The German Numbers Woman. Alan Sillitoe

so he immediately felt calm at being near, especially since, in handing over the jack, she seemed to trust him. She needed the expertise, after all.

      The nuts were so tight he had to stamp his shoes down on the spanner, kicking at each till they loosened and could be taken off, which brought on a bit of a sweat. She would never have done it on her own, but for him it was easy, and he slowed down because he wanted to stay a few more minutes near her. ‘Do you have far to go?’

      She told him. ‘I’ve just been to that stove place near Bracebridge. I’ve never had a blow-out before.’

      ‘There’s always a first time.’ A touch of grey on darkish hair added to her dignity, and he could only wonder where it came from. Straight backed, nothing ambivalent about her, English to the bone, she was the type he had never been so close to before. Her sort were usually too knowing to clinch with him, so good behaviour was the order of the day.

      She felt a fool but thought never mind, it would have been awkward struggling with the bolts, and he seemed familiar with such things, not put out either by drizzle and muddy pools around their cars. She considered herself lucky, and smiled, trying not to hover at each phase of the operation.

      ‘I live out near Benefield,’ he said. ‘My wife and I bought a house there two years ago.’

      ‘A nice village.’

      He told her about the goalposts, and the police visit, surprised at rattling on in a way he rarely did with Amanda.

      ‘You seem very efficient at this type of thing,’ she said. ‘It would have taken me twice as long.’

      At least, he smiled. ‘Part of my trade is messing about in boats, and a sailor can turn his hand to anything. Six months ago I went on a thirty-two-footer to Boulogne and back, and we had sails, but the engine broke down, and getting out of the harbour without it would have been tricky, so I set to, and got it going.’ He certainly had, driven by what they had on board, but he couldn’t mention that. He had made a special Consol lattice on the chart so they would know their exact position in poor visibility with regard to the coastguards. He didn’t think it worked, but at least the trip had gone off all right, and paid for a good bit of his BMW.

      ‘You were in the Navy, then?’

      ‘Merchant Service. Radio officer. But I came out. They didn’t pay enough for my liking.’

      ‘Oh!’

       Her façade was broken. Maybe she’d had a brother in the Navy who had been drowned, and he’d touched a chord. She flushed as if he had come out with something embarrassing, so plain was she to read. Or had he shown himself as too mercenary and common? ‘You seem surprised.’

      He had done her one favour, so she could hardly ask him for another, though perhaps that was all the more reason to. ‘No, it’s just that, well, if you were a radio officer, you must know the morse code.’

      Now he was surprised. ‘Read it like a book.’

      ‘Of course,’ she said.

      A funny question. Maybe she would ask him to teach her Brownie group or Girl Guide class. Or perhaps she was an off-duty policewoman, and wanted him to teach signals twice a week to the force – which would lead him quicker to his doom than being breathalysed. He’d often fancied himself as a teacher, but not that sort. No, she couldn’t be in the police, because she would at least be able to change a wheel, unless they had planted her as a decoy for swine who preyed on women in difficulty on the roadside. He looked at the trees, towards the hedge decorated with a plastic bag, at the ditch strewn with tins. ‘But why do you ask?’

      She liked his trim efficiency, medium height, slim build, face with no fat on it, showing features clean and – well – hard in a way, tough you might say, certainly a sailor, now that he had told her. ‘My husband was a wireless operator, in the Air Force.’

      No coincidence. There must have been tens of thousands trained in the old dit-dah. ‘Is that so?’

      ‘He got shot up, at the end of the war.’

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He put the hubcap back in place, tapped it with the muddy toe of his shoe. ‘So he’s one of the fraternity.’

      She liked the word. A fraternity. ‘He’s blind, but he gets around all right.’

      ‘I’m sorry to hear he’s blind.’ He was. Who wouldn’t be? ‘It happened to many, always the best people.’ That’s what she would like him to say. He wanted to keep her talking, hoped she wouldn’t leave, though they couldn’t stand forever in the mud and grit. ‘There’s a pub down the road. Would you join me for a drink.’

       That damnable east wind blew against her coat. Howard might be taking a nap now, dreaming his dreams, which could never be remembered. No man had invited her for a drink since before her marriage, but it would be impolite to hesitate. ‘Are you sure?’

      He held up his blackened hands. ‘Then I could wash these.’

      Rain, unaccountably, made her thirsty. Strange, that. ‘Yes, all right.’

      Another pint would go down well. Not too much to drive home on. He didn’t know what the attraction was, but he tried not to look at her too intently. Not entirely sexual, either. ‘I can’t go home like this. My wife might wonder what I’d been up to.’

      She had said it, and felt the joy of being young again. ‘I can have a fruit juice, or something.’

      He fastened his blue duffel coat and adjusted the naval-style cap to a sharper angle. ‘I’ll meet you in the parking place. You won’t miss it.’

      In any case, she wanted to use the toilet, the effect of the rain, no doubt. ‘I think it’s only right that I should buy the drinks.’

      He paused at opening the car door. ‘No, that won’t do at all. I’m inviting you.’

      Perhaps she had offended him, difficult to recall the procedures from so long ago. It was too late to rectify, so a smile was called for. ‘Just as you say.’

      She used language precisely, diffidently, as if not sure she would be understood, or maybe as if she had never been in a similar situation before, and in any case met very few people.

      The car stayed in his rearward window, and he went slowly so as not to lose sight, or cause her to go at a higher speed than usual. They parked side by side, at more or less the same time, as if one car was then to take on board packets of drugs from the other. He laughed at such an idea while with her, and led a way to the lounge.

      You had to be careful even what you thought with such a person, though he knew he could manage her, easy after the long hard school with Amanda. Oh, how she’d occasionally dug her own grave! Setting the drinks down, he saw himself in a mirror, a glance, glad to be wearing a jacket and tie under his coat instead of the normal shirt and jeans. ‘You must have married young, to be with a man wounded in the war.’

      ‘Well!’ Undoing her coat showed a nice rounded bosom under a grey sweater. Lines by her mouth, but the skin was otherwise pale and clear. Shapely hands with long fingers reached for her drink, to sip. ‘Why do you say that?’

      ‘I mean, for a woman in her forties.’

      He liked her laugh also. ‘A tiny bit more than that, I’m afraid.’

      This silenced him, for a moment. Better get back onto the topic of morse code – as she had hoped he would. ‘So your husband still listens to the music of the spheres?’

      ‘It’s good for him.’

      She wasn’t the sort of person you should lie to, but he had no option. ‘I haven’t heard it for years.’

      That wasn’t so good. ‘According to Howard you can never forget it.’

      ‘True enough. But you do get a bit rusty.’

      ‘He says listening to the wireless keeps lack of moral fibre at bay. His