Comrade Charlie by Brian Freemantle Page B

out for approval below. The nursing home was safe and cosy there, forgotten about like most of the people in it. There were stories that on a clear day it was possible to look across the valley and pick out the distant spire of Salisbury Cathedral proving how tall it was, but Charlie had never seen it and he’d visited his mother on quite a few very clear days. He tried this time and failed: perhaps he wasn’t standing in the right spot.
    He’d telephoned ahead and arranged the most convenient time, so the matron was expecting him. Her name was Hewlett: her signature made it impossible to identify the christian name, apart from the initial letter E, but then she was not a person to be addressed familiarly. She was not particularly tall but very wide. The large and tightly corseted bust was more a prow than a bosom, parting the waves before her, and she always walked with thrust-forward urgency, as if she were late. She invariably wore, like now, a blue uniform of her own design with a crimped and starched headpiece and an expression of fierce severity.
    â€˜You said ten,’ she accused at once, loud-voiced. It was fifteen minutes past.
    â€˜Bad traffic,’ apologized Charlie, unoffended. She was one of those brusque-mannered women of inordinate love and kindness towards all the old people for whom she cared.
    â€˜Your mother is a great deal better, as I told you in my note,’ said the matron at once. ‘She still drifts a little but she’s much more aware than she’s been for a long time.’
    â€˜You trying some new treatment or drug?’
    The formidable woman shook her head. ‘It happens. We’ve just got to hope it lasts. I’m glad you were able to come as quickly as you did.’
    So was he, thought Charlie. For more than two years now his mother’s senility had locked her away in a dream world no one could enter. ‘Does she know I’m coming?’
    The matron nodded. ‘She’s had her hair washed. Don’t forget to tell her it looks nice.’
    â€˜Any limit on how long I can stay?’
    â€˜As long as you like,’ said the woman. ‘Not a lot of relatives come: some of the others will enjoy a different face, as well.’
    Charlie followed the woman, tender to battleship, in a surge through the nursing home. It was a conversion from the long-ago status symbol of a wool millionaire when men became millionaires in the wool trade. There had been the minimum of alteration, little more than stairway lifts and door widening for wheelchairs. All the panelling and flooring was the original wood and the huge floor-to-ceiling verandah doors were retained in the drawing rooms, so that the occupants could easily get outside when it was warm enough, which it was today. The place smelled of polish and fresh air, with no trace of old-people, decay or clinical antiseptic anywhere.
    His mother was just outside the furthest room, raised into a sitting position by a back support in a bed equipped with large wheels to make it easier to manoeuvre. Her pure white hair was rigidly waved and she’d arranged the pillows to end at her shoulders so that it did not become disarranged. There was the faintest touch of rouge, giving her cheeks some colour, and a very light lipstick as well. She wore a crocheted bed jacket over a floral-print nightdress and was sitting in calm patience with her hands, black-corded with veins, on the bed before her. She was wearing a wedding ring she’d bought herself when he was about eighteen but which he couldn’t remember her using for quite a while.
    â€˜Hello Mum,’ greeted Charlie.
    â€˜Hello Charlie,’ she said, in immediate recognition. It was the first occasion for a long time that she’d known him. He kissed her, aware of a furtive audience on the verandah and further away, from groups on the lawns.
    Charlie offered the box he carried and said: ‘Chocolates. Plain. The sort you