The German Numbers Woman (53 page)

That's why we're here. Howard fumbled a way to his radio post, but paused by the rail, as if he had lost his way, direction topsy-turvy, bearings gone. He stilled his shaking hands, couldn't think, reason gone overboard. He wanted the reassurance of his radio gear, craved his beloved toys.

Nothing on the air waves, though there would be soon. Radar was tracking them along the Channel, but they were beyond the twelve-mile limit. If the morse letter had not been taken note of Waistcoat would get the stuff unloaded and away without molestation. It had gone astray. Or perhaps not. He couldn't yet know. If it hadn't, a pre-emptive strike was called for, legal or not. Impossible to predict. Hard to care what happened, warm in the arms of Judy whenever they had the chance to be alone. The suppressed anxieties of everyone on board convinced him he was as much a member of the crew as they were, hoping for success with the rest of them. He had once, beyond his own control, gone into an amusement arcade and pushed every coin from his pocket into the one-armed bandit, waiting for the crash and fall of a jackpot – which hadn't happened.

In the night they would pass the town where Laura was sleeping. She wouldn't know, or see them. He was sorry she had suffered such anxiety – if she had, and who could be sure? He wouldn't go back, but can a blind man take to the road like the Wandering Jew? The wash of the sea made a comforting sound.

The German Numbers Woman came back, with her hectoring repetitive tone, coded instructions going to no one knew where or to whom, though most likely to say they would never make landfall.

‘NEUN – SECHS – FUNF – ACHT – VIER – EINS – NEUN – NEUN – SIEBEN – DREI – SECHS – VIER – DREI – EINS,' remorselessly on and on.

He passed an earphone to Judy. ‘Take a listen.'

‘Who is she?'

‘I don't know. What do you make of it?'

‘Sounds a nasty piece of work.'

He laughed. ‘I'm used to her. Heard her for years.'

‘You shivered, just then.'

He had, and not from the cold. Landfall blocked. His sins were too great, he had never atoned, not even thought of it, was responsible for all those members of mankind in all countries over the globe who hadn't stopped evil and done good in the ages of the past. Landfall in the mind of the German Numbers Woman was a paradise no one deserved. He silenced her, by flipping the needle, unwilling to take on a burden that would always be there.

Routine weather synopses were typed and handed in, though anyone on board with a ghetto blaster could bring in local stations and hear the forecasts in spoken language. He must be sure that it matched his own, nothing more he could do for them, or wanted to, turned back to the radio nevertheless, invisible switches on which his nervous fingers found a kind of reality. She tapped his shoulder. ‘What would your wife say if she knew we were having an affair?'

The question was soothing, from a more human world. ‘I don't know.'

‘Course you do! I mean, would she be jealous?'

‘I think so.'

‘You mean she doesn't have lovers as well?'

‘Not as far as I know.'

‘Well, maybe a man never does know – if she wants to hide it. It's easy to hide it if you want to.'

‘I wouldn't want to, though, with you.' Everything was in the open, nothing hidden, on the boat, so it wouldn't be when they got off it either.

‘What's she like?'

‘It's hard to tell.'

‘Flippin' 'ell!'

‘Well, not just like that. But why do you want to know?'

She laughed. ‘You always do, I suppose.'

‘I'll tell you when I can.'

‘Maybe I'll see her, one day.'

That, he thought, would be a right meeting and, wanting to alter the topic, said: ‘I haven't heard anymore from Carla.'

She leaned over him. ‘I don't need her anymore. I've got you now.'

Impossible to know how true it was, but her words were honey nevertheless, though if Carla were to magically appear out of the blue and walk along the deck, he didn't doubt Judy would run to her. He would expect no less. In any case, she might get in touch – who throughout months of listening had become real enough to him – after they had, landed, if and when they did.

Hope was in the crucible, the future chaos, as far as plans between him and Judy went. All was fantasy. His mind, the only means of sight, grew darker. Everyone on the boat believed in a future, for morale's sake couldn't afford not to. Cannister had shaved, smartened himself up for a spot of shore leave, as if still a young and careless rating in the Navy. Cleaver had stopped his jibes about the paucity of cucumber sandwiches, and said how much he was looking forward to: ‘Going down the gangway, with pouch, pipe, purse and prophylactics in my pocket!'

‘I wonder though, what's going to happen to us,' he said.

She lounged on the sofa opposite and, peeling an orange from the cloth bag she carried, leaned forward to pass him a segment. ‘I'll tell you, if you like. We'll get ashore, and I'll take you to the nearest decent place for a meal. We'll talk, and hold hands, and the men in the room will envy you, and wonder what you've got that they haven't. I'll moon over you to make them jealous. Then we'll go to a hotel and have a proper sleep together. I'll lead you by the hand.'

‘I'll hold you to it.'

She passed another sliver of orange. ‘Eat it. We share. You brought me back to life, didn't you? You made me feel like myself again, and I know it took a lot of doing.'

He laughed, drinking in the spirit of her still uncaring youth. ‘I didn't even try.'

‘So what would happen if you did? Whizz bang! You'd never get rid of me.'

‘I'll never want to.'

‘Oh, right. I don't even have to think about what I'm going to say when I talk to you. I just say it and know it'll be all right. With Carla it was different. I had to be careful. I could never be easy with her. She thought I was, but she was so selfish she could never know the tension I was under.'

Nor had he, because she'd sounded relaxed enough over the radio on all those nights he'd listened. She hadn't known about his crafty eavesdropping, though perhaps he would be able to tell her, if such a time ever came. ‘What a life it's been for you.'

‘Flippin' amazing how you can love someone who's not very nice. She didn't even understand me, I'll never know why. It should have been easy enough. But I'm keeping my man from his precious wireless. You're the ears of the boat, and that's more important than eyes. Everybody's got eyes. They're ten a penny. But ears are different. They're special. Not as special as your hands, though.
They're
brilliant. Still, you'd better get back to it, while I go and see what's for our dinner.'

‘A kiss before you go.'

‘You don't have to ask.' He had to believe she had fallen in love with him, because a blind man had no right to be sceptical. He had kept the secret of his love from Laura, but she had been his nurse rather than that divine love which ever)' member of the human species who had evolved out of the slime ought to experience once in life. He hadn't been the love of her life, either, merely the purpose of her existence, that of keeping a safe house around him, to make a refuge for herself as well. On a walk in Malvern she had said a car had just passed with a logo in the window saying: ‘
DARWIN WAS RIGHT
', and he was appalled that someone should flaunt such a daft statement, though now, the boat whacking its way through a following sea, he had to believe it.

The staccato rhythm of Portishead pumped out the weather forecast. Everyone on board would agree that Darwin was right, that only the fittest would survive, the fittest being those who saw nowhere to go after death but into blackness, and who behaved as instinct required for the ultimate good of self preservation.

A force five wind, in the North Sea, occasionally gale, but it would diminish and grow calm by tomorrow, a better telegram to hand Waistcoat, he thought, on knocking at his door. He took a few steps to where he smelled the steak being eaten for lunch, and gave him the paper, arm full out, as close as he could get without bumping the table. ‘The latest weather, Chief.'

Waistcoat snapped it away to read. ‘That's good. We'll need it good by then.' His cutlery rattled. ‘Any other interesting stuff?'

‘Most of the waves are surprisingly quiet.'

‘Let's hope it stays that way.' He ate easily, at home in the serpentine mud walled tunnels of his mind. ‘What are you waiting for?'

Howard turned. ‘I was about to go.'

‘No, hang on a bit.' His appetite was good, wine glass and eating irons moving in harmony. ‘I've got something to say to you, Howard.'

‘What might that be?'

‘Don't get huffy with me. All I want to say is, just watch out for that Judy. She's had more boyfriends than you've had hot dinners. Girlfriends, as well. A few things in between, I shouldn't wonder.'

He punctuated Waistcoat's laugh: ‘I'll listen out during the night. Maybe I'll hear something. I don't need much sleep. You never can tell what I might pick up.'

‘Yeh, slog your guts out at that boffin's gear. Work like the rest of us. I'll tell you this, though: I rely on you as much as any of the others. Maybe even more – if I think about it.'

He shuffled along the deck, knowing he must stay wary in the maritime den he was trapped in, because Waistcoat's remark was unusual, after the era of mistrust, as if he had hoped to lure him into a mistake plain for everyone to witness, even sending a message for unknown listeners to hear.

Scraps of talk from various places on the boat were joined by zones of darkness, but he found a cleanliness in the sea air which encouraged him in his design. Waistcoat's foul remarks about Judy – made out of spite, hatred, and perhaps even envy – didn't disturb him. Everybody on board knew he and Judy were in love, hard to hide it in such a place, and who would care to, in any case? They noted every move he made, and neither he nor Judy cared.

Three ships on the same frequency were calling different stations – Portishead, Gdynia, and Bahrein – and getting no answers. They would soon enough, so he spun the needle and tuned in to something else. Morse tinkled into space and was lost, and thus were the cries of humans likewise unmet. Even when two bodies were face to face the wrong signals could be sent, or none that were vital be transmitted, or the right ones that were misconstrued.

A Russian ship failed to get through, the same for one calling Algiers, as if a fearful ambush of atmospherics hovered over the coast stations, or the operators' ears were for some reason stopped up. Communication could be uncertain at the best of times, and often there was nothing to do but wait for the sunspot to go, or hope for better conditions, or persist in your attempts until the blockage dissolved from whoever's ears.

He copied the Mediterranean weather, to give the impression he still had his uses. Richard tapped him in passing: ‘Keep it up.'

‘I will.'

As long as he did he would come to no harm, Richard thought as he stood by the wheel. Being on watch took his tiredness away. When not working he craved sleep, for the trip to be over, to wake up in the luxury of isolation at home, but it was a perilous state of mind, looking so far ahead when the job was nowhere finished.

An engine sounded in the obscurity of low cloud. Aircraft could take photographs through any amount of precipitation, or plot them on their radar, but what was a large piston-engined plane doing out of the air traffic control zone? Gone, as eerily as it had come, but would it return?

He hadn't felt a moment's ease on the trip. So unexpectedly summed up, he knew it to be true. On other jobs his mind had been in neutral from start or finish, a couldn't care less attitude which told him that good sense wasn't buried too deeply and would come when needed. Confident and relaxed – but now he wasn't, not anymore – now that he had told himself so. He wondered if he was the only one on board with forebodings, thought he was, because the others seemed normal enough. Normal however, was button-lipped at the best as well as at the worst of times. You couldn't know what they were thinking even when you had sailed with them so often.

In improving visibility he tried to make out the Isle of Wight through binoculars, not sure whether he fixed on a bank of cloud, or a line of hills. Land played tricks, coy or perilous, scotch mist or fleeting image. Rain splattered the windows. The cloudscape had gaps, a line of sun either to bless or blemish. Cleaver, never one to shun work, recorded its wayward appearances with the sextant, while Killisick slaved to make ends meet in the galley. Food was running short, at least in variety, though nobody much cared since land was so close. Waistcoat paced his state room, aware more than anyone else that the test was coming.

The waves went on forever, they always did, a sight for sore eyes though not just now, each on the bump and slide, one over the other, fist into fist and here comes the next, an ongoing monotony. Cinnakle hoped his engines wouldn't seize up for lack of fuel, lucky to be thinking of nothing else, no sense of threat from any quarter – as far as anyone could tell. Cannister and Scuddilaw kept watch on deck, three pairs of eyes better than one alone on the bridge. ‘More reliable,' Waistcoat swore, ‘than your effing radar.' So all were occupied in their allotted ways, except Judy who had been in to say she was getting her head down for an hour.

Time that dragged by the minute had to be endured. Luckily there was no such thing as forever. His course was steady, no shake at the compass, a dead-on zero-seven-five towards the narrowing mouth of Dover, old Cape Grey Nose to starboard.

A single engined low wing monoplane made a shadow over the water. Another inquisitive bastard, this time different. Maybe he was a private aviator coming from France, except that he should have been higher. One plane was fortuitous, a second definitely worrying.