The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

  His hands went up to the waistband of her skirt and began to deal awkwardly with the zip fastener, so awkwardly that without looking she knew now that they were trembling as her body had trembled. She smiled and shook her head at him, and dropped her own hand, brushing his away, and began to free the fastener herself.

  Billy Ankers was worried. He was also cold. It was a combination which did not improve his temper. What could the bloody woman be doing? She had parked her car at half-past three and gone off down the beach. The tide had been dead low then. It was now half-past seven. When he lowered the window of his car he could hear the returning tide, noisy in the calm which had followed the sudden dropping of the southerly wind, as it ate its way up the beach. There were only two cars left in the park. His and Mrs Where-the-hell-was-she-Tucker?

  At half-past six he had left his car and taken the old military road at the back of the burrows. Something could have happened to her. Sprained ankle, couldn’t walk? Perhaps some assault on her in the far burrows. God knows it happened occasionally. Or it was easy enough, right up the far estuary end of the sands, to go mooning along and be caught by the tide coming in around the back of you.

  He came back through the darkness to his car at seven o’clock. It was useless to go stumbling around unable to see a yard in front of his face. But now, there was real concern in him unlinked to his professional curiosity. Something must have happened to her. He sat in his car and decided to give her until half-past seven – and then what would he do? Go to the police? Well, he supposed he could. They knew him. He could tell them that he had been watching her. They’d keep it quiet and arrange a search for her … but Mr Tucker wouldn’t be pleased if it came to his ears. What man having his wife watched would be?

  When half-past seven came, he still sat in his car, the engine running to give him some heat against the night cold. Ten minutes – and then he would really go and get the police. He kept looking at his wrist watch anxiously. If he went to the police he wouldn’t get away for hours. God Almighty, they would probably expect him to come out here again with them. And this was one of Nancy’s nights. Goodbye to any warm cuddling up in bed between nine and eleven. Life, he thought, was full of disappointments for some. Mr Bloody Bernard Tucker was probably sitting down to a posh dinner somewhere in London right now, with some fancy tart who’d later keep him busy in bed half the night. Nice to be Mr Tucker, well-heeled, having his wife watched while he tom-catted about London, boring the neat backsides off willing girls, explaining the troubles he had with his wife.

  His angry, rueful mood was suddenly broken by the flare of headlights from the car across the park. Margaret Tucker’s car backed and then swept forward in a fast arc across the gravel. She passed within a few yards of Billy Ankers’ car. In the reflected glow of light from the headlamps he caught a glimpse of her face. Then she turned sideways and, for an instant, he could have sworn that she half-raised an arm in a gesture of farewell towards the far side of the park.

  He looked across the park but could see nothing except the dark swell of the rising dunes against the pale, starlit night sky.

  Bernard Tucker was not ‘tom-catting around London’. He was in his flat, a glass of whisky on the table at his side, reading a fat dossier on Sir Harry Parks, once the General Secretary of one of the largest trade unions in the country, for many years a member of the Trades Union Congress and for a year, not long before his retirement, chairman of the Congress itself. He was a man who, in his time, had been a national figure, a man much respected and, though moderate in his views, one who had always known how to be iron-hard in negotiation when the circumstances called for it.

  Earlier that day Warboys had come into his office and dropped the file on his desk. Quint had not been in the room.

  Warboys, shrugging his collar up around his lean neck, said, ‘You might like to do some speculative homework. I’m only playing a hunch, Bernard – but it cheers up a dull day. The file comes from the darker side of the Department of Trade and Industry. You’ll find it compendious but far from complete, but there’s a chattiness about it which may be helpful.’

  Looking at the file cover Tucker asked, ‘You think he’s the man?’

  ‘Like to take a bet that he won’t be dangling his feet under the ducal board?’

  Tucker had smiled and shook his head.

  Now, he lowered the file to his knees and reached for his glass. The material was chatty, true enough. Gossipy, too. But badly arranged and perfunctory and irritatingly disconnected at times. If Quint had made such a file and presented it to him, he would have blistered him. Even so, he could see why War-boys had given it to him. A picture of the man rather than the trade unionist came over clearly and – surprisingly from the official jargon and press cuttings – warmly. Sir Harry Parks had to be a likeable man.

  He wondered what was leading him to Vigo Hall. He could have thought of a dozen trade union officials of rank who might have come higher in the betting odds as a likely traitor. But you never could tell, he thought. Some beetle was gnawing him. Nothing, nobody, was ever what the surface showed. Dig away, strip off the covers and there was always something underneath to surprise you.

  The flat bell rang, three times, short and sharp and then, after a pause, with one long ring. Although she had a key she always obeyed his injunction and then waited. If he did not answer the door within five minutes she would let herself in. She knew little. What she might have guessed he had never asked her. And she herself was a woman who had a sure instinct for not asking the wrong questions.

  He took the file and locked it in his desk. When he opened the door she stood there, holding in her hand the loose silk scarf she had taken from her dark hair, her small face framed in the high roll of her fur collar, eyes almost tear-bright from the cold outside. It had been three weeks since he had seen her but he had no need of absence to heighten his pleasure as he drew her into the hallway and kissed her. She possessed the miracle of always coming freshly and surprisingly to him, delight wrapped around her like a constantly changing aura.

  She sat in an armchair and talked while he made her a drink. He listened, asking a question now and again. She had been to Paris and then down to Rome on a business trip. She had her own business in London, a small fashion house whose limits she rigorously and exclusively controlled. He knew more about her than she would ever know of him. But they both understood exactly the boundaries of their liaison and shared intimacies. If he ever were free of Margaret she would not be the woman he would marry. She would stay in his life until the easy terms of their relationship lapsed without dispute. He was far from certain that, if freedom came, he would ever marry again. It was a question he was in no hurry to answer.

  She drank, arching her eyebrows over the glass at him and said, ‘Now you. Tell me what you’ve been doing. Did you go down and see your mother in Dorset?’

  ‘Yes, I did. A couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘How was she?’

  ‘Old and able as usual. She’s having the house redecorated and is fussing about new curtains.’ He sat down on a stool close to her and took one of her hands, gently massaging and warming it with his own. She knew his mother was a myth, but had never suggested her knowledge in more than a quiet, teasing remark which carried her disbelief like a faint shadow. He loved her for that, just as he knew she loved him and knew that he, not even in the mildest way, would ever imply that her trips abroad might not all be on business. When she had first come to him he had soon known that she had two other lovers, and had known when they were her lovers no longer. If she slept with someone abroad he neither minded nor wanted to know.

  She said, ‘ I could get patterns for her. You could take them down. The material, too, if she wishes. There’d be a trade discount. If you like I could motor down with it. I’d love to meet her. She sounds such a marvellous old lady.’ Her eyes met his, the thrust put gently, knowing she could never embarrass him in this familiar deceit.

  He said, ‘The wilds of Wil
tshire are no place for you.’

  ‘You said Dorset.’

  ‘I know.’ He grinned, because there was no question of recovering from any mistake made by him since he relished the intentional by-play, the mock, affectionate cut and thrust which delighted them both. ‘You see, it happens that the house stands on the Dorset–Wiltshire boundary and the drawing-room, where the curtains are needed, is in Wiltshire.’

  She laughed and then leant forward and kissed him on the forehead. As her lips rested there he reached and took her glass from her hand and placed it on a side table. Her mouth came down to his lips, brushing them lightly then withdrawing a little so that she looked close into his eyes and said quietly, ‘I believe everything you say. It is so much more interesting than the truth.’

  The wind, which had been southerly all day, had gone round to the west, strengthening and bringing rain with it. Now and again it gusted strongly against the bedroom windows, the blown rain noisy against the glass like the sharp assault of hailstones. Sometimes in a lull Margaret could hear the sound of the brook at the bottom of the garden beginning already to run in a fast, brown-coloured spate. Against her own warmth and contentment the wildness of the night outside made a wild contrast. She felt secure, safely cocooned against all fears, the short memory of the passing day a shield against the shadows of remorse or anxiety if they should ever come.

  The telephone at the bedside rang. She picked it up and heard the brief pipping sound of a call-box mechanism.

  She said, ‘ Hullo?’

  He said, ‘Hullo, girl. Were you asleep?’

  She said, surprised by the evenness of her voice, ‘ No, Maxie … I was just lying here. Where are you?’

  He laughed. ‘Out in the wild night. The call-box at Lop-common Cross. Listen – it’s no night for either of us to be alone. Slip down and unlock the door. I’ll be with you in ten minutes, love.’

  Before she could say anything the connection was broken. She slipped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown and went down and unlocked the front door. There had never for a moment been any thought in her that she should say no, or even passingly pay some thought to caution. Already she knew that his wants were hers, that there could be no question of trying to school the force and frankness of his manner. Time might do it, would do it, she was sure, but for now she was happy to be, do and to think in his service. He was the small boy grown man, love his pleasure and gift to her, appetite his strength. That afternoon he had taken her awkwardly and greedily the first time. She had been hurt but the pain was lost in the pleasure of being wanted. He had taken her twice more before she had left, with a greed little less than the first time. She had matched his greed with her own, both losing themselves in it, and then, talking with him as the darkness grew, she had been happy in her own knowledge that the first days of breaking their famine would bring the others …

  She heard the front door open and then his steps on the stairs. He came into the room, pausing at the door as she sat up. He was wearing his peaked cap and a large seaman’s oilskin coat, its blackness sleeked to the shine of wet coal by the rain. He hesitated, smiling at her, and then slowly took off his oilskin and cap and dropped them at his side in a heap on the floor.

  He came over and looked down at her.

  ‘You look,’ he said, ‘like I’ve always known you would look when I’ve been out there and watched the windows. I take no shame from that…’ the West Country burr thickened a little in his voice, ‘… a man in love knows no rules.’

  He bent, cupped her face in his cold, wet hands and kissed her gently on the lips and she felt the damp sweep of his loose dark hair fall against her forehead like another caress.

  He stepped away from her and said, ‘Lie there. I’ll be with you.’

  He went to the bathroom door and opened it, then paused and, looking back at her, said, ‘ Have you ever seen the wash-places at the orphanage? Bare as charity. To go to a tin tub full of hot water in my own kitchen was a luxury. I like luxuries, girl. The right kinds. You can talk to me through the door.’

  He went into the bathroom and began to run the bath and she called to him, ‘Use the big blue bath-towel.’

  He called to her now and then and she answered him, but what he said or she said meant nothing to her. She lay waiting for him, hearing him splashing and breathing, knowing that he was bringing not life to her alone, but to the house. Never once had she seen Bernard bath. He had his own bathroom off his own bedroom. Even in their early days he had maintained an almost prim convention about nakedness, coming to her in the dark as though to be seen defenceless was some shame, some weakening of his manhood.

  He came out of the bathroom to her, naked and unhurried, and into the bed with her. He slipped her nightdress over her head and shoulders and took her in his arms and lay still with her for a long time, his lips against hers, his hands and arms marking the smooth contours of her body which stirred and abandoned itself to his caresses as she held herself to him. And then he took her, now gently, moulding and swinging her to the leisurely crests of bliss and then holding her sated in the long troughs of contentment, her mind freed of all thought.

  When she woke in the morning and reached for him, he was gone, but on the pillow where his head had rested he had left a smooth, red sea pebble, wind and wave-shaped so that it had roughly the form of a thin, flat heart with fine streakings of green and white veining through it. She took it and put it against her lips, tasted the salt from it, and shut her eyes against the slow beginning of tears of joy.

  Maxie as he cooked his breakfast in his cottage kitchen was content. It had begun. Begun as he had wanted it. She had a body that any man who was a man would want. And the hunger in her had been so strong that he had taken her with a rough hunger which had surprised him. She wanted no fancy wooing. Not to begin with. Later, last night, yes, and that he welcomed, preferred, because there was no true unthinking lust in him. He knew himself too well for that. The old Adam could send you forward, stir the flesh, but – even in the brief days of a holiday dunes encounter – he had always taken what was given and coloured it his way. Love was whatever it was. You could argue that from here to Land’s End and get no answer. But a man was no more than a beast if with the taking and the giving he did not make some worship, paint the plainest idol in his own colours. A man had a tongue and a body and they should serve him well, leaving frank coupling to animals. When you were inside any woman you could only despise yourself if you did not offer more than the flesh. Although his eyes could tell him, and his hands confirm that the years had slackened and plumped some parts of her body, that there was a slight coarseness in the fair hair, and the tiny wrinkles set about her eyes made her no girl though he called her such, his delight in her dismissed all this. She was a woman with a strong, shapely body, no lean, unused girl; a woman who now belonged to him. He was her master, the mastery already begun with the smooth gentling of caresses and words. You thickened your accent a little, you put a slight old-fashioned touch to your words, you called her ‘girl’ and so wrapped the barely visible mantle of fatherly protection around her, and when you took her to the high pitch of her body’s joy, you could coarsen your words and against her passion ride her hard into the exhaustion of the body’s bliss…

  He turned the two eggs in the pan, closing their eyes with the hot fat. He could handle her, he could talk her through whatever days had to come. As a painter he was nothing, but with his body and his words he could do what, he wanted with her. He smiled at the thought of the heart-shaped stone he had left on her pillow. Sentimental, romantic, a love token – and of love she would have awakened filled to the brim. He’d picked it up two years before and kept it, knowing then that it would have its use one day. Two years ago, and he had known then that one day he would place it on a pillow in some woman’s bed, and not any woman, but the woman of his choice.

  A week later Billy Ankers typed another report to Mr Bernard Tucker.

  He began it at half-past two in the afte
rnoon and was still at it when Nancy brought his coffee and cake at four. He was taking his time over the report. A man, after all, was entitled to all the pleasure he could wring from the few triumphs that came his way. As a concession, too, to the report’s importance he occasionally looked up the spelling of a few tricky words in the pocket dictionary on his desk. On the whole, he thought, he’d done a damned fine job. Mr Tucker might not be exactly pleased, but at least he couldn’t be disappointed with the service. Thank God, too, he’d earned the bonus for positive results. That had been bargained for and promised. No matter the different sorts of man Mr Tucker might be, he knew that he wasn’t the kind to welsh on that. And thank God, too, he didn’t have to sit half-frozen in a car any longer, or snoop about the burrows getting sand all in his clothes and hair watching Maxie Dougall’s place. Lord, you never knew, did you, what would take a woman’s fancy? Margaret Tucker he’d have bet would have gone for fancier game. Like one of the toffee-nosed types at the golf club. He knew a thing or two about them. Or maybe some doctor, young and hot-blooded enough not to have got over the kicks yet of having it laid out without a stitch on, ready and waiting on a surgery blanket and elsewhere. Like that young Barwell last year who’d got the chop from the British Medical Council. God, you’d think they’d have more sense. But it had to be Maxie Dougall. Well, good luck to him. Nice chap, but a bit of a dark horse. Plenty of rumours, too, about him and holiday girls on the dunes. Though there was no blame in that. They came down here from a year in an office or a factory and, one sniff of the briny air, and they were romping away like a lot of fillies let out to spring grass. There was no knowing with women, and that was God’s truth. And, you had to face it, it might be a damned sight duller world if there was.