Blind Needle (2 page)

There was a low yet persistent rattling noise coming from the engine which bothered me but didn't seem to bother her. We drove along the wide empty road, the darkness coming down by the minute, the black branches of the trees swaying in the wind. There was a range of mountains in the distance – a thin undulating line against the sky – and nearer, but to our right, shallow wooded slopes steepened and
rolled abruptly into mist. I tried to picture the scene in summer, with leaves on the trees and sheep in the fields, a fathomless blue sky overhead and a beaming yellow sun. But my imagination wasn't up to it; this coldness and darkness and rolling mist would go on forever and ever.

‘You don't live round here, do you?' she asked me.

She must have known, of course, because I hadn't known Keswick was twenty miles away. ‘No,' I said. ‘I've just come up the motorway. I've been staying down in – in Cheshire.'

The hood turned towards me and I saw a single dark eye peering at me, for a moment glimpsed its flat expressionless stare. Then she was watching the road again, and after a silence she said, ‘This place is dead out of season, as you can see, but it's the best time. Not a good time to look for work though. Are you?'

I more or less stammered, ‘Oh no. No. I'm here on a visit. My brother. I haven't seen him in over a year. I hope he still lives here—'

‘Don't you know?' She gave a short little laugh. ‘Suppose it's a wasted journey, coming all this way?'

‘Then I'll have to go back,' I said feebly.

‘You could have phoned first, or written to him.'

She took one hand off the wheel to shake out a cigarette, and offered me the packet without looking. I said, ‘No thanks,' and she used the dashboard lighter. Smoke eddied in front of her face and then shot away over her shoulder in a thin blue veil through the missing back window. I liked her hands. There were long shallow depressions on the backs of them between the ligatures, and soft hollows below the thumbs.

I cleared my throat. ‘I think he'd have written me – if he'd moved. I'm pretty sure he would.'

‘You don't sound very close.'

I'd forgotten how the simplest conversation is like a minefield. Confidently you stride out, with hardly a care, and then you step on a piece of innocent grass and feel something metallic and treacherous underfoot. It doesn't matter either if you're careful, watching your step every inch of the way; oh no, you can be trapped, caught, just as easily by a stray bland remark as by malicious curiosity.

She had switched on the headlights, which through my side of the
windscreen made a blank white glare. The world had turned into hazy splintered light and varying shades of grey: the vague splash of headlights, the road streaking by through the side window, the dark clouds overhead I could just about see through the clear arc of the single wipe. We might have been driving headlong towards the edge of the world – the sudden blind plunge into nothingness. She seemed very calm about it, which calmed me, and I put my trust in her; or rather, it was her hands I trusted. Yes I did. I was used to hands doing things calmly and capably, and her hands reminded me of the wings of doves fluttering in slow-motion.

I didn't believe we would really plunge over the edge, and I forced myself to relax.

Just then a white car with an orange stripe along its side went past us at speed, throwing up spray. I caught a glimpse of a checkered cap. The white car went racing ahead, and then it slowed and moved over into our lane. A sign glared redly through the rain-smeared windscreen in front of me, and next to it another sign flashed on and off, saying STOP … STOP … STOP …

I sat with my hat pulled low over my eyes, my hands clasped between my knees, as the flashing STOP grew bigger, reddening the entire windscreen, as we pulled in behind the white car.

She said with a sigh, ‘Hell and damnation, what now?', wrenching at the handbrake. ‘I bet my tail-light isn't working. Either that,' the hood turned as she looked at me, ‘or you've robbed a bank.'

Two glistening yellow day-glo figures approached. One stayed just outside the edge of the splay of headlights while the other came right up to the car window and leaned down and twirled his finger. She opened the window a couple of inches. Rain scurried in through the gap. The policeman's hat was swathed in plastic, the raindrops pattering and bouncing off it with a noise like a shower of rice.

‘Sorry to stop you, s –.' He nearly said ‘sir,' and caught himself, peering in through the gap. ‘Madam. We're warning all motorists not to pick up hitch-hikers.' His eyes flicked past her to rest on me.

‘How many?'

‘What? Beg your pardon, madam?'

‘How many shouldn't I pick up? Three? Ten? Fifty?'

‘We advise you not to pick up any, singly or in packs. This is a
serious warning.'

‘Thank you, officer. I'll take it seriously.'

‘Can I ask, madam,' he said, looking at me, ‘if you know this person?'

The hood was turned away, so her facial expression was hidden from me. She didn't pause or hesitate, but said lightly, ‘Oh I think so, officer. I ought to know my own brother.'

‘And where are you going?'

‘We're on our way home. As quickly as possible, to get out of this foul night. I should think you're sorry you can't do the same, aren't you?'

She wound up the window as the smeared yellow figures faded into the rain sweeping through the headlights. The STOP sign went out, the car signalled and shot off. She put the car in gear, grinding it over the beating of my heart, and pulled out.

Something was being ground metallically and with great persistence – a bearing perhaps – it might have been anything, I knew nothing about cars. She was crouched forward, as if staring intently ahead at something, muttering under her breath; but it was inaudible with the rush of air and complaining engine.

The grass verge at the side of the road came suddenly nearer and I thought we were going over, but we were coasting into a lay-by. She turned off the engine, which clanked and rattled to ominous silence. The rain drummed on the roof.

She said bitterly, ‘They pick their moments, don't they? We passed a garage back there but it decided to bide its time. You're not a mechanical genius by any chance?' She pushed back her hood and a tousled mop of curly hair sprang up. Yet she was older than I thought she might be, mid-thirties or thereabouts. In the glow from the instruments her eyes gleamed very large and dark.

She hit the wheel with her fist. ‘It's my own damn stupid fault. I noticed an oil-leak and did nothing about it. I should have got the rear window seen to and didn't. I should never have got married and did.'

She had one of those classless university-trained voices and the
God-given assurance that went with it. I was rather envious of such people. They were never snubbed by uniformed officials. They expected prompt service and therefore got it. Mechanical contrivances were not supposed to misbehave.

She looked my way. I'd taken off my hat to wipe my forehead and she could see that my hair was cropped and grey. I suppose she saw a middle-aged man. My face I knew had a bit of a pallor.

‘If not a bank-robber,' she said, ‘maybe an escaped convict.'

‘Do you make a habit of picking up escaped convicts?' I said.

She laughed. It was easy and unforced; you didn't hear many laughs like that where I had come from. They were either harsh and cold, flung out with force, or they were whimpering and meaningless, done in corners behind clenched hands. Sometimes you couldn't distinguish them from weeping.

‘Come on,' she said, pulling the hood up. ‘Let's start walking.'

‘Where to?'

‘Civilisation.'

There was a thin verge of grass blasted flat by the traffic and a footpath, a strip of smooth tarmac shining in the drab light.

‘Aren't you going to lock it?' I asked as she came round the car.

‘With no rear window?'

I turned up my collar. ‘Which way? The garage?'

‘That was at least five miles back. We'll walk on. You never know, there might be a cottage or a farm or something. I can see it now: a flagged farmhouse kitchen with a log fire and a plump rosy-cheeked farmer's wife standing at the door with an oil-lamp. They're just about to have tea – the table's groaning with cholesterol. Slabs of butter and jugs of creamy milk. Hot scones and home-made damson jam. Fresh steaming coffee in a big earthenware pot.'

The wind seemed to have dropped, or moderated a little, even though the rain was still driving down. My hat was starting to wilt and my face was cold and wet. She plodded on beside me in silence, head bent inside the hood, arms tight against her body. She was quite tall, almost my height. A car or two went by, throwing up spray. I was beginning to enjoy my freedom. I didn't even mind the chill rain.

After about ten minutes I could see hazy lights ahead, surrounded by husks of yellow drizzle. As we got nearer she said, ‘Yes, I remember.
There's an inn about three miles from Keswick. I'm sure that's it.'

‘I'm going to be disappointed if I don't get hot buttered scones and damson jam,' I said.

‘Who'd have known it. You do have a sense of humour.'

‘It comes and goes,' I said.

We approached a sign lit by three naked yellow bulbs swaying on a wire in the wind. The lettering was in badly formed Gothic script, the kind Tea Shoppes have in small market towns. It read: Craddock's Coaching House.

When I hesitated and hung back the hood turned towards me, her features pale and washed out in the yellow light. ‘Come on if you're coming,' she said impatiently.

The building was low and squat and made of stone, bedded into the landscape. There were two large expensive-looking cars parked on the forecourt between diagonal white lines. A door inset with small panes of thick whorled glass led through a concrete porch into the main house. I followed her through and into the empty bar, rendered whitewashed walls with antique farm implements tacked to them, brasses on the mantel and low crooked black beams which seemed authentic. Narrow doorways and flagged passages gave onto other rooms and what appeared to be a small restaurant: gleaming cutlery and red-shaded table lamps reflecting on dark polished wood.

‘At least – thank God – we can have a drink.' She unzipped her anorak and shrugged her head free. ‘Are you hungry? I'm starving.'

I pulled my hat off. ‘Well, yes,' I said. ‘But I'm not really …'

‘For heaven's sake, don't be so coy.' She sounded impatient again. ‘I can afford a meal and a couple of drinks.'

‘I do have money,' I said, ‘I have to go easy, that's all.'

A large broad-shouldered man with a square ruddy face and quick impatient eyes appeared, dressed in a thick fisherman's sweater with what looked like anchors woven into it. He was wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, still chewing and swallowing. It was early, and a filthy night, and plainly he wasn't expecting anyone at this hour. She asked for the number of the nearest garage and the whereabouts of the phone. ‘Order a drink while I ring up,' she said to me. Over her shoulder on her way out she saw the man's eyes sweeping me up and down, almost with suspicion, and said brightly, ‘Mine's the usual,
darling. G & T, no lemon.'

I took the drinks and sat in a corner. There was an open iron grate stacked with logs and kindling. The landlord was watching me, belching softly behind his napkin. He didn't intend lighting it for my benefit, cold and rain-soaked as I was. His genuine customers in Prince of Wales check jackets with elbow patches and white polo-necked sweaters wouldn't be arriving for at least an hour.

When he saw that I wasn't going to break up the furniture and piss on the carpet he went out. The sound of a radio drifted through: an announcer reading the news as if it were the end of the world and he'd told you so.

I took my coat off. The shoulders of my jacket were damp where the moisture had started to seep through. Outside I could hear the wind threshing about; the low windows in deep embrasures were black rectangles, like blind eyes, reflecting the dim glow of the bar. I shivered slightly. It might have been the cold, but it was more probably fear.

‘They're sending a man to take a look at it,' she said, sitting opposite me on a padded stool. She held her head to one side and peered at me. ‘You're shivering. Are you cold?'

‘I think I've caught a chill. Won't they need the keys?'

‘There's a spare set behind the sunblind thing. I'm always losing mine so I keep a set there. Why not have a brandy?'

‘I don't think I will. Thanks.'

‘Please yourself.' She took off her anorak and spread it over the back of a chair. She was wearing a rag-bag collection of garments underneath, a plaid shirt and a sleeveless pullover with a loose knitted waistcoat on top of that. Instead of making her appear fat, the layers of clothing emphasised how slim she was. Her neck was pale and long, the cords of musclature standing out whenever she turned her head. There were faint lines underneath and radiating outwards from her eyes that I now noticed, seeing her in a decent light for the first time.

I asked her if the garage had said how long.

‘They haven't a clue of course. They said to give them an hour and ring back.' She sipped her drink, raising her fine dark eyebrows as if remembering something. She put her glass down. ‘I'm Diane Locke.'

I shook her hand, which seemed to amuse her. ‘Holford.'

‘You're very formal. What's your first name?'

‘Peter.'

‘Well, Peter,' she smiled, wagging her head to and fro. ‘Sorry if I offended you – about being in prison. It was meant to be a joke, but not very funny. I say things first and regret them afterwards. My father says it will get me into trouble one of these days and I dare say he's right.'