The German Numbers Woman. Alan Sillitoe

sat again, resisted taking up the spoon in case he tapped out something incriminating. ‘I don’t imagine it would do much good to either of us.’

      ‘It might make me a different person, and that couldn’t be bad, under the circumstances. The thing is, that all the time I listen at the wireless I feel myself changing, but so subtly I don’t really notice at the time. That’s what keeps me going. Though it can be disturbing it’s also like a balm, twenty years measurable only in micro units. I tune in on the wavelengths we used in the Air Force, hoping to hear something vital, but there’s nothing there anymore, just silence, or atmospheric mush.’ He was quiet for a moment, and for Richard to fill it would seem too brusque an interruption. Then he decided: ‘Let’s have a whisky. We can take our glasses to the wireless room.’

      The cat followed them. Howard switched on to the French merchant marine station, a call sign endlessly repeating. ‘Such a noise would send most people mad, if they were forced to listen.’

      ‘Me as well,’ Richard said. ‘Maybe they used that sort of thing in Northern Ireland, to get people to talk. A chap went mad from hearing it when I was at radio college. It can be a good weapon. For instance I was in a hotel room once, and a party was going on next door. It was after midnight, and I couldn’t get to sleep. Luckily I had a portable shortwave radio I was taking with me to join a yacht, so I plugged it in and held the speaker against the wall. It only needed two minutes, with the loudest possible morse belting away. Cut their jollity dead. Didn’t hear a murmur after that, though I did get a few funny looks at breakfast.’

      The room was neat, custom built for the purpose, a narrow table from wall to wall, and a small window for taking the aerial outside. The wall was covered by a coloured Mercator map of the world, and a plotting chart of Western Europe similar to his own. Maybe Howard liked to feel the paper.

      He was put in the spare chair while Howard fiddled with the controls of an old RAF Marconi, to the left of his typewriter and the modern equipment. A morse key was screwed into the table and wired to an oscillator. Richard imagined him being helped into his flying jacket, hitching on a parachute, and sitting hunched at his wireless as in the old days, re-living the trip of his final devastation over Germany. He might also wear a suit and beret, and play a resistant pianiste in occupied France, keeping a loaded and cocked revolver by his sending hand should the Germans break in, aiming to kill them but reserving the final bullet for himself. Such people were taken alive if possible, tortured to make them spill codes and contacts before being killed. ‘Been hearing anything interesting?’

      The magic eye of his twenty-quid junk-shop radio was a button of green flame created out of electrons and neutrons, which produced a small circle of living light held to a constant glow, not an identity button for the blackout but one for the overcoat of a wandering wizard – fixed into the left side of the wireless. If the magic eye dimmed out the circuit would go dead, the world stop, all movable animal and geological life be sucked into space. Every morning Howard put his finger close to make sure it was at his bidding, and thanked the Deity – whoever or whatever that might be – for keeping him healthy and well provided for, except that he couldn’t see the green glow in the same way as everyone else, didn’t need to, because there was a greener eye inside him, an eye that could penetrate everything, which he now turned on Richard.

      ‘A fair amount. It’s hard not to, if you’re persistent. I’m at it all my spare time.’ The first rule in the procedure book at radio school was: ‘Intelligent cooperation between operators,’ but to share what he heard would be like leaving a hole in his body never to be closed. All he heard was his alone. To betray Judy and her friend, or the German Numbers Woman, or Vanya in Moscow, or the Flying Dutchman, or any other character culled from the network and allowed to grow and become real in his mind, wasn’t part of his wish. At the moment they were beholden to him for their secret existence. On the other hand, perhaps Richard already had them in his books, and to mention them would make no difference either to their fate or his. But he was taking no chances.

      Richard sensed his reluctance. You only got what you gave, nothing more and nothing less. ‘I still have the speed to take everything, even the Italian news at twenty eight words a minute. It’s amazing how it stays with you. The Italian weather comes in pretty fast as well. It’s good practice, and keeps the brain sharp. That’s the reason I do it.’ He wondered at the red pins scattered across the Russia of Mercator’s World,