The German Numbers Woman (14 page)

‘True,' Howard said dryly. ‘Funnily enough, though, I dwell on it every day. Not for long, but I do. A survival exercise you might call it. Still, it's strange the subject came up.'

‘Maybe it's the common denominator of those who have a life long attachment to wireless,' Richard suggested. ‘You can't help but feel everything is foreordained, every dot and dash sparking the details of somebody's fate into your ear.' He turned to Laura. ‘Now we are talking shop. Didn't take long, did it?'

She liked his levity of tone, as well as skill and diplomacy in keeping the chat going. ‘I'll leave you both to it. I must put those lovely flowers in water, and tidy up the kitchen after supper.'

Richard tapped the rim of the cup with his spoon, as if she had taken their talk with her. Howard looked, if he could be said to, at the door through which she had gone, then lowered an arm to stroke the cat which, though silent, he knew to be there.

Richard saw him as being all the time alone in a place Laura could never reach. When they weren't together Howard was somewhere on his own, unreachable and curled into himself. It was the only way he could get by, but even if he had never been afflicted he might still have been an unreachable loner. You couldn't tell, though he imagined Laura got into his spirit and lodged there for her solace as well as his.

‘You sound as if you're trying to send me a message.'

He lay his spoon in the saucer. ‘Same old restless fingers.'

‘Like all of us. The French call wireless operators
“pianistes”
, so I hear, because they play at the key and make a peculiar rhythmical noise. I suppose it does sound weird to other people, but to us it's like listening to plain language.'

Richard thought it charitable to let someone do the talking who lived a virtual hermit much of his life. Which is good as far as I'm concerned because he'll have little to judge me by, though it could be I'll learn more from him than he will from me.

‘You might call us the high priests of morse. Funny how I sometimes feel one myself,' Howard said. ‘We're members of a secret society because we have access to spheres which let us clip into their traffic – unknown to those who are communicating. I often envy the way they go on so blithely, not suspecting a thing.'

He spoke slowly, yet a subtle urgency lay behind his words, sometimes as if he would stumble over the next, though he never did, choosing each phrase as if rehearsed beforehand in the darkness of his mind. Perhaps Howard thought he was speaking to someone who lacked one of the many senses developed through being blind, or who was without at least one extra sense which a man with sight couldn't have. At the same time he seemed unaffected by Richard being a stranger, unselfconscious to an extent that he was on his own, or talking to a mirror in which he couldn't see himself. Though finding it a peculiar experience Richard was neither offended nor embarrassed, simply standing to one side while Howard did the talking. He assumed he would get used to it, if he came to see him again, and for Laura's sake, after another glance at the photograph of her as a young woman, he very well might.

‘For instance,' Howard went on, ‘there was a time when I heard Chinese operators on the Peking to Turkestan run. Very peculiar morse they sent. Most had no idea of the rhythm, and it was hard at times to make sense of. Then Laura read me from the newspaper that when a Chinese airliner was hijacked the wireless operator killed the terrorist with an axe!'

Richard laughed with him, saw the smile lift his cheeks, an extension of the lips, the sound unnerving, like a hand scraping on cardboard. ‘Served the bugger right. Hijackers will become the unacknowledged legislators of the world if we're not careful.'

‘It's wonderful that the sparks did it,' Howard said. ‘It must have made his day, after being bored so long at his key. I wish I'd been tuned in at the same time, when he sent his SOS. I'm always on the line for learning something new about the human soul. A peculiar wish, you might say, because I don't suppose I'll ever be able to, at least until I've learned all there is to know about my own – assuming that's possible, which of course I have to doubt. I'm not even sure I would want to know myself completely, though the wish is always there.'

Richard sat again, resisted taking up the spoon in case he tapped out something incriminating. ‘I don't imagine it would do much good to either of us.'

‘It might make me a different person, and that couldn't be bad, under the circumstances. The thing is, that all the time I listen at the wireless I feel myself changing, but so subtly I don't really notice at the time. That's what keeps me going. Though it can be disturbing it's also like a balm, twenty years measurable only in micro units. I tune in on the wavelengths we used in the Air Force, hoping to hear something vital, but there's nothing there anymore, just silence, or atmospheric mush.' He was quiet for a moment, and for Richard to fill it would seem too brusque an interruption. Then he decided: ‘Let's have a whisky. We can take our glasses to the wireless room.'

The cat followed them. Howard switched on to the French merchant marine station, a call sign endlessly repeating. ‘Such a noise would send most people mad, if they were forced to listen.'

‘Me as well,' Richard said. ‘Maybe they used that sort of thing in Northern Ireland, to get people to talk. A chap went mad from hearing it when I was at radio college. It can be a good weapon. For instance I was in a hotel room once, and a party was going on next door. It was after midnight, and I couldn't get to sleep. Luckily I had a portable shortwave radio I was taking with me to join a yacht, so I plugged it in and held the speaker against the wall. It only needed two minutes, with the loudest possible morse belting away. Cut their jollity dead. Didn't hear a murmur after that, though I did get a few funny looks at breakfast.'

The room was neat, custom built for the purpose, a narrow table from wall to wall, and a small window for taking the aerial outside. The wall was covered by a coloured Mercator map of the world, and a plotting chart of Western Europe similar to his own. Maybe Howard liked to feel the paper.

He was put in the spare chair while Howard fiddled with the controls of an old RAF Marconi, to the left of his typewriter and the modern equipment. A morse key was screwed into the table and wired to an oscillator. Richard imagined him being helped into his flying jacket, hitching on a parachute, and sitting hunched at his wireless as in the old days, re-living the trip of his final devastation over Germany. He might also wear a suit and beret, and play a resistant
pianiste
in occupied France, keeping a loaded and cocked revolver by his sending hand should the Germans break in, aiming to kill them but reserving the final bullet for himself. Such people were taken alive if possible, tortured to make them spill codes and contacts before being killed. ‘Been hearing anything interesting?'

The magic eye of his twenty-quid junk-shop radio was a button of green flame created out of electrons and neutrons, which produced a small circle of living light held to a constant glow, not an identity button for the blackout but one for the overcoat of a wandering wizard – fixed into the left side of the wireless. If the magic eye dimmed out the circuit would go dead, the world stop, all movable animal and geological life be sucked into space. Every morning Howard put his finger close to make sure it was at his bidding, and thanked the Deity – whoever or whatever that might be – for keeping him healthy and well provided for, except that he couldn't see the green glow in the same way as everyone else, didn't need to, because there was a greener eye inside him, an eye that could penetrate everything, which he now turned on Richard.

‘A fair amount. It's hard not to, if you're persistent. I'm at it all my spare time.' The first rule in the procedure book at radio school was: ‘Intelligent cooperation between operators,' but to share what he heard would be like leaving a hole in his body never to be closed. All he heard was his alone. To betray Judy and her friend, or the German Numbers Woman, or Vanya in Moscow, or the
Flying Dutchman
, or any other character culled from the network and allowed to grow and become real in his mind, wasn't part of his wish. At the moment they were beholden to him for their secret existence. On the other hand, perhaps Richard already had them in his books, and to mention them would make no difference either to their fate or his. But he was taking no chances.

Richard sensed his reluctance. You only got what you gave, nothing more and nothing less. ‘I still have the speed to take everything, even the Italian news at twenty eight words a minute. It's amazing how it stays with you. The Italian weather comes in pretty fast as well. It's good practice, and keeps the brain sharp. That's the reason I do it.' He wondered at the red pins scattered across the Russia of
Mercator's World
, deciding Laura must have put them in, places Howard had heard calling on the radio perhaps, though none were on known towns. A pile of sheets were stacked behind the typewriter, and he tried to see what was on them. ‘Is that how you keep your log?'

‘I do.' Howard shuffled them, put them aside. ‘Though there's no method in it, unless I get my sight back and one day want to remind myself how things were. A tape recorder's better, which I use for voice mainly.' He turned the needle from where it might alight on Judy calling her lover.

Richard, leaning against the chest of drawers, noted a plastic globe of the world, surface slightly raised for coastlines and mountains, which made it easier for Howard to read. ‘I like to hear ship-to-shore telephone conversations, though they're mostly Russian or Italian. Trawler skippers come up as well. Can't say I record much of that, or type it up.'

‘I'd like to be able to.' Howard lit his pipe, more apposite for the wireless room, blowing smoke upwards, head tilted as if to look at its changing shape. ‘That's one thing I miss – seeing my handwriting. I could read a lot more from how that changes than from what it's actually recording. Did you bring your key?'

Richard reached for his plastic bag. ‘And the oscillator. I'll send something if you like.'

‘It'll be music to my ears.'

One at each end of the table, but as if separated by five hundred miles, Howard locked the fingers of one hand into the other, cracking his knuckles into a state of flexibility. Very professional, Richard smiled.

‘You go first,' Howard said.

‘What shall I be? Ship, plane or land station?'

‘Try land station, and I'll be a plane, unless I change into something different halfway through.' His taugh was like that of an infant embarking on mischief. ‘This will give meaning to life, but it'll be interesting to hear morse from a person I know. You can use the call sign RIC and I'll be HOWAR. How's that?'

Start with something short, Richard decided, smoothing thumb and forefinger together, surfaces as if dried with chalk dust. ‘Where are you?' he tapped.

The signals came back with exquisite tone and well practised rhythm. ‘Over the Ural mountains,' Howard played, ‘heading west. You'll hear me louder soon. And where might you be?'

Howard must fiddle with the key at a set time every day to send so perfectly, a man of habit and timetable. ‘On a Greek island, listening out for the sinners of the world. What are you doing?'

‘I'm the radio officer on the
Flying Dutchman
of Eternal Airlines, going round and round the turbulent earth. It's dark up here, all the time. Sometimes the ailerons or an elevator get struck by lightning, and we spiral down, livid with fear, but before we hit the deck God makes everything right and pulls us back to thirty thousand feet. He needs us alive, though I often wonder why. I'd like us to find a neat runway and come into a perfect landing along the flarepath, but God won't let us.'

The gaps between the contacts of Richard's key were wide enough for the clicks to be heard, as well as the oscillations, and his sending at the moment was less perfect than Howard's. He tightened the screw to avoid occasional repetitions. ‘Yes, God is a hard man. Do you want me to have a word with him?'

‘Wouldn't do any good. His wirelesses are turned off for people like us.' He gave the wireless operator's laugh. ‘The Lord ain't got no radio gen. But tell me about yourself. Keep me busy.'

Richard took a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘Irrelevant and inconsequential chat between operators is expressly forbidden but, frankly, I don't give a toss. Of course, somebody's always listening, though only you and me, in this case. So let's carry on. You have my permission, if I have yours.'

‘Granted. Trouble is, there's always a third person taking everything in,' Howard responded, ‘and we know who that is, don't we?'

‘That old grandad God. Let him listen. We can't say anything that would surprise Him.'

‘Maybe not.' Howard laughed at the cat going out because it could take no more. ‘He's a lot older than we are.'

‘I know, but it's saying it that's the point, and you can bet everything's written in the Good Lord's logbook, to be held against us whenever He thinks fit.'

Richard paused, at Howard's intention to give away no secrets – which is why I am here. Hand over the key, he had to break out of such crap talk. ‘There's not much to say about myself.' This was untrue, but the speedy response startled him:

‘We don't listen to morse on the wireless for hour after hour for pleasure. There must be more to it than that.'

Richard's hand trembled, missing a beat and needing to repeat a word. His wrist ached, and he wanted to pack it in, but they had just started. It might be impossible for anything but honesty, not the sort of situation he liked. He looked at the other side of the paper. ‘I'll send you the latest weather from my Greek island.'