The German Numbers Woman by Alan Sillitoe Read Free Book Online Page A

smile (which could only annoy her) she certainly looked a pretty one, beautiful even. ‘Have you eaten?’
    â€˜I had a salad earlier. Where were you?’
    â€˜After rabbits, with Ken.’
    â€˜All boys together, eh? Why didn’t you let me know you were going out?’
    â€˜You were nowhere to be seen.’
    â€˜I was at Doris’s. She did my hair.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜It didn’t occur to me.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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