Alan Sillitoe - The German Numbers Woman

‘It’ll be a little boat,’ Waistcoat said.

Cannister gave a slit-mouthed laugh. ‘Saving on petrol, are we?’

‘Shut up, prick!’ Waistcoat snapped. ‘It’s a big job for us. Simple, though, if you listen to me.’ He opened the chest of drawers, and took out a chart of the Eastern Channel, spread it on a rosewood folding table in the middle of the room. ‘Your skipper will be waiting in Rye. And he won’t be bringing back baccy for the parson nor brandy for the squire. The goodies are scattered a bit more among the population these days, if they go thieving and mugging to pay for it.’

Richard waited for him to say that England this day expected every man to do his duty, but maybe he was saving it for another time. He walked to Victoria, liking the exercise, a hundred and twenty paces to the minute. Good to rattle the limbs and test the breath, knowing he could coax some of it back on the train going home.

The mission would be an easy one, Waistcoat had said, a piece of piss, though it didn’t do to think so till it was over. Three men on a thirty-two-foot boat sailed out of Rye Harbour, set for a weekend of pleasure in Boulogne, where they would pick up a consignment and come back as if on the last leg home. When the motor got them clear of the canalised river Cannister hoisted the sail, and the skipper, whose name was Scuddilaw, gave a course. The sea, fair to calm, made progress pleasant if not easy. Richard felt sufficient apprehension to know they would bring the job off, though the others, half tanked up even when coming on board, fetched a crate of lager and sent empty tins flying over the stern.

Visibility was soon a bit off centre, when they needed to cross two lanes of Channel shipping, but Richard found the beacons on the radio, separated Boulogne from the rest, and called a course to set them straight. Scuddilaw scoffed at his fancy position system from the Consol beacon in Norway, and said he didn’t need it. He could get there blindfold. ‘And as for beacons, you can stuff ‘em. Just keep your eyes skinned for the light. My glasses aren’t as good as they used to be.’

Cannister altered course towards the wake of a tanker without being told. The weather worsened, the boat chopping up and down, but at the entrance to Boulogne harbour, nearly four hours from Rye, Richard felt obliged to do things by the book and put on the courtesy act, which meant getting on deck to haul up the French tricolour on the starboard halyard. He thought the Jolly Roger would suit them better, but the rain was horizontal, and the rope tangled, became stuck halfway, so he brought it down again and went through a clumsy unthreading with wet hands. Scud called that he should wipe his arse on it, but he reduced time into slow motion and threw back the hood of his anorak so that he could at least see, till rope and flag slid up the mast without hindrance.

They found a berth in the yacht harbour and tied up. Cannister went loping into town for a few flagons of red wine, to drink while in port, as well as get fags and booze for their duty-free, while Richard and Scud sorted out the galley to produce a fry-up and brew tea. The French harbourman called to collect their dues. ‘We’ll have to stay up all night,’ Scud said when he’d gone. ‘They could bring the stuff any time, and we have to be on hand to stow it safe.’

Richard took the weather forecast in morse from Portishead, the paper on his knee, legs twisted at the chart table so that the others could get up and down. They didn’t like his news, that by tomorrow the wind would blow up to five or six, maybe on to gale. ‘Whatever it is, we’ve got to clear out.’

While steering outward bound across the harbour Scud was suddenly aware that an Enterprise cross-Channel ferry was coming straight at them – and not too far off, at that. Richard, cursing the French flag down, heard Cannister shout through the squall: ‘Wipe the wet off yer glasses, Skip. We’ve got a visitor at the door.’

The huge white building, all lit up and merry, came head on for the crunch, and Richard thought, well if this is how it’s got to end, so be it. The life jacket might just keep him afloat, but at least he could swim. People fishing at the end of the pier looked on, as well they might, laughing at such stupidity, or misfortune.

How they missed it he would never know – God protect me from such shipmates – but Scuddilaw jeered as the escarpment went by, comic-book passengers with big eyes and red hands looking at them through the murk – and as welcome a slice of luck as Richard had so far known.

Bracing themselves for the wash, the boat went up and down like a piece of balsa, though it was nothing to when open sea struck them beyond the harbour walls, a prelude to the leg back, which was the worst small-boat journey he’d ever put up with, eight hours of corkscrewing through high waves, when the next was always hungry enough to tip them over and under.

After four hours edging way from the French coast Scuddilaw set the engine going while Richard pulled down the jib and put two reefs in the main sail, but left it up to steady the yacht under power. They stayed by the wheel, leaving chaos below deck to look after itself: better to be in the open than go down and sick your guts up, which didn’t stop Cannister spewing before they were halfway across. Richard, who boasted guts of concrete, said it must have been the meal they had in town – when Scuddilaw went to the rail as well.

Under the lee of Dungeness the sea was quieter, all of them happy to reach the welcoming arms of the river mouth that had been in sight for over an hour. The tide took them neatly between the red on port and green on starboard, and suddenly into calm water. ‘We won’t stop for the customs,’ Scud said. ‘We’ll do a Lord Nelson, and go straight on into town. Let the bastards come for us.’

The neat concrete walls to either side, holding the mounds of shingle and sand beyond, channelled them reassuringly back into nanny England, though adrenalin beat through Richard at the thought of what they carried. Even before reaching the berth a man from the customs post followed them along the straight road on his low-powered motorbike.

Tying up was quick and efficient, slotting in without trouble. ‘Here he comes,’ Scud said. ‘Let me talk.’

‘Didn’t you see my signal? You should have stopped at the harbour,’ were his first tetchy words.

‘Come aboard. To tell you the truth, we didn’t. We’ve had one hell of a bloody crossing. I think none of us had eyes except for the berth. We’re just about done for. It took eight hours from Boulogne. Some pleasure trip that was. I thought it was going to be the last.’

He looked down into the saloon, and Richard could have laughed: a mass of dirty bedding, food, pots and pans, radio, charts and logbooks, all Swiss-rolled into a disgusting mess. ‘What do you have on board?’

‘Our duty-free’s somewhere down there,’ Scud told him.

‘I’ll get it.’ Cannister jumped up. ‘If you like. It’s in them plastic bags.’

The customs man was halfway down. Let him cut into it if he was in the mind to. He’d need a sharp knife. Going the rest of the way, he opened a cupboard or two, and came back up. He might have been suspicious, but couldn’t take the boat to pieces on his own. ‘Next time, stop at my signal.’

When the noise of his half-stroke put-put bike diminished along the road they brought out the bundles. Rain came warm and wetter than wet from seawards, but they had something to sing about as they took them under their coats to Cannister’s Land-Rover so that he could set off for London.

‘He’d never have found it, anyway,’ Scud said when he and Richard sat down to a meal in the galley after a quick tidying. ‘I’ve never known such weather for this time of year.’