It was over-civilization that caused that, maybe. Two animals, or two primitives, would never worry about that sort of thing. If one was muddy, the other would just start licking or brushing or whatever was needed. There was nothing sexual about it.
Maybe he was being a hypocrite. He did recognize this woman as… well… a woman, surely? She was a female; he was a male. These were eternal realities. And, let’s face it, she was wearing amazingly little clothing for the weather. He hadn’t seen so much cleavage in public since well before the snows had set in.
Her breasts were suspiciously firm and gravity-defying for their size, though; maybe she’d had them pumped up with silicone. That was a pity. There were health risks – leakage, cancer. It was so unnecessary. Every woman was beautiful. Small breasts fitted snugly inside your hand and felt warm and complete. That’s what he told Cathy, whenever the latest lingerie catalogue came with the junk mail and she went on a downer.
Maybe this woman was simply wearing one of those fiendishly designed uplift bras. Men could be naive when it came to that sort of stuff. He examined her side, from armpit to waist, for tell-tale signs of underwiring or industrial-strength lace. He saw nothing except a small perforation in the fabric of her top, like a snarl from a spine of barbed wire or a sharp twig. The fabric around the hole was tacky with some sort of dried gunge. Could it be blood? He longed to ask. He wished he were a doctor, so he could ask and get away with it. Could he pretend to be a doctor? He knew a fair bit, from Cathy’s pregnancies, her motorcycle accident, his father’s stroke, Suzie’s addictions.
‘Excuse me, I’m a doctor,’ he could say, ‘and I can’t help noticing…’ But he didn’t approve of lying. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive, that’s what Shakespeare said. And Shakespeare was no fool.
The more he looked at this girl, the weirder she appeared. Her green velveteen trousers were very seventies retro-chic, if you disregarded the muddy knees, but she definitely didn’t have the legs of a nightclub babe. Trembling slightly under the thin fabric, so short they barely reached the pedals, they might have been the legs of a cerebral palsy sufferer. He turned his head to glance through the space between his seat and hers, half expecting to see a foldable wheelchair wedged into the back. There was only an old anorak, a garment he could well imagine her wearing. Her boots were like Doc Martens, but even chunkier, like Boris Karloff clogs.
Strangest of all, though, was her skin. Every part of her flesh that he could see, except for her pale smooth breasts, had the same peculiar texture to it: a downy look, like the hide of a cat recently spayed, just beginning to grow back the fur. She had scars everywhere: along the edges of her hands, along her collarbones, and especially on her face. He couldn’t see her face now, hidden as it was behind the tangled mane of her hair, but he’d got a pretty good glimpse of it before, and there was scarring along the line of her jaw, her neck, her nose, under her eyes. And then the corrective lenses. They must have the biggest magnification known to optometry, for her eyes to look that big.
He hated to judge anyone by externals. It was the inner person that mattered. But when a woman’s external appearance was this unusual, there was every likelihood it would have shaped the whole of her life. This woman’s story, whatever it was, would be a remarkable one: perhaps tragic, perhaps inspirational.
He longed to ask.
How sad it would be if he never found out. He would spend the rest of his life wondering. He knew that. He’d experienced it before. Once, eight years ago, he’d had a car himself, and given a lift to a man who’d started weeping, right there in the car next to him. William hadn’t asked what was the matter; he’d been too embarrassed, a macho kid of twenty. In time, the man stopped weeping, arrived at his destination, got out of the car, said thanks for the lift. Ever since then, maybe once a week, William would find himself wondering about that man.
‘Are you all right?’ He could ask that, surely. If she wanted to fob him off, she could put him in his place then and there. Or she could answer in a way that left things more open.
William licked his lips, tried to bring the words to his tongue. His heart beat faster, his breathing quickened. The fact that she wasn’t looking at him made things even harder. He considered clearing his throat, like he’d seen men do in the movies, then blushed at how naff that idea was. His sternum was vibrating, or maybe it was his lungs that were doing it, like a bass drum.
This was ridiculous. His heavy breathing was becoming audible now. She would think he was going to jump on her or something.
He took a deep breath and gave up the idea of asking her anything, at least out of the blue. Maybe something would arise naturally later.
If only he could bring Cathy into the conversation, that might reassure her. She would know then that he was some other woman’s partner, the father of two children, a person who wouldn’t dream of raping or molesting anybody. How to bring up the subject, though, if she didn’t ask? He couldn’t just say, ‘By the way, in case you might be wondering, I have a partner, who I love dearly’. That would sound so naff. No, worse than naff: positively creepy, even psychotic.
That’s what lying had done to the world. All the lying that people had been doing since the dawn of time, all the lying they were doing still. The price everyone paid for it was the death of trust. It meant that no two humans, however innocent they might be, could ever approach one another like two animals. Civilization!
William hoped he would remember all this stuff, to discuss it with Cathy when he got home. He had his finger on something important here, he thought.
Although maybe if he told Cathy too much about this woman who’d given him a lift, she’d take it the wrong way. Talking about his old girlfriend Melissa and the walking tour of Catalonia hadn’t gone over too well, he had to admit, even though Cathy had more or less forgiven him by now.
Jesus, why did this girl not speak to him?
Isserley stared ahead of her in despair. She was still unable to speak, the hitcher was evidently unwilling to. As always, it was up to her. Everything was up to her.
A big green traffic sign said there were 110 miles to go before Perth. She ought to tell him how far she was going. She had no idea how far she was going. She glanced into the rearview mirror. The road was empty, difficult to see clearly under the grey, snow-laden light. All she could do was keep driving, her hands barely moving on the steering wheel, a cry of torment stuck in her throat.
Even if she could bring herself to start a conversation, the thought of how much work it would be to keep it going made her heart sink. He was obviously a typical male of the species; stupid, uncommunicative, yet with a rodent cunning for evasion. She would talk to him, and in return he would grunt, surrender one-word answers to her cleverest questions, lapse into silence at every opportunity. She would play her game, he would play his, on and on, perhaps for hours.
Isserley realized, suddenly, that she just didn’t have the energy to play anymore.
Eyes fixed on the bleak road stretching out in front of her, she was humiliated by the absurd labour of it all, this wearisome nudging and winkling at him as if he were some priceless pearl to be drawn out by infinitesimal degrees from his secretive shell. The patience it required of her was superhuman. And for what? A vodsel the same as all the other vodsels, one of billions infesting the planet. A few parcels’ worth of meat.
Why must she put so much effort into playing this game day after day? Was this how she would spend the rest of her life? Endlessly putting on these performances, turning herself inside out, only to finish up empty-handed (more often than not) and having to start all over again?