Free The German Numbers Woman by Alan Sillitoe Page A

‘There’s no real you,’ she said. ‘What bit there might be you keep for other people. I don’t get a look in.’ No more you will, he had thought, but as always she was both right and wrong, which was what made her so maddening.
    â€˜Of course I’ll come,’ he said to Laura. ‘I’ll be glad to. It’ll bring the old life on board back to me as well, though I may be a little slow on the key at first. My life in any case gets pretty dull at times.’ Except when malevolent sunspots suck away the vital parts of a message. ‘Though I do have to go to London from time to time. Or on a boat trip.’
    â€˜It obviously would be whenever is convenient for you.’
    She was as pleased as a schoolgirl. Charming. Amazing how soon you could make those happy whom you had just met – or who you hardly knew. ‘Give me your telephone number, if you like. I’ll call you when I can, to see if it’s a good time.’
    â€˜It will be, I’m sure. Blast, I don’t have a pen.’
    They stood apart, to let someone go inside. ‘Here’s one. I have to be off soon, though. I have a business appointment in half an hour. But I’ll be sure to call.’ He most certainly would, though it wasn’t easy to say when. ‘I’ll be very interested to meet your husband.’

SIX
    Howard had many acquaintances on shortwave, except that while he knew them they didn’t know him. They could have suspected him but probably didn’t. They were recognisable by the text, and by the idiosyncrasies of the sending. He felt the spring in the wrist or the ache at their elbow. Those with speed and rhythm were artists at the game, whereas he spotted some by the slow and awkward delivery, though they weren’t necessarily inexperienced, merely taken over by a spirit of syncopation out of boredom, or they were drawing attention to themselves by showing off, and maliciously wanting to drive people halfway potty who had to take down their message. Operators by trade were often naive regarding the big world beyond, and neither knew nor cared what effect they had on others, all of which helped Howard in his recognition.
    Sometimes they sounded as if touching two pieces of electrified wire together, a feat he remembered seeing in a film as a youth, when a train going into the far West was wrecked in an Indian ambush. The telegraph operator, who happened to be on board as a passenger, climbed up a pole by the line, cut a wire, and by touching the two pieces together to make morse, sent a message to get help from the US Cavalry. Howard couldn’t recall whether the man had been struck by an arrow at the end of his effort, and fallen from a great height, or whether he had survived for a hero’s welcome.
    He knew the various radio operators also by the tone of their equipment, whether it came from the steely precision of the Royal Navy’s sublime telegraphists, or the bird-like slowness of machine morse giving airfield weather conditions from the RAF. He could tell Soviet operators on ships and at shore stations bouncing telegrams to each other by the ball-bearing quality of the transmitters and the record speed at which they were sent, too fast to write but not to read, though he suspected the messages were tape recorded on reception and slowed down at leisure for transcription. He knew the various nationalities from the language used, able to read (but not understand) Greek, Turkish, Romanian and German, though French was easy enough.
    Fingers on the key called for a flexible wrist. The amount of energy pulsing from the elbow varied as much as a snowflake or thumb print. Energy was fed from the heart and backbone, an engine sending power to the hand, so that he could tell when a man (or, who knows, a woman?) was tired, or irascible, or lackadaisical, or slapdash, or indeed calm, competent, conscientious, and incapable of exhaustion. Maybe the latter