Michel Faber: Under the Skin

Only a few hundred metres short of the junction with the highway, a hairy youngster was ambling along the side of the narrow road, thumbing a lift. She accelerated past him, and he threw up his arm lazily, adding two fingers to the gesture. He knew her face, vaguely, and she knew his, vaguely. They were both locals, though they’d never met except at moments like this.

Isserley had a policy of steering well clear of locals.

Turning onto the A9 at Kildary, she checked the clock on the dashboard. The days were lengthening fast: only 8:24, and the sun was already off the ground. The sky was bruise blue and flesh pink behind a swaddling of pure white cumulus, hinting at the frigid clarity to come. There would be no snow, but frost would sparkle for hours yet and night would fall well before the air had a chance to get warm.

For Isserley’s purposes, a clear raw day like this was good for safe driving, but wasn’t so good for assessing hitchers. Exceptionally hardy specimens might go short-sleeved, to show off their fitness, but most would be bundled up in overcoats and layers of wool to make things difficult for her. Even a starveling could look musclebound if he had enough gear on.

There was no traffic in her rear-view mirror and she gave herself permission to pootle along at 40 miles an hour, partly to test out how the rattle was doing. It seemed to have fixed itself. That was wishful thinking, of course. But it was a cheering thing to think when setting out in the morning, after a night of nagging pain, bad dreams and fitful sleep.

She sniffed deeply and laboriously through her narrow, barely patent little nostrils. The air was fresh and sharp, slightly intoxicating, like pure oxygen administered through a mask, or ether. Her consciousness was hesitating at a crossroads between hyperactive wakefulness and a return to sleep. If she didn’t get the stimulation of some action soon, she knew which way it was likely to go.

Isserley drove past some of the usual spots where hitchers were set down, but there was no-one. Just the road and the wide world, empty.

A few stray drops of rain spattered the windscreen, and the wipers smeared two filthy monochrome rainbows across her line of vision. She squirted bottled water from inside the bonnet, a seemingly endless stream of it against the glass, before she was able to get a clear view again. The manoeuvre left her more tired somehow, as if she’d had to give up vital fluids of her own.

She tried to project herself forward in time, visualizing herself already parked somewhere with a hunky young hitch-hiker sitting next to her; she imagined herself breathing heavily against him as she smoothed his hair and grasped him round the waist to ease him into position. The fantasy was not enough, however, to keep her eyes from drooping shut.

Just as Isserley was considering finding a place to pull in and doze for a while, she spotted a silhouetted figure just below the horizon. Instantly she roused herself and dilated her eyelids attentively, pushing her glasses on straight. She checked her face and hair in the rear-view mirror. Experimentally, she pouted her lips, which were red as lipstick.

Driving past the hitcher the first time, she noted he was a male, quite tall, broad-shouldered, casually dressed. He was using both thumb and forefinger, rather slackly, as if he’d been waiting ages. Or maybe he didn’t want to appear too eager.

On the way back, she noted he was quite young, with a very short haircut in the penal Scottish style. His clothing was drab as mud. What he had inside it filled up his jacket impressively, although whether with muscle or fat remained to be seen.

Driving towards him the final time, Isserley realized he really was uncommonly tall. He was staring at her, possibly figuring out that he had already seen her a couple of minutes before, as there wasn’t much other traffic. Nevertheless, he didn’t beckon to her any more urgently, just kept his hand lazily extended. Begging was not his style.

She slowed down and brought her car to a standstill right in front of him.

‘Hop in,’ she said.

‘Cheers,’ he said breezily as he swung into the passenger seat.

Just from that one word, delivered without a smile despite the smiley facial muscles involved, Isserley already knew something about him. He was the type who needed to swerve round the saying of thanks, as if gratitude were a trap. In his world, there was nothing Isserley could do for him that would put him in her debt; everything was only natural. She had stopped to pick him up off the side of the road; fine. Why not? She was giving him, for free, something a taxi would have charged him a fortune for, and what he said to that was ‘Cheers’, as if she were a drinking pal and had just done him a trifling, perfunctory favour like sliding an ashtray into his reach.

‘No problem,’ responded Isserley, as if he’d thanked her anyway. ‘Where are you heading?’

‘South,’ he said, looking south.

A long second idled by, then he pulled the seatbelt across his torso as if reluctantly conceding this was the only way to get the two of them moving.

‘Just south?’ she enquired as she eased the car away from the kerb, careful, as always, to flip the toggle for the indicators rather than the headlights or the windscreen wipers or the icpathua.

‘Well… it depends,’ he said. ‘Where are you heading?’

She made a calculation in her head, then looked at his face to judge where he might figure in it.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she said. ‘Inverness, to begin with.’

‘Inverness is fine with me.’

‘But you’d like to go further?’

‘I’ll go as far as I can get.’

Another car had appeared suddenly in her rear-view mirror and she had to gauge its intentions; by the time she was able to turn back to the hitcher his face was impassive. Had his remark been impish arrogance? Sexual innuendo? Or just dull matter-of-fact?

‘Waiting long?’ she asked, to tease out more of his wit.

‘Pardon?’

He blinked at her, interrupted in the act of unzipping his jacket. Was the challenge of pulling a zip and simultaneously listening to a simple question more than his intellect could manage? He had a thin black scab etched across his right eyebrow, almost healed – a drunken fall maybe? The whites of his eyes were clear, his hair had been washed in the not too distant past, he didn’t smell – was he just stupid?

‘Where I picked you up,’ she elaborated. ‘Had you been standing there long?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a watch.’

She glanced down at his nearest wrist; it was big, with fine golden hairs, and two blueish veins passing over onto the backs of his hands.

‘Well, did it feel long?’

He seemed to think this over for a moment.

‘Yeah.’

He grinned. His teeth weren’t so good.

In the world outside, the sun’s rays intensified abruptly as if some responsible agency had just noticed they were shining at half the recommended power. The windscreen lit up like a lamp and beamed ultraviolet rays onto Isserley and the hitcher, pure heat with the nip of breeze neatly filtered out. The car’s heater was on full as well, so the hitcher was soon squirming in his seat, taking his jacket off altogether. Isserley watched him surreptitiously, watched the mechanics of his biceps and triceps, the roll of his shoulders.

‘OK if I put this on the back seat?’ he presumed, bundling the jacket up in his big hands.

‘Sure,’ she said, noting the ripples of muscle momentarily expressing themselves through his T-shirt as he twisted round to toss the jacket on top of her own. His abdomen was a bit fatty – beer, not muscle – but nothing too gross. The bulge in his jeans was promising, although most of it was probably testicles.