Under the Skin

6

ON THE WINDSWEPT A9 an hour later and forty miles away, a bleary-eyed Isserley squinted up at a vast electronic traffic sign that said TIREDNESS CAN KILL: TAKE A BREAK. It was a self-confessedly ‘experimental’ sign, inviting comment from motorists by means of a telephone number on its bottom rim.

Isserley had passed under this sign hundreds of times on her way to Inverness, always wondering if it might one day display important traffic information: news of an accident or tailback up ahead, perhaps, or of severe weather conditions on the Kessock Bridge. There was never any message of that kind. Only generic homilies about speed, courtesy and tiredness.

Today, she smiled ruefully at the sign’s advice. It was true: she was tired, and she ought to take a break. To be reminded of this by a soulless machine was funny, in a way – but easier to obey. She’d never been very good at listening to advice when it came from her fellow human beings.

She pulled the car in at a layby and switched off its engine. A belligerent sun was staring her right in the eyes and she considered darkening the windows, but thought better of it, in case she fell asleep and was wakened by police banging on her opaquely amber windows. That had never happened yet, but if it did, it would be the end of her. There were quite a few things police might ask to see which she didn’t have – including a pair of vodsel-sized eyes behind those big thick glasses of hers.

Isserley’s eyes were sore right now, irritated by lack of sleep and the strain of looking through two layers of glass. She blinked, then blinked again, slower and slower, until the lids stayed shut. She would rest her eyes for just a little while, then drive back north for a proper sleep. Not on the farm, somewhere else. The farm might well be in an uproar again, with that idiot Amlis Vess at large.

There was a spot she knew off the main road, on the B9166 to Balintore, where she sometimes pulled in at the ruins of a medieval abbey to doze. Nobody ever went there, despite it being an official tourist attraction; its far-flung web of promotional signs was too sparse to draw motorists in. It was just the place for Isserley when she’d had almost no sleep and been forced to chase lost vodsels for hours before dawn.

Imagining herself in Fearn Abbey already, Isserley fell asleep, her head and one arm cradled inside the padded steering wheel.

She dreamed, at first, of the abbey’s roofless ruins as if she were sleeping inside them, with the ocean of sky above, azure and cirrus-striped. But then, as so often happened, she slipped down into a deeper level of dream, as if through a treacherous crust of pulverulent earth, and landed in the subterranean hell of the Estates.

‘This is a mistake,’ she told the overseer as he led her deeper into labyrinths of compacted bauxite. ‘I have powerful friends in high places. They’re absolutely shocked that I was sent here. Even now they’re working on my reclassification.’

‘Good, good,’ murmured the overseer as he pulled her deeper. ‘Now, I’ll show you what your job will be.’

They had arrived at the dark centre of the factory, the smooth cervix of a giant concrete crater filled with a luminous stew of decomposing plant matter. Huge roots and tubers turned lazily in the albumescent gleet, obese leaves convulsed on its silvery surface like beached manta rays, and billows of blueish gas ejaculated from sudden interruptions in the surface tension. All around and above this great churning cavity, the stifling air swirled with green vapour and particles of sphagnum.

Peering closer despite her revulsion, Isserley noticed the hundreds of tubes, thick as industrial hose, draped over the rim all round, disappearing into the glutinous murk at intervals of a few metres. One of these tubes was being reeled in by an indistinct mechanical agent, the sheer glistening length of it a clue to how deep the crater really was. After some time, at the very end of the tube, attached to it by an artificial umbilicus, emerged a baggy diver’s suit enslimed in black muck. Still clutching a spade-like implement in its gloves, the diver’s suit slithered clumsily onto the concrete rim and struggled to raise itself to its knees.

‘This,’ the overseer explained, ‘is where we make oxygen for those above.’

Isserley screamed herself awake.

She found herself sitting inside a vehicle by the side of a road stretching from eternity to eternity, in a strange and far-off land. Outside, the sky was blue, transparent and without upper limits. Millions, billions, maybe trillions of trees were making oxygen without human intervention. A newly mature sun was shining, and only a few minutes had passed since she had fallen asleep.

Isserley stretched, rotating her thin arms through 360 degrees with a grunt of discomfort. She was still exhausted, but the dream had put her off sleep for the time being, and she felt she was no longer in immediate danger of dozing off at the wheel. She would do some work, then assess how she was feeling by sundown. Obviously, the pressure she’d felt herself under yesterday to deliver the goods for the boss’s son, the distinguished visitor, to admire, had vanished now. Bringing home a vodsel for Amlis Vess was plainly not the way to his heart, or whatever part of him she’d been hoping to impress. However, visiting crackpots aside, she did have her own expectations to live up to.

Still driving south, just beyond Inverness, she spotted a big hitcher holding up a cardboard sign saying GLASGOW.

She drove past him out of habit, out of adherence to procedure, but she had no doubt that she would pick him up on the second approach: he was powerfully built and in the prime of life. It would be criminal to leave a specimen like that standing there.

Despite his bulk, he ran quite nimbly to meet her when she stopped the car near him; always a good sign, since drunk or disabled vodsels could only stumble.

‘Pitlochry all right?’ she offered, judging from his open, eager-to-please expression that this would be more than enough.

‘Brilliant!’ he enthused, jumping in.

He had a big meaty face, a bit like a monthling already, with tight blond curls at the top. The curls were sparse, though, and the skin rough and blotchy, as if the vodsel’s head had been lost at sea at some stage in its life, then cast ashore and weathered for years in the sun before finally being reunited with the body.

‘Mah name’s Dave.’ He reached one hand over to her, and she awkwardly allowed one of hers to be grasped, trying not to wince as he pressed on the place where her sixth finger had been. It was so unusual for a hitcher to introduce himself, she was slow to think of a reply.

‘Louise,’ she said, after a few moments.

‘Pleased tae meet you,’ he beamed, busily buckling himself in as if they were about to embark on a professional adventure together, like breaking the sound barrier in a racing vehicle, or test-driving a jeep in rocky terrain.

‘You seem to be in a good mood,’ observed Isserley as she pulled away from the kerb.

‘Too right, hen, Ah’m well pleased,’ affirmed Dave.

‘Is it something to do with what’s waiting for you in Glasgow?’ she pursued.

‘Right again, hen,’ he grinned. ‘Ah goat tickets tae see John Martyn.’

Isserley mentally scrolled through the entertainers she’d seen on television during her morning exercises, or who’d figured in the evening news for some reason. John Martyn was not a name she remembered, so quite possibly he did not bend spoons by psychic power or break laws against inhaling vegetable smoke.

‘I don’t know him,’ she said.

‘You’ll ken some ae his songs for sure,’ promised Dave, his brow crinkled with incredulity. ‘“May You Never” is a big yin.’ All of a sudden, without warning, he began singing loudly. ‘Ah-M-A-A-AY YOU never lay your head down, without a hand to hold… No?’

Isserley was hastily correcting the startled swerve her car had taken towards the middle of the road.

‘Whit aboot “Over the Hill”?’ Dave persisted. Strumming one beefy hand against his ribcage, the other fingering the neck of an invisible guitar, he sang, ‘Been worried about my babies, I been worried about my wife; there’s just one place for a man to be when he’s worried about his life; I’m goin’ home, HEY HEY HEY over the hill!’

‘Are you worried about your wife, Dave?’ enquired Isserley evenly, keeping her eyes on the road.

‘Yeah, Ah’m worrit she might find oot whir Ah stay, hyuh hyuh.’

‘Any babies?’ She was being audacious, she knew, but she felt in no mood to waste time today.

‘Nae babies, hen,’ said Dave, sobering his tone abruptly and bringing his hands to rest in his lap.

Isserley wondered if she’d overstepped the mark. She shut up, pushed her breasts out, and drove.

It was a pity, Dave reflected, that this Louise was only taking him as far as Pitlochry. At this rate he’d get to Glasgow about four hours earlier than he needed to, and this girl wouldn’t be a bad way to spend that time. Not that he was a sexist, mind, but she had that upfront way of speaking that easy girls had, and she’d picked him up, him a big beefy guy, which let’s face it females almost never did. She had fantastic bosoms, and bigger eyes than Sinéad O’Connor even, and nice hair too, although it was a bit of a mess really, sticking out like a mop so he couldn’t see her face from the side. Maybe this was what women meant when they talked about having a bad hair day. Maybe he should mention something about bad hair days, to show her he had some idea about these things. Women liked to think there wasn’t a hopeless divide between the sexes; it was a real leg-opener, he’d found.

Maybe something would happen between them on the way to Pitlochry! Beds weren’t essential, after all. Louise could pull in at a layby and show him what she was made of.

Dream on, dream on, Dave. This is what would really happen: at Pitlochry she’d set him down at the roadside and drive off with a wink of her tail-lights. End of story.

But he’d get to see John Martyn, just remember that. Trying to get off with a woman was always a bit of an embarrassment when you looked back on it later, but a great musical performance was a warm buzz forever.

Thinking of which: what did this girl have in the way of music? There was a car cassette player just above his knee: plenty of time for a C-90 before Pitlochry!

‘Goat any tapes, hen?’ he said, pointing at the machine. Isserley glanced at the metal slit, trying to recall what had or had not been inside it when she’d first acquired this car, years ago.

‘Yes, I think there’s one in there,’ she replied, vaguely remembering being startled by unwelcome music when she’d been familiarizing herself with the dashboard controls.

‘Brilliant: put it oan then,’ he urged, smacking the thighs of his jeans as if to kick-start the drums.

‘Feel free to do it yourself,’ Isserley said. ‘I’m driving.’

She felt his gaze on her, incredulous at her carefulness, but there were cars overtaking hers constantly and she was too nervous to look down. Being driven around at high speeds by that maniac Esswis had rattled her and she was in no mood to exceed forty-five.

Dave switched on the tape player and sound issued forth obediently. At first Isserley was relieved that he’d got what he wanted, but she soon sensed that all was not well, and made herself focus on the music. It seemed to be submerging itself every few seconds, as if passing through watery obstacles.

‘Oh dear,’ she fretted. ‘Perhaps my machine is malfunctioning?’

‘Nah, it’s yir tape, hen,’ he said. ‘It’s loast its tension.’

‘Oh dear,’ repeated Isserley, frowning in concentration as a car behind her hooted its horn in apparent chagrin at her refusal to pass a tourist coach. ‘Does it need… uh… disposing of?’

‘Nah!’ Dave assured her, happily fiddling with the cassette controls while she endured the sound of beeping. ‘It’s just needin’ windin’ backwards an’ forwards a few times. Daes wonders. You’ll see. Folk throw tapes oot thinkin’ they’re deid. Nae need for it.’

For a few minutes more he busied himself with the tape player, then switched it on afresh. The song rang out of the speakers, clear and harsh as television. A twangy male voice was singing about driving a truck all night long, to put a hundred miles between him and a town called Heartache. The tone was one of jovial dolefulness.

Isserley trusted that Dave would be satisfied now, but instead he radiated puzzlement.

‘Ah goat tae say, Louise,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s funny you huvin’ Coontry and Western music’

‘Funny?’

‘Well… unusual, fur a wumman. At least a young wumman, y’ken. You’d be the furst young wumman Ah’ve met that’s goat a Coontry and Western tape in her motor.’

‘What kind of music would you have expected?’ Isserley enquired. (Some of the larger service stations sold cassettes; perhaps she could buy the correct ones there.)

‘Oh, dance stuff,’ he shrugged, beating the air rhythmically with his fist. ‘Eternal. Dubstar. M Pipple. Or mebbe Björk, Pulp, Portishead…’ These last three names sounded to Isserley like varieties of animal feed.

‘I suppose I have strange tastes,’ she conceded. ‘Do you think I’d like John Martyn? What does his music sound like? Can you describe it to me perhaps?’

Her question lit up the hitcher’s face with a glow of serene and yet intense concentration, as if his whole life had been leading up to this moment and he knew he was equal to the challenge.

‘He daes a loaty stuff wi’ echoplex – foot pedals, y’ken? It’s acoustic, but it soonds electric – spacey, even.’

‘Mm,’ said Isserley.

‘One second he’ll be playin’ this ril soaft acoustic guitar, next second it’s like WHAAANG! WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA WAKKA, birlin’ all roond yir heid.’

‘Mm,’ said Isserley. ‘Sounds… effective.’

‘An’ his singin’! That manny sings like naebody oan earth! It’s like…’ Dave began to sing again, in a melismatic convulsion of slurring and growling which made him sound alarmingly drunk. For years now it had been Isserley’s policy never to allow a very drunk hitcher into her car, in case he fell asleep before she could make an informed decision about the icpathua. Had Dave greeted her with this extraordinary performance, she would definitely not have taken him. But, he assured her: ‘It’s deliberate. Like jazz, y’ken?’

‘Mm,’ she said. ‘So, have you seen John Martyn many times?’

‘Oh, six or seven, over the yirs. But he’s well intae the drink, y’ken. Y’canny be sure someboady like that isnae gauny pop off any day noo. Then you’d be tellin’ y’self, Ah couldy went and seen John Martyn, an’ now he’s deid! An’ whit did Ah dae instead, eh? Watched telly mebbe!’

‘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 pull 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.

Isserley bit back on the temptation to come right out and ask him about the Territorial Army, and found it surprisingly difficult. Again she blamed Amlis Vess; his ethical posturings and phony courage had annoyed her so deeply that she was finding any hint of it in another creature hard to tolerate. She wanted to ferret out this vodsel’s hare-brained passions, rudely yank them out into the light, before he had the chance to bore her with preambles.

She longed to sting him, to get it over with, which she knew was a very bad sign. It showed she was in danger of blundering towards an act of resolute foolishness not so very different, perhaps, from what might be expected from someone like Amlis Vess. As a matter of professional and personal pride, she must not sink to his level.

So, ‘Tell me,’ she said brightly, ‘What job were you hoping to get back there?’

‘I’m doing a bit of landscape design, just to tide me over,’ he replied. ‘My real profession is whatyou’dcall on hold just now.’

‘What is your real profession, then?’

‘I breed dogs.’

‘Dogs?’

‘Pedigrees. Sighthounds and scenthounds mainly, though I was getting into mastiffs and terriers towards the… the last few years. But crème-de-la-crème animals, yunderstandwhatI’msaying? Prize winners.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Isserley, letting her forearms droop forward at last. ‘I suppose you’ve supplied dogs to some well-known and influential people?’

‘Tiggy Legge-Burke’s had one of my dogs,’ the hitcher affirmed. ‘Princess Michael of Kent’s had one. Lots of people from show business. Mick McNeill out of Simple Minds. The other bloke from Wham. They’ve all had one.’

Isserley had no idea who these people were. She’d only ever watched television to learn the language, and to check if there were any police investigations being mounted into lost hitchhikers.

‘I suppose it must be difficult to train a dog and then let it go,’ she commented, trying not to let her loss of interest in him show. ‘It would get attached to you, wouldn’t it.’

‘Not a problem,’ he said pugnaciously. ‘Train them, hand them over. One master to another. Dogs have no problem with that. Dogs are pack animals. They need a leader, not a bosom buddy – well, not a two-legged one, anyway. People get too sentimental about dogs. Comes from not understanding the first thing about them.’

‘I’m sure I don’t understand the first thing about dogs,’ conceded Isserley, wondering if she had missed the right moment to ask him where he wanted to be dropped off.

‘First thing to understand,’ said the hitcher, coming to life, ‘is that to a dog, you’re pack leader. But only if you remind them who’s boss, same as a pack leader does. In a dog pack, there’s no such thing as a soft boss, yunderstandwhatI’msaying? Take my Shepherd bitch, Gertie. I’II go up to her when she’s sleeping on my bed, and just push her off, wham! onto the floor, just like that.’ He shoved his massive hands forward violently, and accidentally triggered the clasp of the glovebox, which sprang open and discharged something furry into his lap.

‘Jesus, what’s this?’ he muttered. Fortunately he picked the wig up himself, saving Isserley from having to grope for it in his crotch. Taking her eyes off the road for an anxious second, she snatched the clump of hair gently out of his hand and tossed it backwards into the darkness of the car’s rear.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, removing the gift box of chocolates from the overcrammed glovebox and snapping it shut. ‘Help yourself to one of these.’

She was proud of herself for handling so many challenges while driving, and couldn’t help breaking into a smile.

‘You were saying?’ she enquired as he fumbled with the cellophane. ‘You push your dog off the bed…’

‘Yeah,’ he rejoined. ‘That’s to remind her, this bed is mine. YunderstandwhatI’msaying? Dogs need that. A dog with a weak leader is an unhappy dog. That’s when they start to chew carpet, piss on your sofa, steal food off your table – like kids, desperate for a bit of discipline. No such thing as a bad dog. Clueless owners, that’s what it is.’

‘You seem to know such a lot about dogs, you must have been a very good breeder. Why are you designing landscapes just now?’

‘The bottom fell out of the dog-breeding business in the early nineties, that’s why,’ he said, his tone suddenly sour.

‘What caused that?’ she said.

‘Brussels,’ he declared darkly.

‘Oh,’ said Isserley. She struggled to see the connection between dogs and the small green spherical vegetables. She was almost certain that dogs were wholly carnivorous. Perhaps this breeder had fed his dogs on sprouts; if so, it was no wonder his business had ultimately failed.

‘Frogs, Sprouts, Clogs and Krauts,’ he elaborated meaningfully.

‘Oh,’ said Isserley.

She should, she felt, have listened to her own misgivings before night fell: only the deranged would be hitching afterwards. Never mind: the turn-off for the seaboard villages was only a few minutes away, and she could get rid of this character then, unless he was heading for her neck of the woods himself, of course. She hoped not. She was feeling ghastly again, exhaustion and an inexplicable misery throbbing in her system like poison.

‘Those bastards are sitting in judgement over there,’ the dog breeder blustered, stabbing his fingers clumsily into the chocolate selection, ‘far away from this fucking country – excuse my French – and they don’t have a fucking clue. YunderstandwhatI’msaying?’

‘Mm. I’m turning off in a minute,’ she said, frowning and weaving her head from side to side as she searched the gloom for the familiar B9175 sign.

His reaction to her being momentarily preoccupied like this was sudden and vehement.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he groaned. ‘You’re not even listening. A bunch of foreigners from over your way fucked up my whole life, yunderstand? One year I’ve got eighty grand in the bank, a Wolseley, a wife, more dogs than I can shake a stick at. Five years later, I’ve got sweet FA! Living alone in a prefab infucking Bonar Bridge, with a fucking Mondeo rusting in the back yard! Looking for work as a fucking gardener! Where’s the sense in that, eh? You tell me!’

The indicator was already ticking, flashing in the dimness of the cabin. Isserley slowed the car down in anticipation of the turn, checked the surviving mirrors for traffic. Then she turned to face him, meeting his glazed little eyes with her own enormous ones.

‘No sense at all,’ she assured him, flipping the icpathua toggle.

Back on the farm, Ensel was first out of the steading as always, bounding up to the car with an almost grotesque eagerness. His two companions were still silhouetted in the light, slow to follow, as if bowing to some ritual privilege of Ensel’s.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said Isserley irritably as he poked his snout through the passenger window to admire the paralysed vodsel.

‘Do what?’ he retorted, blinking.

Isserley leaned across the dog-breeder’s lap to unlock the door.

‘Rush out to see what I’ve got,’ she grunted, half blinded by a stab of pain in her spine. The door opened and the vodsel’s body tipped out into Ensel’s arms. The other men crowded around to help him.

‘Couldn’t I come and let you know,’ persisted Isserley, straightening up gingerly, ‘if I’ve got anything, and otherwise just go straight to my cottage without any fuss?’

Ensel was fumbling about, trying to find a secure grip on the vodsel’s torso. The cow leather of the creature’s jacket, alarmingly, had just unzipped itself with a heavy lurch of unrelated flesh.

‘But we don’t mind if you haven’t managed to get anything,’ protested Ensel in a wounded tone. ‘Nobody blames you.’

Isserley gripped the steering wheel and fought back tears of rage and exhaustion.

‘It’s not about whether I’ve managed to get anything or not,’ she sighed. ‘Sometimes I’m… tired, that’s all. I want to be alone.’

Ensel backed away from the car, dragging his bit of the vodsel onto the waiting trolley, frowning with effort as he and his companions wheeled their burden backwards towards the light. Frowning too, perhaps, at the way she’d just attacked him.

‘I just… we’re just trying to help, that’s all,’ he called to her miserably.

Isserley laid her head on her arms, slumping over the steering wheel.

‘Oh God,’ she moaned under her breath. This really was too much on top of a hard day’s work in impossible circumstances and a narrow escape from death: having to juggle the fragile complexities of human emotions.

‘Forget it!’ she yelled, peering straight down into the darkness at her feet, an oily confusion of foot pedals, filthy rubber matting, leather gloves and spilled chocolates. ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning!’

By the time the steading door had rolled shut and silence had returned to Ablach Farm, Isserley was weeping again, so that her glasses, when she finally removed them, almost slipped out of her fingers.

Men, she thought.