing him or shyness, since with the passing of their bodily restraints so too had gone any bar to their talk, she said, ‘Would you live here? With me?’

  He said, ‘Aye, I would, girl. You say the word and I’ll throw your tenants out and we’ll move in. I’ve always wanted to live by a river and lie awake at night and hear it talking to itself. The sea’s one thing, but it’s a giantess that even when she sleeps never takes off her armour. How can you love something like that? But a river, there’s a real woman for you. All right, she has her moods, floods in anger sometimes, but for the most part she goes her way, biddable and serene.’

  She laughed and teased him, ‘ You should write poetry. You shouldn’t be content to sell those ridiculous paintings.’

  ‘They sell because they are ridiculous. And I eat from them. And if there’s any poetry in me, it’s not for writing, girl. It’s something you bring out. You should have handled your Bernard better and made him live here.’

  ‘You don’t know Bernard.’

  ‘Oh, I know him.’ He reached across the table where they were sitting now after supper and took her hand. ‘I know him and I’m grateful to him because of the way he’s wasted and starved you so that I could take you and feed you with my love. He’s gifted you to me and I’ll always thank him for that, though I could kill him for the years of wasting he put on you.’

  As he spoke, he stood up, still holding her hand and she knew from the look on his face what was in his mind. She could never mistake that look now. He had taken her before they had started from the cottage on their trip, and again on the moors when the swift need in them both had dragged them down to a bed of crumbling dead bracken.

  She shook her head. ‘Not now, Maxie, darling. I told you. I said to Bernard I’d be back by eight.’

  Bernard had telephoned just before she had left the house, saying that he had had to come to Bristol on business and would be home that day for a long weekend. She had said she was going out with friends but should be back by eight.

  Maxie smiled and shook his head. ‘ How often has he kept you waiting? Let him rot.’ His last words held an unexpected touch of contempt which surprised him. Normally the thought of her husband roused no emotion in him.

  She shook her head. ‘You’re terrible. But I really can’t. Oh, Maxie…’

  He moved quickly, picked her up and was carrying her through the half-open curtains, and the warmth of his arms took all resistance from her.

  Half an hour later, he stood at the cottage gate and watched her drive away. The st
ars were misted by faint drifts of cloud. The wind was changing. By morning he knew that it would be raining. He watched the tail-lights of her car pass out of sight on a curve of the old road. She came and went openly now. Neither of them made much attempt to avoid attention. Some people must already guess, perhaps even know, what was happening. He was unworried because it suited his book. He wanted her committed to him. One day her husband would know, must know. The thought held no fears for him. Over the days and weeks he had made her happy. There was no difficulty there. They wanted one another, and she was beginning to speak his language and to think she understood him. Maybe she did, but no more than he wished her to do.

  Lying in the aftermath of love-making she had talked, needing no forcing from him. A few things had surprised him, though he had not shown it. He had half-known, half-guessed, that she had plenty of money. But now he realized that she had far more than he had ever imagined, from her father and then much more from her aunt. Telling him about the house on the river today had been a surprise. He already knew that she owned property in Scotland as well. When she talked about money or possessions, he envied her. Not just for the possession of these things, but because she could talk of them as though they were of little importance. They were there. There was nothing unique about them. God had ordained it. Just as God had ordained that he should walk in an orphanage crocodile and ever since have been seeking some escape to which even now he could not give a final shape. He had taken her, and would take more. She was already enmeshed in the half-illusion, half-reality of loving him, had put passionate words to it, and had taken his words, too, in exchange. But he was never going to love her or anyone else. Love was a dirtiness, which had created him. No matter what all the poets and philosophers in the world said, it was no more than the twisting and turning and naked lusting that made the old patchwork quilt slide to the floor and left them both spent in a now familiar limbo.

  He eased himself away from the gate on which he rested, spat, and walked slowly up the path to his cottage.

  The taxi from the station dropped Bernard at his house just after six. Margaret was out, spending the afternoon with friends she had said on the telephone. He went up to his bedroom and dropped his case, with the box file inside it, on his bed.

  He changed his clothes, then opened the small safe in the wall by his bed and put the box file in it. He would work on his report the next day.

  Habit taking him, he went to Margaret’s bedroom and looked around. There was a faint trace of perfume in the air which was new to him. On the dressing table he found a new bottle of Arpège. For years and years she had used Christian Dior. Idly he wondered what had made her change. He opened her bureau and looked through her diary. There were no fresh entries from the time he had last looked. In the drawer, too, lay a couple of paperback novels. The same ones he had seen on his last inspection. The Churchill volume was by her bedside but with it now was another book. It was a book on Devon birds which he had never seen before, new, with the leather fringes of a bookmarker hanging from it. He opened it to the marked page, and read.

  REDSHANK Tringa Totanus

  Resident and winter visitor, breeds

  During the present century this bird has made a remarkable recovery

  and is now well known as a passage migrant and winter resident

  … The only breeding known to D’Urban was at Slapton in 1894.

  British Birds Journal recorded a pair first nesting at Lobcombe

  Burrows in 1908. Since then pairs have nested regularly until the

  severe winter of 1962–3 and none has bred since. Although there

  has been a progressive recovery the number of winter visitors and

  passage migrants is still below the 1962 level.

  A pencil mark had been made against the Lobcombe Burrows mention. Skipping through the pages, he found other passages marked. He replaced the book. Bird-watching. Well, if she had found something new to do, to give more interest to her walks, he was pleased. Birds and collecting shells and pebbles. She was a child, shaped like a woman. He was touched for a moment by an unexpected tenderness for her. With the books on the table lay a couple of seashells and a thin beach stone, shaped roughly like a heart. He picked up the stone and fingered its smoothness. He should have handled it all differently, he felt. Most of the fault was with him, but the trouble was that a true perspective only came with looking back, not forward.

  He turned away, shrugging his shoulders. Well, Felixson and the Duke and the others would have their dynamite to blow the whole edifice sky high. But there would come a time of rebuilding. How long would Sir Harry’s hopes for the future last, how long before it all began again?

  When Margaret came in he greeted her and kissed her with a shade more easiness than he usually did, but he knew that it went unnoticed by her.

  He said, ‘You’re a bit late. What have you been doing?’ He handed her the glass of sherry he had poured for her.

  ‘Oh, nothing much. I went to the garden centre and ordered some plants. Then I had to go up to the Stonebridge house. The thatch has gone badly in a few places. I’ve kept putting it off, as you know, but it really will have to be done soon.’

  ‘It’ll cost you the best part of a thousand pounds. How were they?’ The house had been let to a retired colonel and his wife.

  ‘Not too happy. They’re leaving. Mild as they are, they don’t like our winters. I fancy they’re thinking of going abroad. I’m sorry I’m late, but they wouldn’t let me go until I’d had a drink with them. And then on the way back I thought I’d take a short cut through the lanes—’

  ‘And got hopelessly lost.’

  She smiled. ‘You know me and my sense of direction. However, here I am. I’ll get you some food. You must be starving.’

  She left him, smiling still, to go to the kitchen. She had lied to him easily, something which in the past had filled her with a sense of shame. But now there was nothing left for him in her. Love gave the tongue a smooth turn in deceit because she had no fear of being discovered. Why should she fear something which she was going to tell him anyway before he returned to London? The only problem was choosing the right moment to speak.

  Over dinner, Bernard said, ‘ I’m afraid I’ve got to spend most of tomorrow on an important report my people want. It’s a bore, but I’ll finish it in a day. We’ll have Monday free. I’m going back on the last train.’ Coming as near as he ever did to any real truth about his work, he went on, ‘Times are pretty bad for business. The miners aren’t getting the results they thought they’d get with an overtime ban. We’ll have a full strike before the winter’s out. Then you watch – they’ll all join in … railwaymen, power workers and the engineers. How can you run a nation like that? Or a business?’

  She said, ‘Yes, it must be difficult.’ But she was miles from him. She would tell him tomorrow, when he had finished with his work. That would leave them a full day on Monday to sort things out. She had no idea how he would react. But whatever he said or did he would have no choice. It was odd that now, for the first time in years, when she knew the break was inevitable he should have been fractionally pleasanter to her. She went on, ‘ I hope you don’t mind, Bernard, but I’ve taken to using your old field-glasses. I’ve taken up bird-watching and I’m going to join the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I must get out and do things. Get outside myself and find new interests. That’s what the doctor said. God … I see now I was sticking in a dreary rut. That’s why I had these stupid turns. Thank the Lord there haven’t been any since I saw Harrison.’

  ‘Good. I think you’re very wise. As for the glasses – you have them. Keep them.’

  He cut at his steak, eyes from her. He was thinking of the binoculars … remembering the first day of possession, the pride and pleasure in handling them, and the days thereafter when they had almost lived around his neck. He’d bought them from Warboys, cheaply, second-hand … too cheaply; and protesting so, but Warboys had been unshaken. He knew n
ow that it had been one of the small acts of ensnarement which would eventually bind him. The curious thing was that he had – in different terms – far more affection and loyalty towards Warboys now than he had for this woman who sat across from him and who, except for a time of pregnancy panic, had known no really high emotion, whose dullness of character and body had within a few early years made themselves plain to him. You pay your money, he thought cynically, and then you have all the time in the world to regret your choice.

  During the night the rain came. It rained all the morning as Bernard worked on his report in his study. Margaret went to church by herself, but he was hardly aware of her leaving or of her absence. Now and again he glanced at his wrist watch to see how the time was going.

  First of all he re-arranged the contents of the file in an order which would make reference to his report easier. Then he fashioned a rough draft, giving a broad outline of the story which the contents of the file told. After corrections, he wrote out a clean copy of the précis and burnt his draft in the fire-place. There were those, he knew, who would never read the full report, would rest content with the cold, sharp conciseness of the précis.