Alan Sillitoe - The German Numbers Woman

An owl hooted from inside the wood, the letter R in morse. ‘Sounds a bit like them noises I sometimes hear coming from your attic,’ Ken said. ‘All them squeaks.’

Richard broke the gun, stooped to put the empty case into his pocket. ‘That’s just my hobby.’

Mud at the gate had been churned by cattle and tractors. ‘I often wondered,’ Ken said. ‘They used to be spies as did that, didn’t they?’

The wind was fresh, though not cold for October. Weeks of rain had left the fields spongy. ‘In war, they did.’ Richard decided to use earphones all the time from now on, in case the police sent a specialist to snoop in the bushes and listen to what he was taking down. ‘I don’t suppose there were any spies around here. They were caught early, so I read. They hanged them. Or maybe they were shot.’

He hadn’t noted such a vindictive tone from Ken before: ‘Serve ‘em right, as well.’

Out of Richard’s unease rose the question as to why he had decided to come out for a night’s shooting with his bumpkin of a gardener. Even harder to say why he was on earth, as if looking at the stars might bring back a long-dead sense of right and wrong.

‘No rabbits’ll be seen on such a night,’ Ken said, on the way up the gravel path to Richard’s house. ‘I’ll be off now, to see what the wife’s got for supper.’

‘I’ll drive you.’

Ken sensed that Richard didn’t care to. ‘It’s only a mile. A walk’ll do me good.’

He locked the garage, and saw him out of the gate, on the way to the back door noting his aerial slung between two willow trees, branches shaking in the wind. Must stop it going up and down like a yo-yo – though he was satisfied with the circular plate-like satellite dish clamped to the roof and beamed into planetary realms. In that respect it was a suitable house, up on a hill and giving good all-round reception.

He would have liked a smell of supper when he got in. Was it from spite, or indolence? She thought of everything, so it must be spite. He shook off his boots by the cloakroom door, set the guns in their cabinet, and put on slippers, unable to say what room she would be in. Couldn’t much care. Probably in the sitting room.

Roaming the fields made you hungry. Ken would sit down to his roast or hotpot, with jam roll and custard to follow, his fat wife slapping it down yet glad to see him eat; but Richard put a slice of smoked bacon in the pan and when it was halfway brown cracked in an egg, and two hemispheres of ripe tomato. A breakfast at night was enough to go to bed on, though he wouldn’t get there for some time. No need to watch his weight, being slim enough at forty. Pale hair, which Amanda always said resembled a toupee, was short enough to never need combing.

He ate quickly, a blob of yolk splashing the knee of his jeans, wiped with a paper towel. Smoke from the toaster came up, so he banged the side and trowelled butter on burnt bread. Amanda stood in the doorway: ‘You’re stinking up my kitchen with your fry-ups again.’ She pressed the switch: ‘Try using the extractor fan.’

The noise was like that of a plane taking off, and he relished silence now and again. ‘I forgot.’

Relaxed, or so you might assume, he was ready to spring, like a panther and as unpredictable, blue eyes turned on her, looking slightly mad, as always, and fully knowing the power of his expression. He was about middle height, less tall than she, but tight with violence, always to be feared, except when he was feeling northwest passage and midnight sugar rolled into one. Then she was as mad as he, but with love, so that was all right. ‘You always do forget. It’s there for keeping the smells of cooking down.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Well, you paid for it.’

The only way to let her have the last word was to keep quiet. He needed to mark the cessation of the day by a sanitary cordon of tranquillity, but she had often said that if she didn’t talk she felt like a waxwork and, he admitted with a smile (which could only annoy her) she certainly looked a pretty one, beautiful even. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘I had a salad earlier. Where were you?’

‘After rabbits, with Ken.’

‘All boys together, eh? Why didn’t you let me know you were going out?’

‘You were nowhere to be seen.’

‘I was at Doris’s. She did my hair.’

‘So I see.’ The treatment of her short fair hair had kept the aureole of curls tight to her head, and he liked that, but blue-grey eyes and smallish mouth gave her a desultory, hungry look, as if never getting enough of what she wanted out of life, whatever that might be. She wore a high-necked white blouse with a broad tie of equally white bands hanging between the folds of her small bosom. In her late thirties, she could at times look blowsy and haggard, but the glow of dissatisfaction had restored her to the younger woman he had first seen sitting in a park bench reading a book, and fallen in love with. ‘Your hair looks wonderful,’ he told her.

‘It’s always best if somebody else does it. When I help Doris in the salon though she pays me well. Says I’m one of the best hairdressers she’s ever had.’

‘I’m sure that’s true.’

She liked his compliment but wouldn’t show it, lit a cigarette and said: ‘You could have left a note when you went out.’

‘It didn’t occur to me.’

‘It never does.’

Being married, who needs enemies? He wanted to smack her around the chops, but what was the use? He once did so, and she’d walked out. Then she came back, by which time he had got used to living alone. Now he’d got used to living with her again, and didn’t want her to go. Maybe that meant she would. She was more of a mystery to him than he could be to her, whatever she thought. Perhaps he had been neglectful. All she’d wanted was for him to leave a note so that she would know he would be coming back. Whenever he went out she feared he might not (though that could be because she didn’t want him to) unless he let her know exactly where he was going, and that wasn’t always possible. So now and again he made up fancy little itineraries out of kindness, though he didn’t like having to tell lies, which they really weren’t, since no other woman was involved. He supposed their ten-year marriage had gone on too long, more and more memories neither of them could mention without spiralling into dangerous arguments, topics well recognised so that whoever brought one up knew very well what they were doing, thus breaking the rules, which happened when a seeming indifference on one side or the other caused boredom too painful to be endured.

She was bored now, with him, with life, above all with herself, and the glow of argument was in her.

‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘you’re too selfish. You’re too mean to share your thoughts with anyone.’

And that’s how it should be, yet to be called selfish riled him above all else, too proud to go through the list of what he had done for her, and though to be honest assumed she had done as much for him, he couldn’t think for the moment what it was. He only knew he’d helped other people, often, but such unthinking bastards hadn’t thanked him because they considered his money had come too easy.

‘I haven’t known you to do a good deed in your life,’ she said. ‘It just isn’t in you.’

He’d never told her, because if he did she’d say what a fool he had been to help such people. And so he was. But a pure good deed from the goodness of his heart to someone who would appreciate it out of the goodness of his? No, she was right. ‘Oh, pack it in, for Christ’s sake.’

His menacing tone didn’t scare her, though she knew it should have. ‘Of course, it could be there’s nothing there. I should have realised it from the first. The trouble with me is that I take so long to learn.’