Michel Faber - Under the Skin

‘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?’

‘Whelks?’

‘Whelks. It’s one of my lines of business. People just like yourself gather ’em. I sell ’em on.’

Isserley pondered for a few seconds, assessing whether she had enough information to proceed.

‘What are whelks?’ she said at last.

He grinned through his haze of steam.

‘Molluscs, basically. You’ll’ve seen ’em, living where you live. But I’ve got one here, as it happens.’ He lifted one cheek of his meaty buttocks towards her, to fish around in his right trouser pocket.

‘There’s the fella,’ he said, holding a dull grey shell up to her eye level. ‘I always keep one in my pocket, to show people.’

‘That’s very foresightful of you,’ complimented Isserley.

‘It’s to show people the size that’s wanted. There’s piddly wee ones, y’see, size of peas, that aren’t worth the bother of picking up. But these big fellas are just fine.’

‘And I could just gather them and get money for it?’

‘Nothing simpler,’ he assured her. ‘Dornoch’s good for ’em. Millions of ’em there, if you go at the right time.’

‘When is the right time?’ Isserley asked. She had hoped he’d have taken his jacket off by now, but he seemed content to swelter and evaporate.

‘Well, what you do,’ he told her, ‘is get yourself a book of the tides. Costs about 75p from the Coastguard Authority. You check when it’s low tide, go to the shore and just rake ’em in. Soon as you’ve got enough, you give me a tinkle and I come and collect.’

‘What are they worth?’

‘Plenty, in France and Spain. I sell ’em to restaurant suppliers – they can’t get enough of ’em, especially in winter. Most people only gather in summer, y’see.’

‘Too cold for the whelks in winter?’

‘Too cold for the people. But you’d do all right. Wear rubber gloves, that’s my tip. The thin ones, like women use for washing dishes.’

Isserley almost pressed him to be specific about what she, rather than he, could earn from whelk-gathering; he had the gift of half persuading her to consider possibilities which were in fact absurd. She had to remind herself that it was him she was interested in getting to know, not herself.

‘So: this whelk-selling business – does it support you? I mean, do you have a family?’

‘I do all sorts of things,’ he said, dragging a metal comb through his thick hair. ‘I sell car tyres for silage pits. Creosote. Paint. My wife makes lobster creels. Not for lobsters – no fuckin’ lobsters left. But American tourists buy ’em, if they’re painted up nice. My son does a bit of the whelk-gathering himself. Fixes cars too. He could sort that rattle in your chassis no bother.’

‘I might not be able to afford it,’ retorted Isserley, discomfited again by the sharpness of his observation.

‘He’s cheap, my son. Cheap and fast. Labour’s what costs, y’see, when it comes to cars. He’s got a constant stream of ’em passing through his garage. In and out. Genius touch.’

Isserley wasn’t interested. If she wanted a man with a genius touch, she already had one on tap, back at the farm. He’d do anything for her, and he kept his paws to himself – if only just.

‘What about your van?’ she said.

‘Oh, he’ll fix that too. Soon as he gets his hands on it.’

‘Where is it?’

‘About half a mile from where you picked me up,’ he wheezed, stoically amused. ‘I was half-way home with a tonload of whelks in the back. Fuckin’ engine just died on me. But my boy will sort it. Better value than the AA, that lad. When he’s not pissed.’

‘Do you have a business card of your son’s on you?’ Isserley enquired politely.

‘Hold on,’ he grunted.

Again he lifted his meaty rump, which was not destined after all to be injected with icpathua. From his pocket he removed a handful of wrinkled, dog-eared and tarnished cardboard squares, which he shuffled through like playing cards. He selected two, and laid them on the dashboard.

‘One’s me, and one’s my son,’ he said. ‘If you feel like doing a bit of whelk-gathering, get in touch. I’ll come out for any amount over twenty kilos. If you don’t get that much in one day, a couple of days will do it.’

‘But don’t they spoil?’

‘Takes ’em about a week to die. It’s actually good to let ’em sit for a while so as the excess water drains out. And keep the bag closed, or they’ll crawl out and hide under your bed.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ promised Isserley. The rain was easing off at last, allowing her to slow the windscreen wipers down. Light began to seep through the greyness. ‘Here’s Tomich Farm coming up,’ she announced.

‘Another two hundred yards and that’s me,’ said the whelk stud, already unbuckling his seatbelt. ‘Thanks a lot. You’re a little Samaritan.’

She stopped the car where he told her to and he let himself out, squeezing her affectionately on the arm with one big hand before she realized what was happening. If he noticed the hardness and thinness of the limb, he didn’t let on. Ambling off, he waved once without looking back.

Isserley watched him disappear, her arm tingling unpleasantly. Then when he was gone, she frowned into her rear-view mirror, looking for a break in the traffic. She was forgetting him already, apart from a resolution to wash and put on fresh clothes whenever she’d been for a morning walk along the firth.

Indicator ticking, she cruised back onto the road, eyes front.

Her second hitcher was waiting for her quite close to home, so close that she had to think hard about whether she’d ever seen him before. He was young, almost too short, with a beetle brow and hair dyed so blond it was almost white. Despite the cold and the persistent drizzle, he wore only a short-sleeved Celtic T-shirt and military camouflage pants. Vague tattoos disfigured his lean but powerful forearms: skin deep, she reminded herself again.

Deciding, on the southwards approach, that he was a total stranger after all, she stopped for him.

As soon as he’d entered her car and sat down, Isserley sensed he was trouble. It was as if the laws of physics were unsettled by his presence; as if the electrons in the air were suddenly vibrating faster, until they were ricocheting around the confines of the cabin like crazed invisible insects.

‘Gaun anywhir near Redcastle?’ A sour aroma of alcohol sidled over to her.

Isserley shook her head. ‘Invergordon,’ she said. ‘If that’s not worth your while…’

‘Neh, it’s cool,’ he shrugged, drumming on his knees with his wrists, as if responding to the beat of an inbuilt Walkman.

‘OK,’ Isserley said, pulling out from the kerb.

She regretted there wasn’t more traffic: always a bad sign. She also found herself, instinctively, gripping the steering wheel in such a way that her elbows hung down, obscuring her passenger’s view of her breasts. This, too, was a bad sign.

His stare burned through regardless.

Women don’t dress like that, he thought, unless they want a fuck.

The only thing was, she mustn’t expect him to pay. Not like that slag in Galashiels. Buy them a drink and they think they can sting you for twenty pounds. Did he look like some kind of loser?

That road in Invergordon with the Academy in it. That was a good place. Quiet. She could suck him off there. He wouldn’t have to see her ugly face then.