The German Numbers Woman Read Free

he’d stopped having them from the age of twenty. Cloud hid the sun, cooling the air, senses sharp enough to pick out the arrowing sloosh of incoming tide driving between the two halves of the broken harbour pier. The past was nagging even more than usual today. When he first met Laura at the station dance he’d seen her as a young rather severe girl, white blouse fastened to the neck, brown cardigan open to show her shape. She smelled sweet, hair freshened by shampoo. His aircrew insignia and sergeant’s stripes were newly sewn on, and he felt second to none, though slightly drunk from the cider.
    They went around in the quickstep, and he knew it was polite to talk: ‘Would you like me to be your cavalier?’ Before she could answer he went on, pell mell to obliterate such a daft beginning: ‘Now there’s a remark to strike you, or it will when you wonder in the future how we first met.’
    Nor had he ever needed to wonder, but why had he blathered such triteness when not really believing there could be any hope?
    He had been blessedly wrong. She didn’t laugh or scorn. ‘Yes, you can be my cavalier.’
    She had waited for him night after night to come back from raids, and then he returned a different person to the one who had set out, but in the hospital she took his hand and, through the confusion of his darkness, said once more that he would be her cavalier, forever.
    There were days when he felt the bow was taut, as taut as before the arrow flies. No explanation, but a tightening of anguish which was there when it shouldn’t have been, making this day different though in what way from others he couldn’t know. A clock began striking, later beats muffled by car noise. Ten o’clock, in any case. His heart missed a turn, marked time, carried on. As always he would recross the satisfyingly perilous roads, trawl along the High Street to get Laura’s Guardian , and reach home in time for their morning coffee.

TWO
    One day he’ll fall. Blind men do. He would fall a long way. Or would he hit the ground like a baby and not hurt himself? On the other hand, why should he fall? If he did maybe she would be there to see. If not she would hear about it. You could turn off a tap but not stop the invasion of your thoughts. One day either he or she would die, but who would go first was impossible to say. The time could be a long way off, but the problem was a cruel one to ponder, so she preferred not to, because wanting him to live long could mean she would drop dead first. There’d be no one to guard him then. Best not to think, since the future belonged to nobody. She watched from the front room window, as always when he set out. He would know what was in her mind. ‘And my life will be finished,’ she said.
    â€˜Oh no it won’t’ – his tone a balance between humour and annoyance, the closest he would allow. ‘In any case, that’s as maybe, and good old maybe is always unpredictable.’
    Why do I let such idiocies through my head? No one was steadier on his feet, and his health was robust. He seemed forty rather than sixty. ‘And so do you,’ he said when she told him.
    He had climbed more steps and hills than she could remember. Choosing holidays, he opted always for inland, as far from the coast as they could get, somewhere in the Derbyshire hills, the Malverns, or Scotland. He was never happier than when they set out after breakfast from the hotel, walking a path between trees and bushes, into the open of higher land.
    â€˜It’s like being in the clouds,’ he said. ‘It’s like flying in an open cockpit.’ Then his talk would stop, and he would go on, locked in for a while until: ‘At least I can feel the wind, and that’s worth a lot. There’s heather in it. Flowers and trees as well. The flowers are over there. Let’s look at them.’ He stroked the stalks, stamens and petals, bending