The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

  Tucker put the telephone down. Collecting his hat and coat, he said, ‘From lunchtime on I’ll be at my flat.’

  Tucker spent two hours in the library on the first floor overlooking St James’s Park. He collected the latest confidential cassettes on the trades unions, and the reports and summaries on the present higher membership from Presidents dawn through Executive Committee men and General Secretaries to Regional secretaries and committees with biographical notes, and a cassette which contained secret biographical and other notes on a wide selection of noted shop stewards in key industries. He sat in a booth listening to them until half-past twelve. When he came out there was little of what he had heard which he did not have at instant recall.

  He walked through to Whitehall and got a taxi. He paid the cab off a hundred yards short of Grainger’s tobacconist shop in the Euston Road. He walked to the shop, paid a collection due, and received the letter from William Ankers. A hundred yards above the shop he flagged another cab. He gave the diver a direction, and then sat back and read me letter. He read it without interest. It contained nothing which he wanted to know. From a professional point of view he had a low opinion of Ankers. But, for his purposes, he was the right man. Ankers had been born and bred in the town and knew the district, its people and its gossip as well as anyone. The whole business with Margaret had been a mistake. All he wanted now was a sign, the signalling of one hard fact which would give him a shabby but reasonably honourable reason for ending the miserable business. There had been times when he had considered throwing the whole thing into Warboys’lap, but lingering prudence – for he was still ambitious – cautioned him not to do it. The sin, a deliberate breach of their professional code, was an old one, condoned now by time and his own changed rank, but like the old man’s albatross it was still around his neck. He wanted to be rid of it quietly and without its ever leaving a mark on his record. His record, his ambition, his professional pride were obsessional and not to be marred.

  He sat back, stuffed the letter into his pocket, and blew out his breath. Jesus Christ … how time could change things … people … Once Warboys had found him – even though he recognized the provenance of his regard for him without ever encouraging or acknowledging it – the man had never let go.

  He stopped the cab a few yards past the main gate to Lord’s cricket ground, and then walked to his flat. On the way he tore the letter and envelope into tiny, ragged squares and dropped them down through the grating of a road gutter. The thought struck him that Ankers and Commander Bernard Tucker, RN, Retired, were brothers under the skin.

  He unlocked the door of his flat, hung his coat and hat in the hall and went through to the large sitting-room whose windows looked down to the autumn-thin crests of plane trees in the square and the oval of thin, spiritless grass. He fixed himself a small pink gin, flicked the switch of the electric fire with his toe and stood in front of the growing heat and drank the gin slowly. Although there was no noise from the kitchen at the end of the corridor past the bedrooms and bathroom, he knew that she would be there.

  He put the empty glass on the mantelshelf and walked down to the kitchen. As he opened the door she turned to him, smiled, and then came towards him, one hand still holding a wooden ladle, its wet face shining under the electric light. She wore a pale-blue woollen dress with a tiny square of apron tied across its front. She dropped the ladle on the table, put her arms around his neck and her mouth to his lips. He slid his arms around her shoulders, held her for a while, and then let his hands travel down her body. They stood together in a long embrace and then he gently freed himself, smiled into her smiling eyes, and slowly dropped to his knees. He pushed the dress high above her waist and then kissed the smooth, brown skin of her belly while her fingers curled into the hair at the nape of his neck.

  She said, ‘ There was fresh whitebait. So I brought some to have before the chicken.’

  At a safe distance, Billy Ankers followed Margaret Tucker into the car park. As he walked past the back of her car she was already sitting in the driving seat. He moved further down the rank of parked cars and got into his own car. He meticulously packed himself a fresh pipe and lit it with care. For a moment or two he contemplated taking out his notebook and making notes … not just for the morning which had passed but for the afternoon and the evening to come. At eleven she had gone to the Town Library as usual on a Wednesday and changed her books. Over lunch at the Two Rivers café she had begun to read one of the books. Billy had gone into a pub across the road, timing his two beers and a plate of ham sandwiches to pick her up as she came out of the café. She had walked up Allpart Street, looking at the shop windows, had gone into W. H. Smith’s and come out with a paper-wrapped magazine under her arm with the library books. On the way to the car park she had stopped at a delicatessen called The Nutmeg Tree. Through the window he had seen her buy camembert cheese, a jar of ginger, a bottle of white wine, and half of a cold roast duck. He had seen the routine so many times on a Wednesday. There was nothing unusual about it – except perhaps the white wine. He couldn’t remember her buying wines or spirits ever before, though he was pretty sure – even from one meeting with Mr Tucker – that he would keep his house fairly well stocked.

  Mrs Tucker’s car moved away, out of the park. An unexpected twinge of something resembling conscience stayed Billy’s hand from his notebook. It was some time now since he had followed her out to the beach. It wasn’t a bad day and he could think of nothing that claimed his attention elsewhere that afternoon. Billy drove after Margaret Tucker. He made no attempt to keep her in sight. He turned the radio on low and the heater on full so that the hot draught comforted his feet. It was an easy way to earn a monthly remittance … Funny bloke, Tucker. Only met him once. Half an hour, if that, in his office over the baker’s shop. Never at home much. Some job in London. Nobody knew what, though there were a lot of guesses none of which, he would lay odds, came anywhere near the truth. One thing he was sure of, though – Mr Bernard Tucker didn’t care a damn what his wife did. Stuck out a mile. When they were jealous and wanted to know who it was they generally screwed themselves up into a tangle pretending to be casual. When they didn’t care but just wanted to know so that they could kiss the whole thing farewell … well, they could have been giving a builder instructions for laying new drains. Clear out the old muck and let’s have a fresh start. Funny, though. Looking at them both you’d think they were a good match. Damned good-looking woman, all the goods still first class and in their right compartments. And don’t think that Mr Tucker still didn’t get it somewhere. He looked the kind that would go on wanting it even when they pushed him about in a wheelchair. No, Mr Tucker wanted there to be another man somewhere. Well, for his money, Mr Tucker was going to be disappointed.

  When he reached the car park, Margaret’s car was parked facing the beach near the closed sea-food stall. Billy parked a hundred yards away from it. He climbed the dune bank overlooking the beach.

  Margaret Tucker was a hundred yards away, moving easily up the fringe of sand, narrowed now to a thin strip by the tide which was full in. Billy climbed down from the dune and walked over to her car. Her library books and shopping – in a decorated Nutmeg Tree bag – lay on the back seat. The magazine she had bought had half-slipped from its paper bag. Homes and Gardens. The house beautiful, thought Billy. A damn fine house, plenty of money, and nobody to keep her warm at nights. Shame. Still…

  He went back to his car, wrapped a rug around his legs and stared at the sea and the sky, letting his mind go comfortingly blank. Billy had the great gift of being able to sit and do nothing, think nothing, content with the bliss of nothingness, a state far more refreshing than the deepest sleep and granted to only a few.

  The orphanage crocodile came down the slender strip of sand between dunes and sea. Margaret smiled to herself. They were a few days into November now and the children were wearing their winter scarves. Winter coats at the beginning of October. The scarves when November came. Never gloves
. Maybe the nuns had some health fad about gloves. Maybe they just didn’t have gloves, or the children too soon lost them to make them worth bothering with.

  The tall, leading sister inclined her head as she passed, a stiff, stork-like gesture. A little boy behind her, trudging heavily through the sand, turned his face towards Margaret, cheeks fired with the sharp wind. He sniffed and beamed at her. She wished she had sweets in her pocket … The thought, not knowingly bidden by her, came into her mind that the man Dougall had once walked as these children walked, sniffing at a running nose. She wondered if he had ever beamed innocently at some passing stranger or occasional benefactor. It was hard to imagine him so young…

  She walked the full length of the beach in a mild reverie. The narrow strip of sand slowly broadened as the tide began to run out. In the gut of the estuary mouth a timber boat was moving upstream and a little way behind it were two fishing boats each with a separate cloud of gulls over its stern. She turned southwards, away from the sea and kept to the dune edge along the run of the estuary channel. It was farther than she usually came, but there was still plenty of daylight left and there was nothing at home to draw her there. With each week that passed a growing idleness seemed to have taken her whenever she was in the house. It needed little care; she gave it less. She kept her one main meal simple, for there was small heart in her to cook. She ought, she knew, to have more outside interests. Bernard had long urged that. There were women’s organizations, voluntary and charity works … no excuse, with all the time she had on her hands, to accept boredom. Gardening she still liked, but there was little she could do outside at this time of year. She could have a greenhouse. There was room for it and money was no object, but somehow she could picture no pleasure in it. She played bridge once a fortnight with three other women, visiting each other’s home in turn. When it was her turn her house came alive, recognizable, meaning something, but when the women went it lost its significance, became a shell about her which she took for granted. Curiously, she felt no anger, no frustration; she just remained untouched. The only times her heart, raced, when she felt vividly alive, were the moments when she suddenly realized that she had stolen something sweets, a paperback book, cellophane-wrapped tights, once three packets of useless screws … and then, over her anguish, came a strange sense of fulfilment and physical relief swamping quickly her guilt and shame.

  Tiring, she turned away from the estuary shore into the burrows, selecting a small path. For all the years she had lived in the district and walked the North Lobb Burrows she knew there were parts of them she had never seen. Over their six square miles were areas she had never explored. The initiative which she lacked about her house and her daily affairs kept her to a familiar pattern in her afternoon walks. Today, because she had come farther than she usually did and was steering a guessing course back to the sands, she soon found herself confused. She followed a path, caught a glimpse of the sea at the crest of a dune and then descended into a thorn and furze-banked hollow to find that the path died away into a drift of sand. Two or three times she had to take a line across rough ground until she picked up another path. There was an occasional irritation in her at the way she kept being balked by dying paths and forced to the rough dune slopes and overgrown hollows, and then it slowly began to amuse her, became a game which she played with some unseen joker who magically opened a path for her and a few moments later teasingly made it vanish.

  When she was half a mile into the dunes, with the sea as far away again on her left, she clambered up the sandy side of a steep, pathless slope and found that from its ridge a path, clearer and broader than any she had met before, ran down into a little valley below.

  Sitting beside the path at the foot of the slope on a length of dead tree trunk was Maximilian Dougall. He had seen her when she had first come on to the beach by the car park. Unseen by her, keeping to the shelter of the flanking dunes, he had followed her progress. With some amusement he had watched her zigzagging movements as she lost and found paths and had now placed himself where she must pass him.

  When she was a few yards from him he stood up. He was wearing his navy-blue short coat and a seaman’s cap with a black, shiny peak. A red bandanna handkerchief was wrapped about his throat under the almost closed coat collar. He put his hand to the peak of his cap in polite greeting, nodded, and gave her a half-smile.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Tucker.’

  ‘Good afternoon…’

  She stood there, her face flushed from the sea wind and her exercise, her hair escaping untidily from the small woollen hat she wore. Without knowing she did it, she put up a hand and touched it to some order, waiting for him to move from her path, caught for a moment in the confusion of surprise.

  His smile broadened across the hard, sun-tanned face and she had a glimpse of even, white teeth. Strong, biting teeth.

  He said, ‘You’re a bit off your beaten track, aren’t you?’

  Surprise and the shadow of distant, stupid panic went from her at the sound of the words. His voice was friendly, easy, almost gentling as though he had immediately sensed her mild resentment at meeting him.

  ‘I went farther than usual. I was trying a short-cut back to the beach.’

  He half-turned and began to move down the path and she found herself moving slightly behind him.

  ‘I’ll show you, Mrs Tucker. Some of the summer people get lost around here. They’re pretty daft, some of them.’

  The West Country burr was in his voice, a slow, almost lazy voice but one that fitted him, she felt … a strong voice yet gentle. She followed a fraction behind him, suddenly wanting and not wanting him there. On these dunes she liked her own company. She sensed that there must have been something deliberate in his being there on the path. But then as he walked ahead and said no more, made no move to turn and mark whether she followed him, she felt a little ashamed of herself. She was making up fancies, quite unjustified, about a man who by sheer chance was being kind enough to help her even though she didn’t need to be.

  She said, ‘Why do you spend so much time here? Is it the birds?’

  Over his shoulder he answered, ‘Aye, that’s so partly, Mrs Tucker.’

  Something about the way he called her ‘Mrs Tucker’ made her feel matronly, old.

  ‘You see they bring me a little money.’ Level with her now that the path had broadened, he went on, ‘I watch them all over the place. Here, along the estuary, up on the moor. Then I paint them and sell them to the summer visitors … that and other stuff … But I’m here mostly because I live here.’ He stopped, standing close to her, looking at her, his eyes steady on hers. He nodded away to the south, his eyes still on her. ‘Over there on the edge of the dunes and the marsh. Just a little old broken-down cottage. Two quid a week. Well water. Nothing found. The summer people know it. They come and buy. A man must eat.’

  Out of politeness, though awkward because of his easiness, she said, hearing and hating the stuffiness in her voice, ‘Really? How very interesting.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s something to do. I’ve never been able to stick any regular job. When the nets are on in the season I work with the salmon fishermen sometimes. Harvest time I help out. But it’s the summer folk that pay best. We could go by the cottage if you like. You could see the paintings.’ He looked at her briefly, giving her a smile now that skirted the borders of an almost boyish impudence. ‘ I give a twenty-five percent discount to locals.’

  She said quickly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m late as it is, Mr Dougall.’

  As she spoke she saw the red-faced smile of the boy in the orphanage crocodile of that afternoon, but the face had changed to his.

  He laughed and said, ‘That sounds funny. Mr Dougall. Everyone calls me Maxie. But I like it. Mr Dougall. As for the paintings, well, you can see them any time. In the summer I have a little stall in the garden. Mostly I lay the stuff out, mark the prices and people can leave the money in a box if I’m not there. I’ve found that it’s
a sight more honest world than most people think. Or, perhaps it’s being on holiday and folk feel a bit different than usual.’

  They came out on to the edge of a steep dune. The path ran clearly down its ridge to the beach a hundred yards away.

  He stopped and nodded to the beach. ‘ There you are, Mrs Tucker. Careful how you go down. The path edge is all loose sand. You could take a tumble.’ He stood aside for her to pass.

  As she did so the wind flicked up the skirts of her coat and for a moment they flapped against his legs like wings. She was so close to him that they were almost touching.

  She said, ‘ Thank you, Mr Dougall.’

  She went down the path and out to the beach without looking back.

  Maxie watched her go. She was going to change. Not Mrs Tucker. But Margaret. He was going to make the change. He looked forward to it, but wasted no imagination on future details. He was going to take her. There was no point in over-anticipating future pleasures.

  Billy Ankers was on the point of leaving when Mrs Tucker came back to the car park. He had had to switch his motor on three times for the heater but even so his feet were far colder than he considered good for them. He was very susceptible to sudden colds. And where the hell had she been all this time? Whenever he had watched her before she had kept a fairly strict routine. He could have given the time of her return before she left. A good three-quarters of an hour over the limit she was today.

  He packed a fresh pipe as he watched her get into her car and drive off. Bloody woman. He might just as well have stayed back in town. There wouldn’t be any coffee and Dundee cake from Nancy. She’d be away home by the time he got back. And no Nancy this evening. It was old Ma Barcott’s bingo evening. Life was hard and it took a man of character to deal with it.

  Chapter Three

  On the following Friday Billy Ankers followed Margaret to the beach car park. He watched her go over the dune ridge and down to the beach. Any temptation to follow her was shrivelled by the blast of a strong north-westerly wind that was sending long, cresting rollers sweeping into the bay and blowing spinning dervishes of dry sand from the ridges of the dunes. Billy had no desire to be frozen by the wind or blinded by the sand. He merely wanted to check whether or not she would revert to her usual timing. If she didn’t … well, then the next time, no matter what the weather, he would have to follow her and find out the cause of her altered routine. Billy got back into his car, switched on the engine and turned the heater full up. Then, staring happily ahead of him, slid away into a blissful state of nothingness.