The German Numbers Woman Read online

  ‘You sound annoyed. But yes, we do.’

  ‘It’s just what we want.’

  ‘When I did something quickly before it usually turned out to be the wrong decision, but it won’t anymore, not now I’m with you.’

  Such happiness could be worrying, whether deserved or not, yet everyone was worth the blessing when it came out of the blue, or emerged from a darkness so imperceptible that the lucky person hardly noticed. He smiled at his shivering reflection. She would scorn him if he confessed such nuances of unease, but how times had changed! What God hath wrought! Even the morse had all but died on him, such rhythmic discipline no longer necessary, though he occasionally turned on the radio so that Arnold could witness the writing down of a weather forecast from the Isles of Greece, a demonstration of more magic in the world than the boy yet knew about.

  The stentorian enunciations of the German Numbers Woman had finally landed the Flying Dutchman: the vessel was impounded, rendered crewless and derelict. Now she was superannuated, and had more than enough to do governing her adolescent and rebellious children.

  Vanya from his post in Moscow had gone up the hierarchy to administer the communications network of a whole region. Or he had emigrated to America and was halfway to making his first million. Arnold, drawing imaginary maps of the world, would have enjoyed playing ‘Spot the Bomber’ – but that too had come to an end.

  These days embassies and the police used foolproof equipment which made it impossible to monitor their messages. The heroic hand-sent SOS’s of former decades were replaced by a global positioning system, and much of the space between earth and the heaviside layer had turned into a cobwebbed graveyard of atmospherics and dusty memorial stones. Even so, Howard didn’t doubt that arcane messages and revealing chatter were still there for the assiduous to alight on.

  His old Marconi, plugged into the mains, buttressed a row of large print books, in the hidey-hole Judy allowed for his study. He remembered, when they called on Laura to collect his things, how Judy took his arm on getting close to the house where he’d lived for so long. ‘You mean to say you walked up and down these steps every day?’

  ‘I know them so well I could do them blindfold! They look so insignificant now.’

  ‘Is that the house?’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve seen it, but I’m sure it is.’ He also felt trepidation, and took her hand. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  ‘She cut me dead when she saw me that time in the hospital and realised who I was. Not that it surprised me, but I was shocked at the look on her face.’

  ‘That was three months ago. We’re a bit older now.’

  ‘You’re always so matter of fact and optimistic.’

  ‘Well, one of us has to be. Anyway, the letter was quite friendly.’

  A teatime meal was set out in the living room, of fruit cake, biscuits and scones, sliced ham and boiled eggs, jam and honey, a feast of plenty which promised ease, though the meeting was cold enough at the start. She looked from Howard to Judy, as if failing to see how any man could live with such a despicable lesbian.

  Passing the food she told them of going to see Richard in prison, that he was writing to her. He’d asked her to call on his father who, at her first visit, had shouted from the window that he no longer had a son. ‘As you know,’ she said to Howard, ‘I’m never one to be put off, so I went up again, and this time he invited me in, and asked if it would be possible to go and see him.’

  Judy wondered how Richard was.

  ‘Well, in my opinion he shouldn’t be there. He never complains, but the conditions are absolutely barbaric. That so-called trial was a travesty.’ She turned to Howard: ‘And you weren’t much help to him in court.’

  ‘I told them everything that happened.’

  ‘Not enough, apparently. But I’ll do all I can to get him paroled at the soonest possible moment. Fifteen years is a ridiculous sentence.’ Her face was flushed, and she spoke with more passion than he’d ever heard, and he wondered why. ‘I’ll harry MPs and editors, judges and lawyers – everyone I can. I’ll pester them till they can’t stand the sight of me.’

  Ebony jumped onto his knee to be stroked, as if remembering him. He smiled, that Laura had another aim in life. ‘I hope you succeed.’

  ‘Oh, I shan’t rest till I do.’

  He hadn’t thought Richard’s sentence undeserved, though decided that maybe it wasn’t when Judy agreed: ‘Yes, you should do all you can. He tried to save Howard, and me as well.’

  Laura spoke whatever came to mind, in a way she hadn’t in the days when he had been blind. ‘I loved Richard,’ she went on, ‘and still do. Did you know – no, I suppose you couldn’t have – that I had an affair with him before you went on the trip?’

  ‘Oh, brilliant!’ Judy exclaimed.

  The trace of shame in Laura’s smile was overridden by a glint of triumph in her eyes. Shock was printed on him, all the same. He hadn’t known, and admitted it. His feelings at the time should have told him, but there’d been no chance to sort them out because of his search for someone else. The three of them suddenly seemed together in an inextricable knot, and it didn’t seem unpleasant.

  ‘I only tell you,’ she laughed, ‘because it can’t matter any longer. The only thing I cared about, after Richard, was that you would be all right. It’s amazing how life has changed, but I suppose it had to, sooner or later,’ she went on, without bitterness he was glad to note, a sly aspect to her smile he could never have noticed before. ‘Oh yes, I’m as happy as anyone can be. I go out a lot these days. There’s always plenty to do.’

  Judy followed her into the kitchen: ‘I couldn’t help it, you know.’

  Laura, who had noticed the bulge in front, held her close, and placed a hand on her stomach as if wanting to feel the baby’s pulse, tears hot when they fell on her cheeks during the long kiss. ‘I’m glad about this.’

  ‘You’ll see whatever it is one day.’

  She dried her face so as to collect the rest of the tea things, then talked as if wanting to tell whatever came to mind, though felt it too early to go into the story of her uncle. One day she would, because why not? Life was good when you had autonomy. Talking always made you feel better, and you could say what you liked, no need to hide anything anymore.

  She helped them carry the radio and his old fold-up table to their big Peugeot Estate at the bottom of the steps. ‘If there’s anything else you want, take it now. I might not be in next time you call, though you can always give me a ring and I’ll have it sent up.’ Then she turned to Judy: ‘I don’t mean that: come and see me whenever you like.’

  ‘She was fantastic!’ Judy said on the drive uphill and out of town. ‘So natural and easygoing. I almost fell for her myself. But don’t worry, it’s you I love.’

  All in the past, except that nothing was, since it made the present and never went out of mind. Stitching together a timetable of events to show what exactly happened at the various way-change stations along the way told how he had gone into a near-fatal adventure because of being blind. Such a reverence for the past had pushed him so fundamentally out of it as to change his life absolutely. ‘Maybe I imagined this sort of a future for us when I caught a packet on the deck of that morris-dancing boat.’

  Judy shrugged. ‘It’s the way of the world. People go through worse.’ She demanded that he think so too. ‘Right?’

  The spring never ran dry, rainy enough in the Wolds to keep the little river going. He wondered how much of Arnold’s growing up he would live to see, though he could, on demand, or giving in to a fatherly wish of his own, carry him this far on his shoulders, and let him down to zig-zag along the bank for tadpoles. Once he slipped into the stream and, as Howard told Judy when she was halfway to giving the darling of her life a punch for carelessness, went in up to his thighs and lifted him out, he laughed, with the speed of morse.

  Judy now and again called on the midwife at Skegness who had brought Arnold into the world, and so
metimes stayed the night because: ‘We have a few drinks, and I don’t feel it would be safe to drive back,’ knowing that Howard was well able to get Arnold on the school bus after a cooked breakfast and produce a hot meal when he came home. She seemed always to need a woman friend older than herself, but was usually in a vitriolic mood on getting back, against the two dogs whose jealousy, fussiness and habits she couldn’t stand.

  Laura sent a scientific calculator for Arnold’s sixth birthday, and Judy had set the table with her old skill as a stewardess on yachts. Six candles for the cake, and Arnold in his place with hair combed and hands decisively at his fork and spoon. He had, as they had often marvelled, Judy’s features and his father’s mannerisms, Howard astonished at the similar timbre to Judy’s in his voice.

  He had helped to serve Arnold and his friends from school, and now that he was in bed they collected the debris, Judy scooping up paper from the presents. ‘Look at the table. It’s a wreck.’

  ‘Just as it should be.’

  ‘I often think,’ she said, ‘about how we nearly went over the edge of doom on that bloody boat. Just amazing we got through it. No wonder nothing can ever part us.’

  ‘As long as we love each other. And we surely do.’

  She dropped the armful of coloured papers to kiss him. ‘You talk like a birthday card. Or a Valentine. I love it.’

  ‘There’s no other way I know?’

  Arnold stood in the doorway, fastening his dressing gown. ‘Oh dear, loving and kissing again! Brilliant!’

  ‘Out!’ Judy cried. ‘Out, out, out!’

  ‘I only wanted my calculator.’

  ‘Now you’ve got it, so out.’

  ‘Apart from which,’ she said, Arnold clumping up the stairs, ‘you’ll always be my hero, the way you handled that boat business, even though the customs and police had been tracking the crew for months.’

  ‘But the trip to the Azores was something they didn’t know about. I gave them all the gen on that. It was priceless information, and they were glad to hand over the reward.’

  She took the birthday cards from the shelf, and slid them into a large envelope, to be put away for Arnold’s future. ‘You only did it for the money.’

  He laughed, and unravelled the story of listening to her and Carla on their boats. ‘You were a dirty old devil!’ she said.

  ‘I know, but I fell in love with your voice, and knew it was our destiny to meet.’

  ‘Oh, that. Let’s not talk about destiny.’

  ‘Well, I had no idea it would happen. I was too timid to be optimistic, but something carried me along.’

  ‘That wasn’t timid at all – though I don’t believe anything you say.’ She pulled him down on the sofa, and they sat together. ‘Still, I like to hear the story over and over again, even if you did make it all up to amuse me. And if you didn’t it’s something else to love you for, so let’s go to bed. We’ll put the light out, and make hot love. I feel like it. As long as that little devil doesn’t hear us!’

  He gave one more glance at the ribbon of water, before turning to go home.

  A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

  Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.

  So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.

  The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.

  In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosis—only discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.

  It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped living—there was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviews—and scripts for the films of his first two books, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.

  Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alan’s books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.

  Time passed … the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.… Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range extended. I usually went with him, and as by then I also was having work published, sometimes the invitation was to me, and he would assume the role of consort.

  Looking back, I realize what a wonderful life we had then. But a year or two befor
e his eightieth birthday, Alan told me he was not feeling well. It was always hard to persuade him to see the doctor; this time he suggested it himself. There were many hospital appointments for investigations and tests—the National Health Service was as excellent and thorough as ever—and a few weeks later the diagnosis came: There was a cancer at the base of his tongue. His suspicions were confirmed. Although he had continued to smoke his pipe (and the occasional cigar), now he stopped at once. The tragic program of treatments started, and the inevitable oscillations between hope and despair. Twice it seemed that he was cured; then it all began again. In April 2010, not long after his eighty-second birthday, Alan died. We had hoped he could die at home, but he needed the facilities of a good hospital. Months later, on a cupboard shelf in his study, I found the manuscript of Moggerhanger.

  Sillitoe in Butterworth, Malaya, during his time in the RAF.

  Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight shared their first home together, “Le Nid”, while living in Menton, France, 1952.

  Sillitoe in Camden Town in 1958, soon after the publication of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

  Sillitoe at his desk in his country house in Wittersham, Kent, 1969.

  Sillitoe in Berlin while on a reading tour in 1976.

  Sillitoe sitting at his desk in his flat, located in Notting Hill Gate, London, 1978.

  Sillitoe writing at his desk in Wittersham in the 1970s or ’80s.

  Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight at the PEN conference in Tokyo, Japan, 1984. They both gave readings at the conference, and Sillitoe was a keynote speaker, along with Joseph Heller.

  Sillitoe standing on the porch of his wife’s apartment in Nashville, Tennessee. He visited Ruth while she was a poet-in-residence at Vanderbilt University in January of 1985.

  Sillitoe (right) in Calais, France, with Jacques Darras (center), a French poet and essayist, August of 1991.