The German Numbers Woman (20 page)

By the settee was a pile of library books: A.J. Cronin, P.G. Wodehouse, J.B. Priestley, and accounts of sailors' travels, and Richard wondered with a smile why the old man's favourite writers always had to have two initials.

‘I don't suppose I need to say that you've always been a great disappointment to me.' He came in with the tray, tea things immaculately laid out, cream biscuits on a plate with a doily underneath, two paper napkins and, when Richard tasted it, the very best tea.

He banged the point home on every visit, and Richard couldn't think why he had bothered to call, unless it was that he needed to hear it for the good of his soul. Or was it necessary to strengthen him into going on more trips to do with his nefarious work? The old bugger said it either because he was senile and had forgotten about the previous time; or he knew very well what he was saying, and wanted to show that he hated his son's guts.

‘I'm sorry about that, but I have my own life to live.' He always made the same response, so that his father could come back with the rejoinder:

‘It's wrong to live for yourself. Every man's duty on this earth is to live for others. Those who live for themselves end up living for nobody. They die bitter and disappointed, and alone.'

Like you, he thought. ‘I'm a long way from that yet.'

‘You won't say so when you're there, in thirty years' time. Today will seem like yesterday.'

Time to get out of his presence, steam down the road in a happier state. All the same, the old man fascinated him, and he couldn't deny there was a profound connection between them, nor feel altogether unhappy about it. He hated to admit that he loved the grumbling old bastard. ‘What would you like me to be doing?'

Len smiled as he put down his large cup. ‘I don't know much about anything anymore. You've always been your own man. I give you that. But I've always felt you were perfect on a ship. You'd have had a good position by now, on a cruise liner even. Or you'd have had a good job on shore, with Marconi's maybe. It's never too late to change, and get back on course.'

‘I'll have to think about it.' Humour the old dog. ‘But how are you, these days? You look well. In fact I don't think I've ever seen you better.'

He winked, a heavy lid covering his blue eyes. ‘I feel good, I'll say that much.' He flexed the muscles under the sleeve of his shirt, and pressed to show how hard the flesh was. ‘Not bad for seventy-five, eh?'

‘I'm glad to see it.'

‘I walk five miles a day, all along the sea front and back.'

He must be healthier than I am. ‘You'll see me out.'

‘No, please God, I don't want to do that. That would never do. I couldn't imagine a world without you.'

‘Nor me you,' he forced himself to say. Not to have spoken would have been vicious, what Amanda called lying by omission.

‘I don't enquire too closely into what you do on your small boat journeys, but I hope it's all four square and above board.' He put a whole biscuit into his mouth. ‘That's all I say.'

‘It is,' Richard told him. ‘You can rely on that.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

Lies were useful in stopping people assuming what you didn't want to hear, though they only deceived good and simple people like his father – except that it didn't seem to stop him worrying, or continuing to get at him. ‘You seem to be leading a fine old life. Just look at that car outside.'

‘I'll take you for a spin if you like.'

‘It's all right. I've got my old banger, though I don't use it much, except for shopping once a week, or if I want a trip in the country. Sometimes I call on an old shipmate in Bootle. He's bedridden now, so he's always glad to see me. Silly bugger's younger than me,' he smiled with obvious pride.

Richard usually departed thinking he would write as many letters as were needed to get a regular shore job, but by the time he was coasting around Birmingham he knew that his destiny was fixed, his life set, his feet locked onto the course until disaster struck or he had so much money put away that even excitement wouldn't tempt him on another trip.

Amanda's car came down the lane, back from her work at Doris's hairdressing shop in Angleton, so he went down to put the kettle on and make her some tea. She would feel welcome, and like that. He couldn't wait to set off in the morning.

FOURTEEN

A sound, as if produced by the idle trawling of fingernails along a corrugated tin fence, came into his earphones. Was outer space trying to get in touch? If so was he the last person they (whoever they were) should want to reach. Yet maybe only a blind man could make sense out of the chaos they would need to know about.

What produced such a noise? Aerials and the superheterodyne stage plus the magnetism of power pulled it in. Molecules were so small that not even he, using the best of his mind's eye, as well as infallible equipment (and what could be a more acute combination?) was able to see them. Yet we can, Howard thought, contemplate the universe in which they function, imagine the most elegant of their trajectories breaking off and free-going beyond all vision, while nevertheless imprisoned within our horizons.

Tracking the molecules by their patterns was a form of prayer to the Great Creator, trying in his blindness to understand the unleashed energy of the universe, the dust in motion whose scattered structures were called atoms. Electricity sent protons and neutrons on a journey to the infinite, never to disappear. Science might not solve the final mystery. Only the heart can explore beyond the range of mechanical contrivances.

Besides the electric heater, he wore a white wool sweater (knitted by Laura), a padded parka (blue with a white band at the back), a woollen rainbow hat, and fishermen's socks tucked into long johns, as well as boots. The Persian Gulf was warmer, morse hammering through in plain language, but he looked forward to Christmas, the New Year and Easter, when the mariners of the world would have loving and friendly greetings sent to wives and relations, telegrams of goodwill and hope for the future, in all languages but especially Russian and those of Eastern Europe.

He would mull on this in his next morse letter to Richard, for want of anything else to say, because Richard's shallow communications in the code did not help to suggest an easygoing, though interesting, response. To begin with, Richard's character was difficult to get into and sort out. He was no ordinary man – though who was? – or maybe he was ordinary enough yet lived so unconventional a life that Howard wished he was an ordinary man. Hard to tell, for he could hear his voice, and had a strong sense of him when he was present. Maybe his occasional boat journeys were no harmless excursions, and perhaps he was in some sort of trouble, for he had caught the change in his voice, almost a catch, when he related his experiences. He wasn't telling the truth, and that was a fact.

On the other hand his morse letters were slightly different, because he made an effort to be as straightforward as possible, by which Howard concluded that he wasn't normally truthful. His ‘fist', his style, his sending of the symbols was suspect, if only because he tried to make it as machine-like as possible, impermeable, hiding any trait or peculiarity of character that less precise sending might reveal. Clear and easy to read, his sending was too perfect.

One way to break down the palisade surrounding such perfection was to send a letter with a mass of false information about what he, Howard, was receiving on the wireless. To make the text plausible he would build up a special letter piece by piece, mix in a true item now and again, and hope such a ruse wouldn't be too subtle to bring the required response.

There was certainly no shortage of time on his part, though he wondered how much there would be for Richard, who was out in the world and trying to make a way for himself. Nor did Howard altogether like constructing such a web around a so-called friend, but excitement in the kingdom of the blind was hard to come by, so the project seemed valid.

He would claim that the falsehoods came to him in agitated morse and through the most difficult curtain of atmospherics: ‘Let me introduce myself. No, perhaps I'd better not. You might not want to know me if I did, and I'm not the sort of personality to waste time and energy, since everyone comes to me in the end, or I go to them, it makes no difference. No, I'm not a miller, a monarch, or a millionaire. And no, “no” is not my favourite word.'

‘Can't make anything of it,' he would say to Richard. ‘So you tell me. He faded at that point, went right off the air. I tried to follow him, searched all over the spectrum, but he'd packed up and gone. Where to? Who can say? Your guess is as good as mine. At first I thought he was the chap from the
Flying Dutchman
, then I didn't think so because he didn't seem at the point of death. People in the worst situations go optimistic when they think it will save their lives. It sometimes does, I expect.'

For what came next he would say: ‘The last six months I've listened mostly on one frequency out of the whole radio range. Don't stop reading this
morscreed
. Everything will be explained. This is a sort of confession, to tell you I've fallen in love. I'm not used to disembowelling myself, but telling you has got to be done, because who else is a blind man to confide in but his best friend? I'm a perfectly happy person, but have strange dreams which lead me over oceans I alone know how to find. All I will say is that it's a very special wavelength I've lit on, and hope I'm the only one who has. Her boat, called the
Daedalus
, does erratics in the Dodecanese, trundles around the coast of Turkey, slides in and out of rock bound gulfs of Greece. I'm on their track all right! This woman talks to someone every night in the
Pontifex
, and wouldn't it be a strange coincidence if you had been on one or both of these yachts?'

He would send it when the time had come for the net to be cast out and drawn in. Such work would be too much of a self indulgence on this cold night, and in any case it was almost the hour for Judy to come on schedule. Morse news in Italian could go by the board, likewise the RAF weather, and material from the Gulf, as well as navigation warnings from the Caribbean, and five figure groups from Haifa. Time for Judy to be calling her lover, and nothing else mattered.

He took the bottle of whisky from the sideboard, where it stood between Gin and Sherry, and poured a small glass, the liquid so warm it came out like nectar. What he wouldn't have given for such a tot in the Lancaster, flying at eighteen thousand feet over Germany on that last winter of the war! He filled the glass, a finger at the rim to feel its progress, so full to the top he saw the liquid as convex in shape, his hand so steady that nothing spilled as he lifted it to his lips. Another one warmed his insides as he made ready to search for the star-crossed lovers.

Everything was unclear at first, mush swamping the earphones. He thought he heard her voice but couldn't be sure, an oscillation halfway between morse and speech, increasing to Donald Duck chatter as he turned the wheel at such slow speed the gradations would hardly be measured. Russian talk was mixed into their interchange, and by the time he found them they must have been on the air for some time.

Judy:
(haughtily, about the Russian speaker, as if Carla could) ‘Tell him to go away.'

Carla:
‘He not hear me. He go soon. Your transmitter too weak.'

Judy:
‘Flippin' hell, it's on full. Do you hear me properly now?'

Carla:
‘I hear you.'

Judy:
‘Last night we went ashore, and had a meal of couscous.'

Carla:
‘Don't you eat that
fackin'
thing.'

Judy:
‘That's not nice language. You shouldn't swear.'

Carla:
‘You swear, some time.'

Judy:
‘I know. But I try not to. The couscous was delicious. Then we had sherbet ices.'

Carla:
‘In my flat, when my boyfriend not there, you make me fish cakes, remember?'

Judy:
‘Oh yes, I remember.'

Carla:
‘They good.'

Judy:
‘Wish you were with me now. I have lots of ideas.'

Carla:
‘Flippin' 'ell! I want to sleep with you all night.'

Judy:
‘I want minimum one week, OK? I'll hijack the yacht and come and see you – all on my own. I don't think I could manage it, though. I'd probably end up on the rocks somewhere. You'd have to come and rescue me.'

Carla:
‘I come and meet you.'

Judy:
(laughing) ‘If I took the boat they'd kill me. It's full of valuable stuff. Know what I mean?'

Carla:
‘Judy, I worry about you. What if you get in a lot of trouble?'

Judy:
‘No trouble. Just come and get me.'

Carla:
‘Turkish prison no good.'

Judy:
‘Don't talk about such things. People on pleasure cruises don't get into trouble.'

Carla:
‘It makes me glad to hear it.'

Judy:
‘Just give up everything and come to me. Leave your man.'

Carla:
‘I can't.'

Judy:
‘If you loved me you would.'

Carla:
‘I do love you, more than anybody.'

Judy:
‘So you say. You're all I have.'

Carla:
‘Judy, I love you. You got to believe me.'

Judy:
‘I do. But I feel like crying. We've had such a busy day here, I can't tell you. I can only talk to you like this because the others have gone ashore. I expect they'll be back soon, probably drunk.'