The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  He came on, roaring by. He went so fast that, able to place himself in front of Richard only by a too-abrupt reduction in speed, and a too-sudden swing to the left, he lost equilibrium, wobbled, struck the embankment and went halfway up it, then overturned twice on the way down before settling, minus a few bits and pieces, on the hard shoulder.

  Richard considered stopping, in case the man and his girlfriend (or perhaps she was his wife) were injured, but because no part of their cars had touched, meaning he couldn’t be held responsible for what had happened, he drove on and left them to it, convinced that a fool must pay for his folly.

  The contest, if such it had been, had unnerved him. For a start the man, no doubt even now too stupid to realise that everything was his fault (if he wasn’t too dazed to think of anything at all) should have had more sense than to tangle with a BMW. He probably thought himself king of that stretch of the road because he drove along it every day, and had the right to try killing whoever he felt was getting in his way. Perhaps I was a bit precipitate at the traffic lights, Richard thought, but certainly not more so than most motorists at such a junction.

  A further notion was that maybe the man had known him, that the awkwardness had been no accident, that someone was aware of what he carried in the boot. He hadn’t noticed another car close enough behind to be in cooperation, so as an attempted hijack the tricksy business would have turned out very clumsy. No, it was a common near-accident of the road, and he had been lucky to get off – as it were – scot free.

  The road was good through the Lowland area of dismal hills, not too much traffic, visibility a kilometre and therefore reasonable for speed, though he kept close to seventy in case a cop car was planted in dead ground, always law abiding at the wheel because it would be ridiculous to get pulled in, even supposing the boot was empty, which it surely was not. He could either regard the stupid man’s accident as a bad omen for his day, or think of good times coming because the bad thing had already happened. Superstition was a weakness, but he looked forward to the luxury of getting to Carlisle and into England.

  To pass the miles he mulled on his recent stint on the water, something of a killpig, as Scuddilaw had accurately termed it, a trip out and in whose incidents made his duel at the traffic lights seem like the pleasant arsing about with an old friend. He had arrived at the hotel in Glasgow in time for breakfast, as a sailor home from the sea after having been, it seemed, almost to Iceland and back. ‘The Cod War’s got nothing on this,’ Scud said, another swig at the whisky when they were halfway there, though no one yet knew exactly where there was.

  ‘Rockall, it’s supposed to be.’

  ‘Fuck all, not Rockall. Here we go again.’

  And a thousand times they went – but who was counting? – up the hills and down into valleys of malevolent water. And who had the heart to calculate after the first, in any case? Cannister looked knife-blades at Richard who had taken down the weather forecast. ‘This is yer force-fucking-two, is it?’

  ‘Well, we’re on our way,’ the skipper said, ‘and we don’t come back without the cargo. It’s the Barbadoes for me next week. Sweat blood now, and get a touch of the sun later. If we aren’t beaten, we’ve won.’

  Richard, to himself, agreed. It was a mood to his liking, but every trip seemed to hinge on an all or nothing gamble, the ever expanding peril of a forlorn hope, and he more than once saw the next white topped emerald wave as his last, except you thought of nothing beyond staying alive.

  The Polish skipper wouldn’t risk his rusty old ship too near the Hebrides, or the eyes of the customs men, but Richard’s radio navigation got them to the rendezvous, when the real trouble began. Had they come all this way for nothing? They weren’t fighting for their lives now. Money was involved, millions, and though only a comparative pittance went into their pockets there was a fortune to be counted out for the gaffers.

  The ship’s flank was a rusting cliff, they were one moment bottomed out, in danger of being keel hauled and then, whoops, you bastards, they were staring boggle-eyed right into the buttons of a sailor’s coat on the bridge, who was looking back at them no doubt wondering what creatures had come out of the deep. After the captain had grabbed his single tea chest of payment (and not before) the stuff came up and over, and they didn’t lose a bundle.

  Set for home, no one dared to think so. The risk of being caught was subsumed by the danger of being drowned, but Richard could only see such a picture by looking on it from safety, like now, steaming effortlessly down the dual carriageway. Wet, hungry, and cramped at the bowels, the power of concentration had threatened to evaporate any second but was kept in check, only he and the skipper at times holding the boat on course. Could Waistcoat and the big men in London know what the crews went through?

  He took them back part way on the Omni Range beacon at Tiree, but kept well clear when in the pull of the islands. No one had seen them go, and no one would spot them sliding in. So they hoped, and so it turned out. The night was long and, despite the sea, the powerful boat landed them far enough into the cove to start the welcome work of humping bundles up the track and into the cars behind the ruined bothy, so that the material could go by various cars to London.

  Mulling too long on the hard night, he bumped the centre studs for a second or two, which told him he was getting tired. Ought to stop soon and stow my head for twenty minutes. But the exhaustion, if that’s what it was, put him into the Republic of Euphoria, only welcoming after all had gone well, setting him up for another hundred miles.

  Beyond Carlisle he overtook a steady Eddie Stobart on its way south, glided by the usual Wallace Arnold and Shearing coaches, Dodd’s pantechnicons, and various self-hire vans. The odd car coming the other way had lights aglow as if playing Volvos. Then he was overtaken on the outer lane by a vehicle of the Freebooter Transport Company doing well over eighty.

  He pushed in the lighter and felt for a cigarette, a simple-minded gloat that if all the cars overtaken in his life had been given to him he would be rich indeed. To while away the miles he pushed in Howard’s morse tape which had arrived before leaving home, slotted it into the cassette deck. He’d carried it in the pocket of his duffel coat out and back, and wondered at Howard’s amazement if he knew the nature of the trip.

  ‘Dear Richard, these are cold days, and it gets cold at the heart sometimes, though Laura and I are weathering it – you might say. The wireless has me in its grip as much as ever. Usually it cools any sparks of passion a blind man might have, but these days it has a nasty way of stoking them up instead. It’s always hard to get through the winter, and seems like a victory when I do. Long nights mean too many long journeys. I’m working on a certain voice frequency, but can’t tell you much as yet, not being sure exactly what I’ve got onto. It may be of interest to you, perhaps not. A woman is talking to her lover, another woman, a few hundred miles from the yacht she works on. Their business might be something to do with smuggling – immigrants or drugs, who can tell which? Probably neither, just my imagination running away with itself. It occasionally does, the one luxury I’m allowed.’

  A sliver of burnt out tyre lay across the motorway. He stopped the tape to get by various weaving wagons, a lorry churning smoke like a haystack about to flare up. A bus overtook him on the inner lane at ninety. Accident black spots move around and settle themselves temporarily in certain places for no apparent reason.

  A few more miles, and he felt safer. Someone always gets killed on the last day of the war, or the final lap home. In a car one loses the feeling of being at the whim of the elements, of crossing a rainswept field with little between you and dull cloud on a winter’s afternoon. He supposed there were people who never knew such a sensation – lucky or not he wouldn’t say.

  He set the tape spinning, to find out whether Howard would be more explicit about the smuggling, but the silly blind devil waffled on about something else until: ‘I walked down the hill to get a sniff at the sea, just before midday, well wrapped up be
cause a fair wind was on, mostly from the old south-west, telling myself I wouldn’t like to be at sea in such a blow. My cap went flying once, but some kind soul brought it back. The only fit haven was a pub, and a pint was soon set before me. A large coal fire burned, a few of the regulars sitting around. I was familiar with their voices, and heard them chin-wagging about a local character called Charlie (no surname mentioned) who had been arrested by the revenue men (that was the term they used: would you believe it?) coming back from Cherbourg in a fast launch with half a dozen other chaps a few nights ago.

  ‘Rumour had it that they had stuff stowed on board worth millions. They’d always wondered where Charlie got his money, because he never seemed to do much, and always had plenty. Now we know, they said. You can imagine how I enjoyed such talk, saying to myself here is a bit of tittle-tattle to tell Richard in my next communication. I usually have precious little to say in such an ordered life. I’d give my right arm to go on such a trip as you now and again take yourself.’

  Richard switched off the morse a few moments to wonder if Howard had made any connection between the two but, though with some unease, decided it wasn’t possible.

  The rhythm soothed him so he let the tape play on. ‘Not being able to see anything wouldn’t rob me of the pleasure, you can bet. But of course, it’s out of the question, and I can only work on the imagination till it seems like reality, as if I’ve actually done the thing. Then it calms me, and I’m happy enough to get back to the radio, which does its job by living for me.’

  Break time. The clock goes slowly not the miles, and landscape stays more or less the same, so there are times you do A to B and have no memory of the scenery at all. Your mind has submerged itself, yet your reactions work if they have to. He thought he was getting a cold, feeling a notch below perfect, which could be dangerous if he didn’t lock his perceptions onto taking care, so he signalled to reach the inner lane, and slowed along the one-two-three white marks for the service station, lorries already cutting along to his right.

  The parking space was fairly full but he found a slot not too far from the cafeteria entrance. The wind freshened his cheeks, and he put on his mackintosh because the sky was low and grey. Preferring to eat little and often, rather than scoff a debilitating sleep-inducing meal, he sat in the smoking section with his cheese roll and pot of tea. Two women across the way were talking about how to make life happier for someone who had recently tried to kill herself. They sounded like social workers but he couldn’t be sure. The pill victim could have been a sister or cousin – a world away from his own life. He was glad of the empty table, for in his line of business it paid to be alone if you wanted to stay in the game.

  A man further along was so untidily bearded it was hard to tell his age. The hair was mostly ginger, with frontier wisps of grey. Exhausted and filthy, wearing a blue jersey, checked jacket, and jeans, he looked like someone who could sleep with his eyes open, and certainly didn’t have a car in the parking lot. Down one side of his face, only partly covered with hair, was a scar still streaked with congealed blood. ‘Going far, are you?’

  Richard knew who was meant.

  The man stared at an empty cup and crumb-strewn plate, a small rucksack beside him with a woolly hat on top. ‘I said are you going far?’

  ‘Far enough.’

  ‘I’ve been here four fuckin’ hours, and nobody’ll gi’ me a lift. Yer know what kind of life that is?’

  He didn’t, wasn’t interested in finding out, finished his food and swigged off his tea. The country was full of such people, on the road for London, where they could beg and sleep rough.

  ‘It’s nay life for a man who only wants to work. Up every fuckin’ mornin’, and I walk the arse off me feet looking for it.’

  Richard buttoned his mackintosh: ‘I’m turning off at the next junction,’ but set two pound coins on the man’s table, in case he was genuine, then walked to the exit without hearing a thank-you. Only now, as the achievement of the sea trip swept over him, did he realise his life was one long bottle of champagne. He started the car, and drove to the pumps to fill the tank, check oil, water and tyre pressures, then go inside to pay, have a piss, and buy a newspaper.

  The same trampish man stood by the lane when he slowed down on turning from the pumps. Richard stopped, leaned back to open the rear door. Served him right for handing out the two quid. ‘Come in, then.’

  ‘Ah, ye’re a gentleman.’

  Like hell I am. He shot off to get in front of a juggernaut and into the middle lane, already regretting his action, in that good deeds never came cheap, or did much for you. He had put him in the back because on giving someone a lift a few years ago the man had managed to purloin some earrings from the glove box which he was taking to Amanda.

  ‘Where the fuck are we?’

  ‘Cheshire.’

  ‘Where the fuck’s that?’

  No point telling him, in case it strained his vocabulary, but he passed over a cigarette, which the man lit with a brass Zippo. The face was scarred, pockmarked, veined, ruined by want and self-indulgence, a face whose movable features, even if they had been washed and cared for, would not have made him pretty. An ugly bastard, and no mistake. After a few more miles he threw the cigarette out of the window, then seemed to doze. Richard liked it that way. He pushed the button to hear more of Howard’s morse.

  ‘You see, there is something to write about after all. That little bit of gossip in the pub made my day, but I don’t really find life’s real until I’m tuned into the two lovers on their yachts, one among the Isles of Greece, and the other somewhere between Corsica and Sicily. I’m particularly attracted to one of the women, but then, I would be, wouldn’t I? It’s the sheer mystery of her that appeals to me, and what also whiles away the time is the fantasy I spin, of one day going in search of her, to try and find out what she looks like.’

  ‘What the fuck’s that noise?’

  He switched off.

  ‘Sounds like fuckin’ morse code or somethin’. Drive yer fuckin’ mad.’

  Richard slid along the wall of a bus doing seventy, and in the mirror saw his passenger rolling up his left sleeve. He took a primed needle from the side pocket of his pack, and jabbed it among the knotted veins. Services, seven miles, Richard noticed, as the man snorted, head back, struck Richard’s spine with his knees and laughed: ‘Yippee! London, here I come!’

  Not in my car. Against expectations, the miles went quickly, and he jinked beyond a sports car and a builder’s van, onto the inner lane by two lorries, and shot up the slipway onto the car park. He didn’t bother to look for a space, but stopped at the steps leading to the entrance. ‘This is as far as you go.’

  The man, head back and looking with rolling eyes towards the sun roof, as if to coax it open so as to see heaven more clearly, heard nothing. Hazard lights on, Richard got out, pulled the door wide open, and took the man’s arm in a twist too powerful for him to resist. He pulled him onto the tarmac. ‘You don’t shoot drugs in my car.’

  ‘What the fuckin’ hell’s going on?’

  A happy family group – mother, father and two children – coming from the cafeteria with chip butties instead of hands, looked on as if a piece of street theatre was being provided especially for them. The man’s rucksack hit him in the stomach, Richard now knowing why he’d had to wait four hours for a lift. The scumbag even tried to get back in. ‘It’s London I want, not fuckin’ Cheshire.’

  Richard evaded the heavy punch, and gave one back which, with the power of an angry sea built in, sent him scuffing across the steps. Very Merchant Service, as the captain once said when he’d laid out a man who had gone berserk on the bridge.

  You goddamned fool, he told himself on driving away, how can you be so brain dead as to pick up a hitchhiker, and a hop head as well? He fumed for the next fifty miles, until he knew himself lucky compared to Howard and his sky-empty life, which reminded him to bring the morse rattling back:

  ‘There is a demon in me
trying to break out, to let fly, to fragment my existence in return for I don’t know what. This is the first time I’ve expressed myself openly as an adult, believe it or not, since the full stop put on me in March 1945. Whether the demon, or the impulse, is evil or not I wouldn’t like to say, but certainly it could be destructive, though not while the thought is unable to change into action. In that sense I’m safe and can talk to you, or tap rather, freely.

  ‘Perhaps my ideas as to what I mean, and what might be possible, will have clarified by the next letter, though the agitation does diminish somewhat while I try to describe my feelings to you. At the most, or worst, I envy the fate of old Charlie, who was nabbed for smuggling. To sum up, I sometimes think we have to look on life as tragic because otherwise it would be too dull to be acceptable. By way of banalities, Laura and I are well, and hope that you are, too. Until next time. Signing off. Howard.’

  Fringing the dereliction of the Black Country (though there were signs of resuscitation) he thought it not a long letter, though there was quite enough in it to make him sweat. Spaghetti Junction posed no fears, after the ins and outs of such a missive which, far from the old boy going off his chump, showed he was on to something bigger than he realised by having picked up Judy babbling away. Howard couldn’t know what kind of tramcar he was jumping onto, in passing over such red hot gen, because if that big silly lesbian wasn’t stopped she would have the Mediterranean end of the game wrapped up by Interpol. She wasn’t cracked enough to blow the gaff on anything knowingly, but any slight clue could get the dogs of the law on the lot of them. Since Howard was picking them up loud and clear there was a chance others were as well. Waistcoat had always had too much affection for tenuous social connections, more than was good for him or them, having fitted her as a general slavey into the outfit to prevent her doing worse mischief to herself than she had already.