The Mask of Memory Read online

  There were steps on the stairs and Nancy Barcott came into the room, pushing the door open with a slow swing of her thigh, holding a tray in her hands. On it were a jug of coffee, cup and saucer, and a plate with a large slice of Dundee cake.

  Billy stopped typing and pulled the loose top of the paper in his machine over on to the keys so that she could not read what he had written.

  ‘Hullo, Nance.’

  She put the tray on the desk at the side of the typewriter. ‘Your bliddy feet’ll drop right off one of these days. You can smell the leather burnin’ down in the shop.’

  Billy chuckled. ‘ Long as it’s only my feet, eh? Warm feet, warm heart – and a warm heart, Nance, is what a lot of people I know could do with.’

  As he spoke he put his hand under her skirt, running it up her inner thigh over her tights until it was in a position to massage her ample bottom. Nancy took no notice of the caress. She was a short, dark-haired, plump woman in her middle thirties with a pleasant but plain face. She lived with a widowed old mother who was a tyrant but from whom out of an incomprehensible – at least to Billy – loyalty she would not be parted to live on her own. Billy and Nancy loved one another without letting it disturb their lives much. They slept together three nights a week from half-past nine until half-past eleven (if Billy’s business commitments allowed). Then Billy drove her back to her mother. Sometimes, if commitments were too frequent, she would come up for half an hour after the shop closed. Both of them knew that when her mother died they would get married, but it was a prospect so remote that they seldom considered it. Mrs Barcott at sixty was as hard and durable as well-seasoned oak.

  As Nancy poured his coffee, Billy said, ‘Got a good price for that load of paint on Thursday. Treat you to a few gins at the pub tonight if you like.’

  ‘Can’t. Got to take Ma to bingo. It’s her night. You’ll get a good price from the police one of these days.’

  ‘Not me.’ He moved his hand on an untouched area of her bottom. ‘You’re putting it on, old girl. Too many doughnuts between serving customers.’

  ‘If you don’t like the goods, stop messin them about.’

  She pulled his ear and moved to the door. From a safe distance – because you never knew with Billy – she lifted the front of her skirts, made an obscene gesture and was out of the door, laughing.

  Billy chuckled. Then, ignoring his coffee, for he liked it lukewarm, he went on with his typing.

  The finished letter read:

  Dear Mr Tucker, Four weeks report on subject up to October 21st. Have carried out randum checks as per instructions given 1st August last. All observed routines are normal, except for incident of todays date which is replicker of three others already noted for your kind attention.

  Subject entered Marks and Spencers Stores, Allpart Street, 1420hrs, spent a few minutes wandering round store and then proceded to confectionary and sweet section at back of shop. Without any attempt to conceal, subject then took four or five items of sale and pocketed same, and then walked back through store without paying. Subject proceded up Allpart Street, through St Peter’s churchyard to car park and got into car. Yours truly followed and passing subjects car noticed – without drawing attention to self – that subject seemed temporily upset. Could have been crying. Subject then drove off. Subject followed to North Lobb Burrows and took her usual walk up the sands and then proceded to place of domocile.

  Again no indication of special aspects as notified by you to watch out for. Randum surveys to continue as per your honoured instructions. Yours truly,

  William Ankers

  Yours truly. Well, mostly, Billy told himself. And why not? He couldn’t waste too much of his time half-assing off after a woman who clearly had an almost set routine for every day of the week. It was damn funny about the shoplifting, though. About once – sometimes twice – a month. Not always Marks and Sparks. Other stores, too. Walks in, bold as brass, just lifts the stuff and out again. God must look after His own or something because it was a miracle she hadn’t been spotted. Not a woman you would overlook, either. Tall, good-looking, all that fair hair and those dreamy, faraway eyes. Must be pushing forty but she still had it all. Though, if he knew his onions, she didn’t get much or any chance to use it, but clearly that was what Mr Trusting-I-Don’t-Think Tucker was after with his special aspects.

  He poured himself coffee, sipped it, and then addressed an envelope for Mr Tucker’s letter. Euston Road, London. Graingers Tobacconist. Accommodation address for sure…

  Margaret Tucker came half-awake, her eyes still closed. She lay for a moment or two, hearing the near sound of the sea as the tide ate its way up the beach, and the buzz of a few late bees working the last of the thyme and gorse blooms. She rolled from her side on to her back and stretched her arms, enjoying the aftermath of sleep and the relaxation of her body. The movement drew her skirt well above her knees and she felt a faint current eddy against her legs and touch with idle, light caress the bare flesh above one of her stockings. The flexing of her arms brought her breasts hard against her brassiere, straining against her blouse buttons.

  She sat up, opening her eyes. Shaking her head, she ran her hands across her hair to settle it away from her face. As her head came up from the movement she saw the man. He was sitting on a small grass mound on the other side of the hollow, his knees drawn up, his elbows resting on them and his large hands cupping the sides of his face. For a moment a touch of alarm moved through her. The burrows had a bad reputation locally.

  As though there were already a settled yet distant relationship between them, the man smiled and gave a little shake of his head.

  He said, ‘It’s all right, Mrs Tucker…’

  Margaret stood up, pulled her skirt straight and brushed loose sand from it. She was embarrassed and a little angry. How dare anyone sit there and watch her while she was sleeping? She realized now that she had seen the man about before … indeed vaguely from local talk knew something about him.

  Before she could control herself, she said, ‘ Your name’s Dougall, isn’t it?’

  She dropped her eyes and shook her light coat, brushing dried grass from the sleeves. She was wondering how long he had been there, watching her, his eyes on her legs. With a strange certainty she knew exactly the limits of intimacy his eyes had covered.

  ‘That’s right. Maxie Dougall. Maximilian, that is. Blame an Irish nun for that.’ He laughed gently, and the sound brought her eyes to him. It was a slow laugh, marking the swift passage of memories. He jerked his head backwards, to indicate the beach. ‘I used to walk in that orphanage crocodile. I’ve been around here for quite a few years.’ He spoke well, not crippling or undervaluing any words, but they all carried the firm touch of the local West Country accent. He grinned. ‘I see you give them sweets sometimes…’

  ‘Only now and then…’ And having said it, she wondered whether in the times he had seen her before, must have seen her before, he had sat on some dune-top watching her, waiting for some small movement of sleep to expose … A faint shiver made her tauten her shoulder blades to contain it.

  Although she was on her feet, he sat still on his mound, his hands now clasped between his legs, his elbows still supported by his widespread knees. She had a swift feeling that his lack of courtesy was maintained as part of some deliberate calculation to rouse her to some emotion which would mark him among other men. She began to move, discarding the nonsense of her thoughts.

  From a buckthorn a small bird flirted across the path, a brief exhibition of black head and patches of whiteness before it was gone over the crest of the dunes.

  From her right he said something which she could not catch. She halted and had the impression that some stranger inhabiting her body had overridden her own will. She looked at him, poised for movement. In that moment a gulf opened in her mind into which flooded a presentiment that she must go … go quickly. It was the same sensation she always got before the comforting hand spread over her forehead and the great peace
of confidence and immunity possessed and controlled her. She stood there, poised, and waited for the warm caress of the hand. But the hand was withheld.

  He said, ‘ Stonechat.’ He was standing now, and a loose, friendly smile spread over his large, sun-tanned face. ‘The bird. Saxicola torquata. His cousins, the whinchats, were here until the beginning of the month, but they’re well on their way to Africa by now.’ Then with a shrug of his shoulders, he went on, ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you, Mrs Tucker.’

  She nodded and then moved on. Maxie Dougall watched her go down the dune path and then disappear over the slight crest to the beach. Watching her in the few moments before she had awakened, he had known the swift desire for possession which had marked the beginning of affairs with summer girls … the small nakedness, asking for the touch of a hand, above a stocking, the thinnest edge of lace filigreed across a thigh. She was a handsome woman, well-built … a fine woman, almost as tall as himself, a woman to measure himself against. But, even so, she wasn’t what he had seen. She was married. Maybe he should forget the whole thing and look for the obvious, the easier type, a widow with money. There were plenty about among the retired residents of this place, and plenty that any man would welcome in bed. Then, remembering the rise of her breasts against her blouse as she had roused herself, the swift tangle of fair hair flung back from the pink and white handsome face, he knew that he was committed.

  He turned away and began to walk the burrows westwards to his small cottage on the estuary marsh where the two rivers parted.

  Margaret Tucker sat in her car without attempting to start it. There was a deep reluctance in her to begin the journey home. Nothing waited for her at home except the monotony of an all too familiar, uncompanionable routine.

  Without any strong emotion, she thought, why do you stand it? Who would miss you? Certainly not Bernard. Apart from all else he was seldom at home and when he was … For three years now, and infrequently for long before that, he had not touched her. A housekeeper with a splendid post – the master seldom at home and when he was his demands were minimal, his awareness of her mildly affectionate but never intimate. All that there had been between them of man and woman had died long ago. Not from her wish. But it had gone. Not suddenly but dying away, like a photograph fading … They had never discussed it. She never discussed certain things with Bernard. If she tried he looked at her with a mild stare, and if she persisted – which she had once or twice in the beginning – he would get up and leave the room. Long ago she had once forced him to listen, and he had ended by getting up and walking out of the house. Sometimes, now – when they had settled to their detached, personal existences – she thought that he had gone gently, permanently mad or something. Or that he was impotent and there was a masculine pride in him so twisted that he could not bring himself even to frame the word in his thoughts, let alone discuss it with her. Whatever it was, the man she had married long years ago had gone, his place taken by this new Bernard, living his own business life in London and coming home for a weekend which might be gapped by a month, two months … there was never any knowing.

  As she leaned forward to turn the ignition switch, her eye was caught by the cover of the paperback which she was reading. She smiled wryly to herself. There had been a time when it was the last kind of book she would have read, a time when love – at least in her reading – needed no specifics. Now she knew, acknowledged with a rueful, even slightly amused eagerness, that she enjoyed the frankness, lingered over it, drawing out with pleasure her physical response to the words, substituting herself with such detailed, awakening fidelity that there had been times when, in a fit of prudish anger, she had thrown a book from her – yet knowing even in the act of rejection that she would come back to it.

  For God’s sake, she thought angrily as she twisted the key and the engine fired, what kind of life is this? She drove off with a fierce skidding of rear wheels on the loose grit of the park. She saw the Highland chieftain’s left hand, large and firm, cupped vigorously over the girl’s bare breast. Big, firm brown hands, like the hands of the man who had sat and watched her sleeping. She shivered suddenly, the whole skin of her body electric with the feeling of a man’s hands running over her.

  He had known the house at Lopcommon for years, from the time when he had been a scholarship grammar-school boy, boarded out with foster parents who were kindness itself to him. Yet they had never established any real contact with him because he would take nothing from anyone except of his own choosing. An artificial family life was the last thing he had wanted. He had come up here at night ferreting for rabbits, waiting for the subterranean thud of feet, seeing the burrow mouth net bulge in the dark, then slipping the rabbit free to break its neck with a quick twist of the hands. In summer the heat-lazy adders would sun themselves on the granite outcrops and he would take those, too, with a forked stick jabbed lightning fast to pin them down behind their heads. He killed them and tossed them away, remembering the only dog he had ever owned which had died from one of their bites.

  There was mist lying still and heavy over the low ground, but up here the air was clear under the bright starlight of a windless night. He lay on the flat top of a boulder, resting on his elbows, his field-glasses to his eyes. The house was on the far bank of the narrow combe through which ran a small stream. A low stone wall, broken by a wicket gate, edged the bottom slope of the house lawn with its flanking shrubberies and rockeries. It was a long, low, white farmhouse, slate-roofed, which had been converted into a country residence many years ago. The main entrance was on the far side by a driveway that ran down from the road which followed the combe crest. Since talking to Margaret Tucker over a week ago on the burrows, he had watched the house most nights and had walked around it during the day when she was away in the town, shopping.

  The glasses held the long windows of the lounge. The curtains were carefully drawn but the inner light showed round the vertical edges of the – frame in a soft glow. She would be sitting in there reading or watching television. On a night recently, when one of the curtains had been badly adjusted, he had gone down and looked in to see her in an angle of limited vision sitting in her chair reading. When he wanted to he could drift through the night and the darkness with the ease of a fox, with the deliberate, silent naturalness of any night creature. No dog was kept at the house, there were no children and no servants – except a daily who came two or three times a week and was gone by midday. In the summer a jobbing gardener came three times a week for the day. Now in late autumn the man came once a week on a Saturday. Margaret Tucker was clearly not a woman who was worried by loneliness or frightened by being alone at night. It was general knowledge that Mr Tucker, who worked in London – though it was not known clearly at what – was often away for weeks at a time.

  The light in the lounge went out. A moment or two later a light was switched on in the bedroom at the far right-hand side of the house. The curtains were undrawn. He held the room in focus as Margaret Tucker crossed it and drew the curtains. One day – he knew this with a certainty that held no arrogance – he would know that room.

  He lowered the glasses and watched the palely limned cracks of light at the curtain edges. She would be undressing, stripping the clothes from her tall, boldly formed body, shaking out, combing and brushing that fair hair, the mild blue eyes perhaps watching herself in the mirror. The thought triggered a contraction of muscle in him, a fractional response to the sexual tones of his imagery’ … but there was no lust. The time would come when he would take her and know her body and she would know his and tell herself that she loved him. He would wrap her in the web of her own illusions as surely and with as deadly intent as any spider slowly and expertly cocooning some trapped, struggling moth in its web, draping it with silken filaments, adorning and destroying it.

  He rolled slowly from his boulder, drew his jacket collar about his neck and walked away. From the far side of the combe a lone curlew called. Far away, above the low mist, the red aircraft warni
ng lights on the power station stacks across the Two Rivers estuary were steady marks for his line across country to the dunes. He saw Margaret Tucker lying asleep in her hollow. Because he planned to use her there was already growing in him a love for her. All possession was a form of love and he saw no contradiction in the fact that he could love the thing which in the end he would have to discard. For a moment she was recreated in the lens of his glasses, fair hair blowing in the wind as she gave sweets to the nun at the head of the crocodile chain of children. He remembered the Irish nun who had him named Maximilian Dougall. When she had died he had wept. He had never known such tears for anyone else, would never know them, if the moment came, for Margaret. Once you had walked in the crocodile chain you were marked apart. All such children know instinctively that charity is a form of conscience money or – though it came later – an offering to the gods for continuing good fortune. When you came into the world unloved, unwanted, was there any wonder that you brought a new and personal form of morality with you?

  Propped against her pillows, wearing a silk quilted bed-jacket, Margaret was writing in her diary. It was something she did two or three times a week. Generally the entries were brief, little more than an aide memoire to the even flow of weeks and months. Nothing much happened in her life of note or of such personal intimacy that she could confide only in the diary. Nevertheless she kept it locked away in one of the side drawers of the bedroom bureau – to which she alone had a key. Innocuous though the entries were, she would not have liked Bernard to read them … could not imagine even that he would be remotely interested in them. A long time ago Bernard had withdrawn into his own world.

  She wrote:

  It happened again. There I was sitting in the car and my pocket was full of sweets. At the time it always frightens me so much – but then the feeling soon goes and I really feel quite calm about it and soon I’ve forgotten all about it.