The German Numbers Woman (2 page)

‘Thank you, then, and I hope you have a nice day' – for putting such notions into my head, though better not think so much, unless I want to get run over. Her light and quick footsteps were lost among others, crowding into the High Street, holidaymakers, mostly, out from boarding houses and hotels, or walking down from the station.

A poor kid got smacked for craving an ice-cream. There was a double stretch to cross where two streets merged. A dog barked, at what he would never know, but its throat grated, so it was on a lead, giving a shriek of despair at some minor loss, dragged from a rancid smell perhaps, or begrudged a tailwag with a possible companion. He stood, and laughed, dryly and alone, in tune with the animal's moans of commiseration as it passed the pet shop.

The studs of the crossing made a wide enough runway, and the baker's smell on the other side was a beam to draw him over. Ten times more traffic than forty years ago. A car stopped at seeing him, a big one this, station wagon maybe, certainly not a Mini. Here goes, and he went, a lift of his stick to the motorist, who pipped his horn – a vocal handshake. Another car stopped, this time small, all considerations shown, though he was glad to tap the lip of the kerb: the one-engined blind old kite had landed, the beam approach of studs and smell had worked, flying control had rolled out its expertise, just how he liked it.

Ozone caressed his nostrils from the one unmistakable direction, an endless horizon of green and blue, duck-egg blue maybe, a touch of turquoise, and the odd high cumulus above the line. A sail now and again might speck the water, anything from white to orange, though the fishing boats were already long back from their night's work. He could smell that, too, another odour of eternal life, healthy as well, as he crunched over shingle and picked up the tang of tar from the tall huts called tackle boxes in which nets were hung to dry.

So it was easy, as always, to know where he was among the radar of aromas, familiar from years of living in the same place, gratifying that in nil visibility he could make his way at a sure pace to where he wanted to go. From rightwards came the shrill calls of children living out their lives on the boating lake and in the paddling pool, and the muted clank of the miniature railway making its slow way up and down, all sounds providing cross bearings to his navigation system, perfect cocked hats to fix his location from the constant rush of traffic behind.

At this point, between the huts and the broken concrete pier, he always thought of when Laura had led him here for the first time. Every day it came to him, as if there had been little progress in their lives since. Hands firmly held, he had smelled the tears before they came to her eyes, on him remarking that he could taste the salt water turning into spray from the sullen waves falling line by line onto the stones. A common observation, not one to make her cry, he would have thought, but she hurried him back up to the house, as if she found it too painful to be seen walking out with him, husband and wife at twenty-two, not a word from her on the ascent. Halfway, he assumed it was because of the summer rain that fell in plates and drenched them after a few yards.

Once in the door she put his stick away. He saw her as the young girl she was, how she threw the stick rather, though in those days people weren't counted as young at such an age. The stick flew at the wall and bounced. She took off his saturated jacket and waistcoat, and sat him down, breathless from the climb though he was not, but he felt a light before his eyes as if about to get his sight back. She played Elgar's
Enigma Variations
on the radiogram. He'd often told her how much he liked it, so she'd gone out the day before to get the records for his birthday, not for another month.

He heard the angry crash of the curtains sliding to, then – silence but for the duet of their breathing. She put on one of the records to hide whatever devastating emotion still blighted from the beach. ‘This is for you, darling' pulling him roughly to his feet. ‘Only for you.' Salt tears again, as they listened and held each other, mixing with his to run down both faces, an amalgam of happiness as much as despair for a plight that would lock more firmly than any marriage.

He couldn't talk, blocked at the throat, a dumb tongue adding to his blindness. She had brought the records as a surprise, and the colours of music flared and expanded across white space, lighting every dark corner, his heart buffeted by the sweet strong music. Neither could she talk, didn't want to, pulled and pushed, kisses of possessive disregard for that one time which her love had to go through, noises meeting with his, no words possible, a dull erotic burning conquering them both, taking them away from house and seascape and the downs behind. Each other's clothes were clawed off, too hot in their passion to wait, that must have been it, they fell onto the carpet wailing and lost in a maelstrom of despair and pleasure that even now they hadn't fully learned to separate, while knowing they had been made for each other even before birth.

More than thirty years ago. Kids, they might be called. He tapped a bigger stone than most, pushed a hump of seawrack out of the way. That's what we were, yet it was all so dammed lucid still, and why did it come back every time he stood on this spot, the anchor stone of his life, and hers as well? Little more than twenty, how grown up we felt, and were, as if we'd lived a whole life already; and had, because there'd been no more since, not knowing we were set for an eternity of same days.

A gull came close, painted him with a rush of air from wing tips, slicing away the mark of Cain perhaps, or to stick two good eyes back beneath his lids as a gift from the gods, though even one would do. He envied Polyphemus at times and, hearing Laura's divine and measured voice as evening by evening she read through the
Odyssey
from the other side of the fireplace, cursed the brutal Odysseus for taking a burning fire brand to gouge out that one sensitive solitary eye, while supposing he would have done the same to save his friends.

He swung his stick in case another curious gull thought him a piece of rock. Memories had ossified in him, since he'd stopped having them from the age of twenty. Cloud hid the sun, cooling the air, senses sharp enough to pick out the arrowing sloosh of incoming tide driving between the two halves of the broken harbour pier. The past was nagging even more than usual today. When he first met Laura at the station dance he'd seen her as a young rather severe girl, white blouse fastened to the neck, brown cardigan open to show her shape. She smelled sweet, hair freshened by shampoo. His aircrew insignia and sergeant's stripes were newly sewn on, and he felt second to none, though slightly drunk from the cider.

They went around in the quickstep, and he knew it was polite to talk: ‘Would you like me to be your cavalier?' Before she could answer he went on, pell mell to obliterate such a daft beginning: ‘Now there's a remark to strike you, or it will when you wonder in the future how we first met.'

Nor had he ever needed to wonder, but why had he blathered such triteness when not really believing there could be any hope?

He had been blessedly wrong. She didn't laugh or scorn. ‘Yes, you can be my cavalier.'

She had waited for him night after night to come back from raids, and then he returned a different person to the one who had set out, but in the hospital she took his hand and, through the confusion of his darkness, said once more that he would be her cavalier, forever.

There were days when he felt the bow was taut, as taut as before the arrow flies. No explanation, but a tightening of anguish which was there when it shouldn't have been, making this day different though in what way from others he couldn't know. A clock began striking, later beats muffled by car noise. Ten o'clock, in any case. His heart missed a turn, marked time, carried on. As always he would recross the satisfyingly perilous roads, trawl along the High Street to get Laura's
Guardian
, and reach home in time for their morning coffee.

TWO

One day he'll fall. Blind men do. He would fall a long way. Or would he hit the ground like a baby and not hurt himself? On the other hand, why should he fall? If he did maybe she would be there to see. If not she would hear about it. You could turn off a tap but not stop the invasion of your thoughts. One day either he or she would die, but who would go first was impossible to say. The time could be a long way off, but the problem was a cruel one to ponder, so she preferred not to, because wanting him to live long could mean she would drop dead first. There'd be no one to guard him then. Best not to think, since the future belonged to nobody. She watched from the front room window, as always when he set out. He would know what was in her mind. ‘And my life will be finished,' she said.

‘Oh no it won't' – his tone a balance between humour and annoyance, the closest he would allow. ‘In any case, that's as maybe, and good old maybe is always unpredictable.'

Why do I let such idiocies through my head? No one was steadier on his feet, and his health was robust. He seemed forty rather than sixty. ‘And so do you,' he said when she told him.

He had climbed more steps and hills than she could remember. Choosing holidays, he opted always for inland, as far from the coast as they could get, somewhere in the Derbyshire hills, the Malverns, or Scotland. He was never happier than when they set out after breakfast from the hotel, walking a path between trees and bushes, into the open of higher land.

‘It's like being in the clouds,' he said. ‘It's like flying in an open cockpit.' Then his talk would stop, and he would go on, locked in for a while until: ‘At least I can feel the wind, and that's worth a lot. There's heather in it. Flowers and trees as well. The flowers are over there. Let's look at them.' He stroked the stalks, stamens and petals, bending down for a closer look, touching without damage.

The bed hardly needed making, they slept so deeply in their separate dreams, but she pulled it apart for freshness. The room was large and gloomy, backing against the cliff. She shook the sheets smooth, pulled blankets straight and folded them in, banged both pillows into shape. At least the little iron fireplace when filled and glowing took out the damp of winter, the room a delight to be in then, shadows on the walls at dusk. Howard couldn't see them, though said he could, at the sparking of the flames, lying in bed with a three-day flu last winter. ‘The first days out of action,' he said, ‘since the crash.'

Two people couldn't be ill in the same house, so no debilitating flu or colds for her. Howard knew this only too well, and swore he would keep fit till his dying day.

After bumping the Electrolux around the living room she noted its bag was full. Hadn't emptied it for months, so unclipped the top, lifted out the paper container bulging with dust, and walked through to thump it into the kitchen bin. Fitted with another, the nozzle sucked perfectly, though there was little enough to feed on.

She cleaned the house while he was out, easier than when weather kept him in, even though he sat in the wireless room, as he called it, listening to his eternal and mysterious morse. She liked him to go out because he was always more cheerful when he got back. He was like a baby to look after, but would die of shame if she told him. Which he might have assumed was why she hadn't had any, not knowing the reason had been hers more than his.

She fought against tolerating vain regrets. Regrets poisoned the soul, and the soul seemed frail enough at times, Howard knowing he can't – she thought – tell me how nice I look, though he was able to at the beginning and did so in such a way as to last me for life. But I always dress for him and look smart, so that people will think the same when I walk out with him. And I dress as well as I can when in the house because it makes me feel good, and there's always the thought that if there was a sudden miraculous peeling back of his blindness, I would want him to see me at my best.

It was essential to tidy up so that he would know where everything was. If an ashtray or chair, or one of his three pipes was out of place, his system for getting about without knocking anything over would, he said, go for a burton, so she took care that nothing did. If he asked where something was it would be that even she couldn't find it. The house was his universe, every object one of the innumerable stars that lit up in his darkness for guidance. As long as he could find the domestic radio, however, and the record player to put on a piece by Elgar or Gustav Holst, all was right in the world.

She cleared the plates, all shining and stacked. He would be back for coffee, the newspaper under his arm. ‘Read me whatever you think I might find interesting.' There was usually one item or another, to be marked with a pencil and reserved for tea time or after supper.

She kept two pencils by the telephone, in case the point of one snapped off while writing a message. Sharpening both, though they had hardly been used, she threw the shavings into the bin. If she went out Howard could just legibly write the number of anyone who called and wanted to hear from her. Sometimes they descended the hill together, but mostly she let him go. He wandered everywhere, and came back happy, though occasionally exhausted. Or so it seemed. He always denied it. When she went with him he became irritated by the smallest thing, such as imagining she resented going slow for him. It galled him, but not her. When they got home he was burning with inadequacy, even after all these years, as if thinking he had failed to lead her to somewhere wonderful, or hadn't brought her home to a heaven more alluring than the one they had left.

They talked about it. She never asked, but he volunteered. ‘The secrets of my blasted heart,' he said, ‘are all I have to give you. I want to be more than your ball and chain of flesh. I want to lead you to I don't know where. But it's a yearning, you see, and it gets me at the heart every so often. I can't think why.'

‘That's silly,' she said. ‘You've brought me there already.' She proved it with a kiss, for it was true enough, had to be, after living so long in stasis, never moving beyond the vivid days of their youth. For his sake there was much loving she had to feel, yet did so with neither thought nor effort.