The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  In prison – where Richard had met such characters during his fortunately brief incarceration – Waistcoat would have learned many things that were more profitable. He made connections, got into the real world and found advancement on going free but, even then, had to come back a few times before falling in to the drugs trade. In twenty years he had become rich, changed his name, appearance and accent (as far as he could) and certainly his style of living, which had helped him not to get caught so often.

  Traffic smoothed its way more freely beyond Sidcup, but he held back from driving too fast. Keep your distance, sideways as well as to the front and back. A scarlet biscuit tin on the starboard bow overtook, came on as if pulling a wall of rain with it. The wipers conducting like a metronome, he lit a cigarette. Shit’s creek without a paddle would be paradise compared to the Howard connection. Hard to know how serious the old bat was about getting on board, though he seemed determined enough. He hoped so, because if he backed out the best to be expected would be driving an ice-cream van for the rest of his active life with half his fingers missing.

  Then again, if he did manage to inveigle Howard onto the boat his time might be up when Waistcoat realised he was blind. Richard had no enemy as far as he knew (except Amanda, and she had flitted) and decided that if he must have one it might as well be Waistcoat, who wouldn’t be difficult to deal with because he regarded everyone as his enemy, and of no particular importance unless that person had something specific against him.

  Howard had to come on the trip because he knew too much, but if Waistcoat found out he was blind he would be done away with before he could get on board. Or he would find a grave in the water soon afterwards. Orders had ever been orders, but he didn’t want to see Howard damaged, a man who represented everything that was the opposite of himself, a probity so thick you could scoop it up with a spoon and sell it in jars. He didn’t envy Howard, or think he could ever have fitted into his sort of character, knowing from early on that such a moral life was not for him. Howard had moral quality, he decided, and could never be anyone other than who he was.

  And yet there was enough of Howard in him for him to know that he could never be Howard, and what there might have been of Howard in him at the beginning had been overridden by an impatience forever nagging at his vitals, till it had landed him in a fix so tight he wished he had got out of the drugs game years ago.

  Approaching the end of the Maidstone bypass, the notion came to him of saving himself even now, of turning the car round at the island and making his way northwest to call on his father. He would stay and look after him, a safe place to hide in any case, and let the Azores trip go to disaster, or success if they were lucky, which they probably would be without him or Howard on board.

  He wasn’t the sort to run away like a frightened rabbit, knew himself to be the keep on keeping on type, having at least that much of Howard in him which said that a contract was a contract and must be kept, even with the worst of people and for the worst of reasons. You didn’t desert when things got difficult, and nor would he expect Howard to let him down. If either made a run for it Waistcoat and the others would pursue them into everlasting hell.

  Such a gridlock could not be broken. He was so much part of one that there was no decision to make, nothing but to go on; unless to tell Howard, who had probity and fine sense, that he had been playing with a dream, and should be satisfied to keep it at that. Men of probity were made for dreams, such visitations sustaining them on their straight path. Howard would call to say he couldn’t come on the boat, it would be impossible to cope, he would be a hindrance, and so would like to keep the idea as a dream. Out of friendship, his lips would stay clamped. He would give nothing away.

  Richard laughed on rounding the island, to drive across the Weald at dusk. Such an outcome could be little more than a dream he himself was having, as if trying to snatch one from Howard. The dream was going to happen, and he was giving in to it, a thought which did not help, since he realised, turning on his headlights – and in their beams saying goodbye to bellies of cloud overhead – that he did not know anything about Howard who was as complete a blank as if he – Richard – was the blind man. Howard was a code he hadn’t so far cracked.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Gulls, aeroplaning above the chimney pots, were calling that he must talk to Laura about his plans. He needed no telling, for once in tune to their outlandish cries. Judy had sent her final message, as the yachts closed on their routes. The boat would stop at Gibraltar for water and provisions, before leaving for you-know-where. She would go by hire car to Malaga for a day to keep a well-planned tryst with Carla.

  The frantic, one minute burst ended by her saying there would be no radio contact for an unspecified time afterwards. Howard taped their talk to use as encouragement for making his way onto Richard’s yacht. His spirit floated in suspense, but with the confidence of a compass needle always sure where north and therefore every other direction was to be found.

  The tension in him resembled the adolescent state of mind before he had gone blind. More than halfway in thrall to that previous existence, he felt the unacknowledged emotions of a young man, forever impatient to get from one minute to the next no matter what would occur. Life had been normal then, exciting but tolerable, above all easy going, the play of uncertainties utterly different to the present routine which he would learn to live without, by letting the past come back and help him to face the changes that came.

  He leaned on the gate, pausing in his ‘constitutional’ – Laura’s word, which he disliked, knowing she would see nothing tired in him when he explained where he was going. Walking made up the mind with a firmness that would not be undone however she objected. The exercise stilled his secret fears, after years of not needing to make up his mind about anything. Though there had been no final yes from Richard, an illusion of increased visibility in his dome of darkness convinced him there would be. For the barely imaginable to become reality meant climbing out of the pit he had inhabited for so long, like a mole in its comfortable burrow, and going into the second great trip of his life.

  The gulls told him he was on his own. One squeal a yes and the one that followed a no. Either way, he lived in an indifferent universe, and smiled at the notion that the universe itself might mirror the complexity of a single human being – if there was anything to it at all – and by giving himself up to it he became the controller of the earth and every star and planet, if only for a second in astronomical reckoning. The gulls would be fixed in the swoop and circle of their intimidating cries till the end of time, and because Fate cared nothing for either him or them he enjoyed their eternal disputations.

  A steady downpour of warm rain came from the direction they would chop towards when the boat motored into Atlantic spaces. The homely smell of the house would be hard to leave, yet less so because of it, a break to be welcomed whatever his adventure led to.

  After checking that the table was laid in the dining room he followed the smell of cooking into the kitchen. Laura noted the increased confidence of his approach. He stood by her side:

  ‘We’ll have smoked mackerel and toast,’ she said, ‘to start with. Then new potatoes, with cauliflower and a thick lamb chop. I’ve put a bottle of wine in the fridge, which we can share. I’ll serve the first course now, while the rest finishes on a low light.’

  He had noted her concern, how she provided an extra newspaper for reading aloud in the evening, set out nicer treats for his meals, gave unsolicited embraces and kisses. What else could she do? There was nothing worse than not knowing.

  He heard the apron coming off, for a more formal meal than usual, as if knowing he had something to tell her, though how could she? She held out the chair, but he pulled it under himself. Over the years they had developed an idiom of signs, graded by the subtlety of pressures from one to ten, you might say, shades of the heart’s wish easy to express, yesses and nos without the help of words. An unacknowledged lexicon of smell and touch had built betwe
en them, by now of a certain bulk. Misinterpretation was a call for laughter, though not this time. His brooding staled his appetite, but she gave him the sound of cutting into her fish and toast, and was not pleased by him pouring wine which came exactly to the brim. He held the glass towards her: ‘Let’s drink to having lived so long together.’

  She fought the tears, as if he might see them. Making no sound would deceive him, but the touch of their glasses covered the catch in her voice. ‘Yes, I like that.’

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I’ve decided to go on a trip. Richard has asked me to go with him to the Azores. I might be away for some time.’ He sighed, not for himself, but for the thing completed. The darkness seemed to have opened, a faint glow shimmering where his sight once was, so that he had less feeling of being blind.

  Half his wine went in one swallow. ‘Richard wants me to help with the radio.’ He ate so easily, as if he told her such preposterous news every day. ‘It’s a big boat, a motor yacht, a hundred and fifty feet long. There’ll be a crew of seven or eight, so I’ll be well looked after.’

  The fork fell against her plate. ‘How long have you known about this?’ She needed no special faculties to realise that his behaviour had changed since their outing to Boston. He tied himself less to the wireless, had become impatient with all activity, sat at his dials for no more than half an hour of an evening, not always that long. A change of habit when she didn’t have one of hers to vary was disturbing. He sat for hours as if half asleep, but she picked up the intensity of his thoughts, knowing he would never tell her what they were. Now he had. She was frightened that such snapping of routine meant the end of their life together, but to question him would solve nothing. She must let him talk further, as he certainly must, though the suspense put a stitch in her side.

  He filled another glass, spilled some this time. ‘Oh, I’ve told you as soon as I could.’

  No post had come today, no phone calls either, so he had known for a while. Or was it another fantasy, like the pipe dream that had led them on a wild goose chase to Boston? Richard couldn’t be such a fool as to take a blind man to sea.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said.

  ‘Do you? Can you?’

  ‘Well, what’s strange about my plan to have a little outing? It’ll take two or three weeks, that’s all. I’ve always wanted to see the Azores.’ He heard her go into the kitchen, to stop the chops scorching, no other response possible, though he couldn’t think why, since he only wanted to go on a sea trip with a friend instead of with her.

  Topside, they were a little overdone, but their celebratory meal had gone into the wilderness. Draining the cauliflower steamed the glasses as she tipped it into a colander. If the trip had been with anybody but Richard the scheme might have sounded feasible. ‘What sort of people will be going on the boat? And what is the real reason for the voyage?’ she asked, back at the table.

  Howard poured another drink, as if it would be better for her to comment that he was becoming an alcoholic. ‘It’s a rich man’s yacht, and he’s cruising for pleasure, to the Azores.’

  She put her unfinished mackerel aside for the cat. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘I’m not sure at the moment, but I’ll tell you as soon as I find out. It’s all open handed and above board, so I wish you’d stop worrying.’

  ‘Worrying?’ she said, with an anger he’d never heard before. ‘Don’t you know I worry about you every second of the day and night, especially when you go down the hill alone each morning on your walk? Don’t you know it’s been the same since the day we were married? Always hoping you’ll be all right, that you’ll come back safe. Maybe it was unnecessary – it obviously was – but it’s been a lifetime of anxiety nevertheless. And here you are, suddenly announcing that you want to go away for weeks on a small boat into the Atlantic, with people I know nothing about. And you don’t seem to know anything about them, either.’

  ‘I wish you would eat your food before it gets cold. All this is rather unnecessary. It’s even irrelevant.’ She would have made the same fuss if he had been going on a bus trip to Brighton, because by having gone everywhere with her he had dug his own grave into absolute dependence. In spite of her disapproval he found the silence benign, though not unaware of his callousness.

  ‘Has this got anything to do with this woman you were hoping to meet in Boston?’

  His tone was flat. ‘No.’

  It was a lie, at least a half-truth. She knew it had started then, and that this voyage was another stage in looking for her, and said so.

  Easy to slump back into ease and go on with no event to mark the time between now and death. Is that all life would be? Those glorious moments of feeling the laden bomber lift sluggishly under him from the runway as a youth couldn’t be all there was to it. He had paid for them over and over by vegetating ever since, and now he must get into the world again. He didn’t need anyone to tell him whether he was doing right or wrong: not even the German Numbers Woman, or Vanya, and not Judy either. He was alone with his own voice saying that not to go would pitch him into a living death till the end of his time, unless he weakened and soon enough died by cancer or a blow at the heart for his pusillanimity.

  ‘All I can do is repeat myself. Richard has worked hard to get me this place, and it’s an opportunity that won’t come again.’

  She laughed with such bitterness that he wondered what part of her it had come from, where it had been hiding all these years, and why. He saw no reason for bitterness. Parts of her she hadn’t shown before, having no reason to, though there must be more to it than that. He also had zones never revealed, but that he found encouraging.

  ‘I thought you’d be happy to let me go, and do everything possible to help me on my way.’

  ‘Why,’ she said mockingly, ‘do you intend to make a career of it? Surely not!’

  ‘Would to God I could. But no, I don’t.’ He laughed at such an idea. ‘I’m not going off into the blue forever. There’ll be radio facilities on board for me to call you every day or two.’ He wasn’t sure this would be the case, didn’t much care, though hoped it was possible so that the separation wouldn’t hurt her for too long. On the other hand the disturbance of calling would break into his sensation of being free.

  She wanted to lie down, from weakness, out of shock, in total surprise at his ruthlessness, at his denial of everything they had lived by, marking the end of their world, a confession as if he had announced he was going to live with another woman, nothing less than a stark betrayal of trust, destroyed by one plain announcement. ‘Do you think it will make me happy, knowing that every minute might be your last? I don’t suppose there can be any worse position for someone like you being on a small boat in a rough sea.’

  If it meant getting killed, what better way to die, though it was only her unreasonable fear that suggested such might happen, while his premonition of danger was due only to a childish dread at being apart.

  ‘You’re denying me a holiday,’ he said. ‘It’s as simple as that. I’ll go away for a few weeks, and then come back. We’ll have something to talk about for a change.’ It was impossible to do anything without being cruel. He was seared, but unrepentant and more determined. If Richard called to say it was no go, this anguish would be for nothing. Yet nothing was for nothing. Everything that happened was good in a life where nothing happened, and no more so than to a blind man. She disliked him, therefore he was noticed, more real to her, a more separate person than he’d ever been. He said as much, assumed he was becoming like the man he would have been if he had come back from the air raid with no injury. She was the only obstacle to this progress, but the power of his infatuation with Judy wouldn’t let her stop him going to sea. Judy was the glow drawing him on, and no amount of resistance could deflect him from the beam.

  ‘It’s not so much that I mind you leaving me, though I do, wouldn’t be human if I didn’
t, but it’s what might happen. You surely see that.’

  He touched her hand, but she drew it petulantly away. ‘Nothing bad will happen. I’ll have a wonderful time. I can’t tell you how much it means to me, how much I’m looking forward to it. You’ll have to trust me.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ There was steel in her tone. ‘I just can’t let you go. Won’t. You can’t go. It’s not a matter of you leaving me on my own. Anywhere else. But not to sea. I couldn’t bear it. I won’t let you go.’

  ‘Well, I shall.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Richard. He’ll understand.’

  ‘It was his idea.’ Lies had become easy because the limits to his freedom had fallen down. ‘He wants me on the boat. He thought I needed to get away for a while.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Richard was man enough of the world. He would never make such an outlandish offer, but if it were true she had only herself to blame for having introduced them. And if Howard was lying, which he probably was, how could she hold it against him when she had married him to escape the pain of what she could never mention, thus lying to him by omission? It was as if he guessed, or definitely knew, and felt free to crush her with this kind of revenge. The possibility of him having found out gave her more strength. ‘You can’t go, though. I’m quite determined. You’re not fit for such an adventure. There are ways of stopping you. I’ll discuss it with a social worker, to see what we can do.’

  ‘The cat’s going to eat well today, if you don’t finish your meat. He’s putting on too much weight as it is. Everything balances out. How can you think anything will happen to me, or that I won’t come back? I don’t see it.’

  Her instinct was as good as his. The journey might be easy to set out on but hard to get back from, or perhaps the obstacles to going were so difficult that the return couldn’t enter the mind. Departures for her were fraught with terrors and desolation, while with him they stimulated and filled with joy. Her despair was understandable, always worse for the person left behind.