it; he had the half-smiling, half-grimacing squint of the dull-witted. There was black engine oil on the sleeves of his shabby polyester jacket. Pale scars littered his tanned face like imperfectly erased graffiti.
Of his two guesses, she picked the one that was wrong.
‘Dornoch,’ she said.
‘I haven’t seen you around,’ he said.
‘I only arrived a few days ago,’ she said.
Her car had caught up now with the procession of vehicles that had passed him by. A long trail of tail-lights stretched, fading, into the distance. That was good. She dropped back into first gear and crawled along, absolved from speed.
‘You working?’ he asked.
Isserley’s brain was functioning optimally now, barely distracted by the steady pace of the traffic. She deduced he was probably the type who knew someone in every conceivable profession, or at least in those professions he didn’t despise.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m unemployed.’
‘You need a fixed address to get benefits,’ he pointed out, quick as a flash.
‘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
