The Mask of Memory Page 5

  Margaret walked briskly up the beach, her coat buttoned fully around her against the wind. There was no orphanage crocodile today. The weather was much too bad. For a moment she smiled at the thought of the whole skein of children being whisked up by the wind, sucked up into the low-clouded sky to disappear, shrieking and shouting with laughter, to some magical land where they would live happily ever after.

  Three hundred yards up the beach, she turned away from the sea and on to a path through the burrows. Half an hour later she was sitting on the leeward side of one of the most southerly dunes, sheltered from the wind, though wraiths of gale-blown sand occasionally hissed above her head, and watching the small cottage. She watched through a pair of old Carl Zeiss binoculars which Bernard kept in the house.

  The cottage was served by the spur of an old military road which ran between dunes and marsh out to the headland which marked the meeting-point of the two rivers where there was a military training area. The cottage garden was small, enclosed by stone walls which were banked on two sides by wind-twisted growths of thorn and alder bushes. The roof was thatched with one chimney in the centre. Its face, like a child’s drawing, held a central doorway, flanked by two windows and three windows across the top of its façade. The thatch was old but in good repair, the walls white plastered and the paint and woodwork of the door and windows in good condition. To one side of the cottage was a large pond, edged with cotton grass and rushes and on this moved two white geese and some ducks.

  Maxie Dougall was working in the garden. He wore a thick, navy-blue seaman’s jersey, the sleeves pushed up over his elbows, and the peaked, dark cap on his head. He was so close through the glasses that Margaret felt she could put out a hand and touch him, touch the glints of light on his face, which was marked with sweat from his work. He was turning over a small vegetable patch with a spade, his movements unhurried, rhythmical and easy with the deliberate strength and grace of a man who does a long-familiar job.

  Margaret watched with interest. Although the man meant nothing to her, her curiosity was strong. She was not a fool. She sensed clearly that this man had gone out of his way to make himself known to her, that – detached though her curiosity was – his interest in her was personal. She could resent this – had at times when she had sat thinking about it at home – but she clearly accepted her curiosity. If it were nothing else, it was something different with which to concern herself, a break in the routine of the predictable days she lived.

  She watched him now, aware of the strength in the shoulders and arms, the almost lazy control of power which was realized in the growing length of the dark marsh soil which lay, mahogany-fresh, in spade-silvered slabs under the pale light of the cloud-filtered sunshine.

  She saw him reach and pick something from the ground. He pushed his cap back so that a frond of sweat-lacquered, dark hair streaked his brow. For a moment or two he examined something in his hand. Then he tossed it away over the garden wall into the pond where ducks and geese raced across the water to it. Clear, vivid and unnaturally near to her in the lenses she saw him laugh, his teeth marking the brown face, his lips red-wet, the colour of ripe hawthorn berries. Then, his face was hidden as he half turned and the spade began to rise and fall again.

  She dropped the glasses, letting them hang around her neck by their strap. Without warning, her whole body was swamped with a sense of utter misery, a sensation of sadness that she had never known before … an emotion which went swiftly beyond misery and desolation to a nameless possession of her body … neither loneliness nor longing, but a living nothingness which for a moment or two completely immobilized her. Her whole nature called out its want in terms which she could not understand.

  She got up and went down at an oblique angle to the old military road. She began to walk back to the car park along the road, the whole width of the burrows now between her and the beach. There were tears in her eyes but whether they came from the wind which whipped across her face or from her own feeling she did not know because she walked now like an automaton, beyond knowing, just walking, just being without feeling or awareness.

  Maxie watched her go. He had been unaware of her until, pausing in his digging and looking round, he had seen her come down the dune side to the old road, the sloping path setting the binoculars round her neck swinging against her coat front. For a moment or two he had thought she was coming to the cottage. Then she had turned away down the road to the east and he knew that she was going back to her car. Unmoved, not even touched by a moment’s egotism, he knew that she had been up on one of the dunes watching him. Why not? This woman wanted him. He would take her want and satisfy it, and then take her and satisfy himself. There would be no retreat from this courtship. He turned back to his digging, loving the richness of the fresh-turned soil, relishing the mirror-bright face of the spade which cut like a knife into winter-bare ground.

  Margaret passed within two yards of Billy Ankers, coming from behind him and across the park to her car. She walked with her hands in her pockets, the field-glasses swinging still around her neck. Her head was bowed a little against the thrust of the wind. For a moment Billy saw her face, wind-rouged, and her eyes glistening and tear-bright.

  Watching her get into her car he wondered whether the tears were from the wind, and wondered, too, about the field-glasses. There had been no sign of them when she had left. And now, here she was, back from another direction, one he had never known before, coming back up the old military road along the marsh edge, fifteen minutes over her time.

  He watched her as she turned her car and drove out of the park. The fifteen minutes meant little, not in this wind. But the new direction was interesting and so were the field-glasses. He had never seen those before. Perhaps she had taken up bird watching. A lot of people did it about here. She drove by, thirty yards away, and he saw that she was still wearing the field-glasses about her neck. She had the look, he thought, of a woman in a trance, oblivious of the glasses. Either that or she was over-proud of her new toy and, like a child, wanted everyone to see it. No, that wasn’t her style. Not from what he knew of her. For his money, something was happening, and that something was out there in the dunes … Well, next time he would follow her, though that would be no picnic unless the weather turned milder.

  He drove back to lukewarm coffee and Dundee cake with Nancy and, for the first time, admitted her to his confidence over Margaret Tucker.

  He said, ‘Nance, you know that Mrs Tucker woman … you know, tall, well-built blonde number what lives out at Lop common?’

  ‘Yes. Comes to the shop sometimes. Not regular. She one of yours?’

  ‘In a way. Ever hear anything about her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if you do, let me know.’

  ‘You do your own bliddy snooping. You know I don’t like it, anyway. And now if you’ve finished doing what you’re doing I’ll have me leg back and go down to work. You ought to tire yourself out with more exercise. Take a bit of the Old Nick out of you.’

  The letter was addressed to Bernard Tucker at his London flat. It read:

  Dear Commander Tucker, I wonder if you might find it amusing to come down here for the first weekend in December? My brother was a contemporary of yours at Dartmouth and I think you served together later. Come on the Friday. If you are not travelling by road you can be met at the station – Salisbury. My father and a few friends of his will be here.

  Nothing formal. We live very simply.

  Yours sincerely,

  Cynthia Melincourt

  An hour later he passed it across the desk to Warboys. The man read it, fiddling with the point of his chin, then flicked it back, saying, ‘Lady Cynthia Melincourt. Woodford’s daughter, spinster in her late thirties, mad as a coot. Two or three dubious phases in her life. A very minor English eccentric and, if she’s in the mood, a praying mantis.’

  Tucker picked up the thick, green, deckle-edged paper with its black engraved address: Vigo Hall, Horsfell, Wiltshire. He kne
w as much about Lady Cynthia as Warboys. She was in their files somewhere. He asked, ‘Vigo Hall?’

  ‘Bloody great place on a hill over the upper Avon. Tudor origins overlaid with a mess of additions since then, Nice collection of Dutch sea paintings. No central heating. Cold as charity, but the food and drink are excellent. You knew the brother?’

  ‘Paul. Yes. Nice, quiet chap. Killed in submarines off Taranto in forty-four. Would Lady Cynthia know the object behind the exercise?’

  ‘No. Woodford probably dictated what she should write.’ Warboys leaned back and raised his peaked face to the ceiling chandelier. ‘I’d give odds there’s no need for the precaution, but don’t go by car. There isn’t an official one existing that hasn’t been marked by someone or the other. Use the rail and take a roundabout route. Pop down a hole like Alice and come up in Wonderland…’ His voice trailed off as his eyes came back to Tucker. ‘Sorry, Bernard. I must be getting old. Teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. I’ll be telling you to wear a false moustache next.’

  Tucker smiled automatically. He had hardly listened to the directions because he was thinking that Warboys didn’t like this job. That made him garrulous and fussy, a shield that concealed a professional anger. Both of them knew the limits of the Department’s brief. Both of them could move easily through the underworld of politics nationally and internationally, but there was a long-standing official reluctance to become involved in party politics. Labour, Liberal and Conservative were newspaper terms, interchangeable labels almost. The present Prime Minister like all others before him understood the veto against using the service purely for party ends. He had to be a frightened man, or a far more powerful and persuasive one than any of the others to have involved Warboys and the men who ranked above Warboys in this.

  Back in his own office, Tucker said to Quint, ‘I want a train timing for December the fifth to Salisbury. Arrive late afternoon. I don’t want to go direct. Give me a roundabout route with two changes.’

  ‘Return route?’

  ‘I’ll arrange that.’ Tucker palmed his watch from the pocket of his double-breasted waistcoat. ‘ I’m going over now to the Navy division. I’d like it when I come back.’ He dropped the watch back into his pocket and moved to take his hat and coat from the office stand.

  Quint took a time-table from his lower drawer and began to look up trains. He had no curiosity about the request. He had been in the service long enough now to sense at once when a new job was being prepared. Tucker was as remote as an iceberg, the bulk of his real personality submerged – which meant that he did not like the job. And Warboys, whenever he had had reason recently to be with him even on routine matters, was quietly fussing, openly woolly in his talk – which meant that there was something around which he did not like. All this rarity of behaviour from two men who were seldom touched by professional scruples, who had lived with well-disciplined deceits and the smooth – deadly, sometimes – stratagems of power beyond and above the common run of the laws which the man-in-the-street recognized meant that someone had set the wrong dish before them. The smell was getting up their noses.

  It was nine o’clock. Margaret had had, for her, a late dinner, taking it on a tray before the television set in the sitting-room. Before eating she had changed from her tweed dress into a long, blue, velvet housecoat. As the news came on the screen she leaned forward and switched it off. She had already seen or heard the news twice that day, and tomorrow morning there would be the papers. There was too much news. It had become an obsession with the human race, she thought. In Scotland, as a girl, there had been a weekly paper only … She leaned back, ignoring the book which already rested in her lap. The intermittent shake of a strong westerly wind against the window-panes took her back to the same wind noises coming up the loch, full of sea vigour. As a girl her father and the ghillies and the keepers had taught her every inch of the lochside and the surrounding country, but she had never, been able to take any special interest in their particular passions … shooting, fishing, and stalking. Her father, since she was an only child and not the boy he wanted, had tried to interest her, with kindness and no sign of disappointment. She had wanted to respond, knowing his feeling, but there was no answering passion in her. To walk the loch shore and the hills, she loved. To shoot and fish gave her no pleasure. Her father was dead now and it was sad to think that he had carried his big disappointment to the grave with him. Her mother had soon followed him because she had always been his shadow, drawing a large draught of her spirit and contentment direct from him. That was when Bernard had come; five years after the war, from the experimental station run by the Navy at the loch mouth, an establishment that filled the neighbourhood with wild rumours of the things which went on there. Not the Bernard she knew now. The Bernard of then. Much older than she was, for she was hardly nineteen. She lived – chaperoned by an old aunt – the wealthy young heiress of the estate and the family fortune. It was like one of the books she now read. The young Highland girl, sheltered, untouched by the rough buffets of life, and the virile, swashbuckling stranger from the sea. She smiled. Not that even in those days, or any days, Bernard could have been described as swashbuckling. But he had swept her off her feet, captivated her half-senile aunt, and they had been married in the local kirk with only a handful of witnesses from the estate. He had been the first and only man she had known. Halcyon days followed – though even then he would be away from her for days, sometimes weeks. But even in his absence his flesh was part of her flesh … their love-making a wonder which even in his absence fired her body with sudden torments of bliss which would often force her to get up and leave the room and the company of her aunt because the vividness of his presence even in her thoughts was something only to be supported in the solitude of her own room.

  Then, over the years, the whole thing had gradually died, like some tropic growth succumbing year by year as the natural climate of its life changed, the seasons turning through cycles that brought a slow death.

  Anger touched her suddenly, and she picked up the book from her lap and forced herself to read, the fingers of her right hand playing nervously with a loose strand of her fair hair.

  A stronger squall of wind pulsed against the windows. As it died away she heard the front-door bell ring. It was after nine and no time for callers.

  The bell rang again insistently, a finger pressed long on the button. The length of the ring gave her a sudden assurance. Now and again her daily woman would find that she could not come on a promised day – and it was her day tomorrow – and would send up her small son with a message. He was a boy who thought that when you rang a bell you kept your finger on it until someone answered.

  Margaret got up, smiling to herself, and went out into the hall. She switched on the outside light and freed the door lock.

  As she drew the door open, the wind rushed into the house, forcing the door back against her restraining hand, setting the ceiling hall-light swinging on its pendant and rippling like some living thing under a loose rug on the polished floor-boards.

  A man stood on the doorstep, full under the portico light. It was Maximilian Dougall, cap on head, the coat collar of his pilot jacket turned up against the wind, and a large brown-paper parcel under his arm. He smiled at her and made a half-gesture of touching the peak of his cap with his free hand.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Tucker. Hope I haven’t disturbed you?’

  As he spoke, her first instinct was to close the door quickly against him. How dare he come up here at this time of night? As her lips framed to give him some curt dismissal, a balm for the outrage his smiling insolence presented, the wind gusted again with even greater force. It smashed into the hallway as though it were in league with this man, powering him, adding its strength to his to bear her down. A picture slid at an angle on the wall with the slew of racing wind, the ceiling light swung in an erratic orbit and the loose rug raced to the foot of the stairs to collapse in an untidy heap. Then the wind was sucked back by the gale outside. Th
e open door, caught in the retreating vortex, was jerked from Margaret’s hand and swung away from her. She gave a small cry of alarm, fearing, even in her anger with him, that the door would smash outwards into the man’s face.

  Maxie reached out a hand, caught the door knob and halted the violent swing with a thrust of his shoulder. He moved round the door and shut it. He turned to her, taking off his cap, the smile still on his lips and – the West Country accent fuller than Margaret had ever heard it before – said, ‘Well; what a night, Mrs Tucker. A full scale westerly that’ll make a lot of craft run for shelter. It’s not so bad down here. You’re in a bit of a hollow, but coming over the cliff path … well, I thought I was going to take wing and join up with the seagulls—’

  Margaret broke in stiffly, ‘Mr Dougall, it’s very late and I … I … Well, I was not expecting anyone to call.’ She was angry still, but through her anger she knew that she sounded like some stammering idiot.

  ‘Oh…’ Maxie sounded genuinely surprised. He looked at his wrist watch and then went on, ‘Well, yes, I suppose it is, Mrs Tucker. Trouble is I don’t pay much attention to time. Only you see—’ he patted the parcel under his arm, ‘—I’ve just been over to Lobhill to show some of my paintings to a client of mine.’ He grinned. ‘Client is a nice word. He’s a dealer, has a couple of second-hand shops and buys now and then. Coming back, I suddenly remembered I’d promised to let you have a look at them sometime. But I see what you mean. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘I’m not much of a hand at … well, at thinking about what other people consider proper times and things like that. I’ll come back some other day.’ He put his cap on and reached for the door with his free hand.