The German Numbers Woman (48 page)

‘I'm the wireless hack, listening for any opposition.'

‘A sparks, eh? They don't generally carry one.' After a silence she asked: ‘How long till we get back?'

He stroked the rail, as if it breathed for them both. ‘Are you in a hurry?'

‘I've someone to see. The other boat's gone to the Med. I want to see my girlfriend.'

She was so close he touched her when the boat lurched, its course coming into line with the north. ‘Can you see anything?'

‘No more than you can.' She laughed. ‘What a funny question.'

‘I can't see, even when I look.'

‘How do you mean? You're getting a bit philosophical. I'm not used to that.'

Her voice was so much the same, locked in by darkness, and the rushing of the sea, that he wondered if he wasn't hearing it as in former days, earphones clamped, and she chatting to a male interloper who had wandered onto the wavelength. ‘Can you see me smile?'

‘If I look close. Your eyes are fixed. I'm not surprised you can't see. How do you do it?'

He jumped the inches, hands going over the features to take in her image. ‘Like this.'

‘What the hell?' she cried.

‘Sorry. I wanted to see you. I wanted to make out what you looked like.'

‘Oh, that's all right then. I've never had that excuse before. Very funny.'

‘I really am.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘It doesn't make any difference being blind if you're a wireless operator.'

‘You've got to be joking.'

‘You could even say it sharpens the ears wonderfully.'

‘I've never met anyone who's blind.'

To say he'd caught her in a rare area was more than right. She'd never been such a way before, and since it was something to his advantage he sensed an element of cheating. ‘Not many people have.'

‘You aren't kidding?'

‘Who would, about that?' He wallowed in the closeness of her voice, and her face as she looked closer for confirmation. ‘I only wish I could be.'

‘What sort of a boat have I landed on?'

‘You may well ask.'

‘Was it in a car crash, or have you been like that from birth?'

There was a possibility of her spending a long time in jail, because sitting at his radio night after night he had malignly influenced the turn of events which brought her before him. Back at the radio he might hear voices closing in on them by the minute, a pair of powerful launches crossing searchlights over the bridge, a bellow through megaphones for them to heave-to. The jaunt would be over. She would be handcuffed, and led away with the rest of them.

Better to be with her while he could, time too valuable to waste on such imagining. So many emotions beat at him. He had expected, for all his trickery – sheer bluff – to hear no more than a few casual words, either on the beach or on the boat. She would drift away, and he would be satisfied. Now she was close enough to touch, waiting for him to talk, which was all he wanted, when he should be at the radio, working on a scheme that might save them. ‘In an aeroplane. I caught it over Germany, at the end of the war. I was twenty, and haven't seen anything since. I feel I can see you, though.'

‘Oh, right! You are a strange bloke.'

‘I might not have been, but for this. You're a rare person yourself.'

‘How can you know?'

Nights at the radio made her voice as familiar as a friend not seen for a while.

‘I suppose it was the way you jumped on board and said you were hitching a lift home. In no uncertain terms, when you didn't seem wanted. You really let rip at the chief.'

She laughed. ‘I don't take any nonsense from men like him. He knows who I am. I was on a boat with him on the Med once, for a month's cruise. He treated me like rubbish, until I let him have it. He wasn't so bad after that, though I still think he's a nasty piece of work. I don't often swear, but sometimes you have to.'

‘You seem in a hurry to get to England.'

‘I suppose so,' she said after a pause. ‘I have a girlfriend, and she might be there. She might not be, though. You can never be sure with her. She's got a boyfriend, so maybe she's still in Barcelona.'

He didn't want to hear about Carla., ‘Take my hand, and lead me to the wireless place. I can do it on my own, but it'll be easier with you.'

‘Why not?' Her fingers closed over his. ‘I've done some funny things in my time. Woof-woof! I'm a blind man's dog! Come on, then. The thing is,' she said as they went along, ‘I'm not sure about my girlfriend anymore. Everything's getting too difficult for her. I sometimes think I might be wearing her out. And it's hardly ever possible for us to get together. When she's in Spain I can't phone because her boyfriend might answer, so she told me not to. We used to natter over the radio, but the skipper put a stop to it.'

She talked openly because he was blind. He was much older and not involved, so he too could be frank. ‘Do you prefer women to men?'

‘I don't know. It's just her.'

No more talk. She found him the place, and he tuned in. The voices were no louder, because the boat was pushing along at top speed. A clipped police menace, obvious in any language, was still there. Judy stood by, thinking that if Carla wasn't too far off she would ask to use the VHF, or perhaps even shortwave. ‘You could call her, if she's still on the boat,' he said, knowing her mind. ‘Except that you would blow our cover. Our lives depend on radio silence.'

‘How did you know what I was thinking?'

‘I put myself in your place. Everyone has a sixth sense, or whatever number it is, except they don't know how to find it. Being blind, it comes more readily. I developed it over the years.'

‘I've often wondered about that. I get a whiff of it when I'm in love, and then it lets me down.'

‘If you're blind you have to be in love all the time, with life, just to keep going.'

‘Right! I can see that. Do you want another cigarette?'

‘Yes, it'll help me stay awake.'

‘I'm feeling dead beat.' She drew her chest away from his shoulder. ‘But my eyes won't close. Tensed up, I suppose. I always am.'

Waistcoat put his head around the door. ‘Any news, Sparks?'

‘They're still there, but they aren't gaining on us.'

‘Tell us if they do, and we'll dance a few zig-zags.'

‘I know what you picked up on the island,' she said when Waistcoat had gone.

‘It might be best if you didn't. If we get caught with this lot on board we'll get twenty years each.'

‘Probably forty,' she laughed.

The earphones rested on the back of his neck. ‘Why did you choose to hitch a ride with us, in that case?'

‘It's a free trip. And I have a date. Or might have. The trouble is I'm not sure anymore. Do you think we'll make it?'

‘We'll get away from here, but they may be waiting for us up-Channel.'

‘Why do you think that?'

‘It's a risk we always take.'

‘Does Waistcoat know about the odds?'

‘I could be wrong.'

‘I hope so.'

‘I usually am, so don't worry.'

She felt safer with such a man on board, who wasn't the usual hyped-up yuppie or jailbird hysteric. He might be blind, but at least he was more interesting. ‘Oh, I never worry.'

‘I know how to put you to sleep,' he said. ‘I have a technique.'

‘You're not a dirty old man, are you?'

He was glad of her laugh. ‘Of course I am.' While sleeping she could no longer talk to him, but with four or five days still to go there would be enough time. He followed her to her bunk.

‘Lie on your stomach, and I'll massage the back of your neck. I do it for my wife when I'm on shore. You'll be off in no time.'

‘I'd like that.'

‘I must do another stint at the radio first, but I'll be back.'

‘You work hard.'

‘Only at times like this.'

The wavelengths were clear, all voices gone, so everyone was happy. Even Cleaver at the wheel was humming a tune. He hurried as safely as he could back to Judy.

His hand, touching her hair, rested gently on her neck, fingers opening along the flesh then coming together, firm without pinching. He pondered on the nature of a miracle. No such thing. He made it happen. His mind was beamed onto making her relinquish all connections with her troubled world, threads snapping one by one to let her float into the clear space of nothingness so that he could have peace for a while and take in her apparition.

‘I've heard of blind healers,' she murmured. ‘There used to be one in Boston.'

‘Tell me about it tomorrow. You need sleep.' He wanted oblivion for her even more than she wanted it for herself, needed her to be unconscious so that space for her own thoughts would come back. Kneeling, and leaning forward, both hands worked a rhythm, thumbs coming in from the sides of her neck and pushing a short way upwards, a forceful semicircular motion over and over to the beating of engines carrying them for the moment out of danger.

A changed rate of breathing told him she was asleep, a faint whistle, the slightest snore, but he kept on a few minutes beyond the usual number so that she wouldn't wake at the drawing back of his touch. The insomniac put in such a way to rest either woke up in half an hour, assuming they had been under for days, or they didn't come to until the clock had gone round, thinking they'd slept only a few minutes.

The treatment exhausted him, so he fumbled his way to the bridge, where he sensed people standing around in silence, nothing left to say. The blacked out boat was on one of Cleaver's courses taking them out of trouble, but they might have been dead, turned to stone as the boat drove under its own will, taking the crew on a straight line till there was no more fuel, the timbers went rotten, and it quietly sank. He and Judy, the last people alive, would go under together.

He went back to the comfort of the radio, tuning into morse on shortwave as if to connect himself again to the world beyond this ghostly boat. At the same time as finding Judy it had turned into the
Flying Dutchman
, and he a fully paid-up but soon-to-be-superannuated member of the crew, because everything had its price and there was only one lump sum for that.

A telegram rippled to a Philippines' coastal station, a member of the crew requesting his brother to take two kilos of the best ice-cream to his wife on her birthday. A tanker wanted anchorage at Antwerp in two days' time, giving its position in the eastern Atlantic. Normal life went on, traffic passing to and fro beyond the limbo of their boat speeding God knew where.

Laughter came from the bridge, the touch of glass against glass as he got close. Voices on VHF had faded, leaving them free and beyond range of interception, he said.

‘Come in, Howard,' Waistcoat said. ‘We're through the worst. The bags are on board, and all's well with the world. Have a drink, and a smoke if you like. We've got enough of it. Or you can have a shoot-up – in the arm though, not the arse!'

‘You want it, we have it,' Scud cackled.

‘Except it's teetotal with the powdered stuff,' Waistcoat said. ‘It's too top quality for the likes o' you lot. Just plain whisky's good enough.'

‘Start meddling with the cargo,' Cleaver said, ‘and we'll end up chasing skuas in Spitzbergen. It's not the stuff to indulge in at sea. Thank you, Chief, I will have another, but that's my limit. Then I'll go out and get a fix. There are stars about at the moment. You can take her in a tad, Richard. Make it zero-five-zero, and we'll be all set for hearth and home.'

Howard felt the glass at his hand, then a slice of bread and salami from Ted's tray, as half starved as the rest of them, after more excitement for him, he thought, than anybody else.

‘You run a good ship,' Cleaver's jaws munched. ‘Can't fault the food, Mr Killisick.'

‘Cut yer throat if yer did,' Ted said.

‘Cucumber's a bit off, though.'

‘It's been more than a week, Mr Cleaver,' Scud put in. ‘Ted ain't God.'

‘No, he's not.'

‘More than my life's worth, not to provide a good cook with all the trimmings.' Waistcoat was relaxed and in humour. ‘That, and a shit-hot navigator, and we can go anywhere.'

‘Thank you,' Cleaver said.

Refills were handed out, the tray passed around. ‘How's that tart who came on board?' Waistcoat said.

‘She's sleeping,' Howard told him.

‘I know her. She bumped in to the big gaffer a long time ago, so he gets her a job now and again. Otherwise she'd be serving in a chippy, or creating hell somewhere. Family man, the gaffer is, though I'd like to sling her overboard. She's got too much lip.'

‘I don't think anybody would like that,' Richard said.

‘I know they wouldn't. But she was on the radio, the one who flapped her mouth off. She should be taken to task.'

‘Better you than me, Chief,' Scud said.

‘At least we've got pineapples for a day or two,' Ted remarked. ‘Which was thoughtful of her. I can use 'em.' He laughed so merrily that Howard heard his teeth rattle. ‘They'll keep scurvy out, and that can't be bad.'

‘It's two o'clock, so we'd better get some shut-eye,' Waistcoat said. ‘Except for Mr Cleaver, and you, Cannister. Richard and Scud can take over at six. I'm knackered, so nobody wake me. You can sort out the watches among yourselves. I want to see dolphins in the morning. Polish my sea glasses, Ted, when you've got a minute.' He was on his way out. ‘There's fog all over 'em.'

THIRTY

Nobody was willing in their work, certainly not with a smile, as if landing and loading, and getting away from the island, had worn them to the bone. Whatever was done had a sullen air about it, no banter, not even grumbling – the worst sign of all. Only Cleaver didn't seem unusual, obsessionally occupied in obtaining astronomical fixes of the highest possible accuracy. Cannister and Scuddilaw, when not on watch, sat behind Howard at the radio and played brag, swearing when on hands and knees to find the rolling ten pee pieces. Ted Killisick's prowess at the stove had gone a step down in dexterity compared to the first week out. On the second day north Waistcoat was seen to lope from his quarters and throw both plate and food into the drink, without even the spirit to berate his cook.