The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Like what?’

  She spread the map on the bed. ‘Oh, there’s Bulldog Sand, and Pandora Sand.’

  ‘I expect they’re married. A right couple they must be.’

  ‘Perhaps brother and sister. Then there’s Roger Sand, and Old South, not to mention Westmark Knock. You couldn’t find better names on your radio. There’s Peter Black, and Thief Sand, and Gat, and Trap, and Hook, as well as Stubborn Sand, and Macaroni Channel.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re right. What I wouldn’t give to hear names like that,’ wondering if somewhere among them he would find a clue to Judy’s antecedents, though it could be she wasn’t born of the area, only connected to it by some branch of the family. Not here now, maybe in two weeks she would be, walking the streets, haughty and set apart among the stay-at-homes yet glad to be in a place known since infancy. He would be on the south coast, the radio blank because she and her girlfriend were in Boston. He ached for a sight of her, but fate was as blind as he was. To beat the painful tension he must assume they would never meet, though in his imagination he would keep her a prisoner behind a jumble of kilocycles, locked in an electric cell, pristine and never aging, a picture for himself alone, no one able to release her from his radio hideaway.

  But if ever he did get close, and he had to foresee the possibility so as to live in hope, he would touch her face in recognition, establish a memory in case he should meet her a second or third time, would guide a hand from nose to lips, over the contours of the chin and around to that tactile place at the back of the neck. Then she would be his.

  ‘We should go to bed,’ Laura said from her seat at the dressing table. ‘I’ll help you get your things off.’

  The promise of her body between the sheets had never failed to displace even the room he was in, but now, shamming enthusiasm when her fingers began their work, the word ‘Azores’ lit his mind like the flash of a beacon, repeating itself across the shining water.

  He saw himself performing self-destructive actions of which he would normally never approve, tried to ignore the word ‘Azores’, pull away from its dangers, and get back to being the person he had always supposed himself to be, but he was no longer in control and, happy enough in such a state, was helplessly pulled along.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘I don’t want to do anymore of this,’ he would say to Waistcoat, who was sure to come back with: ‘I’m afraid you have to, yellow belly. Nobody retires from this game till I press the buzzer. If they do it before then they are likely to find themselves up the creek without even a teaspoon. In Essex most likely, face down in the ooze. Or you’ll be a waiter for the rest of your life at the Scarface Hotel – as I myself might if I wanted out.’

  He knew it, so would keep the cosy chat to himself for some time yet. In any case there still wasn’t enough in his Malta account to provide a comfortable beachcombing life till he popped his clogs, and he hadn’t the right to go poor due to moral scruples, whether or not he assumed that Amanda would stay with him if he did.

  All the same a few more trips and he would be justified in hinting that the job was too hard, and it was time a younger man took his place. He was too loyal, he would say, to allow his body to let them down in a crisis. And his present loyalty could be proved by blowing the gaff on that big gorgeous Judy yapping to her Spanish girlfriend. Love isn’t only blind, it’s dangerous, and she ought to be put down.

  He stood by the gate at the end of the garden, a heavy two-two air rifle sighted across the meadow, ready for the next plump rabbit to come sniffing out of the hedge oh so full of the joys of life. Amanda had gone to put in some time at the hairdressers, and he would surprise her with a stew for supper. The only time he liked to cook was after skinning, disembowelling and cutting up what he had killed himself. Howard’s morse letter had arrived with the morning post, showing on second reading that the old telegraphist was going even more off his trolley, in spite of his precisely rhythmical sending. The clicks of the key were audible behind contacts which were slightly more apart than usual.

  Not one, but two rabbits. Let them play. Plenty more where they came from. There were ten born every minute, and he could take one whenever he liked. If they were lovers – and what two rabbits weren’t? – he saw no reason for them not to enjoy life a little longer. They chomped the grass, came together and nuzzled prettily. A shame, really, but where was the morality when you wanted something to eat? Their flesh was even fresher than at the butcher’s, and probably cleaner.

  Talking about drugs the other day, Waistcoat said that bringing them in was part of the excitement, a perk of the trade. ‘Look at it this way,’ he smarmed, ‘if it’s not us channelling ’em onto the streets to keep the dregs under control, the government would have to provide something else.’

  ‘It’s good to know we’re doing a public service.’ Richard smiled.

  Waistcoat puffed on his long thin cigar. ‘And you’re well paid for it. Don’t forget there’s something big coming up in the Azores this autumn. A lot of cash and carry, a spin-off from the eastern trade. The Russians are getting greedier. Too many on the take. It’s getting easier, though, in some ways too easy.’

  He was right. They were living close to the clouds, business for everyone, so that at times you would think everyone was in on it. The organisation was getting ragged at the edges, because here was Howard, as unknowing as that prime rabbit gambolling in the sunlight as if its life was going to last forever, obsessed with the notion of tracking down a voice on the radio. If in his madness he made contact God knows what might pass between them.

  The weighty two-two lead slug sent the rabbit spinning, kicking in the air till Richard locked its back feet, held it level, and sent the blade of his hand on a blow to the neck. Amanda hated to see him kill them, was even more sickened during the preparations for the pot, but she was always happy with the meal that followed.

  After a long day in London he came home to see her packing two suitcases on the bed. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘I can’t take it any longer.’ She sat on a stool, her face ugly with despair. ‘I didn’t marry a commuter, nor a dope smuggler, either.’

  ‘Bit sudden, isn’t it?’

  Her laugh was pure vinegar. It wasn’t, but no use telling him. ‘Not for me.’

  The Azores operation would be the most profitable ever. For all concerned, Waistcoat added. The length of time planning it told Richard as much. He went to London every day with energy enough, but the work of going over and over the minutiae of organisation wore him out. After every recent trip, when he’d thought to pack the trade in, he recalled the frequent saying of his father: ‘Can you tell me one thing that thought ever did?’ All the same, after the Azores trip he would.

  The arrangements still had plenty of holes left to plug. Everything depended on planning and security, and though he had never known a lack of either, watertight was no way to describe the care they were taking. Yet what boat had ever been watertight, and what plan either? The crew was made up of freebooters to a man, in rough weather or smooth, brothers in arms no less, all of them tight lipped for fear the tighter rope they walked on would snap. You either ended in jail, or cursing the sky at fifty when an ulcer burst. Richard wanted neither option, though none of the others, as far as he knew, were glued into his kind of wedded domestic relationship. And now he wasn’t to have it for more than a few minutes longer.

  He lit a cigarette, watched her opening drawers to decide what was worth taking. Whenever a wife or girlfriend left the reason was never the one they threw at you, but he was too tired to figure it out. It was light and tranquilly green across the garden, the birds still musical, which would have been soothing if she had been glad to see him. He couldn’t understand why she had chosen this particular hour to leave, instead of during the day when he was absent. A note on the kitchen table would have served, unless she was making the gesture now because she hoped he would argue and plead, though she ought to know that wasn’t his way.

>   ‘I’m absolutely unable to put up with the so-called work you do. It’s not work at all. It’s horrible.’

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about it. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘I know there isn’t.’

  ‘The next trip will be my last. I promise.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘It’s too late already.’ She put layers of clean and newly folded knickers over her dresses in the second case. ‘Anyway, it always was.’

  ‘Then why did you wait?’ He had never known she had such quantities of underwear, and wondered who it was for. The sight made him want her in bed. ‘Is there somebody else?’

  ‘You know why I’m going.’ He would ask that, wouldn’t he? Walking cocks can’t imagine you don’t want to be bothered with a man anymore, not for the moment anyway, and never again with one like him. ‘I’m off to Doris’s. She’ll put me up, till I decide what to do.’

  So that was it. You couldn’t win ’em all, though it would be gallant to ask her not to go, even if only for the sake of her self esteem. As if she needed it. And how egotistical could he get? They used to joke that when they were rich they would each have their own house built, a grandiose back-to-back, one for him and one for her, each residence with its separate door. The only communication between the two would be via a false bookcase, as in the old movies, to be used by prior telephone agreement when they wanted a romantic meeting. The rest of the time they wouldn’t be so intolerably close.

  He smiled at the memory of better days. Let her go. Best not to argue. Even so: ‘Why don’t you stay? I love you, you know that.’

  ‘It makes no difference anymore.’ She remembered how, not long after their first meeting, he did funny things with a razor blade while sitting at the kitchen table. Looking closer, she saw he was dividing each match into four, hadn’t seen him so diverted before or since, and wondered where he had learned the skill, not to say the technique. It wasn’t long before he told her, and now she thought: ‘Once a jailbird, always a jailbird. I’m getting out while the going’s good.’ She closed the case. ‘I don’t want to stay with you. I can’t take it anymore.’ She began to cry, which he didn’t know whether to take as a good or bad sign. ‘I’ve had more than enough.’

  He went to comfort her, knowing she would say, as always when he did: ‘Keep away from me.’

  They had given each other so much during the best times that at parting they owed each other nothing – a perfect separation. He was going to tell her, but didn’t because it wouldn’t stop her going. Living in Dropshort Lodge was over. He offered to carry her cases to the car, and when she agreed he knew it was final. She had been on the verge of leaving him from the very first day, so he had grown to assume it would never happen. Now it had. Her car bumped gently over the ruts to the road, then accelerated ferociously to the left.

  He pulled the plug out of a bottle of wine from the fridge. Nothing like a glass or two to settle the gut. The ring on a tin of sardines snapped off, so he opened it with the ordinary tool and jagged his finger. He sucked the globe of blood, and popped a slice of bread in the toaster, then settled to his first course. Leftover rabbit stew did for the second, with fruit and cheese to follow. Luckily she’d always believed in having plenty of food in the house. Because he was hungry even iron rations tasted good, but in what commodity would he find the poison? Into what dish had she poured a distillation of her dislike? Coffee, a glass of Cointreau and a cigar erased the devastation, yet kept him in a mood to think about what had happened.

  Luckily he was too engrossed in providing for himself to suffer annihilation at her scarpering. Time enough when he got back from the Azores, though it might seem old news by then. He switched the telly on, then off. Cointreau as always blended ambrosially with the cigar. A tape from Howard had laid on the table since the day before yesterday. The silly bugger took the game seriously, kept pumping them out, though Richard knew it was a plaything for them both.

  Howard had the perfect life. Being totally dependent on Laura was a small price to pay for his blindness, even much to be envied, though envy wasn’t – Richard considered – one of his especial sins. But to have a wife of Laura’s calibre must be a wonderful comfort. He carried his glass upstairs and plugged the tape in, stretched himself in the armchair to listen.

  ‘Dear Richard, my life has been full of incident lately, full of thought as well, though where to start and tell you about it is the difficulty. You’ll remember I was listening to those Mediterranean yachts. The woman called Judy was due to go to Lincolnshire on leave, and I got Laura to drive me to Boston so that I could make contact. The plot thickens, you might say, and though I didn’t actually get to her it was a worthwhile trip, because I found out quite a lot. You might wonder why I wanted to talk to her at all, and the reason is that, apart from other things, I had to put her wise about the Azores, the big event (if you know what I mean) coming off soon, which she and maybe even her girlfriend Carla will become mixed up in. It’s not so much the text of her messages I’m going by as the tone of her voice. She’s certainly not ignorant of what’s afoot, and what it could all mean, but I suspect she’ll go into it nevertheless. There’s a fecklessness about her that’s almost enviable to someone like me. All the same, I wouldn’t really want her to get into such a venture up to, or even deeper, than her neck.

  ‘Who she is I don’t know, but I’m in thrall to her. It began out of curiosity, but now it’s gone close to infatuation, so much so that yesterday I went into a travel agent’s and asked about prices and services to the Azores, thinking it might be possible for me to head her off, meet her there, and get her away from whatever danger she could be in. Of course, it’s out of the question because Laura would never let me go on my own, so I’m left with one possibility, which I really don’t want to pursue. Or I can’t make up my mind whether to or not because I could never be sure of the outcome. I want to get her out of the fire, not land her in a pit of dung.

  ‘Being blind I love a plot, but I seem to have landed in one that’s hard to get out of. You’re the sort of person I can confide in, being a fellow wireless operator (a member of the fraternity, as Laura told me you said) because who else could understand the extent to which one can become involved in some chance interception? The decision I’m talking about is whether or not to drop a suggestion somewhere – Interpol, maybe? – as to what’s going to happen in the Azores. Whether or not it would do Judy any good is another matter, which makes me hesitate, and hence my feeling that the best thing would be to fly out to the Azores and see what I can do. That she’s in danger I can’t doubt, because smuggling is a wicked and perilous occupation, from all points of view. I just feel I ought to try and do something.

  ‘I apologise for worrying you with my problems, but at least I have something to communicate instead of just talking about the weather in the Gulf of Mexico. I could ramble on, but won’t because I’m sure you have your own problems. Everyone does, and that’s for sure. I can’t see the point of tapping the key simply to fill up the tape. So – signing off. Yours Ever. Howard.’

  Richard reached into the cupboard for his special bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and poured a good glass, thinking-cap stuff, considering the state he was in after hearing Howard’s letter. He sweated and shivered, and swore. Anxiety was too mild a word. The lid was falling shut on him and all of them. Howard couldn’t know what problems he was making for himself.

  He laughed, but wasn’t amused, sorry not to be dreaming. The reasoning of the letter was full of holes, yet the whole fitted together, deliberately plotted by the cunning devil who had nothing better to do and all the time to do it in. He sounded as if he knew even more than he let on, but whether he had guessed, or had pulled in piquant extras from the radio with more shit-hot skill and instinct than Richard could ever muster, was hard to say.

  He certainly wasn’t giving his sources or methods away, just letting drop by worrying drop fall into his letter and c
ause maximum anxiety. Perhaps he was part of a subtle law-enforcing plot to put the kibosh on the biggest drug transaction of the century (as Waistcoat liked to brag) and had been in it from the beginning. Laura had played the decoy by putting a knitting needle in her tyre at the lay-by, knowing he would be passing on his way home from the pub. A policeman in a bush across the road would have been there to witness that all went well. Either it made sense, or a fit of paranoia was coming on – or both. Such a trap was easy to imagine, and tempting to dismiss, but it would be unwise to do either.

  He was sweating again. Someone had fed Howard just that little bit of information to make his letter convincing, or at least disturbing. What a fuck-up he was in. Everyone. Or they might be. Whatever way you looked at it something needed to be done, or discovered, or confirmed – and quickly.

  Another wouldn’t help, but when he poured and swigged off half, it did. He knew what to do, would call Howard in the morning and say he’d take him for a pub lunch – if he was free. Talk to him, it was the only way, though Howard obviously knew so much that no amount of gabble would set anybody’s mind at rest. At least Richard might get some idea of the situation before confronting Waistcoat and the men in London and telling, rocking back and forth as the shit hit the fan, that their security had been cracked.

  No aches, no pains, but Howard felt weak and weary. Being blind made you quickly tired. He smiled, nevertheless. Listening to startling and fascinating words from the radio was no longer the cure, unless to hear the divine voice of Judy. His magneto didn’t provide enough energy to work his fingers at the typewriter.

  And yet, out of the house, only a cap between his head and the sky, he was sufficiently clear – brained and wide awake not to care about whatever had reduced him to impotence at the radio. On such walks he was more at peace than when in the house with Laura. No reflection on her, but the lid was off, was how he put it. He sometimes wondered if she wasn’t yet born, had stopped living or being herself from the moment they were married. She had either been fixed for all time by his so-called helplessness, or there had been an event about which she had never told him. There sometimes seemed as big a blind spot in her as in him, though the notion was hardly credible, such a thought leading him to doubt any wisdom he might have. He shook his head, and a passing man must have said to himself: ‘Oh no! not another bloke off his chump due to the stress of modern life!’