Comrade Charlie

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 near the bed. Charlie pulled it closer and as he sat she extended her hand, to be held. Again it was in full view of everyone. Charlie said: ‘How are you, then?’

‘Going into Salisbury on the bus on Friday,’ said his mother, who had been bedridden for almost a year. ‘Do some shopping.’

‘That’ll be nice,’ said Charlie easily.

‘With George.’

‘George?’

His mother made a vague gesture towards a group of mostly men near a grey fir, on a far lawn. ‘George,’ she said. ‘Only just arrived. He likes me.’

‘Careful you don’t get into trouble,’ warned Charlie.

‘I need company, with your father gone and all.’

‘Sure you do,’ said Charlie. The skin of his mother’s hand felt thin, like paper.

‘He was very fond of you, your dad. Remember when he used to take you fishing, on that river down there? And to football matches?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Charlie, to whom none of it had ever happened.

‘William,’ said the old lady, producing a name like a rabbit out of a hat. ‘Always William: never Bill. Nice man. Worked on the railways.’ She began to pick with her free hand at the cellophane wrapping of the chocolate box and Charlie helped her, opening it fully. She touched several with a wavering finger, as if she were counting, before finally making her choice. ‘Those others didn’t bring any chocolates,’ she said.

Charlie looked out at a group of old people by the drooping fir tree, curious if there really were anyone called George. He said: ‘Matron says she’s very pleased with you. How you’re getting on.’

‘Tells lies,’ his mother insisted at once. ‘She doesn’t like me. Hits me for not eating cake with nuts in and you know I don’t like cake with nuts in. Told you in my letter.’

‘I don’t remember that bit,’ said Charlie.

‘They said they’d tell her but I don’t think they did. How’s Edith?’

‘Edith’s dead, Mum.’

She chose another chocolate, nodding in recollection. ‘I remember now,’ she said. ‘Never knew anyone die of flu before.’

‘Flu that became pneumonia,’ said Charlie. He was surprised she recalled the explanation he’d produced, instead of the numbing truth: that Edith had been blasted apart in mistake for him by a trigger-happy mob from the CIA avenging their Director he’d disgraced, along with his own, for being prepared to sacrifice him on a border crossing during the Berenkov pursuit. Charlie said: ‘Quite a while ago now.’

‘Liked Edith. Posh but she never had any side to her. Never looked down on me. Often wondered what she saw in a scruffy bugger like you.’

So had he, since she’d been dead, reflected Charlie. He knew a lot had in the department before that and certainly when they’d got married. Inconceivable, old boy. I mean, lovely girl like Edith! General’s daughter, would you believe! Double First at Cambridge, head of Research. And that threadbare little oik who shouldn’t have been allowed office space in the first place. I mean! Inconceivable! Charlie said, with deep feeling: ‘I miss her.’ He missed Natalia, too. Maybe more so because he believed Natalia was still alive in Moscow, although he didn’t know absolutely. And never would know.

‘The men asked about her,’ said the woman. ‘I tell you some thing! Edith wouldn’t have let you go around like that. Look at you! Bloody tramp. You never wore shoes like that when I was responsible for you. John wouldn’t have allowed it. Heart of gold, your dad. Very proud of you, John was. Good to me, too.’

Muddled about some things. What about others? He stroked her hand and said: ‘What men, Mum?’

‘Told you,’ she said with ancient belligerence. ‘Didn’t bring any chocolates. I didn’t like them. Kept asking me questions…’ She plucked out a chocolate shaped in a half moon and said: ‘I can’t find that on the chart that tells you what they are. Is it a hard or a soft one?’

‘It’s soft,’ said Charlie. ‘That square shape is a hard one.’ Charlie had the impression of a distant warning, a far-away bell almost too muted properly to distinguish. He smoothed his mother’s hand some more and said coaxingly: ‘These men: was that the new man who likes you? And a friend of his, perhaps?’

The woman splayed her hand with the wedding ring Charlie had noticed when he first arrived. ‘George gave me that,’ she said. ‘That is how I know he likes me. Calls me Judith. I don’t know why but that’s what he calls me. Judith.’ Her name was Mary.

‘Was it, Mum? Was George one of them?’

‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded suspiciously.

‘I want to know about these men who didn’t bring you chocolates or complain to matron about the cake with nuts.’

She looked suddenly, sharply, at him like a disturbed bird. ‘Course it wasn’t George, you silly sod. They were visitors, like you…’ She smiled, showing the real teeth she possessed. ‘No one’s had more visitors than me, not for weeks! Matron said, so there!’

‘Who were they?’ said Charlie. He didn’t look at her as he spoke, making it all sound casual.

‘Men were always fond of me,’ she said, drifting off. ‘Popular. That’s what I was. Always enjoyed a good laugh.’

‘Have they been before?’

‘Course not. They’re important. Official. Told me. From a Ministry…something like that…’

The bells were louder now, easier to hear. ‘What did they want?’

‘All sorts of things. Asked about Edith…you… lots of things I can’t think of now…’ She suddenly tightened her fingers upon his. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong, have you? Been up to thieving or something like that.’

‘No, Mum,’ said Charlie gently. ‘I haven’t been thieving. How many were there?’

‘Two,’ she said at once. ‘Dressed nice. Not like you, scruffy bugger. They wrote things down.’

The matron, Ms Hewlett, had written about pension changes in her letter. He was abruptly anxious to talk to the woman. He said: ‘How did they speak?’

She giggled, engulfing him in chocolate breath. ‘Like every else speaks, of course!’

‘I mean how did they sound? Did they sound English or foreign?’

She frowned and Charlie thought how unlined his mother’s face normally was, apart from this momentary effort at recall. ‘Properly,’ she decided. ‘Not foreign.’

There were always fantasies about men who liked her but he’d never known her maintain a pretence as consistently as this before. He said: ‘Did they tell you they’d come back again?’

The frown stayed. ‘You haven’t told me you like my hair.’

‘I was going to,’ said Charlie, irritated at forgetting. ‘It looks good. You’re very pretty.’

‘Went into Salisbury yesterday to get it done.’

‘On the bus?’ anticipated Charlie, deciding momentarily to break the single-track questions.

‘Don’t need to go by bus,’ she said. ‘George drives me, in his car. He’s got a car, you know? You can’t see it, though. It’s around the back of the house, in a garage. It’s green and it’s got a radio.’

‘Did they have a car, the men who came to see you?’

The old woman nodded. ‘Black. It had lots of things to make a radio work.’

Two aerials: would the second have been for a telephone or a two-way radio? ‘What about them coming back?’ repeated Charlie.

Once more there was the furrowed-brow effort at recollection, then a shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Try and help me, Mum,’ pleaded Charlie. ‘Try to think of something they said, the way they said it. Just one thing.’

‘Is this a hard centre?’

It was an oblong shape described on the chart as a praline surprise. ‘It should be,’ said Charlie.

‘You couldn’t get chocolate during the war, you know? I could, though. I knew this American army sergeant…’ Her face twisted. ‘…Can’t remember his name right now. Hershey bars, they were called. You remember all that chocolate when you were young?’

‘Yes, Mum,’ said Charlie, who didn’t. He looked around, trying to locate the matron.

‘Not bitter chocolate, though. I like bitter chocolate best,’ said the woman. She suddenly brightened. ‘I might get more money!’ she announced.

Charlie sighed at the new avenue to nowhere opening up in his mother’s confused mind. He said: ‘That’ll be useful.’

‘What’s it called, when you get extra because you need it?’ she demanded, looking directly at him.

‘Extra what, Mum?’

‘Pension,’ she said impatiently.

‘Is that what the men said, that you were going to get more pension money?’ seized Charlie.

‘I think that’s what they meant.’

‘Supplementary,’ suggested Charlie.

‘That was it!’ said the woman. ‘That was the word. It means extra money, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘That’s what it means.’

‘That’s it then: what I’m going to get,’ she said, triumphantly. ‘Why didn’t Edith come with you?’

‘She’s dead, Mum.’

‘Dead? Edith? When?’

‘Quite a long time ago.’

‘Never knew. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I meant to,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Shame.’ Her eyes closed. She made a tiny attempt to open them but it seemed too difficult. She tried again, even more feebly, and then stopped. Her held-away head went at last against the pillow: so lacquered was her hair that the tight waves flowed on undisturbed.

Charlie waited several minutes before easing his hand from hers, managing to stand without grating the chair. He checked as he walked, satisfying himself the matron was not in the grounds, relieved that she was in the office when he got there.

‘Great improvement, isn’t it?’ the woman demanded at once.

‘She’s gone to sleep now,’ said Charlie. ‘She rambled a little.’

‘At least she’s talking!’

‘About some men,’ said Charlie. ‘Men in a black car.’

‘That’s right,’ agreed the matron. ‘Pension people. I told you in my letter.’

Charlie nodded. ‘So people did come. I thought you were referring to some form or notice or something.’

‘Supplementary Benefit,’ smiled the woman. ‘They check from time to time, into everybody’s financial circumstances. To see if there’s any special need.’

‘Have other people here been visited?’

‘Quite a few, from time to time.’

‘By these two particular men?’

The matron’s face set in a serious expression. Instead of replying she said: ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I’m sure there’s not,’ said Charlie reassuringly. ‘I’m just curious, that’s all.’

Ms Hewlett did not look completely convinced. She said: ‘These were inspectors I had not seen before. But that has no significance. Quite often the people are different from those who have come before.’

‘Two inspectors!’ queried Charlie. ‘Does it always take two inspectors?’

The woman’s colour began to rise. Again there was a hesitation. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not usually two.’

‘They carried identification, of course?’

‘They telephoned several days in advance. That’s the normal procedure. Told me they were coming and why. And they quoted your mother’s National Insurance number, the one that’s on her pension book. No one else has access to details like that except people from the Ministry.’

Was he overreacting, Charlie asked himself. Possibly. But Charlie frequently responded to the antennae of instinct and he thought there was a message here somewhere. He said: ‘Where do such inspectors come from when they carry out these checks? Towns, I mean?’

‘It varies,’ said the woman. ‘Salisbury, Andover, Winchester…all over…’

‘From what office did the two men come to see my mother?’

The subsiding colour grew again. ‘They didn’t say.’

‘No number? Nowhere you could contact them?’

‘They said when they left that she didn’t qualify. That there’d be no need to talk about it again.’

‘So that looks like the end of it,’ said Charlie with attempted finality.

‘Did they upset her?’ asked the woman. ‘They said they’d like to see her, and she was so much better I thought it would be a treat for her. Visitors. It’s important to them, visitors. I knew they were wasting their time: of course I did. It was your mother I was thinking about, not them.’

Poor woman, thought Charlie: poor innocent, compassionate, unknowing woman. He said: ‘I’m sure she enjoyed it.’ He didn’t think he’d get into cake with nuts. He added: ‘Did she sign anything?’

‘Oh no!’ insisted the woman. ‘Your mother was on the verandah, just like today. And I was outside all the time they were with her. I would have seen.’

‘Like I said,’ repeated Charlie. ‘I’m sure it’s all perfectly proper.’

‘I know it is,’ insisted the woman.

From his Vauxhall apartment, not from Westminster Bridge Road, Charlie contacted every regional and local pensions office remotely likely to have organized the visit to his mother. None had. He extended the check to the main department building in London and was once more assured there was neither interest in nor consideration of awarding his mother any supplementary pension allowance.

There was the beginning of fury – but only briefly, because Charlie didn’t allow it. Fear had its benefits; released adrenaline and heightened senses. But not anger or fury. Neither. That sort of emotion was positively counter-productive: obscured the proper reasoning and the correct balances. This time, anyway, his feelings catapulted far beyond fury. Charlie was engulfed by an implacable, vindictive coldness. He’d chosen an existence of constant deceit and constant suspicion, a sinister shape to every shadow, a dangerous meaning to every word. That’s what he gave and that’s what he expected back. A fragile old lady with skin like paper wasn’t any part of that; a fragile old lady in whose twilight life long-ago lovers stayed on as names with indistinct faces, William who became John and who might not have been a real person at all. But they’d made her part of it: sullied her with it. His own people; he was convinced of it being his own people, directed by Harkness. Wrong to move prematurely, though: he had to establish it absolutely. And there was a way: a required, procedural way that would protect him if he were wrong – if he were the target of a hostile pursuit – and raise a stink in all the embarrassing places if he were right. Harkness was going to regret this vendetta.

Ironically another vendetta was being conceived against Charlie Muffin almost four thousand miles away.

‘We’ve got to start all over again,’ announced Alexei Berenkov, who had sought the encounter with Valeri Kalenin. ‘Part of the Star Wars missile is being made in England.’

Kalenin shrugged philosophically. ‘We’ve done well enough in America,’ he said. ‘This can only be a setback, surely.’

Berenkov had come to Dzerzhinsky Square intending to suggest to Kalenin that the English involvement provided an opportunity for a further operation, but abruptly he changed his mind. He shouldn’t involve this man who’d risked so much for him. Berenkov knew he could, on his own, evolve the retribution for all the harm that Charlie Muffin had caused and attempted to cause him. With customary confidence Berenkov decided he didn’t need any help or advice in destroying Charlie Muffin, as the man had sought to destroy him. But failed. Berenkov said: ‘I have the same freedom to operate in England as I have in America?’

‘Of course,’ confirmed Kalenin at once. ‘Do whatever you consider necessary.’

Berenkov supposed that, by a fairly substantial stretch of imagination, those words might later be construed as permission for what he had in mind. He began planning that day.

It was Ann’s birthday, her fortieth, so they had to celebrate although Blackstone couldn’t afford it. He made a reservation at a pub just outside Newport he’d heard talked about at the factory and when they arrived discovered it specialized in seafood. Blackstone couldn’t run to real champagne but Ann seemed thrilled enough with a sparkling imitation. He tried to compensate by ordering quite an expensive white wine to go with their fruits de mer, which included lobster as well as crab and shrimp and some chewy shellfish neither had had before and didn’t like: Ann was brave enough to say so first and stop eating them. The wine was sugar sweet, a dessert drink, but neither knew and both thought it was very nice.

Blackstone waited until they reached the pudding before giving Ann her present, a single-strand chain with a solitary pendant pearl. She put it on immediately and kept fingering it, to reassure herself it was there. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

Blackstone, who was in one of his ebullient moods, thought it was, too. Ann, who was dark-haired, still without any grey, had a good skin she didn’t spoil with too much make-up, and the necklace was shown off perfectly against her throat. It had cost far more than he was able to afford. He said: ‘The chain’s eighteen-carat gold. And the man in the shop said it was a cultured pearl.’

‘Beautiful,’ she said again. ‘You shouldn’t have spent so much.’

He shouldn’t, Blackstone knew. He seemed to think of nothing else these days but the expense of running two homes. And it wasn’t as if Ann or Ruth didn’t help. They both worked and each contributed to the housekeeping and neither complained about living in rented accommodation instead of buying their own places, which would well and truly have crippled him financially. Blackstone fought to retain his optimism: at least there was something. Deciding to tell her about it, he said: ‘I’ve applied for a better job.’ He liked impressing both his wives and tried to do so as often as possible. He was a senior tracer at the aerospace factory, although Ann believed him to be a quality control inspector required to tour all their installations in England, which accounted for the time he spent commuting to and from the mainland during the time he spent with Ruth, who trustingly believed the same story.

‘A different one?’ Ann asked.

‘No,’ said Blackstone. ‘Some tie-up with America, a space job. It’s all very hush-hush. There was just a general memorandum inviting applications to become involved.’

‘I think you’re ever so clever,’ praised the woman admiringly. ‘Would it mean you didn’t have to travel around so much?’

‘Oh no,’ said Blackstone, quickly. ‘I’d still have to do that.’ The secret project carried another £1,000 a year and he reckoned he could just about manage on that.

‘Go to America, you mean?’

Blackstone hesitated, recognizing the opportunity. Holidays, manoeuvring sufficient time for both, was always a problem with the dual lives he led: a supposed fortnight’s business trip to the United States would be the ideal excuse. He said: ‘I don’t know yet. Nobody knows anything apart from the senior scientific staff. I would think it’s a strong possibility I’d have to go, if I got it.’ He was glad he’d started the conversation.

‘When will you know?’

‘Quite soon,’ said Blackstone. ‘There’s a lot of excitement at the factory about it.’

Ann fingered the necklace again. ‘I think you’re the best husband anyone could have,’ she said.

‘And I think you’re the best wife,’ said Blackstone. ‘Happy birthday, darling.’

The telephone was answered on the second ring but without any identification beyond the single word, ‘Yes?’

‘I don’t want to be laughed at: to be humiliated,’ said Krogh. His voice was weak and uneven, someone either on the point of tears or who had already succumbed to them.

‘Of course you don’t,’ agreed Petrin soothingly.

‘Nothing will go wrong, will it…? I mean, it’ll be…?’

‘I’ve worked it all out,’ guaranteed Petrin.

Which he had, observing the universally accepted intelligence maxim that an entrapment achieved has to be consolidated. The Russian dictated the contents and the place of the first handover, in a restaurant in that wharf area of San Francisco converted into a tourist attraction of waterside shops, amusements and exhibitions. Their meeting – and particularly when Krogh handed over the envelope – was extensively photographed by carefully placed KGB technicians. So a record was created of a millionaire American defence contractor passing information to someone who, if renewed or additional pressure were ever needed, could be identified as a KGB operative.