The German Numbers Woman. Alan Sillitoe

up was quick and efficient, slotting in without trouble. ‘Here he comes,’ Scud said. ‘Let me talk.’

      ‘Didn’t you see my signal? You should have stopped at the harbour,’ were his first tetchy words.

      ‘Come aboard. To tell you the truth, we didn’t. We’ve had one hell of a bloody crossing. I think none of us had eyes except for the berth. We’re just about done for. It took eight hours from Boulogne. Some pleasure trip that was. I thought it was going to be the last.’

      He looked down into the saloon, and Richard could have laughed: a mass of dirty bedding, food, pots and pans, radio, charts and logbooks, all Swiss-rolled into a disgusting mess. ‘What do you have on board?’

      ‘Our duty-free’s somewhere down there,’ Scud told him.

      ‘I’ll get it.’ Cannister jumped up. ‘If you like. It’s in them plastic bags.’

      The customs man was halfway down. Let him cut into it if he was in the mind to. He’d need a sharp knife. Going the rest of the way, he opened a cupboard or two, and came back up. He might have been suspicious, but couldn’t take the boat to pieces on his own. ‘Next time, stop at my signal.’

      When the noise of his half-stroke put-put bike diminished along the road they brought out the bundles. Rain came warm and wetter than wet from seawards, but they had something to sing about as they took them under their coats to Cannister’s Land-Rover so that he could set off for London.

      ‘He’d never have found it, anyway,’ Scud said when he and Richard sat down to a meal in the galley after a quick tidying. ‘I’ve never known such weather for this time of year.’

      ‘Maybe that’s what saved us.’ The thought of surviving another such trip put him in a low mood, yet they were all the same, and none exactly alike. As the spaghetti and rich meat sauce went down, helped by two bottles of wine, he could only look forward to collecting his pay. Hard to know how Waistcoat had been so sure they would accomplish what he’d sent them to do in such foul weather.

      

      ‘Bad trip, I hear?’ Waistcoat said the next afternoon.

      ‘It was all right.’

      ‘Smoke, if you want to.’ He offered a cigar. ‘I’m glad you were with them. You might not think you’re essential, but you are. You keep them in order, just by being there.’

      So that was it. Thank you very much, fuck face. Without him they might run off with the stuff.

      ‘Or do something silly,’ Waistcoat said. ‘You never know.’ He flashed the gold lighter under Richard’s cigar. ‘But a chap like you, well, they feel safe. Anyway, it’s good to have a radio officer on board.’ He took an envelope from the pocket of his smoking jacket – plum coloured this time. ‘I hope this keeps you happy.’

      Best to be a man of few words. Make him think he’s got a bargain. ‘Thanks.’

      ‘The next trip will be in a bigger league altogether. Much larger boat. All engine power. We’ll fly to Malaga, and bring it back from Gib.’

      ‘I’d like a date.’

      ‘Don’t know myself yet.’

       ‘As soon as you can, let me have it, then.’

      Meeting over. The next stage was to face Amanda’s righteous anger for not having told her where he was going and how long he would be away. He brought that one off as well, in spite of them screaming at each other that there was nothing else to do but end the marriage.

      ‘Next time,’ he said, a shake in his hands as he fitted the corkscrew into a bottle of wine from Boulogne, ‘and for me anyway it’ll be hemlock before wedlock.’ Which made her laugh, the crisis over, leaving him to wonder how many more times he would get away with it.

      He sat again at the radio and checked all frequencies. Nothing was coming through that could be used. At half-past six everyone had signed off, so he picked up the phone and dialled Laura’s number from his address book. She had a young woman’s voice, and seemed more than happy when he said his name. ‘If it’s all right with you I’ll knock on your door tomorrow evening, sometime after supper.’

      ‘About eight o’clock? You’ll be able to have coffee. Howard will be thrilled when I tell him.’

       EIGHT

      Sunspots had given so much trouble that Howard hadn’t heard Moscow for a week, no sound of Vanya on his usual qui vive. A wobbly-wobbly note, like the noise of a bathtub eternally filling, might turn into his reappearance, but the sound died, though he listened assiduously and long for anything intelligible. Ionised gases and the sun’s ultraviolet rays in the upper atmosphere, bending the radio beams back to earth, were troublesome at dawn and dusk, and solar flares played havoc for days.

      The magician’s cabin was full of complications, a test bed of patience needed even from the most devoted. He became angry when things weren’t perfect, always hoping for something, maybe a signal from God’s miracle department saying that the application in triplicate to get his sight back had been approved. Neither the in-tray nor the out-tray held any such plan. The condition had been so long with him that he was beyond that kind of hope, more an animal longing he ought not to need anymore, but necessary for him to go on living.

      You could always hope, because sunspots altered by the hour. A special radio station devoted to news of them morsed out periodical bulletins from a place called Boulder:

      ‘FORECAST SUN ACT LOW TO MODERATE. MAG FIELD ACTIVE TO WEAK STORM. HF CONDITIONS NORMAL TO MODERATE,’ followed by a long dash from the beacon.

      Atmospheric conditions varied with the equinox, yet he doubted this was the reason for Moscow’s demise, because certain random whistles and occasional taps at the key were beginning to come back, or the tuning-up of transmitters (that fizzled to nothing) or muffled voices too far out to identify.

      Either there was no work for Vanya, or no planes were flying because of bad weather, or everyone was on holiday, or the system had been discontinued for lack of use, or the frequency had been changed for security reasons, or the transmitter had broken down and Vanya had gone back to his village till a telegram arrived by landline saying the equipment had been mended.

      Whatever the reason, Moscow came back, and Vanya was his unmistakable, competent, idiosyncratic self. Howard’s typed log soon filled with latitudes and longitudes, and the serial numbers of Russian aircraft grew into a column on his typewriter. He recalled kids on street corners before the war writing on penny jotters the number of each car that passed, a futile pastime he’d laughed at, but which he now seemed to be following with his collection of Russian plane numbers.

      Last year at the end of the tourist season Laura had taken him to Paris, and he resisted the temptation at both airports of asking her to note the numbers of any Aeroflot planes she might see on the tarmac. At London Heathrow, going through the security screen, the man took the morse key and oscillator from Howard’s bag and asked what it was for.

      ‘Looks like one of them little tap-tap things,’ the girl assistant said.

      Howard explained that indeed it was, and gave a demonstration to prove it was no part of a secret terrorist weapon.

      ‘I’ve always admired blokes who can use one of them,’ the man said. ‘It must be wonderful to send messages like that.’

      Howard was gratified at being wished a good journey.

      ‘He’s blind, as well,’ he heard the girl say. ‘Did you notice?’ as Laura led him away for coffee.

      At evening in the hotel he took out his key to send an item or two to himself. Rich days of different air and unusual food, and going around galleries with a hired commentary plugged into his ear – perfect for a blind man – demanded some therapy before