The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  Something had happened. Waistcoat was villainous, as everyone found on coming into his employment, lived so much in his own mind he wasn’t aware of the attitudes of others, and didn’t care however much they knew it. Waistcoat assumed he didn’t need to know or care. Cocksure and brutal, he had been operated on a long time ago by the surgeon of circumstance, any trace of human feeling had been cut away leaving a contempt for everybody, which had led him into a labyrinth without exit.

  Even so, Waistcoat must suspect that several stages were missing in his ability to deal with people, knew that he lacked the ability to get more out of them than could be paid for by money, which kept his temper on a fractious and violent level, and his body in permanent thrall to the worms. Because everyone put up with his high handedness he believed cunning to be the ultimate protection. The more he thought it true the more he let success deceive and lull him, unable to see the danger because he hadn’t gone through normal experiences of development that most people had as a matter of course. He had jumped, so Richard had implied, from being a battered infant to an accomplished and bitter thief who, as they often heard – from the horse’s mouth, no less – stood ‘no fucking nonsense’. Howard considered that the so-called nonsense such people were unable to tolerate commonly doomed them.

  The rest of the crew members would stay loyal to Waistcoat, too much afraid of him not to do as they were told. They may despise and even hate him, but they worked with competent dedication because it was in their own interests that the enterprise succeeded.

  Expecting no help from any quarter, the one man on board they should be wary of, Howard left the radio running, earphones on the table emitting faint noises, and went outside as silently as only a blind man could – as if tempted by the clean air of the breeze. The boat vibrated to its steadily humming engines, wind at the back of his head as he moved along, meeting no one because they were on the bridge or in their quarters. Judy had gone to hunt up a gin and tonic, promising one for him later. Waistcoat’s one gesture towards concern for his crew was to make sure the booze never ran dry. ‘The grub’s a bit short,’ Killisick had told them, ‘so maybe we’ll cast out the fishing lines before we get home, but we’ve got all the fags and bacca we need, so we can’t complain.’

  Hands going from port hole to port hole, he felt his way along the deck, hardly knowing where he was heading but drawn on by instinct. A piece of wire that came out of an opening made little impression on his fingers. He passed it, but turned back, and followed its direction to the upper deck, a thin strong length of wire, probably copper, ideal for a radio independent of the main aerials.

  He shuffled along the steps, as if out for as much of a stroll as could be got on such a vessel, convenient handrails everywhere. Ordinary men needed every assistance in rough weather, so boats were made as if for the blind.

  At the top of the steps, and towards the main aerials, he trod over Waistcoat’s state room, taking care not to be heard, holding the rail, putting his heel soundlessly down followed by the rest of the foot, paces completed in silence and slow motion. The wire, almost invisibly laid, came from Waistcoat’s cabin. Howard stopped. Easy to snap the strand, though not so as to show that the wind had done it. Otherwise Waistcoat’s suspicions would become certainty, if they weren’t already. A warning disturbed his darkness, that Waistcoat knew he had been distorting his reports. He shivered in the more erratic gusts from one side and the other. The wire from below was attached to the main system, confirming that Waistcoat had a VHF receiver in his stateroom. He could check what Howard said he had heard, or know what items he had claimed not to hear.

  ‘Hey, I’ve been looking for you,’ she called from the stairway.

  A finger to his mouth, he moved quickly down – at whatever risk. ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll follow you.’

  She looked back. ‘What’s it all about?’

  ‘The chief doesn’t like anybody stepping over his quarters.’

  ‘Oh, right!’ she laughed. ‘They never do, especially if they’ve got the DTs. Take this, then. It’s the best gin and tonic between here and a pub in Boston. I made it especially for my lover.’ She kissed him, and put it into his hand as they stood by the rail. ‘I had mine back there. It wasn’t easy carrying two.’

  He drank it with the speed of water, made tasteless by the peril he was in. ‘A kind thought.’

  ‘Is anything worrying you?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You look as if you’ve had a shock. I can feel everything that upsets you. You’ve got something on your mind, and won’t tell me. Is it that you can’t?’

  He tried for the right uncaring tone. ‘It’s just the everyday anxiety I’ve had since birth. I’m wondering if everything will be all right when we reach land. Nothing more.’

  Her lips must show disbelief, but she said: ‘It always goes better than you think. Maybe the gin will settle you. It works wonders for me.’

  ‘I feel all right, with you being here.’ A shade of dependence was coming back, as when he had been with Laura, which he didn’t like but knew was inevitable. ‘I’m better when you’re near me.’

  She threw his empty glass into the sea, following it with her own, turning to hold him. ‘Same here. We’ll be OK, if we stick together.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘more than you can know.’

  ‘Love you, too, Sailor! But don’t look so serious. We’ll be all right. I’ve been through the worry of landing scores of times.’

  Richard took his stance in the glowing pre-light of dawn. A fire in the east, stoked by some agency, seemed unsure it wanted the trouble of warming and illuminating another day. Might even put a damper on it and go back to sleep, except the day was impossible to stop, would get there maybe sooner than anyone wanted. He had been through too many to know that the blissful grey peace ever lasted long.

  A series of courses to steer, handed out by Cleaver, and seconded in no uncertain terms by Waistcoat, were to be followed precisely. Clouds had overtaken them during the night, the red sky hovering as if to swallow the boat and everyone on her. Two large ships and a small coaster were safely ahead, both shorelines as dark and solidly outlined as if about to be rained on – a menacing straits to go through.

  They had passed where Laura lay asleep, and she couldn’t have known how close her wayward husband had been. If she did maybe she also dreamed of me, he thought, though knew he would never see her again. After the trip, and the ceremony of paying off, he would call on his father and make sure he was all right.

  From there he would go back to the house and put it on the market, and after it was sold move to where memories of Amanda could no longer cause him misery. As for Howard, he was too enamoured of Judy to find his way home, though Richard assumed it wouldn’t belong before she tired of the novelty of having a blind man in tow, and lit off with someone else, leaving Howard to tap his white stick up the steps to Laura after all.

  Cleaver, looking over his shoulder, noted that the compass was spot on and steady. ‘We’re doing well, after that fine bit of speed during the night. I think the chief’s pleased. We’ll beat ’em yet.’

  ‘We always have. What’s the ETA?’

  ‘Tomorrow night, as close as dammit.’

  ‘I assumed so.’

  ‘No harm you knowing.’

  Secrecy among thieves was unnecessary, though Waistcoat seemed to think so. ‘Nor for the others to know, either. Nothing they can do with the information.’

  ‘It’s that blind radio wizard,’ Cleaver said in his ear. ‘The chief seems to have a grudge against him. He’s the nigger in the woodpile.’

  ‘There’s always someone.’ He shrugged. ‘Howard’s straight enough.’

  ‘He’s got to be. But the chief wasn’t ranting when he said it, and that strikes me as being a tad different. Anyway, keep her going, I’m off for my cup of coffee.’

  Ted never offered Cleaver tea or coffee in a mug, for fear of a dressing down. ‘Ask Judy to b
ring some for me, Richard, if you can unstick her from Howard’s bunk, that is. As long as he stays shacked up with her we should be all right.’

  Cleaver grunted in disbelief as he walked away.

  Richard didn’t know whether his sudden lightness of heart, so agreeable to the system, promised good or ill. A not-unfamiliar state when close to home, he was unable to care, because in spite of Waistcoat’s histrionics he had confidence in him as the eternal survivor, sometimes saw in his face the wilfulness of a little boy dead set on getting whatever was good for himself, which at this point meant for the crew as well. Not to pull off all his ventures was against the rules of the people he had come from, and sailing with someone who plotted but didn’t think – who put action before thought – guaranteed getting through to a successful unloading. All the same, Richard preferred not to assume that his mood owed more to hope than to reality.

  Howard felt the boat turn north. They were far from land but the end was close. It had to be. He couldn’t figure out what the end would be because the darkness as he stood at the stern became so light he almost thought he could see the widening flail of the wake fanning towards the horizon, and the cauliflower-shaped tops of the crimson-tainted cumulonimbus rising behind the boat. The illusion that the invisible skin of a bubble was about to burst and show him the whole wide expanse of the sea was momentary and caused him to smile: he’d had such feelings before, usually at times of extreme tiredness and uncertainty.

  The aerial from Waistcoat’s cabin, connected to the main mast, came from a spare VHF receiver. Of that he was certain. There were no flies on Waistcoat, as they used to say in the Air Force about some demon of a drill sergeant, invariably adding that marks could no doubt be found where the buggers had previously been. Nothing heard on the radio at the moment in any way concerned their boat, but the earlier exchanges, which he had denied intercepting, had obviously been heard by Waistcoat, who now realised what lies Howard had told, Howard knowing he was therefore marked down for vengeance, even if all went according to expectation, but he felt a placidity in himself, for the moment, that nothing could disturb. The bullet never struck you, always the next man – except that once it had, and if once, then why not twice? Even so, for reasons beyond his understanding, he felt in control of his own dark sphere, knowing he would not be deterred from his final move.

  He was soothed even more by taking down the morning forecast, and Waistcoat in his cabin accepted without a thank-you the clutch of navigation warnings. He didn’t need eyes to realise the contemptuous expression of dismissal, Waistcoat taking even less care to hide it from someone who couldn’t see.

  Howard rummaged in his bag for another sweater, as if an extra layer of protection might bring a glimmer of sight back when it was most needed.

  ‘It’s not that cold.’ Judy approached, as he was taking down the amount of a tanker’s oil. ‘They stop me getting close to your skin, so I don’t like them.’

  ‘Yes, it’s warm in here, but it’ll soon be a lot hotter all round.’

  ‘Why do you say that? I want you to be my man, not the ancient mariner prophesying doom.’

  ‘We’re close to home, that’s all.’

  She sat by him. ‘You aren’t trying to frighten me, are you?’

  ‘That’s the last thing I want.’

  ‘Just think what we’ll do when we’re out of all this.’

  ‘I even dream about it during the day.’

  ‘I’ll show you around Boston. It’s pretty in the middle, lots of nice houses. And the church is fabulous. Beats all those Spanish ones. My aunt who lives there will let us stay a day or two. We’ll be given separate rooms, but I’ll sneak into your bed at night, you can bet. I’ll hire a car and drive us to Woodhall Spa. There’s a good hotel there. Then we’ll go to Lincoln. I know a pub called The Magna Carta, and they serve meals. It’s right by the cathedral. We could put up at The Bull across the way. That’s a very old place, and I’m sure they’ll have a big-four poster bed with curtains where even the stars can’t see us making love. Better than a damp old bunk we keep falling out of all the time!’

  Her talk came from a dream. She was happy, open-minded, optimistic – youthful. He would walk like a jester in cap and bells, playing blind to make the dream his. She sometimes seemed more distant than when he had heard her voice loud and clear from the Dodecanese. But he could touch her now, felt the sting of tears about to break free, as if they were looking back on the joys she was proposing. ‘It sounds wonderful.’

  ‘It will be, darling. I know it will. I think about it all the time.’

  ‘I’m afraid to be too hopeful.’ There were difficulties in hinting that such happiness wouldn’t come about, however wrong to think so. ‘I can’t say why. Maybe it’s because I’m so much older.’

  ‘If I wasn’t optimistic,’ she said. ‘I’d stop living. It keeps me going.’

  ‘And so it will.’ He turned for a kiss. ‘You light up my life like the brightest lamp in the world. I didn’t exist before I met you. I really didn’t. I don’t even feel so blind anymore.’

  ‘I like to hear that. I can’t hear it too often. I want you next to me, with nobody else around. I want you in me all the time.’

  He listened to himself talking over the airwaves. ‘That would be a bit awkward, you daft girl.’

  ‘Well, as often as possible.’ She laughed. ‘Even if you couldn’t do it. I won’t be disappointed. I love you too much to let such a thing bother me. I can always tell you what to do if you can’t, though you never need telling.’

  She was talking the language of the young in love with the old. Or from infatuation. ‘I think I’ve known you forever.’

  ‘You have,’ she said, ‘but you always feel like that when you’re in love.’

  ‘I’ve never been in love before.’

  ‘Someone like you? I can’t believe it. I’ll never know why I let you seduce me, but I’m glad you did. I think you only came on this trip to waylay me. I hope so. I suppose I took to you because you made me feel like myself again. I was all in bits when I came on board, didn’t care whether I lived or died after that affair. It devastated me. Now I want to live more than I’ve ever done. Normally I’d think it strange, but I know it isn’t.’

  Even in the beginning Laura hadn’t made so long a speech, nor spoken anything of such importance, either about him or herself. Nor had he. There had been no need. Hard to fix his past into a clear picture. ‘They’re changing course again. I feel it.’

  ‘It’s none of our business. They’ll probably go around in circles before shooting in tonight. Or they’ll rendezvous with another boat. They sometimes do. This is the time I close myself off from whatever goes on. It’ll soon be over.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘And we’ll hope for the best.’ Whatever he did there’d be no danger to her. He turned in his seat to stand. ‘Let’s go outside so you can tell me what the sky looks like,’ any ruse to hear the voice he now had to himself.

  Life didn’t exist beyond the way he felt, no instrument able to sound the depths of his love. It couldn’t go on, no matter what he needed to feel, or whatever he said, because behind landfall there was nothing, and he tried not to let her think he could be in any way unhappy.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Scraps of paper littered the state room: hard for Richard to say, as he stepped through the door, whether they were discarded notes reminding Waistcoat who to kill, or soiled tissues – though he didn’t seem to have a cold. Split capsules were scattered around, a crushed paper cup in a pottery ashtray with CARACAS block lettered along the side, and empty plastic water bottles underfoot. Waistcoat fingered a radio scanner on the table, sat upright and switched the set on, a finger buttoning the various channels.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ Richard said.

  ‘Too right I did. I’m not happy with the way things are going.’

  Any fool could see as much. The drink showed in bloodshot eyes, and more than a little breakfast hadn�
�t got beyond his shirt front. He also needed a shave. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Nothing serious as far as arrangements go – luckily. But that blind boffin’s about as reliable as an egg with a hole in it. I asked him what he’d been hearing on VHF, and he says not a word. He didn’t know I was tuned in as well, with this. I heard so much talking you’d think every ear in the Channel was cocked on us, waiting for us to drop a bollock and hit the nearest beach. So he was lying, wasn’t he? Is he an Interpol agent, or what? I can’t believe they’d put a blind man onto us, but you never know. They’ve been blind themselves for years. I’ll tell you one thing: the first sign of trouble, and he’s dead. I’d like to get him in here and crack every bone in his body, but I don’t want the others to hear the commotion. They might get nervous, and that would make things worse.’

  ‘So why tell me?’

  Coffee steamed from his Thermos. ‘Because you’re the one I trust most on this tub. If you see any sign of him misbehaving I want you to top him. Get him overboard. No fucking nonsense. I’m relying on you.’

  ‘I’ll do as you say. This is my last trip, and nobody’s going to spoil it. I’m getting out of the game, and telling you now formally.’

  The announcement was not to be disputed. He couldn’t care less whether Waistcoat wanted him to go on or not: he was going, and that was that.

  ‘You disappoint me. We’ll miss you.’ An uncommon smile. ‘We’ve been through a lot together.’

  ‘I know. I’ll miss the life as well. I’ve always had a real buzz out of it – as you know. Not to mention the money. But my father’s old and getting doddery. He’s going to need looking after.’

  ‘Oh, right, yeh, well, you’ve got to take care of the family. I accept that. I like a man who looks after his family. Cleaver don’t seem to have one. That’s why he’s such a dark horse. I might not use him again. Won’t have to with these navigational gimmicks coming in. My family, though, they’ve cost me a million or two, but I don’t regret a penny. They’ve all got pubs to run, or a hotel. I like a man who thinks of his family, but it’s an amazing thing how big mine got after I came into the money. I shelled out, didn’t I? There’s a reunion next week, and I’ve got to show my face. But anytime you want to come back on a job just let me know. Whatever trip you do with me you won’t be out of pocket. Just keep tabs on that blind lunatic. I really think he’s got a screw loose.’