My Mother's War

A cold smack of rain across my face held me in check after I had scrambled onto an old Valor stove and pushed open the metal framed window of my box-room in order to catch a final glimpse of my mother,as she cycled to work.
She would be rounding the corner of St.Botolph's church now, with its glassy sharp flintstone wall and making for the square of staff houses, dubbed 'little Moscow' with their bleak, depressing sameness.
When she had passed these, I would be almost able to make her out, as if almost in miniature; she wouold cut on to the old cinder track, little more than the sweep of a scythe wide.
With her nurse's navy cap pressed firmly down over her head and matching rainproof coat buttoned into place, she would crouch low over the handlebars

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