The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Just curious. I wanted to put a picture to what I’d heard.’

  An evening breeze cooled against his cheek, a slightly heavier chop on the sea. He gripped the rail. ‘How long before we see the light?’

  ‘Here comes Sextant Blake, our shit-hot navigator. I’ll ask him.’ Howard heard the definite tread of someone approaching, and a respectful tone in Scud’s voice: ‘How long before we see the light, Mr Cleaver?’

  ‘In this visibility, I should think’ – was he looking at his chronograph watch? – ‘at twenty-five minutes past nine. Landfall’s always a great moment, Mr Scuddilaw, as regards seeing the light. That’s when you begin to feel God might be looking after you again. He presents you with the evidence of his wonders, after you’ve been lost at sea, which is another of his wonders in that all knowledge comes from Him.’

  He sounded like a preacher in a crematorium chapel, though not, Howard thought, at the grave side, for his self assurance seemed rather friable. All the same, since he was talking, you had to listen to someone who had no trouble cranking himself up for a mini sermon.

  ‘He gave man the wit to devise a sextant and a chronometer – bless Mr Harrison for the latter – and make charts – hats off to Captain Cook – and He made the stars on which we can take angles and get our position to one nautical mile or even much less – with sufficient care. So it’s down on our knees to Him now and again.’

  ‘No thanks,’ Howard heard Scud say. ‘I’m on watch.’

  ‘Well, never mind, He’ll look after us anyway, but we have to do our bit as well. After all, what more do we want when the sun and the stars are all laid on? I must say, though, I’d give a lot right now for a nice fresh cucumber!’

  Howard heard him walking away, the deliberate tread of highly polished boots, he imagined. ‘I have to get back to my charts,’ Cleaver called. ‘It’s been good talking to you both.’

  ‘Sanctimonious streak of piss,’ Scud said. ‘I’d like to slit his fucking windpipe.’

  ‘He knows his business.’

  ‘I suppose so, but you know why? He was master of his own ship once, a real tartar, because I once met somebody as served under him. He worked the River Plate trip, ferrying beef from Buenos Aires to Blighty.’

  ‘Sounds like a good job.’

  ‘The best. Ship’s master, and he thought nobody could touch him. Well, like a lot of them toffee-nosed tight-arsed high-and-mighty scumbags he came a cropper, didn’t he? Overreached himself. He was fiddling the company something rotten. Off-loaded only half the stuff, and the rest went elsewhere. The manifest was a masterpiece of the forger’s art. He was at it for years. Got his fingers in the till all right. He had bandages on both wrists though by the time he’d finished. Spent a few years inside, but he’d been stashing it away for long enough, so he had plenty to live on when he came out. I suppose he could have retired for life, but a bloke like that’s got scorpions in his boots, and greed knows no bounds. Instead of setting himself up in a pub, which he thought was beneath him, I suppose – but which I might have a go at one day – he got took on for jobs like this. Richard swears by him, but I don’t like him, so I don’t trust him. There’s just something in the way his grey eyes look at you and don’t care whether they see anything or not. It makes you wonder what he’s found out about you that even you don’t know about. Not that I believe there’s much to see when he looks at me, buggered if I do. He’s the one I’d say was blind, not you, Howard, though Waistcoat would never agree. All George Cleaver sees is the stars and the sun through that priceless sextant of his, and then he jabbers to the likes of us about God, as if he knew him personally. God! God would turn in his grave if he saw him in church. I don’t know what he thinks we carry on these trips, though it ain’t jelly babies, and that’s a fact. I know what I’d do to him if I had a nice fresh cucumber!’ He spat side on to the wind. ‘Which reminds me, I’m getting a bit peckish in the old locker box. I wonder what Ted’s got cooking in the galley? Bloody chilly, as well.’

  ‘Red sky at night.’ Richard put a plate down for Howard. ‘So it ought to be good for us.’

  ‘What have we got?’ He smelled meat, and rich gravy, not caring that he had put weight on these last few days from sitting too much and eating whatever Ted dished out.

  ‘Stew.’

  Waistcoat was passing through. ‘And it’s too good for all of you.’

  ‘He sounds happy,’ Cannister said. ‘No turdburgers on this outfit. Must be the red sky. We’ll be seeing the happy coastline soon. Better than a bit o’ magic lantern, any road up. I shan’t be sorry to get away from it, either.’

  ‘Some work to do before that,’ Richard said.

  ‘I don’t mind. Takes my mind off things.’

  Ted laid out the tray, to be taken to Waistcoat’s saloon: shrimp cocktail to start, chilled white wine, with immaculate linen and silver cutlery. He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better hump the first course in. The chief don’t like to be kept waiting.’

  ‘And I’ll get back to my perch,’ Scud said. ‘We don’t want to argue with any old tanker coming up ahead.’

  ‘Bang would go my pretty engines.’ Paul Cinnakle spread a white napkin over the knees of his pale Rohan trousers, consulted his Rolex. ‘Waiting is always the worst. Even with full steam ahead we never seem to get there.’

  The boat made almost a full turn to starboard. Howard felt it, vibrations to the feet, a positive increase of tension all round.

  ‘That means we can see the light.’ Richard hurried to the bridge. ‘Spot on, Mr Cleaver.’

  His eyes seemed brighter in the dim light. ‘Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? But we can’t rest on our laurels. Not yet, anyway. I’ll be doing the fixes till it’s time to turn south. Take over, will you? Keep on at two-seventy, neat as you can.’

  ‘Neat it will be.’ He fancied he could make out the hump of the island, but went by the oscultating light.

  ‘How are we going?’ Howard asked.

  ‘We’re onto it. No lights on board, but that shouldn’t bother you. We turn south at eleven, and hit the beach at midnight, as soon as we see the signal. All being well, we’ll be away by two, and out of trouble by daylight.’

  ‘I’ll get back to the radio, then. Work the push buttons on VHF. See what I can pick up.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nothing to help or hinder, so half a minute on BBC Overseas was restful – before serious listening began. The die was cast, the Rubicon boated over, everyone into the venture, out of themselves and agog for what it seemed they were born to do. A turn of ninety degrees into the welcoming sunset would bring them onto the pinhead of light saying all was well for their predatory swoop. Until then the tension of not knowing for sure put them into an ideal state for work.

  Shortwave was calm and orderly. Howard caught a message to a departing ship concerning cargo and some dispute over the crew’s pay. No weather or navigation warnings of any interest came, and the distress frequency on five hundred kilocycles was quiet except for a sunspot blemish playing its little tune. Half an hour went easily by. He would be a hindrance on deck, was only of use in his corner, earphones close to his head for as long as he could resist being away from the world outside. He momentarily wished to be back in the old shore billet, imagined the cat warming his knees and Laura about to come in with a hot drink or to say supper was ready. Then he was hearing Judy, saw her walking along a palm-lined street. She waved, smiled, and waited for him to come close. By which time he wouldn’t care what had pulled him into such an adventure.

  A distress call startled him, in voice on VHF, from the north-east, according to a given position. A three-man sailing yacht radioed that the skipper had fallen ill and was thought to be dying. Of what, they couldn’t be sure, but he had collapsed at the wheel and was in great pain. A search and rescue plane was looking for them. Howard sensed the alarm behind their talk. Benighted, they grieved for the sick man, lost in a dark world, wind in their sails the only sound.

&n
bsp; He wondered if those on deck heard the plane, and what it would bode should their escape route lay that way in the morning. A further signal said the skipper had died, date and time given with sailor-like coolness. He typed both exchanges, pulled the paper free, and took it to the bridge.

  Waistcoat, standing behind Richard and to the left of Cleaver, read the messages by the light of a pocket torch. He repeated it to the others. ‘Anybody hear a plane?’

  ‘It’d be too far west,’ Cleaver said.

  ‘Just our luck, to have a fucking kite around.’

  ‘They won’t see us,’ Richard told him.

  ‘What makes you think so?’ Waistcoat’s tone was venomous, but Howard detected fear.

  ‘Because they’re not looking for us.’

  ‘Let’s hope not. That’s all we need. The whole Portuguese air force shooting us up. Why did that fucking skipper have to pop his clogs tonight?’

  ‘Are they British?’ Cleaver demanded.

  Howard told him they were.

  ‘The other blokes on board will have the body in port by morning, or near enough. They’ll lose no time, then the search will be off. It probably is already. The plane will identify and get back. It won’t come out again. God looks after his own.’

  ‘He’d better,’ Waistcoat grumbled.

  Howard turned away. ‘I’ll see what else I can find.’

  A call from plane to yacht acknowledged their signal. The yacht said they needed no assistance, and would reach Punta Delgado next day with the body.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Waistcoat said. ‘You’ll get a medal for this, you blind old bastard.’

  Back at his listening post he heard nothing more that was relevant, silence mostly. He drifted towards sleep, which he had been short of since embarking. A dream came, of walking the lanes in spring around the Malverns, Laura’s commentary sounding through: ‘A splash of sun on the ivy brings out the sheen and shape of every leaf, Howard. There’s a patch of primroses, a lovely fresh mustard yellow, about a score of them a bluish one in the middle that the others are cherishing. It’s really beautiful. Ah, now there’s a cheeky celandine! We’re coming to a dead elm, dead twigs dried by a week of dry wind. They rattle like bones, dry bones, dead bones. It’s all dead.’

  ‘I can hear them,’ he thought he had said on waking up.

  The boat was turning south, and it was quiet on deck, eleven o’clock, lightning flashes towards the north-west, wind shifting, an almost silent chop. Richard was called to the stateroom, leaving Cleaver at the wheel.

  Waistcoat was going at a large whisky, though at such a time it would have no more effect than water. Probably cold tea. Better if it was. He stared at the chart. ‘This is the time I get nervous.’

  ‘I know how you feel.’

  ‘You don’t.’ He laughed. ‘But I’ve got the stomach for it, that’s all I know. Will they be there, is what I’m concerned about. You never know till it happens. I shouldn’t like to come this far for fuck-nothing. Will we get there at all, though?’

  ‘No doubt about that.’

  Richard preferred a chief whose nervousness bubbled on the outside, found him easier to trust and more reliable than some of the tight lipped masters he had known. ‘We’re on our way. Nothing can stop us.’

  ‘But are we tracked? Will that fucking plane pick us up?’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. We were lucky it didn’t happen under our noses. They’ve done their work for today. It’s good for us.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘They won’t be out looking tomorrow. It’s all happened today.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. Let’s get back on the bridge.’

  The turn shook Howard from his green and pleasant lanes, and the sound of Laura’s voice from the time when his eyes were working, in the days when he saw as clear as she did. On deck in the uttermost blackout of the night he was in total darkness anyway. Nor would anyone else see much, hear only the hum of engines and a softened rush of water as the bows cut towards the mountainous island. They relied on Cleaver’s skill as a navigator, without which, or a warning light, they would hit the shore at fifteen knots and the end would be quick: a line of surf and a tangle of black razor rocks smashing the boat to pieces.

  ‘How much now?’ Waistcoat said.

  ‘Half an hour,’ Cleaver’s cool voice told him. ‘Another seven miles.’

  ‘But where’s the fucking light?’

  ‘We’ll see it, when we get down to four.’

  Howard came and went unnoticed, wasn’t part of their fixed unity. Each time inside he reconnoitred the relevant wavelengths, heard a few ships asking if any messages had been left for them at the various coast stations. A gabble of voices from Porto Delgado was killed by static, but seemed nothing to concern them. Unable to sit still, he walked to where Scud was keeping watch. ‘Anything?’

  ‘No. But I’d like to suck on a fag. Senior Service for preference. Black as pitch, ain’t they? I can see the water, but knock all else. I’ll be glad when this part’s over. I told my wife that when I got back we’d jump in the car and go off to France. Find a nice three-star hotel to relax in. I’ll need cosseting by then.’

  ‘Sounds like a good way to get it.’

  ‘You bet it is. Eh, what’s that?’

  ‘Is it lightning?’

  ‘No, it’s steady. Now it’s gone. I must be seeing things. That’s the danger. You expect something, then you think you see it, when you don’t at all. Got to be careful, because if I tell the chief I see it, who don’t because it ain’t there for him, he’ll have a fit – and that’s not a pretty sight. He can’t stand somebody who isn’t a hundred per cent sure of what he sees.’

  ‘It’s not good for his confidence, I suppose.’

  ‘It don’t matter all that much. He can pay for them as knows how to see and how to do. He’s better than good at that.’

  ‘You can see the light now, though, can’t you?’

  ‘I’ve just caught it. How did you know? You saw it before I did. Are you blind, or aren’t you?’

  Howard’s head went forward, as if to smell the light. ‘I felt it, can’t tell why. A light in my darkness, and I’ll never know where it came from.’ I shouldn’t have spoken, he thought, but hadn’t been able to resist showing off the powers of instinct. ‘It must be my sixth sense. Sometimes jumps into action. Is it still there?’

  ‘It is, for sure this time.’ He pushed by. ‘They’ll want to know on the bridge.’

  Richard called Waistcoat from his pacing up and down the state room. ‘I knew they would do it. More than their legs are worth not to. Straight on, Mr Cleaver. You found it, anyway. Spot on. Right out of the night, and dead on the snout. Send one short flick on the lamp to say we’ve got ’em.’

  Cleaver grunted himself into a ramrod straightness, shoulders back. He didn’t need praise. No praise could be good enough. It was irrelevant. Navigation was an art as well as a craft, dependent on confidence and occasional luck, the ability to move in darkness with no points of reference except those last seen in daylight, or sights on stars and planets when the curtains or night were about to come down. You couldn’t be praised for what you did, praise not being praise from those who knew nothing about the profession. ‘Just stay on course, I’ll tell you when to reduce speed.’

  ‘It’s flickering,’ Waistcoat said. ‘What’s it saying?’

  ‘The letter A,’ Richard told him.

  ‘Alpha,’ Cleaver added. ‘Aleph, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Exactly what it should be.’ Waistcoat rubbed his hands. ‘All’s well for the right letter. Anything else and we’d about turn for twelve hundred miles.’

  ‘No need,’ Cleaver said. ‘Keep straight on. On and on, Richard.’ Other lights jewelled faintly up the hills behind. ‘Ignore those. Hold the correct one in your mind’s eye. He’ll send the A now and again, so there’ll be no mistaking.’

  ‘I see it,’ Richard said. ‘No problem.’

 
; ‘Twenty minutes yet,’ Cleaver uttered. ‘A piece o’ cake, now we’ve got their signal.’

  Killisick came in with a tray of mugs, and each took one silently. ‘Cocoa,’ Ted said, ‘with plenty o’ milk and sugar.’ He put one in Howard’s hand. ‘You’ll need it as well.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Waistcoat hissed. ‘You’ll wake the dead. It’s lights out and silence till we hit the beach. And the same then.’

  Ted whistled a tune as he went.

  ‘Cocoa,’ Waistcoat snarled, but he drank it. ‘Reminds me of that time when I …’

  Richard broke in. ‘Me too.’ Neither he nor anyone else needed to say where. ‘It’s good stuff.’

  ‘Dead slow, no lights, and not a squeak, that’s what I said, wasn’t it, Mr Cleaver?’

  ‘It was, sir, and we heard you.’

  ‘Give ’em another glow on the flasher to say we’re still on our way. If theirs changes from an A to an N it means we can’t land.’

  ‘It’s still on A,’ Richard said.

  ‘I know, cunt. Even I can recognise it now.’

  Richard, as always on such trips, had one of his handguns snug and loaded in the pocket of his naval jacket. He carried it, as a guarantee against what contingency he didn’t care to think about. He saw no situation in which he might use it, not in a normal state of mind anyway, which he had no intention of ever abandoning. But a cutting weal flashed over him at Waistcoat’s rebuke, and to take out the gun now and squeeze the trigger at the back of his head seemed a short journey towards teaching him a lesson, except there would be no improvement in his behaviour because he’d be dead. Waistcoat had made worse ripostes before, but in less tense circumstances, and wrapped them up in his usual fluent abuse at which you could only smile. Silence as always was good for dignity, and the temptation passed, though he worried that it had come, not liking to have the moods that shot over him influenced by any man.

  Waistcoat swayed, as if seeing double from the whisky. ‘It’s the best sight in the world.’