Isserley walked along the path the generations of sheep-flocks had made, up the tiers of the hill. In her mind, she was already behind the wheel.
When she got back to the cottage, the bonfire had died. There was a halo melted around it, a dark circle of ash and scorched grass in the snow. On the pyre itself, some of the rucksack still lay unconsumed. She pulled the sooty metal support struts out of the ashes and cast them aside, for disposal later. Tomorrow, perhaps, if she was ready for the sea again by then.
She let herself into the house and walked straight to the bathroom.
It, like all the rooms in the house, had a bare and uninhabited appearance, tainted by mildew and the chaff of insects. Dim light leaked in through a tiny window of filthy frosted glass. A jagged shard of mirror slumped crookedly in the alcove behind the sink, reflecting nothing but peeling paintwork. The bathtub was clean but a little rusty, as was the sink. The yawning interior of the lidless toilet bowl, by contrast, was the colour and texture of bark; it had not been used for at least as long as Isserley had lived here.
Pausing only to remove her shoes, Isserley stepped into the ochre-streaked bathtub. Screwed into the wall above her head, there was a shower nozzle which she instructed by means of a Bakelite dial to spurt pressurized water down over her. Even as the torrent sputtered out, she was taking off her clothes and letting them fall into the tub around her feet.
On the rust-mottled ledge of the bath, three different bottles of shampoo stood ready. Together, they had cost exactly five pounds at the Arabella Service Station. Isserley picked up her favourite and squirted the pale green syrup over her hair. Then she squirted more of the stuff over her naked body and, lavishly, down into the sodden heap of clothing at her feet. With one foot she pushed the squelching pile over the plughole to allow the water level in the tub to rise.
She washed her hair carefully, rinsing it over and over. Her hair had always been her best feature, back home. A member of the Elite had once told her that with hair like hers it was out of the question she could possibly be destined for the New Estates: a cheap and fatuous compliment, in retrospect, but thrillingly encouraging at the time. She’d felt as if her passage into a bright future was a matter of physical inevitability, a lush and glossy birthright everyone could see at a glance, and a lucky few could stroke admiringly.
So little of it was left now that she couldn’t bear to cherish it anymore. Most of it would never grow back again, the rest was just a nuisance.
She stroked the skin of her shoulders and arms, checking if she needed to shave again just yet. Her palms, slippery with lather, detected the soft stubble, but she decided she could get away with leaving it for one more day. Lots of females had a bit of hair on them, she’d discovered. Real life wasn’t at all like the smooth images celebrated by magazines and television. Anyway, nobody would see it.
She lathered up her breasts and rinsed them, with distaste. The only good thing about them was that they prevented her seeing what had been done to her down below.
Redirecting the shower nozzle, she turned her attention to the clothes, which now swirled in a shallow pool of sudsy grey water. She trampled them, rinsed them, trampled them some more, then wrung them out in her powerful claws. They would dry out, eventually, in a square of sunlight shining through her bedroom window, or, if that failed, on the back seat of her car.
It was after midday when Isserley finally drove out of the farm. The sun which had been so golden in the morning was barely visible now; the sky had turned slate-grey and hung swollen with undischarged snow. The likelihood of finding any hitch-hikers on the roads, let alone suitable ones, was slim. Yet she was in the mood to do some work, or at least get away from all the fuss she knew was still going on below ground.
On her way past the main steading, she noticed a most unusual sight: Esswis perched on a large wooden stepladder, a tin in one hand and a brush in the other, painting the stone walls white.
Isserley slowed the car to a stop near the foot of the ladder and looked up at Esswis. She was already wearing her glasses and so he wasn’t all that clear, distorted by the glare of the sun. It occurred to her to take her glasses off for a moment, but that seemed impolite, given that Esswis was wearing his.
‘Ahl,’ she said, squinting up, not knowing if she’d done the right thing in stopping.
‘Ahl,’ he replied, as taciturn as the farmer he was supposed to be. Perhaps he was wary of their native language being spoken out in the open, even though there was no-one else around to hear it. Paint dribbled off the end of the brush he was holding, but, apart from frowning, he did nothing about it, as if Isserley’s greeting were some sort of mishap which must be stoically endured. He was wearing overalls and a cap, and paint-spattered green Wellingtons whose secret interiors had taken almost as long to design as Isserley’s shoes.
All things considered, he’d got off more lightly than she had, Isserley felt. He had no breasts, for a start, and more hair on his face.
She waved at the task he was busy with. Only a fraction of the building had been whitened.
‘Is this in honour of Amlis Vess?’ she asked superfluously.
Esswis grunted.
‘Quite a fuss,’ ventured Isserley. ‘Not your idea, surely?’
Esswis scowled and looked down at her in disgust.
‘Fuck Amlis Vess,’ he pronounced, very distinctly, in English, and then turned to continue painting.
Isserley wound up her window and drove on. One by one, feathery snowflakes started spiralling down from the sky.
IT WAS AS SHE
was crossing a concrete tightrope, high up in the air, that Isserley admitted to herself that she absolutely did not want to meet Amlis Vess.
She was driving towards the midpoint of the Kessock Bridge, gripping the steering wheel in anticipation of fierce side-wands trying to sweep her little red car into space. She was acutely conscious of the weight of the cast-iron undercarriage beneath her, the purchase of the tyres on the bitumen – paradoxical reminders of solidity. The car might have been protesting how heavy and immovable it was, in its fear of being moved.
You-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou!
jeered the atmosphere.
At intervals along the bridge were trembling metal signs depicting a stylized net inflated by the thrust of a gale. This, like all traffic symbols, had been a meaningless hieroglyphic to Isserley when she’d first studied it, long ago. Now it appealed directly to her second nature, and made her seize hold of the wheel as if it were an animal desperate to break free. Her hands were locked tight; she imagined she could see a heartbeat pulsing between the knuckles.
And yet, when she muttered under her breath that she would not let herself be pushed off course, no, not by anything, it wasn’t the side-winds she was thinking of, but Amlis Vess. He was blowing in from somewhere much more dangerous than the North Sea, and she could not predict the effect he’d have. Whatever it turned out to be, she certainly wouldn’t be able to negate it just by keeping a tight grip on her car’s steering wheel.
She was past the mid-point now, minutes away from the Inverness end. Burring slowly forwards in the outer lane, she flinched every time a faster vehicle roared past her; the wind pressure would drop away suddenly, then swing back with a vengeance. To her left, the air was swirling with seagulls, a chaos of white birds endlessly falling towards the water, then hovering just above the firth, sinking gradually, as if caught in sediment. Isserley returned her attention to the distant outskirts of Inverness, and tried to force herself to tread harder on the accelerator. Judging by her speedometer, she wasn’t succeeding.
You-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou!
cried the wind all the rest of the way.
Cruising safely off the bridge at the far end, she hugged the slow lane, tried her best to breathe deeply and unclench her hands. The pressure had died down almost at once; she could drive normally, function normally. She was on terra firma now, in control, blending in perfectly, and doing a job only she could do. Nothing Amlis Vess thought or said could change that: nothing. She was indispensable.
The word troubled her, though.
Indispensable
. It was a word people tended to resort to when dispensability was in the air.
She tried to imagine herself being dispensed with; tried to imagine it honestly and unflinchingly. Perhaps some other person would be prepared to make the same sacrifices she and Esswis had made, and take her place. She and Esswis had been desperate, in their different ways; might not other people be equally desperate? It was hard to imagine. No-one could be as desperate as she had been. And then, anyone new to the job would be inexperienced, untested. With mind-boggling amounts of money at stake, would Vess Incorporated take such a risk?
Probably not. But it was difficult for Isserley to draw much comfort from this, because the thought of being genuinely indispensable was troubling too.
It meant that Vess Incorporated would never let her go.
It meant that she would have to do this job forever. It meant that a day would never come when she could enjoy the world without worrying about the creatures crawling on its surface.
All of which, Isserley reminded herself irritably, should have nothing whatsoever to do with Amlis Vess. How could it? Whatever the reason for young Amlis’s visit, it must be a purely personal one, unconnected to Vess Incorporated. Just hearing the name Amlis Vess was no reason to get all excited.
OK, granted, Amlis was the big man’s son, but there was no sign of him inheriting the big man’s empire. Amlis didn’t even have a
job
at Vess Incorporated – he’d never had a job of
any
kind – and he couldn’t possibly have any power to make decisions on the Corporation’s behalf. In fact, to the best of Isserley’s knowledge, Amlis actually felt disdain for the world of business and was a big failure in his father’s eyes. He was trouble, but not for Isserley. There was nothing to fear from him dropping in, however inexplicably, on Ablach Farm.
So why did she want to avoid him so badly?
She had nothing against the boy himself (or the man? – how old would he be by now?); he hadn’t asked to be the sole heir of the world’s biggest corporation. He’d done nothing to offend her personally, and in the past she’d followed his exploits with amusement. He was always in the news, for the usual rich-young-pretender reasons. One time, he shaved all his hair off, as an initiation rite into a bizarre religious sect which he joined in a blitz of publicity and left, weeks later, with no comment to the press. Another time, he and his father were reported to be bitterly estranged over Amlis’s support of extremists in the Middle East. Another time, he made a public statement that icpathua, when used in small enough doses, was a harmless euphoric that should not be against the law. Countless times, some girl or other made a fuss, claiming to be pregnant with his baby.
All in all, he was just another typical rich kid with a colossal fortune hanging over his head.
Isserley’s second nature, alert while she’d been busy brooding, fetched her back into the driver’s seat to notice something important: a hitch-hiker standing in the distance, opposite the first of the many garish roadside diners between Inverness and the South. She listened to her own breathing, assessing whether she’d calmed down enough to take the challenge on. She felt she had.
At closer quarters, though, the figure at the roadside proved to be a female, harried-looking, grey-haired, shabbily dressed. Isserley drove straight past, ignoring the appeal to shared gender in the eyes. A single instant was enough to communicate injury and dejection, then the figure was a dwindling fleck in the rear-view mirror.
Isserley was all geared up now, grateful to have had her mind on something other than Amlis Vess. Fortuitously, another hitcher was standing only a couple of miles further on. This one was a male, and fairly impressive on first sight, but unfortunately positioned in a spot where only the most foolhardy motorist would consider stopping. Isserley flashed her headlights, hoping to let him know that she might have picked him up had he not made it so dangerous for her to do so. She doubted that a simple flash of lights could communicate this; more likely he would simply assume she was beaming out ill-will, a jab of mockery.
All was not necessarily lost, though – perhaps she would see him again later on the way back, by which time he might have walked to a safer spot. Over the years, Isserley had learned that life often offered a second chance: she had even picked up hitchers who, many hours and miles before, she’d observed climbing gratefully into someone else’s car.
So, optimistic, Isserley drove on.
She drove all day, backwards and forwards between Inverness and Dunkeld, over and over. The sun set. The snow, which had retreated during the morning, returned. One of the windscreen wipers developed an annoying squeal. Fuel had to be bought. Through it all, nobody suitable reached out to her.
By six o’clock, she had just about decided why she was dreading meeting Amlis Vess so much.
It had nothing to do with his status really;
she
was an invaluable part of the business,
he
a thorn in its side, so he probably had more to fear from Vess Incorporated than she did. No, the main reason why she was dreading him was simpler than that.
It was because Amlis Vess was from home.
When he set eyes on her, he would see her the way any normal person from home would see her, and he would be shocked, and she would helplessly have to watch him being shocked. She knew from experience what this felt like; would do anything to avoid feeling it again. The men she worked with on the farm had been shocked too, at first, but they were used to her now, more or less; they could go about their business without gawping (though if there was a lull in activities she always felt their eyes on her). No wonder she tended to keep to her cottage – and why Esswis did too, she guessed. Being a freak was so wearying.
Amlis Vess, never having seen her before, would recoil. He’d be expecting to see a human being, and he would see a hideous animal instead. It was that moment of … of the sickening opposite of recognition that she just couldn’t cope with.
She decided to return to the farm immediately, lock herself in her cottage, and wait until Amlis Vess had come and gone.
In the mountainous desolation of Aviemore she caught a hitcher in her headlights. A little gargoyle gesturing in a flare of illumination, registering almost as an after-image on the retina; a little gargoyle foolishly attached to a spot where cars would be whizzing by him at maximum speed. Isserley’s maximum speed being about fifty, however, she had time to notice him. He seemed awfully keen to be picked up.
Passing him, Isserley thought seriously about whether she wanted a hitcher just now. She waited for clues from the universe.
The snow had died down again, the windscreen wipers lay still, the motor was purring nicely, she was perhaps in slight danger of dozing off. Isserley slowed, cruised to a stop in a bus bay, and let the car idle, headlights dimmed. The Monadhliath Mountains loomed on one side of her, the Cairngorms on the other. She was alone with them. She closed her eyes, slid her fingertips under the rims of her glasses and rubbed her big satiny eyelids. A massive tanker roared into view, flooding the cabin of Isserley’s car with light. She waited until it had gone, then revved her engine and flicked on the indicator.
On the second approach, passing by on the other side of the road, she noted that the hitcher was small and barrel-chested, with lots of exposed flesh so darkly tanned it resisted being bleached by the full beam of headlights. This time she observed that he was standing not far from a car which was parked, or possibly stuck, in a ditch off the road. It was a shabby blue Nissan estate, scratched and battered all over but not in such a conspicuously fresh way as to suggest an accident. Both hitcher and car seemed upright and in one piece, although the one was making exaggerated gestures to draw attention to the other.
Isserley drove on for a couple of miles, reluctant to involve herself in anything that might already be of interest to the police or a vehicle rescue service. Eventually, however, she reasoned that if a stranded motorist had any expectation of being found by such authorities, he surely wouldn’t be trying to hitch. She turned around then, and drove back.
The final approach revealed the hitcher to be an odd creature, even by Scottish standards. Though not much taller than Isserley, with a wizened, wispy-haired little head and spindly legs, he had improbably massive arms, shoulders and torso, as if these had been transplanted onto him from a much beefier creature. He was wearing a frayed and faded flannelette shirt, sleeves rolled up, and seemed impervious to the cold, thumbing the bitter air with almost clownish enthusiasm, making elaborate gestures towards his decrepit Nissan. Isserley wondered momentarily whether she had seen him somewhere before, then realized she was confusing him with certain cartoon characters on early-morning television. His kind weren’t the title characters, though; they were the ones who got squashed flat by giant mallets or burnt to a crisp by exploding cigars.
She decided to stop for him. He had more muscle mass packed in between his neck and hips, after all, than many vodsels twice his size had on their entire bodies.
Seeing her slow down and veer towards him, he nodded idiotically and held two stiff-thumbed fists aloft in an expression of triumph, as if awarding her two points for her decision. Above the crunch of gravel, Isserley thought she could hear a throaty whoop.
She parked as close as she could to the stranger’s own car without snaring her wheels in the ditch, and trusted that her flashing rear lights would warn any motorists coming up behind her. This really was a very awkward spot, and she was curious to find out if the hitcher would acknowledge it. That would already tell her something worth knowing about him.
She wound down the passenger window as soon as she’d pulled on the handbrake, and the hitcher immediately poked his tiny head into the car. He was smiling broadly, a mouthful of crooked brown-edged teeth inside two leathery crescents of lip. His brown face was bristly, wrinkled and scarred, with a mottled snout of a nose and two spectacularly bloodshot chimpanzee eyes.
‘She’s gonna skelp my bot, I tell ya,’ he leered, breathing alcohol into the car.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘My girlfriend. She’s gonna skelp my bot,’ he repeated, his grin deepening to a grimace. ‘I shoulda been at her place by teatime. That’s
always
when I’m supposed to be there. And it
never
happens, can you believe it, eh?’ He slumped a little in the window-frame and his eyes closed slowly, as if the power that was keeping his eyelids up had abruptly run out. With effort he roused himself, and continued, ‘Every week this same thing.’
‘What same thing?’ asked Isserley, trying not to pull a face at the beer fumes.
He winked, laboriously. ‘She’s got a temper.’ Eyes falling shut again, he sniggered, like a cartoon tomcat in the shadow of a falling bomb.
Isserley found him actually quite good-looking compared to other vodsels, but his mannerisms were distinctly odd and made her wonder if he was mentally defective. Would an imbecile be given a licence to drive? Why was he just hanging in her window-frame, simpering, when both their cars were liable to get annihilated by a passing lorry? Nervously she glanced in her rear-view mirror to confirm no speeding vehicles were coming up behind.
‘What happened to your car?’ she asked, hoping to shift his attention to the heart of the matter.