The German Numbers Woman Read online

  Howard stilled himself so as not to frighten it away. ‘It seems fit enough to me. I can almost feel it breathing. Hear it as well.’ He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out half a biscuit. ‘There you are, Jehu. See what you can make of that.’

  ‘You’ll have a friend for life.’

  ‘I think it’s eating.’

  ‘Scoffed the lot. On its last legs.’

  He shook the rest of the packet on the deck and felt the bird leave him to sort it out, webbed feet padding on wood. ‘What a privilege, to save a life, even a bird’s.’

  Richard resisted telling him it wouldn’t live. They never did, always too far gone when they came aboard. ‘It knew where to come, which is more than most people know, especially the ladies of the world.’

  Disturbed by Howard’s laugh, the bird hesitated as to whether it should stay on the comfortable platform of his hand or try its luck again over the water. ‘It’s up to the men to know that.’

  ‘Ah, well, there’s no pattern in that one.’

  ‘Aren’t we born knowing it?’ He stroked the pigeon’s neck, a finger drifting along the warm pulsating feathers that felt like silk, and brought forth a warble of gratitude. ‘If we aren’t, we should be.’

  ‘There’s a ring on its leg,’ said Richard, ‘with a name, I expect. I’ll read it.’

  ‘A message as well?’ Laura had set a pigeon to race after them, with words of encouragement for their travels on the briny. She had called at a coop behind the town and urged the man to send his best and strongest. ‘Don’t keep me waiting.’

  ‘No message. It just says Terry, and gives a number.’

  ‘I’ll call it Jehu. Won’t I, Jehu? Is it looking at me? I feel it is.’

  ‘Lovingly,’ Richard said, as it flew up to the mast. ‘It’ll come back. We often pick one up, miles off its course, utterly knackered and lost. Maybe it’ll stay till we reach land, glad of a lift, and spend the rest of its life in the Azores. Plenty of lovely lady pigeons there. Why call it Jehu? What kind of a name is that?’

  ‘Just shot into my head. As I remember, it’s from the Bible. Jehu murdered all and sundry so as to set himself on the throne. Must have heard it at Sunday school. No connection, really, is there, Jehu, my old bird?’ – looking to where he thought it had gone.

  ‘Do I feel a spot of rain?’ Richard said. ‘Or is it a bit of spit? Anyway, I’m due on the bridge for a stint at steering this de luxe waterbus. Floating gin palace, if you like. I’d better get Jehu entered in the log as another mouth to feed. Boiled rice usually goes down well. Ask Ted for a handful. The poor bloody specimen looks as if it needs building up. Then back to the wavelengths. If you happen to chit chat with God ask him to let us know how this little run is going to turn out.’

  A build up of the sea and wave pattern made the boat roll, but Howard knew where hands and feet should go to stop him getting too bashed about. One foolish miss left a scrape along the arm, useful in teaching what not to do.

  Jehu had a quick flight around the boat, as if to keep its wings in trim, not much to its liking, so it came back, found a way to Howard on the radio, either drawn by the warm billet of his arm, or pulled by the birdlike rhythmical whistle of the weather forecast in morse, and the steady clack of the typewriter.

  The head of the bird went from left to right as he moved the space bar. Maybe somewhere in Jehu was the spirit of a dead radio officer from the war, faint echoes of an old life coming back. He couldn’t think so, because when you were dead you were dead, a meltdown into the eternal blackout. He took the paper from the machine and tapped, felt, trod his way to the bridge. ‘Here’s the latest weather, if you want a look-see.’

  Richard noted the pigeon resting on Howard’s shoulder as if he was Long John Silver, and they’d been friends since the bird left the egg. ‘He’s looking livelier.’

  ‘He was warbling back there, short-long-short in morse. Same letter over and over again. Maybe R for Richard.’

  ‘If you teach it the rest of the alphabet it might tell us what it’s like to be a pigeon.’ Richard glanced at the forecast. ‘You’ll need ten million years, that’s all.’

  Another person was on the bridge, but he wasn’t sure who, until: ‘Let’s have that fucking weather, then’ – unmistakably Waistcoat. ‘That pigeon will crap all over the boat, though I suppose it’d be the right sort of camouflage for this shower of a crew.’

  ‘The weather’s on the mend,’ Richard said. ‘Those north-east will have the worst of it.’

  Waistcoat took the paper, read, and folded it into his pocket. ‘Stay at the wheel. I’m going in for some shut-eye. And I don’t want anybody banging on the door to ask any stupid questions. I’ll be out.’

  Cleaver came in, put his sextant carefully into the box. ‘He gets jumpier and jumpier. We’d be a lot better on our own, except he doesn’t trust us to run the show.’

  ‘That’s how he’s got as far as he has,’ Richard said.

  ‘Pity they’ve done away with hanging. I’d love to see him swinging in the evening breeze. He thinks we’ll take the stuff to the Bahamas rather than head back for Blighty. There’s got to be honour among thieves, though. If we can’t trust each other who can we trust? I don’t like these big jobs. Never did. I’d rather do two or three smaller ones. You can’t help but get jumpy on such jaunts.’ He sat down to work out his sights. ‘Still, it’s better than shovelling cod around on a trawler.’

  ‘We’re all doing better than otherwise, or we wouldn’t be here.’ Richard glanced at the compass, and flicked on the wipers to clear a light drizzle shooting across. Or was it spume from a wave? He turned them off. We’re going after the great white whale, and no mistake, packed tight with dope. Half of Europe will be out of its thought box when the stuff gets on the streets and boulevards.

  ‘What’s up ahead?’ Howard stood to one side, as if his blind eyes were looking at trouble.

  ‘Nothing,’ Richard told him. ‘So we can feel happy without popping pills or shooting up. The sea’s lumpy and in a bit of a twist, as I’m sure you can tell. There’s a cumulo stratus about six octers over the grey sea, but it’ll better itself during the night.’

  Ted Killisick came from the galley with biscuits and tea, and a plate of paper thin cucumber sandwiches for Cleaver. He put a mug into Howard’s hand. ‘There’s a plastic bag of cooked rice left over, so you can feed your pigeon. We usually give ’em a bite. They’re English birds, after all, so we have to look after ’em. Anybody else’s wouldn’t get a crumb, Common Market or no Common Market.’

  ‘You wouldn’t starve a French pigeon,’ Howard said. ‘Would you?’

  Ted handed the tea around, scalding and sweet. ‘Compliments of the galley, which is so posh I have to call it a kitchen. I might not begrudge a French pigeon, but if I got one that was Spanish I’d wring its neck. I suppose they’ve got more sense though than to land on us. As soon as they see the flag they hop it.’

  ‘You can’t blame the pigeons.’ Cleaver stowed his box as if there was a top hat inside. ‘They’re innocent enough creatures.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if it landed a streak o’ white on your mirror while you was taking a sunsight, would you, Mr Cleaver?’

  He sat down as if to think about it, one cucumber sandwich after another going into his mouth. ‘Well, it hasn’t happened yet.’

  Ted put a hand on Howard’s shoulder. ‘I hope your pigeon don’t bring us bad luck.’

  ‘What, my Jehu?’

  ‘I’ve always thought pigeons were lucky,’ Cleaver said. ‘Not like seagulls. They’re the only things in life I can’t stand. If it was a seagull that landed we might be heading for shit’s creek at a fair rate o’ knots. We had a seagull once, all the way from Aberdeen to near Iceland. It stuck to us like shit to a blanket. Couldn’t get rid of it any how. The old skipper had a two-two rifle, and took a few pot shots, but it was so darned clever he could never hit the mark. He wouldn’t let any of us have a go in case we took it in mind to
shoot him. Talk about bad luck. We caught practically nothing that trip. The weather was so bad we all but capsized. We thought it was the end a time or two. When we got out of it and straightened everything up the seagull had gone. They’re dead unlucky, but pigeons are all right.’

  Howard felt the pressure of Jehu on the palm of his hand, head pecking at rice grains in the other, a gentle scratch against his skin. On deck the wind made him an island, clean air surrounding each searching gust fresher than the last as it washed against him. He wondered why he was here, but the only answer was that he was here because he was here, as in the old song, but also that he was here yet not here, here because he could be nowhere else, and not here because as another person he was able to look on himself vividly from the dark, an entity in control and separate from the self looking on. The soft touch of the pigeon’s beak joined the two parts, its throaty warbling a pleasure to hear, so easy was it to make a creature content.

  Maybe all on board feel they’re not absolutely here either, conscripted by Fate into the same somnambulist trap – until the action starts, when they can be themselves again. To know the truth of it he would have to be able to see like them, and he couldn’t. He was the lodestone, the man beyond them and on the outside, the pigeon feeder, the blind wireless operator who could listen but not communicate with any agency beyond the boat. He was among thieves, out of reach, had tricked his way on board hoping to find Judy of the alluring voice, no other reason.

  Jehu left his hand, wings whirring into the wind. He would be back. If the radio and all else failed, or the boat sank under them in a storm, Jehu would be the survivor. ‘He’s off for his constitutional,’ Paul Cinnakle said. ‘They have charmed lives sometimes.’

  ‘How are the engines?’

  ‘They’ve got a charmed life as well. Time for a roll-up.’ Howard heard the slip of paper rustle out of the packet, the quick manufacture of a cigarette, and the scrape of a match. Paul handed the where with all to Howard. ‘Make one, if you like.’

  ‘Not so easy for me.’ He spoiled the attempt, and put the barely crumpled paper into his shirt pocket, not wanting to untidy the boat, but made a shapely enough fag the second time round. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s easy enough at the moment,’ Cinnakle said. ‘We have to take advantage of it. Be daft if we didn’t. But I prefer things when all hell breaks loose. That way, I know I’m living.’

  Howard felt the pigeon shooting him up, waft of wings across his forehead. ‘I’m only living at the radio. Always think I might hear something good.’

  ‘What would be good, though?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know till I heard it.’

  ‘Something interesting, or surprising, you mean?’

  ‘If you like. I’m sure you can guess the sort of stuff. The more I glue myself to the wireless the more chance there is, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Better you than me. I never did know why blokes like you didn’t go off your chump with all those dots and dashes.’

  ‘It’s because we were bonkers to start with.’ He stood, and Jehu perched again on his shoulder as he made a slow trek to the radio space, thinking he could hear the crumpling of the rejected cigarette paper, so thin and delicate that, if need be, it would fit perfectly into the tube on Jehu’s leg, with any message he cared to write. Jehu would be a winged chariot in the sky, braving the underbelly of the worst dank cloud, navigating by the sharpest gusts but careful to stay clear of the spume tops. He would backtrack the course of the boat, bounding against the odds for Blighty and, once over the Devon or Dorset cliffs, would sink for sustenance at some friendly door, so that whoever picked up such a pliant bird to feed would find the clip and read a message written in the tiniest of letters on the cigarette paper.

  He was long practised at writing. Often in previous years he would ask Laura to read what she could, and after a while the skill increased, till by strict control on his fingers and a grid of imaginary lines he wrote at least halfway intelligibly. At first it was four out of ten for the test, and stayed there for a long while, but by inner tears at his cackhandedness, the five mark was passed, then six and seven. The most Laura gave was eight, which was enough, because even with eyes nothing could be a hundred percent.

  He typed half a dozen navigation warnings, none relevant, but it was something to earn his and Jehu’s bread. They concerned the North Sea coastal waters, telling of a wreck shifting position by a few feet, or a fog signal not working, or something in the oil fields to be given a wide berth, or a light gone out, vital information for ships and boats in the vicinities.

  They were steering southerly, and back on deck Jehu took it easy at the rail as if waiting for a message to be attached to its leg, the antithesis of an albatross hanging around the neck, a friend, if only the unfeeling brain pan of a bird could know it. The warbling was outpaced by the radio teletype of a weather station, a sound beyond the interpretation of either, but soothing nonetheless as the well motored morris dancer of a boat clogged its way into the dusk.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The German Numbers Woman in her forest cabin parroted her wares, but he was too far off to hear, a thousand miles south-west, threads pulling ever tauter. In any case she was involved with her children, and the lover Howard had generously given her.

  The Moscow station had also gone off the air, too far over the horizon to impinge. Vanya was so assiduous at his secret bottle of vodka he would only bother with planes on the east-west run across Siberia. Well into the zone of radio silence, Howard no longer hoped to hear Judy on the Daedalus. She had already left by plane to prepare the ground in the Azores, or she was on the boat which would set aside lethal stores which the good yacht Waistcoat was on its way to collect, material Howard knew would never reach the streets. For all its calm moments the adventure was becoming warmer by the hour, more heated than anyone else on board could know. He smoothed under the poll: ‘Eh, Jehu, my little darling?’

  Richard came down from his stint on the bridge. ‘You must be crackers, talking to that bird.’

  ‘I’ve been barmy all my life. It’s a sad world if you can’t go through a good half of it off your trolley. Makes existence tolerable. Keeps me sane.’

  ‘For somebody like you, I suppose it does.’ He took a packet of rolling tobacco from his anorak pocket. ‘I’m out of cigarette papers. Do you have any on you?’

  ‘Wish I had. Can’t oblige, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What about the one you took from Paul?’

  ‘I don’t have it anymore. I held it up, and Jehu scoffed it. He loves rice paper.’

  ‘On your own head be it.’

  Hard for a blind man to realise he was spied on, even to know when someone looked in his direction. Such a boat was a small world, though it still seemed big enough in the complications of getting around. Not to know that he was being watched at all times was a failure of the imagination. If he lost the rice paper Jehu would be out of a job. ‘After tomorrow I should be picking up the weather direct from the Azores.’

  Richard had cigarette papers after all, must have, because Howard sniffed the smoke. ‘That could be useful. We’ll need to know. Especially about visibility and wind. It’s a small beach we’re going to.’

  ‘Where, exactly?’

  ‘Waistcoat only said what I’ve told you. He keeps things close till the last minute, though I don’t see why. Cleaver knows, of course. In any case it wouldn’t mean anything to you.’

  No more questions. Let them tell him, or not. Or let him overhear, or let the gen leak, as gen had a way of doing. ‘Oh, I know it’s none of my business. I won’t see the place anyway.’

  Richard leaned against the table. ‘No, but I hope I do, though I won’t want to set eyes on it again after we’ve high-tailed our way north, believe you me.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to that.’

  ‘But for what reason?’

  Howard knew something he didn’t know, what none of them could, and Richard seemed to think it would be wor
th his while, and everybody’s, and even Howard’s perhaps, if he could find out what it was. ‘Oh, I don’t have a reason. I don’t much care how long the trip goes on. If it lasts months I won’t be unhappy. I’ve forgotten everything about the past, a state more than enjoyable to me. It’s a blank. Don’t even know if I had one most of the time. I just fit myself into the spirit of the ship and feel happy. What’s good for you and the others is more than good enough for me.’

  ‘I’m glad you think that way.’ Richard stroked the pigeon. ‘You’ve reassured me.’ He pressed a finger around the bird’s neck, and Howard sensed he wanted to put out the feeble light of its life. So did Jehu, fluttered from his shoulder, up to the ceiling and out of the door. ‘Doesn’t like me. Only you.’

  ‘He’s off for a breath of the old sky.’

  ‘I expect he’ll be back.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Howard said, the bird his only friend on board.

  All hands were called to the chief’s quarters. Dinner had gone by, and the sea was calm. ‘We’re making progress, so we’re earning our keep,’ Waistcoat said, which Richard considered a fair way of putting it, though only to be expected from someone who’d never earned anything honestly in his life, and who saw those mirrored walls and pastel shades as the height of glamour. More a tarted up penthouse flat near the Elephant than an honest boat made for the ocean and the job in hand, though things would look different after the stowage from the beach. ‘Except for that fucking pigeon,’ Waistcoat added, glaring at Howard.

  Paul Cinnakle sipped his vodka, ice rattling back from his lips. ‘I heard it had gone.’

  ‘It has,’ Howard hoping it was pressing on regardless along the reciprocal.

  ‘We could have put it on the treadmill and got another half knot.’ Scuddilaw sat on one of the leather pouffs scattered around, too low for his legs to be easy, so he stood up as if he had hinges instead of muscles. ‘Unless Ted decided to let us have it on toast for breakfast.’