The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  He didn’t like people on the road who broke the law, she knew. ‘But those papers, don’t you pass some of the information to other people?’

  Changing his mind about stopping on the coast, he turned onto a winding lane towards higher ground in the distance, as if starting a circle to get back home. ‘I hate that road on Sunday.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t pass it on.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’

  The truth was what he told her whether it was true or not. A woman who didn’t believe your lies when you said they were the truth ought to be sent packing because there was no greater injustice. The relationship was intolerable from that point on. He might not believe certain things that she told him but he could never let her suspect it. He pressed the tab to let fresh air into the car. ‘Why should I lie?’

  She only knew that he was lying. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Have I ever lied to you?’

  ‘Only by not telling me things.’

  ‘There was never any point in telling you what you didn’t need to know.’

  ‘There is that, I suppose.’

  He laughed inside, which gave his face a grimmer expression. ‘There certainly is.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘we are married, which means we’re fairly close, shall I say. Everything that happens to me, I tell you.’

  ‘That’s not the same.’

  ‘I like to think it is.’

  So would he, but wasn’t able to. Silence was the best policy, though once something had a grip on her mind there was little hope.

  ‘For example,’ she said, ‘when I read such things from those papers I wondered about the smuggling part, and wondered whether you have anything to do with it.’

  ‘You would, wouldn’t you? That’s normal. But the answer is still no.’ He hoped that would satisfy her, but it didn’t. It never had. He took a sharp corner in the lane and bumped a verge below the hedge, which was just as well because a car coming overfast barely missed him, a mere tick on the wing mirror. The answer had to be no, and no again, till the end of time.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  She was doing well as an interrogator, so would he have to stop the car and tip her out, as the only way of bringing it to an end? ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a feeling.’

  ‘Oh, well, is that so? We all have them.’

  ‘Based on evidence. I’ve got to believe what’s before my eyes. You don’t sit at that radio day in and day out for fun. I can’t believe it. I don’t think I ever did. The stuff you take is lethal. You sell it to whoever it’s useful to. They must pay you a pretty high price. I would, if I was in their game.’

  ‘You have a good imagination.’

  ‘I don’t need much of one to think that.’

  ‘I’m sure I would.’

  ‘You’re not me.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ If they fell to bickering maybe the argument would go away. He joined a B road heading towards a village, the church tower visible. ‘We’ll find a pub there. I could do with a drink.’

  So could she. To question him further would be futile, and demeaning since he would admit nothing. In any case she knew the truth, and would have to be satisfied with that, and with him knowing she knew. Like so much else in their life it would remain unspoken, just another sore festering in the relationship, but one so charged with danger and ruination that destruction seemed the only prospect. She couldn’t live in peace with it, which he didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, or was incapable of knowing. Or he just didn’t care, or couldn’t afford to care.

  When they first got together and she had taken him to meet her father he had said, as soon as Richard went down the road for some cigarettes: ‘What do you want to marry somebody like that for? I wouldn’t trust him an inch. He’s as sly as they come. I can see it in his eyes. I’ll be worrying every minute you’re with him’ – or words to that effect. Well, he didn’t worry for long, because a heart attack took him off three months later. But it was galling that he’d been right. ‘I’m hungry as well.’

  They gave their orders for the meal, and stood at the bar, Amanda with a pale sherry, and he a vodka with a cube of ice. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but I wish you trusted me as well. Or doesn’t your sort of love include trust?’ She’d intended not harping on it anymore, but was upset, fighting back tears, so it just came out. ‘I always thought it did, or at least I hoped, but I know different now.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that.’ He felt like throwing the vodka into her face. Nothing less would stop her, so he had to stand there and take it till she packed it in. The pub was full of the green wellie brigade, as he had known it would be from the phalanx of Volvos and Land-Rovers outside. Braying voices made it hard to hear, their faces too close. ‘I trust you as much as I would trust anybody.’

  ‘Oh, thank you very much,’ she scorned.

  He turned, to look across the dining section. ‘They’re taking long enough with our bloody meal. I suppose they want us to order more drinks. They never miss a trick in these places.’

  ‘I think I’m going to need another, in any case.’

  ‘I can’t, though, because I’m driving.’ A number was called. ‘That’s ours.’

  She was no longer hungry, but split the fillets of fresh mackerel in two, and ate a piece with some bread. Lack of honesty had given him an appetite, not surprising. He was empty but for the telling of lies, and it seemed as if his body was also empty, the way he was eating. In his certainty he had all the answers, and therefore more inner peace than she could ever have with him. The distance was increasing between them, which touched her with despair, and made her wonder whether she shouldn’t walk out now, just go, leave him to it. Surely one of the green wellie brigade would give her a lift back to town. The older she got the more she needed to be close to him, but as time went on such a necessity had less importance on his part. He didn’t want it, and maybe never had, though there had been some promise in the early years.

  ‘You’re being unreasonable, in quizzing me.’ His first course finished, he was disturbed at her not eating. ‘I thought we were coming out to have a pleasant meal.’ He refilled her glass with white wine. ‘But something has got into you.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Oh yes, it is.’

  Now he would put on a show of understanding her. Either that or he would be angry. He was so simple it was impossible not to know him, and they had been through the same pattern many times. After needing to be close she no longer wanted his sympathy, or whatever it was. She only wanted to finish the meal, clear out, and go home. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

  ‘A minute ago you wanted to.’

  ‘Now I don’t.’ He looked miserable. No doubt he felt it. She hoped so, but that too was a show. ‘There’s no point talking if you can’t tell the truth.’

  Their plates were taken away. ‘I wish to God I worked in a bank, or some sort of nice nine-to-five office. You’d like that, I’m sure. Then I could amuse you with all the scandal and tittle-tattle I’d heard during the day.’

  She laughed at the idea, not wanting to, but it tripped out. ‘I just expect you to be what you are.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am. But you don’t like it.’

  ‘No, but I like you.’ All said and done. ‘And I love you, that’s what I know.’ She asked herself if it were really true, whether she was telling the truth only to emphasise his lies, but if she wasn’t, which seemed more and more likely, let him be deceived for a change. She would say anything at the moment to ensnare him and get a straight answer. After she had read those sheets of incriminating paper she had screwed each one up and thrown it back into the basket so that he wouldn’t know they had been disturbed. He must have burned them the following day, all but the most blatant drug-related transcript, which she kept hidden, without knowing why. Anyone she showed it to would realise straight
away what it was. She imagined the police going crazy at the sight of it, and sending a dozen squad cars to get him. But oh damn, they could take her away as well, on the assumption that even if she wasn’t as deep in it as he was she might well have something to tell them.

  ‘I just ask you to trust me,’ he was saying, ‘because if you can’t, there’s not much point in staying together.’

  It was as if she had caught him having an affair. Once she had, and he insistently denied it, his last ditch ploy for defence was that he would pack his bags and go if she didn’t believe him. Such ultimatums were childish and base. Those without trust and honesty were never able to grow up, be mature, responsible, and truly loving. ‘I don’t trust you,’ she said, by now enjoying the rack of lamb. ‘How can I? If you tell me I’m wrong, in the face of such black and white evidence, what can I think?’ He really wasn’t worthy of straight talking, didn’t deserve it, was best left alone.

  He wondered if others in the same game had this kind of trouble with wives or girlfriends. They probably told them all about it, boasted even, but threatened to disembowel them if they breathed a word. Either that, or they kept their mouths firmly shut. It was a career exclusively for button lips, as Waistcoat had said. They told their women to mind their own business, and they did because they didn’t want to lose such an easy going life. He couldn’t trust Amanda because she was a different type of woman. Reaching across, he laid a hand on her wrist. ‘Look, since you know about it, why keep on asking me if it’s true?’

  She smiled. ‘All of it, though?’

  ‘Up to my neck.’

  There, it was done, said. She would never breathe a word, of course. Maybe someone else would have taken his messages and plastered them all over the district as handbills, but not her. They went on eating. ‘You’re a difficult bastard.’

  He seemed about to laugh. ‘Am I?’

  She had always known it, but hadn’t thought to tell him. What greater proof of love can there be than that your partner gives you something to churn up your liver about? ‘You certainly are.’

  ‘I try not to be. I just don’t want you worrying.’

  ‘Oh thank you very much again.’

  Neither of them could do anything about that. If his boat went down she didn’t want to go with it. Love was love, but self sacrifice was unhealthy. ‘I feel much better now it’s in the open.’

  ‘So do I,’ he admitted, unable to know whether he did or not, but there was no doubt he felt better at having made her happy, marvelling at how easy it had been, though far from assuming he had been right to capitulate, wondering if she realised what she had got herself into. At least he’d make sure to burn everything in the basket from now on. Lifting his glass, he looked into those palest of blue-grey eyes which he had found so sexy in the beginning and still did: ‘Here’s to us, darling.’

  She clinked his glass. ‘Who else? We have to stick together’ – though I hope not till the edge of doom, at least not if I know it. Her hard won victory brought a steely attitude into her thinking not known before. He still didn’t trust her, and never would, even though it might be to his advantage to do so. He was just hell bent on destroying himself.

  THIRTEEN

  After dark, when nothing more of significance could be expected to come through, Richard thought of sending a morse letter to Howard, but he hadn’t reckoned on the difficulty of filling a half hour tape, or deciding what sort of items to mention. Nothing in common between them beyond the hobby of shortwave eavesdropping, he had no notion where to start. In any case he had never written a letter of more than a few lines in his life, and to concoct one at eighteen or twenty words per minute by morse code would have to cover at least two pages of transcript. He needed to think of something that even Howard hadn’t heard on the radio. Ordinary chatter of everyday life would be too much like cheating. The main thing was to begin.

  Following the address and the date he sent: ‘Dear Howard’ – and stopped. His morse was crisp and clear. The beginning always did sound musical, fresh on the ears, notes evenly spaced, rhythmical, in the best professional style – a concert fist, as they used to say – but to send morse for half an hour without cease and not to make an error would be something of a feat, though he could stop the tape recorder whenever he did so or his hand grew tired.

  Even so, thumping out banal generalities by such a method hardly fitted the effort that went into it, or the uniqueness of the means used. He wound the tape back, reached for a pencil so as to write the letter first and send it from sight as a long message. That way he would be less likely to make mistakes, or give out anything he regretted.

  Yet that also was cheating, and he couldn’t get further again than ‘Dear Howard,’ wondering why he had suggested such a revealing and difficult means of communication.

  He threw the paper away, set the recorder going, and reached for the key. ‘Dear Howard, for the last week or so I’ve intended calling on you again, but I’ve been much of the time in the sort of mood that wouldn’t even let me leave the house.’

  Not a good start, but it would have to pass. ‘Not knowing what to do with myself I spent several hours a day at the radio, and usually got something interesting to ease the mind. To sum up, there was diplomatic screed on the eighteen-megacycle band, as well as government stuff knocking around on various other wavelengths. I have to be careful of course to shred the stuff afterwards, having no further use for it. I don’t suppose you’d care to see it, either, if I sent it to you, which I won’t unless specifically requested. This obsessive attachment to radio stops me going bonkers.

  ‘You do it for different reasons, I know, but it stops me thinking of things which aren’t pleasant to dwell on. What are they? Well, how I got to the stage of life I’m at now. After I’d had enough of the Merchant Navy there were lots of shore-related jobs I could have taken. I might even have gone on a course and become a teacher in a comprehensive school for the rest of my life, but that seemed too much like a living death, and in any case what would a character like me have to teach? I’m an all or nothing sort who, when I end up with nothing, as I sometimes have, diverts into something easy to do, and has such rewards on the payment side that at least I can have a good life, and enjoy myself while it lasts.

  ‘And there’s the rub, you might say. Nothing good goes on forever, only the ordinary, the humdrum does that, and who wants that kind of existence? Your life isn’t anything on those terms, with your unique disadvantage. But my life floats along between one high moment and another, each moment (which might last a fortnight) packed with sufficient excitement to keep the adrenalin short-circuiting very well between times.

  ‘The boat trips are what I’m talking about. In the last two years I’ve been to the Med a couple of times, across to Holland more than once, also to the Canaries and down to Madeira, to pinpoint a few. I mix with people I wouldn’t be seen dead with on shore, but it’s the sort of trade in which one can’t choose one’s companions, and since I’m paid well I can hardly complain.

  ‘In spite of the ideal life I’m telling you about, I can’t but think there’s a better and more fulfilling one waiting for me somewhere. Why I’m going on about it I don’t know, but at least it’s in morse and is filling the tape, exclamation mark! though I realise it may be of no interest to you at all. Doing such top secret work as I do, which I can’t even talk about to my wife, makes what you might call a lonely man out of me, but I like that, because it matches perfectly with my temperament, whatever of course that is.

  ‘Having made your acquaintance improves my situation, because-at least there’s someone I can talk to without inhibition or limit. Maybe we are equally cut off from the world in our different ways, when we’re not at the radio and in touch with more than anybody can realise.

  ‘It’s a different world, and that’s the attraction. I often wonder when the point came in my life that made me what I am today. The more I dwell on it, the less I can decide what it was. This suggests to me, perha
ps as an easy way out, that such a decision must have taken place before I was born.

  ‘In other words, it’s in the genes. We’re born more than made is what I mean, and what I’ve thought for as long as I’ve been capable of thinking – or asking questions – which may not go that far back. In one respect you are lucky because you can say exactly where and when that special something happened which made you what you are today.

  ‘Forgive such rambling. The tape runneth over. I’m not stuck to the radio every hour God sends. Another exclamation mark! I walk over the hills, and through the woods when the paths aren’t knee-high in mud. Sometimes I drive in the Bracebridge direction and call at the pub where I took Laura for a drink – to whom best wishes, by the way. Occasionally I take Amanda to London, where she does a bit of shopping, and we enjoy a night out.

  ‘But it’s time to stop. Wrist’s aching like the devil, as you must twig from the number of erasures. Let’s meet. Call you soon. Best regards. End of tape, which alas can’t be endless, Richard.’

  Sweat plastered his hair, from the effort of prolonged sending. He’d pumped more than expected, or that he had intended, felt uneasy at having let the words sparkle out and not thought once of censorship, and hoped he hadn’t revealed too much of himself. Spinning the tape back he played it through to hear what had been said. Amanda knew all of it and more already, but it would be interesting to know what Howard guessed on listening in.

  The replay, all the same, seemed to concern someone quite different, not another person exactly, but a sidestepped version of himself who both puzzled and fascinated. A fool in the grip of cosmic forces couldn’t avoid being who he didn’t want to be.

  He smiled however at the similarities which couldn’t be disowned. Tapping out more such missives would illuminate himself to himself, both versions eventually turning into one person so that he would finally know. He might even find a clue as to what he wanted to do in life, and then do it.