The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

  He went into the kitchen, stripped his shirt from him and washed in the tin bowl in the sink, speaking to her as he towelled himself.

  ‘Since noon I’ve been out on the bank, shovelling sand. You could slice it like a cake and then see it slowly crumble as you tossed it aboard. There’s something about earth or sand that works like that. Snant they call it in these parts…’

  He came back and into the bedroom end of the room and changed into a clean shirt and trousers and went back to her. He sat at the table, slewed sideways to get the heat from the growing fire and poured himself a beer.

  She said, ‘ Maxie … will you do something for me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just something.’ The edge of a teasing smile which he had come to know marked her lips. ‘There’s something I want to do for us. Something I’ve been thinking about in these last few days. But I don’t want you to say no to it. You’ve given me so much, I want to give you something. Will you do it and not ask any questions … not now, anyway?’

  He nodded. ‘ If it’s something you want … something you specially want.’

  ‘It’s for Saturday. I want you to be ready in the afternoon. Just pack some clothes and be ready to come with me. Don’t ask where or why or for how long. Just be ready.’

  ‘Why not? I enjoy a surprise as much as anyone.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Maxie.’ She came round to him, sat on his knee and put her arms about his neck, her lips touching the side of his forehead. He held her and was happy because things were coming back to his own ordering again. He could read her mind and indulge her. He knew the strain which had been with her, knew that it sought some ease which he alone could give by the promise he had made. What she had in mind would be no surprise to him. He knew that for a while there was nothing for them, either here in his cottage or in her place up at Lopcommon.

  They sat for a while talking, and they both knew that they needed no more of one another now than that … knew that the future would begin for them when she called for him on Saturday. They could both wait because there was now nothing to keep them apart;

  As he watched her car drive away he sensed that the withholding of themselves one from another was a poor rite to mark her husband’s passing, but a due one. Death was no atonement. Only a going that wiped the slate clean and put all living debts into limbo.

  It all came to a head on the Saturday. In the morning Quint interviewed the last of the motor pool drivers who had just returned from a week’s driving duties in the North of England. The man had been with them for years.

  Quint took him through the driving duties he had had with Bernard over the last month and the driver – an elderly, heavy-faced man called Harris – answered Quint’s questions briefly and accurately, remembering dates, places of put down and pick up and giving no sign that he was well aware – even though he had only been back a few hours – that something was in the air about Commander. Tucker. Though he ranked low in the order of the Department’s personnel, he shared the common law of answering a question but never asking one until invited … and that invitation sometimes signalled in the faintest tremor of an eyebrow, a pause where one should only – half be, or a stillness which waited to be disturbed.

  Finishing going through the schedule, Quint said, ‘That’s it then, Harris. All routine stuff?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s it for the last month.’

  ‘Did Commander Tucker talk to you much when you were driving him?’

  ‘Sometimes, sir. He’d sit up front and have a chat. Just about general things. Nothing … well, ever personal or work-wise. He was always very correct.’

  Quint caught something in the tone of the man’s voice as he spoke, the last sentence – or he could have imagined he did. Anyway, he kept back the framing of some words of dismissal and held Harris’s eyes, watching the slight nervous motion of two thick lips moving over one another, the tip of a tongue barely breaking through them. There could be more Harris wanted to say, but he knew it would not come uninvited. Harris was an old naval man. He had a loyalty to Tucker and a loyalty to the Department. He could guess how finely they were weighed against each other. Dropping any thought of finesse, he said bluntly, ‘All right, Harris, you can go.’ He waited as the man stirred to turn away and then added, ‘Unless you have anything to say which might help us.’

  Harris’s body poised to move, relaxed. He rubbed a big hand over his chin, and then said, ‘ There is, sir.’

  ‘Let’s hear it then.’

  ‘I may get into trouble over this. Not that I really did anything wrong. I’m very fond of Commander Tucker. He’s a fine man. I suppose you could say … Well, maybe it comes from working in a place like this, you see things differently; begin to think, well, in the way you, sir, and Commander Tucker have to think. After all we are trained to keep our eyes and ears open.’

  Quint, having let him run long enough to clear his embarrassment and firm himself for whatever he wanted to say, cut in, ‘All right, Harris. Just tell me about it.’

  It came then briefly and plainly. Harris had frequently driven Tucker home, to the corner of the road in which he had his flat. But on one or two occasions Tucker had asked to be dropped in Euston Road. On one of these occasions Harris had been held up at the traffic lights and had seen Commander Tucker go into a tobacconist’s shop a little way up from the lights. On another occasion he had dropped Tucker and had gone on up the road; found a turning place and coming back had seen the Commander getting into a taxi. He hadn’t thought much of all this until the third time when he dropped the Commander and was held again by the lights. There had been a long delay because the police were hand-controlling the lights to regulate the evening rush-hour traffic. Harris had seen the Commander come out of the shop and get into a taxi on the far side of the lights just as they had changed. He had driven on, following the taxi at a safe distance.

  ‘I don’t know why I did it, sir. Except, well … I was stuck in the traffic stream anyway and then … Well, working here, there’s times when you get a bit fanciful in your thinking. Anyway, I followed the taxi and it dropped Commander Tucker at the end of his road. It happened once more, about a week later – only this time there weren’t no hold-up at the lights. I just went ahead and parked well up the other end of the Commander’s road and saw him come up in a taxi like before. I don’t suppose I’d ever think much of it – him hopping out to get some cigarettes, maybe; and sending me off because there wasn’t any parking spots. But there are. Shop’s on a corner of a side street. I could have pulled in and waited and then gone up through the back streets to his road. I know it’s nothing much, sir. But it struck me as kind of funny. Why waste good money on a taxi, when I could have parked and waited for him to take him home? If he’d gone off anywhere else, sir, I could have understood because maybe he didn’t want me to know.’

  ‘Well, we’ll leave that, Harris.’ Once they had got something off their chest they liked to embroider things. Quint had no time for that. He asked, ‘What was the name of this shop?’

  ‘Grainger’s, sir. Lefthand side, just below the underground station.’

  He would have sent Lassiter, but Lassiter was out. So he went himself. Bernard smoked his own special brand of cigarettes and pipe tobacco made up by Dunhill’s. In the flat, when he had searched it, there was a cabinet stocked with a good month’s supply – Bernard was not the man to let his stores run out. He would be unlikely to need to buy cigarettes casually on the way home. But tobacconists had other uses.

  It was a small, rundown shop, hardly bigger than a kiosk. The man behind the counter could reach practically all his stock without moving.

  Quint said, ‘Have you any letters for Tucker? Mr B. Tucker?’

  The man said, ‘ Who are you?’

  ‘I’ve been sent by him to collect.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well I know Mr Tucker. Never forget a face. And ’is instructions is – personal collection only. So shove off.’

  Quint put his ide
ntity card on the counter, and said coldly, ‘Don’t play around with me.’ He tapped the card. ‘You can read. Hand over his mail and I’ll give you an official receipt. Make a fuss and I’ll have a police car here in two minutes.’ He laid his hand on the dusty, finger-marked telephone at the side of the counter.

  For a moment or two the man looked at him, and then with a sigh reached under the counter and brought out a long cardboard box, split into sections by alphabetical tags. It was halffilled with letters, some of them stuck in on their short sides because they were too long to fit the width of the box. Quint pulled the box to him against a half-protest from the man and began to thumb through the Ts. There was one letter for Tucker. He took it and pushed the box back to the man.

  ‘What about the receipt?’

  ‘It will be sent to you officially.’

  He went back to the office. There was satisfaction in him, but no elation. He knew better than to indulge that. Experience had taught him that an easy break was often the beginning of real trouble. Nothing was ever neatly dished up, ready for consumption. But even with his limited knowledge he could not suppress his wonder that a man like Bernard could have tolerated in his private affairs a sloppiness which would have been unthinkable professionally. He had to know that all the drivers and low-grade employees saw themselves as extensions of those they worked for. You could not train them to keep their eyes and ears open for the unusual, to train even limitedly their senses to recognize the small flaws in set patterns without creating in them some ambitious dream of usefulness, uniquely manipulated and ending, in a triuinph which would mark them, raise them higher. The place was riddled with tuppenny numbers who felt that they deserved to do something more important. Harris would get his credit eventually and it would probably ruin him as a driver for ever.

  He slit the envelope open and read the letter from William Ankers.

  An hour later Lassiter came back. He hung up his hat and coat and then sat down at Tucker’s desk and said, ‘Funny thing, isn’t it, when a man wants you to find something, puts it right under your nose and you go blindly by it? He got himself married and said nothing – at a time when there was a strict rule against it. Stay single or get out was the order. Christ – he must have really wanted out at the time and nobody obliged him. In one way or another, I suppose, it’s a phase we all go through. Well, perhaps not all.’ He pulled a sheet of notepaper from his pocket.

  Quint knew what was coming, knew that ‘it’ was not ever any phase he was going to go through, and knew too that he would never allow any shadow of his own satisfaction in having beaten Lassiter to the post to show. That was a pleasure which was heightened by not being revealed.

  Lassiter came over and dropped the paper in front of Quint. ‘There it is. A copy of the certificate is being flown down from Edinburgh. He was married in Scotland when he was on a special course donkey’s years ago. Still in the Navy then, but officially attached to us, and had been for a long time, for special duties. Margaret Fiona Donaldson. A bonnie Highland lass, no doubt. And for my money she’s still alive.’

  Quint touched the paper, his eyes taking in the pencilled information and he said, ‘You’ve done a good job. She lives in North Devon. Mrs Margaret Tucker, Lopcommon Barton, near Braunton.’ He nodded to a pile of Kelly’s local directories which were piled on his desk. To ease a disappointment which Lassiter must have but would never show, he added, ‘It all came from a line I picked up from one of the drivers. I’ll tell you about it later.’

  Lassiter’s eyes widened a little and he faintly blew out his cheeks, holding his breath, a deliberately comic face.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what do we do? Find the phone number and ring up and ask if the Commander’s there?’

  Quint smiled, Lassiter had taken it well. He said, ‘I’ve got the phone number already but it won’t be used unless Warboys says so.’

  ‘Which he won’t. I wasn’t being serious.’

  ‘I know.’ Then as a sop to the man, charity which he could easily dispense now, Quint passed the letter to him. ‘You can read this.’

  Lassiter took it and sat down at the other desk. The paper was headed with the name of William Ankers, his professional style and his address. It read—

  Dear Mr Tucker, Further to my last, and hoping to recieve some communication from you or the pleasure of a visit when you are next here for the benefit of new instructions consequential to the facts as set out under. Since last report have had the subject under observation more closer owing to her change of habits, chiefly concerning the Lobb burrows and dune visits. Recently subject has taken to being away for customery walks much longer. One day in particular (20th) leaving at four she did not return until after dark (7.30 p.m.). The same again two days later, and the following day after that. Each time I went out after a proper interval and tried to locate subject without success. 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. Subject was inside for half an hour and then left. Said Dougall is man well in his thirties. He earns a living casual labouring, but not often, selling things, gifts and such like to holiday people. I know nothing against him personally but he has a reputation for various things. Enough said, but if you should wish for more I will tender with pleasure a separate report. Two days later I followed subject No. 1 to Lobb Burrows where she repeated visit to cottage but did not emerge as I kept observation. When it came dark this is on the evening of the 29th inst at seven o’clock I approached the cottage and through a chink in the curtains of a lighted window managed to look into the ground floor bedroom. Both subjects were on the bed. Both subjects were unclothed and they were in the act. More than that I need not say. I withdrew at once, but I felt it my duty to you to confirm the same goings on on a further occasion and can swear to times and dates. I now await your further instructions or the favour of personal visit from your good self. In addition I have to report that during all this time since last report I have seen no sign of Subject No. 1 having any of her shoplifting fits. Also I will think you will agreed that the agreed bonus for results are fairly earned. Yours at your service

  William Ankers

  Lassiter dropped the letter on the desk and rubbed the back of his hand across his lips. For Quint he felt nothing. Nobody need do. He knew where he was going and would get there. But Tucker … an early marriage in Scotland, the only move he could think to make, probably made on an impulse, to get him out – plenty of people here had known that desire. Not bloody Quint. He was hand forged, anvil-beaten and tempered for this job. From that moment of marriage in Scotland he knew, as certainly as though Tucker were here telling him, that something had gone soft in him which the wanted uncovered. And nobody would do it because nobody could imagine its existence. It was difficult, too, to imagine the Tucker of later years as a young man without the guts merely to hand in his notice openly. Maybe he had been going to do that and then, suddenly, had changed his mind – and luck had stayed with him. Funny, someone you had always thought to be so solid should all the time have been all messed up within. Sad, too. But there was plenty of sadness around, well covered up. But Jesus, what kind of contained despair was in him to send him to any William Ankers – though, God knows, the man had done his job? And Margaret Fiona Donaldson with her Maxie Dougall? Any charity for Tucker most probably would have to be shared with her. Quint’s voice came through to him.

  Quint said, ‘I asked you what you thought of that?’

  Lassiter knowing, though he doubted if Quint did, that ‘Tucker had been Warboys’ creation, guessing long ago at the love behind that act of creation, answered, ‘I’m glad you’ve got to drop it in front of Warboys, not me.’

  Quint said, ‘I’m seeing him at four o’clock. He’ll be pleased I’ve broken it so soon.’

  Lassiter nodded, half closin
g his eyes. The ‘I’ve’. meant nothing to him because he had long ago ceased to look for, or want, any mead of credit. He was thinking of Warboys. He’d take it, of course, without a sign, but the scar would come and be there always, though hidden.

  She had been busy all day Friday, the arrangements she had to make filling her day and, in a curiously soothing way, making the last days remote. Bernard was gone, but the finality of that knowledge now lost all trace of real meaning because he had always been gone. She had no sense of loss because she had lost nothing. At first that thought had made her feel guilty, but it was not a guilt she knew now that she could honestly accept. For his death, the going of a man who had once meant something in her life, she had paid all the respect demanded of her and had found a moment of true grief. Beyond that there could be nothing, no claim which still lingered to impose itself on her from their life together.

  She had unlocked the two safes, collected all the papers and documents she could find and had taken them to her solicitor to deal with. All his personal stuff she had left in the house. She could collect it later or dispose of it. She had made a collection of such things as she wanted from her own possessions and clothes and removed them. She was leaving, never to come back to Lopcommon to live. The arrangements for ridding herself of the place would come later. Her life had been given a new beginning and a new direction. There was little of the past she wished to carry away with her.

  In the early afternoon on the Saturday she drove down to Maxie’s cottage. When she arrived he was standing by the pool at the side of the house, a loaf of bread under one arm, another loaf in his hand and he was breaking the bread and throwing it to the ducks and geese. He wore a black, polonecked sweater, clean green corduroy trousers and there was a soft suede jacket lying across the wall behind him. She smiled to herself, loving him, relishing this moment of arrival.

  The wind was southerly down the estuary and mild in her face as she got out of the car. He raised a hand to her and went on feeding the ducks and geese, finished the loaves, and then came across to her. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. There was nothing now to hide. What the world might have guessed, the world could now know. This kiss, this greeting, belonged as much to the world as to them.