Her car’s tank was almost empty. She would have to fix that.
And her own stomach, now that she thought of it, had run out of fuel hours ago: she was absolutely ravenous, just about ready to faint! God, how long had it been since she’d eaten anything? Yesterday morning! And today she’d been running around like a maniac since before dawn, on top of almost no sleep.
In all honesty, she had to face facts: from the moment she’d driven onto the roads today, she’d been a tragedy waiting to happen.
Bone-tired and dizzy, Isserley stopped at Donny’s Garage in Kildary for petrol. She wished she could buy fuel for her own body as easily. Skulking inside the shop while a queue of other motorists were paying, she peered longingly at the snacks displayed in the sickly fluorescent light. There was nothing fit for human consumption, as far as she could tell.
And yet, there surely must be. It was just a matter of making the correct choice. Which was not easy. The last time she had been adventurous and eaten something meant for vodsels she had ended up in bed for three days.
Sluggish with indecision, she glanced around the shop in case there were any cassettes, by John Martyn or musicians with names like animal feeds, for sale at £5 or £10 exactly. There were no cassettes at all.
But to return to her unfortunate experience with vodsel food: perhaps her mistake had been to select something that looked exactly like serslida husks baked into a bar shape. Perhaps this time she could select something not according to how it looked, but according to what it claimed to be. In fact, she really should select something while she had the chance. Any risk of getting sick later was surely outweighed by the risks of pushing herself any further when she was so empty.
The queue was dispersing: she would have to pay for her petrol soon, or risk attracting attention. She picked up a packet of potato crisps from a little metal cage and with some effort read the microscopic list of ingredients on its shiny packaging. It seemed to contain nothing exotic, just potato and oil and salt; the men on the farm were routinely served a potato dish very like this from their canteen, albeit prepared in a different kind of oil.
Calculating prices hastily, Isserley selected three packets of the crisps, a gift box of chocolates and a copy of the Ross-shire Journal, bringing the cost to £5 exactly. She handed two banknotes to the bored youth behind the counter and hurried out to her car.
Fifteen minutes later, Isserley’s car stood idling in another layby, and she was leaning over its purring engine, scraping fluffy snow off the windscreen with the edge of her hand. She collected some of it in her palms and sucked it gratefully into her mouth. There was no feeling in her lips – there never was – but the soft flesh of the insides of her mouth and throat thrilled to the melting purity and the heavenly taste of the frozen moisture. Three packetiuls of scorched potato slivers had made her extraordinarily thirsty.
When she’d swallowed enough snow, she returned to the driver’s seat.
Only ten miles from home, she passed a hitcher, signalling forlornly in the dark.
Forget it, she thought, as she crested a hill and left him behind.
But then, as if photographic chemicals in her mind had been activated, an image of him began forming. He really was rather impressive. Worth a second look, anyway. It was only five o’clock, virtually daytime, if this had been summer. Lots of hitchers who weren’t necessarily deranged might be out on the road. She mustn’t be so dismissive.
Isserley doubled back, executing her turns carefully and safely. Nobody hooted at her or flashed warning lights; she was an ordinary capable motorist as far as the other traffic was concerned. Inside herself, she felt less exhausted than before, and the food had done her good.
The hitcher, when she passed him on the other side of the road, looked glum but unaggressive in the fleeting periphery of her headlights. He carried no sign, and was perhaps a little under-dressed for the weather, but not bizarrely so. He was wearing leather gloves, and his leather jacket was zipped up to the neck. Snow twinkled on his dark-haired head, his moustache, and the shoulders of his jacket. He was tall by Scottish standards, and powerfully built. And, in the glimpse she caught of his expression, Isserley thought she detected an impatience, a nearness to some self-imposed limit, which would make him abandon his attempt to hitch if someone didn’t stop for him bloody soon.
So she turned again, drove back, and stopped for him.
He leaned his face to the passenger window, which she had wound half down.
‘Bad time to be out,’ she remarked cautiously, challenging him to explain.
‘Job interview,’ he replied, melted snow dripping from his moustache. ‘Finished later than they said it would. There’s another bus in an hour, but I thought I’d try and thumb it.’
She opened the door for him, clearing the empty crisps packets off his seat.
‘Thanks,’ he said, not smiling, but with a deep cloudy sigh, presumably of appreciation. He removed his gloves to fasten his seatbelt; on both of his big hands, a tattooed swallow flew in the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger.
As they were pulling away from the kerb together, Isserley remembered something.
‘It’s Saturday,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ he acknowledged. ‘This interview wasn’t at the Job Centre or anything, it was a private arrangement.’ He eyed her momentarily as if assessing whether she could be trusted, then added, ‘I told them I had a car parked not far away.’
‘Work can be hard to find,’ Isserley reassured him. ‘Sometimes you have to be crafty to get it.’
He did not reply, as if loath to surrender too much of his dignity all at once. After a few moments, though, he said, ‘I do have a car, actually. Needs road tax, MOT. Nothing a couple of weeks ‘wages wouldn’t sort.’
‘So, do you think these people you’ve just seen will give you a job?’ said Isserley, nodding backwards at the mysterious interviewers they were leaving behind.
His reply was instant and bitter. ‘Time-wasters. Just trying on the idea of employing somebody, yunderstandwhatI’msaying?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Isserley, sitting up straighter in her seat.
Observing his rescuer, the hitcher was not impressed. What was this obsession women had with showing cleavage these days? he thought. You saw it all the time on TV, all those greasy-haired young females in London, going to nightclubs wearing little black vests not even big enough to cover a dachshund. They’d get the shock of their lives if they had to survive in the wild, that’s all he could say. No wonder the army wasn’t happy about women soldiers. Would you trust your life to someone who went out in the snow with an acre of tit showing?
Christ, could this girl not drive a little faster! This was barely faster than walking. He should just suggest they switch seats, he could get this thing moving at twice the speed, even if it was Japanese crap. Oh, to have that Wolseley he’d owned in the eighties back again! He could still remember the feel of the gearstick. Quality leather on the knob. Soft as pigskin. Probably was pigskin. Where was his Wolseley now? Some idiot with a mobile phone would be driving it. Or crashing it. Not everyone could handle a Wolseley.
There had been no bloody point in even bothering to go and see these people today. Typical two-income poncy show-offs. Lights that came on automatically when you stepped close to the house. Choice of coffees. Computer in every room. Maple bookcases full of bloody Feng Shui and Gardening and The Joy of bloody Sex, and a pedigree Samoyed they didn’t have a bloody clue how to care for properly. ‘Don’t chew our nice sheepskin rug, darling.’ Jesus, how he would have liked to take the rug out of that dog’s mouth and teach her the first few rules of obedience.