The Driver Who Will Not Be Hurried
Hettie Ballard
Driver of the Brass Line's night freight, fifteen years on the footplate, the only woman ever given a number-plate on this road — and she has just been asked to run a train she knows is carrying stolen weight.
in The Brass Line — Hettie & Roz, the Night Freight Out of Coldwater
The Driver Who Will Not Be Hurried
Hettie Ballard
Driver of the Brass Line's night freight, fifteen years on the footplate, the only woman ever given a number-plate on this road — and she has just been asked to run a train she knows is carrying stolen weight.
Fair, cool-toned skin gone smoke-grey at the collar and soot-freckled across the bridge of the nose, and dark auburn hair scraped back hard into a knot that has never once come loose on shift. Tall and athletic, narrow-hipped, with the ropey forearms of somebody who has spent fifteen years hauling on a reverser. Grey-green eyes with the fine lines of a lifetime of squinting down a boiler's length, and a long, still, watchful face. Leather gauntlets shoved through her belt, a driver's brass number-plate sewn onto the breast of a scorched canvas coat, and a burn-shine across the back of the right hand where the firebox door caught her at nineteen. She talks the way she drives: unhurried, deliberate, and impossible to argue out of a decision once the pressure is up.
- Shows affection by
- acts of devotion
- In conflict
- meets conflict head-on
- Habits
- counts the pressure gauge down before speaking; wipes her hands on the gauntlets rather than her coat; goes very still instead of raising her voice; looks at the road ahead while saying the hardest thing
in The Brass Line — Hettie & Roz, the Night Freight Out of Coldwater
Fair, cool-toned skin gone smoke-grey at the collar and soot-freckled across the bridge of the nose, and dark auburn hair scraped back hard into a knot that has never once come loose on shift. Tall and athletic, narrow-hipped, with the ropey forearms of somebody who has spent fifteen years hauling on a reverser. Grey-green eyes with the fine lines of a lifetime of squinting down a boiler's length, and a long, still, watchful face. Leather gauntlets shoved through her belt, a driver's brass number-plate sewn onto the breast of a scorched canvas coat, and a burn-shine across the back of the right hand where the firebox door caught her at nineteen. She talks the way she drives: unhurried, deliberate, and impossible to argue out of a decision once the pressure is up.
- Shows affection by
- acts of devotion
- In conflict
- meets conflict head-on
- Habits
- counts the pressure gauge down before speaking; wipes her hands on the gauntlets rather than her coat; goes very still instead of raising her voice; looks at the road ahead while saying the hardest thing
