‘What happened to your car?’ she asked, hoping to shift his attention to the heart of the matter.
‘It won’t go no more,’ he explained dolefully, his eyes crusty slits. ‘No more. That’s the truth. No use arguin’, eh? Eh?’
He grinned fiercely, as if hoping to charm her into dropping some opposing point of view.
‘Engine trouble?’ prompted Isserley.
‘Nah. I ran out of petrol, like,’ he said, snorting with embarrassment. ‘On account of my girlfriend, y’understand. Every minute counts, with her. But I shoulda put in more petrol, seemin’ly.’
He squinted into Isserley’s giant eyes, and she could tell he saw nothing more exotic there than the imagined reproach of a fellow motorist.
‘The fuel gauge is a piece a’shite, you see,’ he elaborated, stepping back from Isserley’s car to display his own. ‘Says empty when it’s near full. Says full when it’s near empty. Can’t listen to a word it tells ya. Ya just have to rely on your memory, y’understand?’ He yanked the door of his car open, as if intending to give Isserley a guided tour of its frailties. The light went on in the cabin – a pale and flickering light, attesting to the vehicle’s dodgy reputation. Beer cans and crisps packets littered the passenger seats.
‘I been up since five this morning,’ the snout-nosed hitcher declared, banging his car’s door shut. ‘Worked ten days straight. Four – five hours sleep a night. Wicked. Wicked. No use complainin’, though, eh? Eh?’
‘Well… can I give you a lift, perhaps?’ suggested Isserley, waving her thin arm in the empty space over her passenger seat, to capture and hold his attention.
‘It’s a can of petrol I’m needin’,’ he said, lurching into the window-frame of Isserley’s car again.
‘I haven’t got any,’ said Isserley, ‘But get into the car anyway. I’ll drive you to a garage, or maybe further. Where were you heading?’
‘To my girlfriend’s place,’ he leered, winching his eyelids up off his eyeballs again. ‘She’s got a temper. She’ll skelp my bot.’
‘Yes, but where is that exactly?’
‘Edderton,’ he said.
‘Get in, then,’ she urged. Edderton was only five miles out of Tain, thirteen miles or so from Ablach Farm. How could she lose? If she had to give him up, she could soothe her disappointment by retreating instantly to the farm; if she took him, so much the better. Either way she’d be safe in her cottage by the time Amlis Vess arrived, and might even sleep through all the brouhaha – as long as nobody came knocking on her door.
Hitcher safely strapped in, Isserley pulled away from the gutter and accelerated up the A9 towards home. She regretted that this stretch of the road was unlit and that she couldn’t legally turn on the cabin light; she would have liked this guy to have the opportunity to examine her properly. She sensed he was dim-witted, and likely just now to be fixated on solving his immediate problems; he might well need extra enticement to talk about himself. The darkness of the road, however, made her too nervous to drive with only her right hand on the steering wheel; he would just have to strain his eyes a bit, that’s all, if he wanted to see her breasts. Admittedly, his eyes looked pretty strained already. She faced front, drove carefully, and left him to it.
She would throw him out on his arse, for sure, the hitcher was thinking, but maybe she’d let him sleep a bitty first.
Ha! No chance! She’d make him look at an oven dish full of dried-out supper, and say it couldn’t be et now even though he’d be desperate to get stuck into it, but she wouldn’t let him of course. That’s what he drove like a maniac up the A9 for, every week, week after week. His girl. His Catriona. He could lift her up and toss her through the window like a vase if he wanted to, and she was the one who pushed him around. What was that all about, eh? Eh?
This girl who’d picked him up, now. She'd probably be all right. As a girlfriend, like. She’d let him sleep when he was dying for it, he could tell. She wouldn’t poke him just when he was drifting off and say, ‘You’re not falling asleep are you?’ Kind eyes, she had. Bloody big knockers, too. Pity she didn’t have any big containers of petrol tucked away somewhere. Still, he couldn’t complain, could he? No use complaining. Face the future with a smile, as the old man always used to say. Mind you, the old man never met Catriona.
Where was this girl going to drive him? Would she be willing to drive him back to his car again if he could get some petrol? He hated to leave his car in a ditch like that. A thief could steal it. Thief’d need petrol, though. But there were probably car thieves driving all around the countryside, with big petrol containers in the boot, just looking for a car like his. How low could some people go, eh? Dog eat dog, that’s what it all boiled down to.
Catriona would murder him if he turned up any later than he already was. That wasn’t so bad in itself, but she wouldn’t let him sleep, this was the thing. If he could get some petrol into his car he could sleep in that, and maybe visit Catriona in the morning. Or sleep in the car all weekend even, sit around in Little Chefs during the day and drive back down to work on Monday morning. Fucking great, eh? Eh?
This girl here wouldn’t mind if he rested his head back on the seat for just a few minutes, would she? He wasn’t much of a talker anyway. ‘Thick as two planks,’ Catriona always said.
But how thick exactly was a plank, eh? It just depended on the plank, didn’t it, eh?
Isserley coughed, to summon him back to consciousness. Coughing didn’t come easily to her, but she tried every so often, just to see if she could pull it off convincingly.
‘Eh? Eh?’ he yapped, his bloodshot eyes and snot-shiny snout leaping out of the dimness like startled wildlife.
‘What do you work at?’ said Isserley. She’d been quiet for a minute, assuming the hitcher was ogling her, but a strangled snort from his direction had let her know he was falling asleep.
‘Woodcutting,’ he said. ‘Timber. Eighteen years in the business, eighteen years behind a chainsaw. Still got two arms and two legs! Heh! Heh! Heh! Not bad, eh? Eh?’
He held his fingers up above the dashboard and wiggled them, presumably to demonstrate that he had all ten.
‘That’s a lot of experience,’ complimented Isserley. ‘You must be well known to all the timber companies.’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded emphatically, his chin almost bouncing off his barrel chest each time. ‘They run when they see me coming. Heh! Heh! Heh! Ya got to keep smiling, eh?’
‘You mean, they’re not satisfied with your work?’
‘They say I’m not a good time-keeper,’ he slurred. ‘I keep the trees waiting too long, y’understand? Late, late, late, that’s me. La-a-a-a-ate…’ His head was slumping, the attenuated vowel describing a slow lapse into oblivion.
‘That’s very unfair,’ Isserley remarked loudly. ‘It’s how well you do your job that matters, not the hours you keep, surely.’
‘Kind words, kind words,’ simpered the woodcutter, staring ever deeper into his lap, his tufty hair slowly rearranging itself on his compact skull.
‘So,’ exclaimed Isserley, ‘you live in Edderton, do you?’
Again he snorted to the surface.
‘Eh? Edderton? My girlfriend lives there. She’s gonna skelp my bot.’
‘So where do you live?’
‘Sleep in the car through the week, or bed and breakfast. Work ten days straight, thirteen sometimes. Start five in the morning summertime, seven in winter. Or I’m suppo-o-o-o-sed to…’
She was just about to rouse him from his slump when he roused himself, shifted around in his seat and actually laid his cheek against the headrest, pillow-style. He winked again, and, with a weary obsequious smile, mumbled across to her,