The Mask of Memory Read online

  Warboys had been right about Sir Harry Parks. Bernard sat opposite him. They had been introduced over drinks before dinner. He was a tall man well into his sixties, but looked even older. His face was a complex of worn angles and deep, creviced wrinkles, his skin chalk white; a dead face in which only the large, luminous, fast-blinking eyes signalled that there was intelligence and a certain sage humour alive in him. Years ago he had schooled his speech to acceptable form, but nothing had taken the North Country accent from it.

  The talk was unexceptional apart from Felixson’s sallies, and when Lady Cynthia left them to their port there was no improvement. They all knew that they played a charade, that the real business was to come. Back in the long, picture-hung library Lady Cynthia stayed with them for coffee and a liqueur and then, needing no signal from her father, withdrew.

  Bernard found himself isolated at the fireplace with Felixson while the Duke at the far end of the room was showing Sir Harry Parks a collection of old medals and antique coins.

  Felixson said, ‘This place is like a morgue. Needs half a million spent on it. The old boy’s got it, too, but doesn’t care a damn. Why should he? There’s no son to pass it on to. You knew him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. We served for some time together.’

  ‘Out shooting this afternoon, you could see it needs thousands spent about the place. Damn shame. If you own something you should keep it in good shape.’

  ‘A fair philosophy – for those who can afford it.’

  ‘There are always ways to find money. What most people don’t realize is that they’ve all got something which they can turn into money. Something to sell … service, brains, aptitudes or sheer damn buccaneering expertise. Which in converse means that, with cash, if there’s anything you want you can always find it and buy it.’ A faint smile just touching his bland face he nodded with the merest slant of his head towards the Duke and Sir Harry Parks. ‘He’s selling. We’re buying – if the stuff is right.’

  ‘And your motive?’ With little effort Bernard thought he could dislike the man.

  Felixson chuckled. ‘Patriotism? Keep the Reds out? Or maybe just the familiar itch for a good story. I’m a newspaper man. Began on the—’ He stopped, grinned, touched his hair gently in almost a feminine gesture, and went on, ‘ You tell me.’

  Bernard smiled. ‘Auckland. A throw-away sheet. Twenty years ago. You were sacked for, frankly, bloody rudeness in a pay dispute. So you borrowed – could it have been pinched? – enough money to start a rival sheet. You never looked back.’

  Felixson laughed, delighted. ‘Pinched,’ he said. ‘Not borrowed. I didn’t know then that was the easier way. All right, I’m not worried about you. Warboys – though a touch of the old woman is creeping into his style the nearer he gets to that Honours List – would never have sent a boy to do a man’s job. But,’ all expression left his face, ‘we’re going to have to take your word that the bomb we will buy is genuine. It’s got to be no booby trap that could go up in our faces. Sir Harry Parks – the man, not just his wares – is your baby. We act, or we don’t, on your say so. I don’t want my face blown off, and, I imagine, you don’t want the chance of inheriting Warboys’ seat blown out from under you.’ He paused and then, a smile reaming across the varnished face, he added, ‘Too frank?’

  Bernard said, ‘ Perhaps Warboys should have sent a bomb-disposal squad.’ He walked to the fireside table and began to help himself to brandy.

  Later the Duke buttonholed him. The Duke took him into a small room off the library to show him a collection of seventeenthand eighteenth-century Dutch and Flemish seascapes and ship paintings.

  ‘Started to collect ’ em when Bobby was a boy. He used to spend hours in here. When he went … well, it wasn’t the first time in this family, Commander. We’ve spilt the family blood all over the world. But I don’t believe in snivelling around. Family’s one thing, but your country is another. And this country today – full of snivellers, bloody state-supported snivellers. They’re rust on a good crop. Reds, demonstrators, student agitators, bomb-slingers, hi-jackers … you name them and we’ve got them, and sitting right on the top are all these damned trade unions holding the country to ransom with strikes the moment someone treads on a shop steward’s toe or they find out that forty-hour-a-week Joe is having trouble keeping up the payments on his colour television and all the other bloody gadgets they fill their houses with. Oh, I know, there are some good trade unionists. Honest chaps. But, by God, I find it hard to be civil enough to pass the time of day with some of their leaders I meet around Whitehall.’

  He stopped, shook his head like a terrier just come from a briar tangle, and suddenly smiled. ‘Sorry … This time of night I rant a bit. Drink touches up one’s feelings. Anyway, you know what I mean. Something’s got to be done for this country. We’ve got to have the right ammunition…’

  There was, thought Bernard, with the Duke and Felixson an almost childish preoccupation with warfare metaphors. Bombs, guns, ammunition, explosions. Frankly, in as much as he allowed himself any political feelings – and a reason why he disliked this job as much as Warboys – he thought that the last people to be trusted with subversive arms were types like the Duke and Felixson. In their own coverts if a guest handled a gun carelessly he was never invited again. Their skins and the skins of their friends were precious. But in political life they would happily light up their cigars while they sat on powder kegs.

  He said, ‘I gather the real concern isn’t so much whether Sir Harry’s wares are sound or shoddy – but Sir Harry himself.’

  ‘Exactly. The goods you can examine and say yes or no. But why – and this niggles – are they brought by him? He’s the one man I would never have tipped to come to market. We all want to know why. In a sense we’ve asked him, but we got no convincing reply. The PM has suddenly begun to waver about the whole thing. He thinks that the goods may be being planted – to go off in his face. Until he’s sure of that we could have trouble with him. So…’

  ‘So, you’d like me to find out.’

  ‘You’re in the right position. Sir Harry knows it all rests on your word. You can talk to him in a way we can’t. I know you and Warboys don’t like this bag of tricks at all – don’t blame you in some ways – but I know your reputations. Particularly yours. Fact I feel I’ve known you for a hell of a long time. Kept all Bobby’s letters. Always full of you. Knew you were good to him when he kept putting a foot wrong. Damned grateful, even now. Sir Harry will talk to you because you’re a professional and also because he knows you could queer his sale. We want a straight yes or no from you about him. What you say will be enough for me and the rest of us.’

  When Bernard went up to his room, the bed was turned down, his pyjamas and dressing-gown laid out, and his slippers by the side of the bed. In the centre of the bed was a shabby old box file, its edges dog-eared. On top of it, weighted down with a box of matches, was a sheet of notepaper. In a neat, oblique renaissance script were the words:

  I thought it would help if you went through this lot first. I’m an early riser and like a stroll before breakfast: I’m told there’s a lake in the park with a rather nice mock-Roman temple. I hope it is not as depressing as I find the rest of this place.

  It was unsigned.

  Bernard took a bath. He put on his pyjamas and dressing-gown, turned the gas-fire high and began to go through the contents of the box file. Everything was in a rough chronological order. Most of the letters had paper tabs attached to them, detailing the, identity and history of the writer and the recipient. The neatness of the work impressed him. The brief, skeleton biographical notes were easily fleshed out by the imagination. He had an immediate respect for the mental qualities of the man who had made them. There were photographs, taken in England and in Europe – some of them patently at a first glance political dynamite. These too had their explanatory tabs and one or two ironical notes which coldly veiled a sharp cynicism. There were hotel bills, photo-static series of unio
n accounts, some dating back for fifteen years, and sets of minutes of committee meetings which had been held in secret. There were private agency reports on individual trade union members, and two or three sets of proceedings of secret tribunals set up to enquire into the handling of various funds and the conduct of liaison centres and communication systems with other trade union parties in Europe. The languages used in many of the letters and documents were Russian, Polish, Dutch, French and Italian. Frequently a translation was attached. Bernard read them in the original and checked the translations. He found that there were often discrepancies and clever distortions of true meanings. Within the first half-hour he knew that he was sitting with a bomb on his lap. From the material he had examined so far it was clear that, with the right timing, backed by a properly conducted press campaign (an exposé laid out with all the appearance of dignity and a sense of shocked duty to the public) the labour and left-wing elements could be mowed down in any election like a mob of angry, club-swinging peasantry throwing themselves at the tight ranks of an army meeting them with massed fire and cold steel. He twisted his mouth wryly. Something of the martial imagery of the Duke and Felixson had rubbed off on him.

  He read for two hours, making his own translations, entering observations in his notebook. If any real emotion touched him in the cold, analytical process of his work it was the slight stir of admiration for the subtlety and tactics of Communist groundwork, its use of men’s weaknesses, greed, pride, ambition and appetites. One or two of the photographs could never be shown in the press, but they could be prudently described, and would be there to be authenticated by any State enquiry. Years and years ago, he realized, Sir Harry must have been well aware of the undercurrents, and had known that one day the house must be swept clean. There was no hope for the house to which honest, dedicated men had laid the foundation stone. It had to be burned down and a new house built. The prime fuel was here. All that was needed was the match. There would be many hands willing to strike it.

  Despite his completely detached professional status, the disciplines which he had learnt in his early training, the dispassionate exercises of body skills and mental acuteness, and the cold assessment now called for from him, he wondered how much it would change the course of British political history if he now were to strike one of the matches which Sir Harry had kindly left and burn the lot.

  When he had finished and was ready for sleep, he locked his bedroom door and saw that the windows were fastened. He climbed into bed and pushed the box down with his feet to the bottom. He could almost absolutely discount the need for fear in this house. Nothing, however, was secure, particularly when it most seemed to be.

  He woke at half-past six, washed and shaved, dressed, and went down into the park, carrying the box file under his arm. It was a mild December morning, a thin mist knee-high over the ground and the sky, barely light, a gun-metal grey. He walked down a gravelled ride, leafless poplars towering over him, and found the lake. Grebes and coots moved out of the sere reeds and the bent, brown flags to lose themselves in the mist after a few yards.

  In the scollop-shaped temple at the far end of the lake he found Sir Harry sitting on a wooden seat beneath the statue of a tall, plump, half-robed goddess. Sir Harry was filling a pipe. He wore an overcoat and cap.

  Bernard sat beside him, putting the box file between them. As Sir Harry put the packed pipe to his mouth and patted his pockets for matches, Bernard handed him his box.

  ‘You left them with me.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’ The man lit his pipe, blowing the smoke in quick spurts from the corner of his mouth. The pipe drawing, he went on, ‘Since I was a lad I could never bear to lose the early morning. Even come the time when it was going through, grey streets to the mill. Morning music, too. Not just the birds. The sound of people. Feet coming down the street, clogs in those days. People and their clogs, they made a music. I apologize for getting you out so soon – particularly as you must have been up some time reading.’ He beat a brief tattoo on the box file between them. ‘ Dirty stuff. More than once I’ve had a mind to burn it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Aye, why? There’s a good question. Well … in the beginning I had, faith. I was out of the mill then – union official – working the way my father had always wanted. He was one of the early ones with Keir Hardie and the like. Then, when faith withered a bit, I still had purpose. Not that I didn’t know the way some of them wanted to take us. It’s always been there for some. Not an organization of men who had a fair right to sell their labour at a fair price … No, there was always some that saw it t’other way, dreamt of it as a political machine. A weapon of power. Not just to fight the bosses – though, by God, you had to fight them in the beginning even to get a few miserable bob extra…’ He stopped, suddenly smiled, and then said, ‘I’m not by nature a talkative man – ’ ceptin’ on a platform or at a council table and then it’s my job, or was. But I guess you want me to talk. You’ve read the stuff there.’ His fingers brushed the box file. ‘Pandora’s box. If you’re half the kind I think, you know it’s not a box of fancy love letters. Over the last fifteen years I’ve hated the sight of it every time I came to put something new in it.’

  Bernard nodded. ‘No, I don’t think we have to talk about the box. And you don’t have to worry about the early morning. I’ve seen my share and enjoyed most of them.’ He’d seen the sun come up over seas as still as the lake before him, and over other seas that rolled and swung with gale-worked savageness. Now, but for Warboys, he could have been long retired to Falmouth or to somewhere in the Highlands with Margaret. Without Warboys – though he could find no true hate in himself for him – all that might have gone right, his stupid half-challenge for release long accomplished…

  ‘Aye, happen you have, Commander.’

  Bernard said, ‘They’ll buy. Before I leave I’ll give them my word. All I have to do then is write my report for … well, the few other gentlemen involved.’ Despite himself he could not entirely disguise the bitterness that marched with the penultimate word.

  Sir Harry chuckled. ‘It’s me then? Why should I do it? Me that could swing block votes in their thousands once. They’re thinking, they’re sharp these trade union lads. Not hoiks any longer. Don’t be taken in by a few dropped aitches and verbs not agreeing with their subject. That’s to keep the working man feeling he’s in touch. No, they’re thinking, why should it be Sir Harry? Where’s the trick? Where’s the catch, the trap they want us to walk into?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they? Many of their forefathers were playing those games centuries before you came on the scene.’

  Sir Harry shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it, Commander. We can go back, too – and not just to Wat Tyler. There were plenty before him. Wherever and whenever there was master and man. But I take your point and—’ he smiled suddenly, the long chalk-white face cut deeper with creases and wrinkles, ‘—since I’ve got you up so early but you don’t want to miss your breakfast I’ll give it to you – hard and sharp. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘Two reasons. The first few people can escape. I want the money. I’ve lived my life for a cause. I’ve a wife and grown-up children and grandchildren. You can have a cause and a family, Commander, but the family suffers. The work you do takes from them, and you give little back. You have to neglect them. You become a stranger to them. So—’ he smiled ruefully, ‘ when I go, and I don’t think that’ll be over long, I’d like to leave them something. Something a little extra. It’s as simple and human as that. I feel guilty towards them all. Maybe they don’t even see it that way. But I do. And when they get the money, for I shan’t touch it, they’ll be glad. Aye, they’ll use it. It’s convenient that that particular reason trots nicely in harness with the second and, for me, more important one.’

  ‘You want to burn the house down so, that those of your kind who are left can build a new one?’

  Sir Harry laughed. ‘ I can see why they
sent you. Aye, of course I want the house burnt down. It’s rotten. Wood-worm in every beam. But it’s owned now—’ he tapped the box file with the back of his hand, ‘by a small clique of men who don’t care a damn for democracy, for men’s rights, workman or master. I don’t call them Communists. They’re not interested in equal rights, equal pay, the State control of the means of production and distribution. No – that’s all claptrap. They worship power. They don’t care a tinker’s bugger for Labour or any other party. They want to sit on top of the pile and when they do – which could be sooner than a lot of people might imagine – there’ll be master and man again – and God help the man! It’s as simple as that, Commander. And don’t call me naive politically. There’s your proof in that box. And here, too, another proof—’ he jabbed a thumb against his shoulder ‘—me. I’ve brought you the kindling to start the fire to burn down the house, though I doubt I’ll ever see the beginning of the building of the new one. But built it will be. And if you want me to say more than that you’ll not have it. I’ll just get up and go.’

  ‘And take the box with you?’

  ‘You’re a saucy bugger, aren’t you? No, Commander, I’ll not take it, and you know why. There’s no other market for it. Chuck it in the lake.’

  Bernard took the box and stood up.

  ‘When all this is unloaded. Press, television and radio. They’ll know it must come from you. They’ll massacre you – one way or another.’

  Sir Harry shook his head. ‘ No, they won’t, Commander. They’ll deny it all, of course. Call it all fraud and forgery. They’re not stupid. I’m a figurehead still. They’ll want all the union solidarity they can find. They know they’ll have my backing. While it lasts, I’ll be called back. You’ll see me on television, hear me on radio, press conferences, election platforms. Honest Harry – they’ll need every figure of repute they can get. But make no mistake about this – if over the last weeks they’d had any idea of the course I was going to take, of the stuff I had … Well, then I could easily have had a car or street accident and that little box would have disappeared.’ He stood up. ‘Now it’s in your hands. You watch yourself, lad. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies. The desperation of men who see their violent hopes about to die doesn’t have any limit to it.’ He smiled. ‘But I guess you’re used to that kind of situation or you wouldn’t be here. Aye, and in many ways I wish you weren’t here and me neither.’ He looked at the lake. ‘A nice, quiet, kindly winter morning. I wish, though, that I’d never lived to see it.’