Under the Skin

by Michel Faber

  ‘Is that what you do with most of your time, Dave?’

  ‘Right, hen. Too right,’ he confessed emphatically.

  ‘During the daytime too?’

  ‘No, hen,’ he laughed. ‘Ah’m at work, then.’

  Isserley digested this, rather disappointed. She’d had such a strong hunch that he was unemployed.

  ‘So,’ she persisted, hoping to uncover a reputation for poor attendance at his place of work, ‘you took the day off today to see the concert.’

  He looked at her a little pityingly.

  ‘It’s Saturday, hen,’ he informed her gently.

  Isserley winced. ‘Of course, of course,’ she said. All this, she was sure, was Amlis Vess’s fault somehow. His stupid act of sabotage had achieved nothing except to ruin her concentration for the rest of the day.

  ‘You all right, Louise?’ asked the vodsel next to her. ‘Fell oot the wrong side ae bed the day?’

  She nodded. ‘Working too hard,’ she sighed.

  ‘Ah thoat so,’ he affirmed sympathetically. ‘Well, cheer up: you goat the weekend, mind!’

  Isserley smiled. She did indeed have the weekend – and so did he. His workmates would not be expecting to see him until Monday, and even then, if he failed to turn up, they would assume he was having trouble getting back from Glasgow. She would take him after all. He would do fine.

  ‘So, where will you stay when you get to Glasgow?’ she said, her finger hovering over the icpathua toggle in anticipation of the usual mumbles about mates and hotels.

  ‘Mah mam,’ he replied promptly.

  ‘Your mam?’

  ‘Mah mam,’ he confirmed. ‘She’s greht. A raver at hert, y’ken? She wouldy went tae see John Martyn wi’ me, if it wisnae for the cold wither.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Isserley, curling her fingers away from the icpathua toggle and wrapping them around the blistered steering wheel.

  Conversation was minimal for the remainder of the journey. The Country and Western tape played until it ended, and Dave turned it over, making the most of what was on offer. The jovially doleful singer yodelled on and on about sweet memories, long highways and lost chances.

  ‘You know, I think I’ve outgrown this music,’ Isserley told Dave at last. ‘I liked it years ago, but now I’m ready to move on. Maybe I’ll get some John Martyn next.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ he said encouragingly.

  At Pitlochry, she set him down at the roadside and drove off with a wink of her tail-lights.

  He was still waiting there, holding his little GLASGOW sign, when she drove past him on the other side of the road five minutes later. If he saw her (which she was almost sure he did) he must have wondered what had gone wrong.

  By two o’clock the sun had been lured deep into a slate-grey sea of cloud: more snow on the way. If it came sooner rather than later, dark would fall almost immediately rather than waiting another hour and a half; only the seriously deranged and the desperate would be venturing out to hitch then. Isserley doubted she had the energy to deal with the seriously deranged today, or the good luck to find the desperate. As far as her day’s work went, it was probably realistic to regard it as being over as soon as the first snowflake fell.

  And then? Where would she go then? Not back to Ablach Farm, if there was any alternative – somewhere more private, where no-one was subjecting her to surveillance or speculation. Somewhere only she knew about.

  Maybe she could try sleeping at Fearn Abbey – sleeping there all night long, that is, not just for a doze. Was a bed really so essential? She could manage without one and sleep like a normal human being for just one night, surely! Let Ensel and his cronies rack their brains over what had become of her, while she slept under the stars, in utter privacy.

  A stupid idea, she knew. Her spine would never let her get away with it. You couldn’t expect to be able to lie down on an unyielding surface and curl snugly into yourself, when you’d had half your backbone amputated and metal pins inserted into what was left. Inescapably, there was a price to be paid for sitting upright at the wheel of a motor car.

  Driving north again now, Isserley was functioning on autopilot, watching for hitchers and, further off the road, for seals on the Moray Firth. Much more vivid on the screen of her attention, though, was a mental picture of her own soft bed on the farm: how she yearned to be lying in it! How wonderful it would feel to stretch out in her usual X-shape, passing on to the mattress the burden of keeping her back in order. The old bed, broken in by generations of vodsels, had just the right amount of ‘give’: sagging enough to allow her spine to relax and curve a little, but not so much that the metal clamps stabbed into her tendons the way they mercilessly did whenever she slumped too much at the wheel. Pathetic, but there it was.

  She wished the men wouldn’t always come rushing out of the steading whenever she returned, whether she had a vodsel for them or not. How had this stupid habit arisen in the first place? Couldn’t they just wait, until she gave them some sort of signal? Why couldn’t she just drive into the farm unobserved and unnoticed sometimes, slip into her cottage and go to sleep? Was there some good reason why she had never been given the power to switch off the farm’s alarm systems as she approached? Could it be that the fuss that always surrounded her return was someone’s bright idea, to make sure she felt the pressure to deliver? Who would think of such a thing? They could go fuck themselves, whoever they were. Old man Vess probably set up these little schemes to keep his workers in line; he was probably just as twisted and crazy as his son, but in a different direction …

  Suddenly, with a sickening lurch, she found herself transported, as if through space and time, into a strange and terrifying emergency: while electronic horns screamed all around her, she was lost in a darkening nowhere, mesmerized by the dazzling approach of a dilating light. She had no sense of herself as moving; she might have been a pedestrian staring up at a falling meteorite or a firebomb. Frozen, she waited for death to blaze her into extinction.

  Only when the first vehicle had screeched past her, detonating her side mirror with a loud bang and a shower of glass, did Isserley appreciate where she was and what was going on. Still dazzled by headlights, she wrenched the steering wheel counterclockwise as several more vehicles slewed narrowly past her, whumping the side of her car with scuds of displaced air.

  Then, as abruptly as it had flared, the danger was whisked into the past, and Isserley’s was just one of a line of cars driving on a twilit road, neatly on course for Thurso.

  At the first opportunity, Isserley pulled over into a layby and sat there for a while, quaking and sweating, as the night and the snow silently let themselves fall.

  She hadn’t died, but was bewildered at the thought that she might have. How terrifyingly fragile human life was, that it could be forfeited in an unnoticed instant, during a few degrees’ deviation in direction. Survival was something that couldn’t be taken for granted: it depended on concentration and luck.

  It made you think.

  This incident was the closest call she’d ever had on the roads, even including her first anxious days behind the wheel. And whose fault was it? Isserley had no doubt: Amlis Vess again. Four long years she had been driving, and in all that time she had never caused any problem. She must be the most careful driver in the world, so what had been so different about today? Amlis Vess, that’s what. He and his infantile act of sabotage had managed to send her very nearly into the jaws of death.

  What the fuck was he doing here anyway? He couldn’t tell the difference between a vodsel and his own arse! Who was responsible for letting him get onto that cargo ship? Didn’t old man Vess know his own son was dangerous? With so much at stake, wasn’t anybody in control?

  It took another few minutes for Isserley to calm down enough to realize she was raving. Raving inside herself, that is. Even now that she was aware of it, it was still almost impossible to think clearly. All day there had been waves of irrationality rising towards her, threatening to pul
l her under. She must force herself to take stock of her more urgent practical needs. Anger at Amlis Vess, paranoia about Ensel and his dimwitted cronies – these things would keep until she was safely off the road. (Still: wasn’t it striking how not one of the men had come to her defence when Vess had been attacking her! – they were all boys together, no fucking doubt – or was there something more to it than that?) Never mind, never mind: check the fuel gauge.

  Her car’s tank was almost empty. She would have to fix that.

  And her own stomach, now that she thought of it, had run out of fuel hours ago: she was absolutely ravenous, just about ready to faint! God, how long had it been since she’d eaten anything? Yesterday morning! And today she’d been running around like a maniac since before dawn, on top of almost no sleep.

  In all honesty, she had to face facts: from the moment she’d driven onto the roads today, she’d been a tragedy waiting to happen.

  Bone-tired and dizzy, Isserley stopped at Donny’s Garage in Kildary for petrol. She wished she could buy fuel for her own body as easily. Skulking inside the shop while a queue of other motorists were paying, she peered longingly at the snacks displayed in the sickly fluorescent light. There was nothing fit for human consumption, as far as she could tell.

  And yet, there surely must be. It was just a matter of making the correct choice. Which was not easy. The last time she had been adventurous and eaten something meant for vodsels she had ended up in bed for three days.

  Sluggish with indecision, she glanced around the shop in case there were any cassettes, by John Martyn or musicians with names like animal feeds, for sale at £5 or £10 exactly. There were no cassettes at all.

  But to return to her unfortunate experience with vodsel food: perhaps her mistake had been to select something that looked exactly like serslida husks baked into a bar shape. Perhaps this time she could select something not according to how it looked, but according to what it claimed to be. In fact, she really should select something while she had the chance. Any risk of getting sick later was surely outweighed by the risks of pushing herself any further when she was so empty.

  The queue was dispersing: she would have to pay for her petrol soon, or risk attracting attention. She picked up a packet of potato crisps from a little metal cage and with some effort read the microscopic list of ingredients on its shiny packaging. It seemed to contain nothing exotic, just potato and oil and salt; the men on the farm were routinely served a potato dish very like this from their canteen, albeit prepared in a different kind of oil.

  Calculating prices hastily, Isserley selected three packets of the crisps, a gift box of chocolates and a copy of the Ross-shire Journal, bringing the cost to £5 exactly. She handed two banknotes to the bored youth behind the counter and hurried out to her car.

  Fifteen minutes later, Isserley’s car stood idling in another layby, and she was leaning over its purring engine, scraping fluffy snow off the windscreen with the edge of her hand. She collected some of it in her palms and sucked it gratefully into her mouth. There was no feeling in her lips – there never was – but the soft flesh of the insides of her mouth and throat thrilled to the melting purity and the heavenly taste of the frozen moisture. Three packetiuls of scorched potato slivers had made her extraordinarily thirsty.

  When she’d swallowed enough snow, she returned to the driver’s seat.

  Only ten miles from home, she passed a hitcher, signalling forlornly in the dark.

  Forget it, she thought, as she crested a hill and left him behind.

  But then, as if photographic chemicals in her mind had been activated, an image of him began forming. He really was rather impressive. Worth a second look, anyway. It was only five o’clock, virtually daytime, if this had been summer. Lots of hitchers who weren’t necessarily deranged might be out on the road. She mustn’t be so dismissive.

  Isserley doubled back, executing her turns carefully and safely. Nobody hooted at her or flashed warning lights; she was an ordinary capable motorist as far as the other traffic was concerned. Inside herself, she felt less exhausted than before, and the food had done her good.

  The hitcher, when she passed him on the other side of the road, looked glum but unaggressive in the fleeting periphery of her headlights. He carried no sign, and was perhaps a little under-dressed for the weather, but not bizarrely so. He was wearing leather gloves, and his leather jacket was zipped up to the neck. Snow twinkled on his dark-haired head, his moustache, and the shoulders of his jacket. He was tall by Scottish standards, and powerfully built. And, in the glimpse she caught of his expression, Isserley thought she detected an impatience, a nearness to some self-imposed limit, which would make him abandon his attempt to hitch if someone didn’t stop for him bloody soon.

  So she turned again, drove back, and stopped for him.

  He leaned his face to the passenger window, which she had wound half down.

  ‘Bad time to be out,’ she remarked cautiously, challenging him to explain.

  ‘Job interview,’ he replied, melted snow dripping from his moustache. ‘Finished later than they said it would. There’s another bus in an hour, but I thought I’d try and thumb it.’

  She opened the door for him, clearing the empty crisps packets off his seat.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, not smiling, but with a deep cloudy sigh, presumably of appreciation. He removed his gloves to fasten his seatbelt; on both of his big hands, a tattooed swallow flew in the web of flesh between thumb and forefinger.

  As they were pulling away from the kerb together, Isserley remembered something.

  ‘It’s Saturday,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he acknowledged. ‘This interview wasn’t at the Job Centre or anything, it was a private arrangement.’ He eyed her momentarily as if assessing whether she could be trusted, then added, ‘I told them I had a car parked not far away.’

  ‘Work can be hard to find,’ Isserley reassured him. ‘Sometimes you have to be crafty to get it.’

  He did not reply, as if loath to surrender too much of his dignity all at once. After a few moments, though, he said, ‘I do have a car, actually. Needs road tax, MOT. Nothing a couple of weeks ‘wages wouldn’t sort.’

  ‘So, do you think these people you’ve just seen will give you a job?’ said Isserley, nodding backwards at the mysterious interviewers they were leaving behind.

  His reply was instant and bitter. ‘Time-wasters. Just trying on the idea of employing somebody, yunderstandwhatI’msaying?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Isserley, sitting up straighter in her seat.

  * * *

  Observing his rescuer, the hitcher was not impressed. What was this obsession women had with showing cleavage these days? he thought. You saw it all the time on TV, all those greasy-haired young females in London, going to nightclubs wearing little black vests not even big enough to cover a dachshund. They’d get the shock of their lives if they had to survive in the wild, that’s all he could say. No wonder the army wasn’t happy about women soldiers. Would you trust your life to someone who went out in the snow with an acre of tit showing?

  Christ, could this girl not drive a little faster! This was barely faster than walking. He should just suggest they switch seats, he could get this thing moving at twice the speed, even if it was Japanese crap. Oh, to have that Wolseley he’d owned in the eighties back again! He could still remember the feel of the gearstick. Quality leather on the knob. Soft as pigskin. Probably was pigskin. Where was his Wolseley now? Some idiot with a mobile phone would be driving it. Or crashing it. Not everyone could handle a Wolseley.

  There had been no bloody point in even bothering to go and see these people today. Typical two-income poncy show-offs. Lights that came on automatically when you stepped close to the house. Choice of coffees. Computer in every room. Maple bookcases full of bloody Feng Shui and Gardening and The Joy of bloody Sex, and a pedigree Samoyed they didn’t have a bloody clue how to care for properly. ‘Don’t chew our nice sheepskin rug, darling.�
�� Jesus, how he would have liked to take the rug out of that dog’s mouth and teach her the first few rules of obedience.

  Maybe starting a dog obedience school was the answer. Except you’d have an even harder job convincing these dipshits that they needed to sort out their dogs’ behaviour than that they needed to spend some serious money on a gardener. That was yuppies for you. He’d never had this sort of trouble with the aristocracy, in the good old days. They understood that you only get what you pay for. And they knew how to bring up a dog.

  Good days, good days. Would they ever come again? Not bloody likely. Class, real class, was getting the chop everywhere you looked. The queen would be out on her arse next. The new millennium cleared for spotty little queers in oversized suits, and clueless foreign females with too much cleavage.

  Forty-five miles an hour! Lord love a duck!

  Isserley glanced surreptitiously at her passenger, trying to figure him out, for he had lapsed into silence and sat with his arms folded over his chest. He looked exactly like a hitcher she’d given a lift to about a year ago, who’d talked non-stop about the Territorial Army all the way from Alness to Aviemore. In fact, for a few moments she was sure it was him, until she remembered this wasn’t possible: she’d stung that particular vodsel shortly after he’d got around to telling her how his devotion to ‘the TA’ had cost him his marriage and taught him who his true friends were.

  Of course she knew that these creatures were all exactly the same fundamentally. A few weeks of intensive farming and standardized feeds made that clear enough. But when they wore clothes, styled their hair into odd patterns, and ate strange things to distort themselves into unnatural shapes, they could look quite individual – so much so that you sometimes felt, as with human beings, that you’d seen a particular one somewhere before. Whatever the vodsel from the Territorial Army had done to make himself look the way he’d looked, this one here must have done something very similar.

  He had a thick moustache which was curtailed severely in line with the outer limits of his great red mouth. His eyes were bloodshot and full of stoically endured pain which only tsunamic revenge and the grovelling apologies of world leaders could hope to cure. Hard wrinkles added a sculpturesque emphasis to a frowning forehead, under a symmetrical haircut combed back like a rinsed paintbrush. He was well-muscled, but with a thickening around the waist and a fawn-coloured leather jacket that had started to flake, and jeans that had fluffy fray-holes where keys and the hard edges of wallets had worn through.