‘And in return?’
‘I want access to all – and copies of – every part of the Star Wars vehicle that you’re making. Everything, you understand? Every bolt, screw, wire and clip. Drawings, specifications, plans…the lot.’
‘Jesus!’ said Krogh in sagged awareness. ‘Oh Jesus!’
‘It’ll work just fine, believe me.’
‘No,’ refused Krogh, striving to sound strong. ‘I won’t…can’t…’
‘You need to think about it,’ said Petrin, unworried by the refusal. He pushed the envelope further towards Krogh. ‘Take these, please. I’ve got lots more copies. Look at it all and think about the alternatives…the humiliation and the scandal…’ The Russian took from his pocket a card bearing a single telephone number. He said: ‘You call that when you’ve had your think.’
Reluctantly Krogh picked up both the card and the envelope but then suddenly sniggered. He said: ‘It’s not going to work, you know!’
‘Why not, Mr Krogh?’
‘We don’t have all the contract. One of the most essential parts of the missile body shell, the reinforced resin carbon fibre, is being moulded quite separately in England!’
Charlie had set his own burglar alarm system, like he always did, leaving just inside the flat doors carefully arranged letters any intruder would have disarranged – which they weren’t. He still checked the other precautions, doors apparently left ajar, things placed in remembered positions in cupboards and drawers, before finally deciding there’d been no entry while he’d been away.
The place smelled stale, a locked-up-and-left smell, and he opened windows and squirted an air freshener here and there.
There was quite a lot of mail in addition to his burglar precautions. There were two separate invitations to have his windows double glazed and a communication from
His mother’s letter was last, the writing spiky and in places impossible to read, cramped on a sheet torn from a lined exercise book. He tried the parts that did appear intelligible but quickly gave up, because they didn’t really make sense. The matron must have guessed he would have difficulty because she’d enclosed a typewritten note saying she knew he would be pleased to know that after so long his mother was showing protracted periods of lucidity and that the old lady would appreciate a visit. The last had been three months before, she reminded him unnecessarily: his mother frequently asked for him by name. And there could be some changes to his mother’s State pension he might like to hear about.
Charlie doubted if the recovery were as good as the matron indicated but it would have been nice to think his mother was emerging at last from her closed-off, shuttered world. There was the whole weekend to find out.
There could, of course, be no question of Harkness disclosing his confident expectation of permanent promotion to anyone, because Harkness was a protectively reserved man, although he was sure he could have trusted Hubert Witherspoon with the secret. Witherspoon was a good and loyal colleague, which was only to be expected. They’d both graduated from Balliol, although at different times: by coincidence they were today both wearing their Oxford school ties. He said: ‘They’re sure?’
Witherspoon was a languid, superior man who hadn’t conducted the interview but debriefed the men afterwards. He said: ‘It wasn’t easy to make sense of a lot of what she said, apparently. But she definitely didn’t know anything about what he did in Moscow.’
‘A pity,’ said Harkness. ‘A great pity.’
7
There is a part of the Test valley, near Stockbridge in Hampshire, where the river winds back upon itself, as if it’s lost and can’t find its way, the water sluggish and uncertain. The banks and then the cow meadows are tiered away towards the higher levels, where the trees grow like sparse hair. Near the very top there is a cleft formed by a whim of nature, like a giant footprint, a protected, wrapped-around place to look down upon the view set 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.
‘You said ten,’ she accused at once, loud-voiced. It was fifteen minutes past.
‘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.
‘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.’
‘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.’
‘Any limit on how long I can stay?’
‘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.
‘Hello Mum,’ greeted Charlie.
‘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 like.’
‘Hard centres? I do like hard centres.’
‘At least half,’ promised Charlie. He’d forgotten about that.
‘I’ll give the soft ones away to the silly old buggers who haven’t got any teeth.’
His mother didn’t have many herself but she was proud of what there were. There was a chair considerately
