Ordinarily, she had no objection to going a long way to find what she was looking for; it was not uncommon for her to drive as far as Pitlochry before turning back. Today, however, she was superstitious about travelling too far from home. Too many things could go wrong in the wet. She didn’t want to end up stranded somewhere, her engine churning feebly against a deluge. Who said she had to bring somebody home every day, anyway? One a week should be enough to satisfy any reasonable person.
Giving up around midday, she headed back north, playing with the notion that if she announced resolutely enough to the universe that she’d abandoned all hope, she might be offered something after all.
Sure enough, not far from the sign inviting motorists to visit picturesque seaboard villages on the B9175, she spotted a miserable-looking biped thumbing the watery air in the snubstream of the traffic. He was on the other side of the road from her, lit up by the headlights of a procession of vehicles sweeping past. She had no doubt he would still be there when she’d doubled back.
‘Hello!’ she called out, swinging the passenger door open for him.
‘Thank Christ for that,’ he exclaimed, leaning one arm on the edge of the door as he poked his dripping face into the car. ‘I was beginning to think there was no justice in the world.’
‘How’s that?’ said Isserley. His hands were grimy, but large and well-formed. They’d clean up nicely, with detergent.
‘I always pick up hitchers,’ he asserted, as if refuting a malicious slur. ‘Always. Never drive past one, if I’ve got room in the van.’
‘Neither do I,’ Isserley assured him, wondering how long he was intending to stand there ushering rain into her car. ‘Hop in.’
He swung in, his big waterlogged. rump centering him on the seat like the bottom of a lifebuoy. Steam was already rising before he’d even shut the door; his casual clothes were soaked through and squeaked like a shammy as he settled himself.
He was older than she’d taken him to be, but fit. Did wrinkles matter? They shouldn’t: they were only skin deep, after all.
‘So, the one bloody time I need a lift,’ he blustered on, ‘what happens? I walk half a bloody mile to the main road in the pissing rain, and do you think any bugger will stop for me?’
‘Well…’ Isserley smiled. ‘I stopped, didn’t I?’
‘Aye, well you’re car number two thousand and bloody fifty, I can tell you,’ he said, squinting at her as if she was missing the point.
‘Have you been counting?’ she challenged him sportively.
‘Aye,’ he sighed. ‘Well, rough head-count, you know.’ He shook his head, sending droplets flying off his bushy eyebrows and abundant quiff. ‘Can you drop me off somewhere near Tomich Farm?’
Isserley made a mental calculation. She had ten minutes only, driving slowly, to get to know him.
‘Sure,’ she said, admiring the steely density of his neck and the width of his shoulders, determined not to disqualify him merely on the grounds of age.
He sat back, satisfied, but after a couple of seconds a glimmer of bafflement appeared on his stubbled spade of a face. Why were they not moving?
‘Seatbelt,’ she reminded him.
He strapped himself in as if she had just asked him to bow three times to a god of her choice.
‘Death traps,’ he mumbled derisively, fidgeting in a faint miasma of his own steam.
‘It’s not me that wants it,’ she assured him. ‘I just can’t afford to be stopped by the police, that’s all.’
‘Ach, police,’ he scoffed, as if she were admitting to a fear of mice or mad cow disease. But there was an undertone of paternal indulgence in his voice, and he wiggled his shoulders experimentally, to demonstrate how he was adjusting to his confinement.
Isserley smiled and drove off with him, lifting her arms high on the steering wheel to show him her breasts.
She’d better watch those, the hitcher thought. Or they’ll fall into her Corn Flakes.
Mind you, this girl needed something going for her, with glasses as thick as that and no chin. Nicki, his own daughter, was no pearl of beauty either, and to be honest she didn’t even make the most of what she’d got. Still, if she really was studying to become a lawyer instead of just boozing his allowance away in Edinburgh, maybe she’d end up being some use to him after all. Like, she could maybe find a few extra loopholes in the EU regulations.
What did this girl do for a crust? Her hands weren’t quite right. No, they weren’t normal at all. She’d buggered them up, maybe, in some heavy manual job when she was too young to handle it and too stupid to complain. Chicken-plucking. Fish-gutting.
She lived by the sea, definitely. Smelled of it. Fresh today. Maybe she worked for one of the local fishermen. Mackenzie was known to take women on, if they were strong enough and not too much trouble.
Was this girl trouble?
She was tough, that was for sure. Probably had been through hell, growing up funny-looking in one of those little seaboard villages. Balintore. Hilton. Rockfield. No, not Rockfield. He knew every single person in Rockfield.
How old was she? Eighteen, maybe. Her hands were forty. She drove like she was pulling a wonky trailer-load of hay over a narrow bridge. Sat like she had a rod up her arse. Any shorter and she’d need a couple of pillows on the seat. Maybe he’d suggest that to her – maybe she’d bite his head off if he did. Probably illegal, anyway. Highway Code regulation number three million and sixty. She’d be scared to tell them where to shove it. She’d rather suffer.
And she was suffering. The way she moved her arms and legs. The heating turned up full. She’d done some damage there somewhere along the line. A car accident, maybe? She had guts, then, to keep driving. A tough little bird.
Could he help her out, maybe?
Could she be any use to him?
‘You live near the sea, am I right?’ he said.
‘How can you tell?’ Isserley was surprised; she had made no conversation yet, assuming he needed more time to appraise her body.
‘Smell,’ he stated bluntly. ‘I can smell the sea on your clothes. Dornoch Firth? Moray Firth?’
It was alarming, this point-blank accuracy. She would never have expected it; he had the half-smiling, half-grimacing squint of the dull-witted. There was black engine oil on the sleeves of his shabby polyester jacket. Pale scars littered his tanned face like imperfectly erased graffiti.
Of his two guesses, she picked the one that was wrong.
‘Dornoch,’ she said.
‘I haven’t seen you around,’ he said.
‘I only arrived a few days ago,’ she said.
Her car had caught up now with the procession of vehicles that had passed him by. A long trail of tail-lights stretched, fading, into the distance. That was good. She dropped back into first gear and crawled along, absolved from speed.
‘You working?’ he asked.
Isserley’s brain was functioning optimally now, barely distracted by the steady pace of the traffic. She deduced he was probably the type who knew someone in every conceivable profession, or at least in those professions he didn’t despise.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m unemployed.’
‘You need a fixed address to get benefits,’ he pointed out, quick as a flash.
‘I don’t believe in the dole.’ She was getting the hang of him at last, and suspected this reply would please him.
‘Looking for work?’
‘Yes,’ she said, slowing down even further to allow a luminous white Mini into the queue. ‘But I don’t have much education. And I’m not that strong.’
‘Tried gathering whelks?’