Under the Skin

by Michel Faber

  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 a
way 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.

  7

  WHEN ISSERLEY FINALLY clawed her way back to the surface from a black hole of sleep, she opened her eyes to find that it was still dark. Floating in a void, her little clock’s digital numbers were feeble and flickering, and said zero, zero, zero, zero. The internal power source needed replacing. She should have anticipated this, she thought, instead of … instead of what? Instead of wasting money on a box of chocolates she had no intention of eating.

  She lay tangled in the bedclothes, confused, disoriented and mildly anxious. Though she could see nothing in the blackness except the flickering clock, she suddenly had a vivid mental picture of the floor of her car, the last thing she could recall seeing before plummeting into sleep. She must remember to clear out the spilled chocolates before driving off again, or else they would get squashed underfoot. She’d seen the dog breeder bite into one. They had some sort of goo inside them that would make a sticky mess and no doubt decompose in time.

  She’d let things veer a little out of control lately; she must restore some order at the earliest opportunity.

  Isserley had no idea how many hours she had slept; whether the long winter night was still young or would soon be ending. It was even possible she’d slept through the brief pale hours of daylight, and that it was now already the dark afternoon of the following day.

  She tried to gauge from how she was feeling how long she had been unconscious. She was as warm as an overheated engine, sweat simmering out of those parts of her that could still sweat. That meant, assuming she could still trust her cycles, that she had slept either a very short or a very long time.

  She stretched her limbs cautiously; the pain was no worse than usual, but usual was bad. She would have to get up and do her exercises, regardless of what time it was, or she would end up unable to get up at all, trapped in a cage of her own bone and muscle.

  Moonlight was sketching some detail into her bedroom now as the pupils of her eyes at last began to dilate. Because her room was bare, though, the details were things like cracks in the walls, shards of peeled paint, functionless light switches, and, in the hearth, the dull pearly gleam of the sleeping television. Parched, Isserley fumbled for the glass of water beside the bed, but it was empty. She raised it to her lips and tipped it upside down just to make sure. Empty. Never mind: she could wait. She was strong. Needs could not bully her.

  She sat up, clumsily disentangled herself from the bed-sheets, and launched herself off the mattress onto the floor, landing crookedly, almost pitching sideways. A long needle of pain stabbed through the base of her spine, the amputation site; she’d tried to steady her balance with her tail again. She swayed back and forth, finding her new centre of gravity; the palms of her feet, damp with perspiration, adhered slightly to the frigid floorboards.

  The moonlight was not enough to do her exercises by. She didn’t know why she should need to see her limbs in order to exercise them, but she did. It was as if, in too profound a darkness, she could not be sure what sort of creature she was. She needed to verify what remained of her body.

  Perhaps the television, as well as providing some illumination, would serve to orient her. Unreality was swirling all around her like the delirious miasmas above the oxygen pits at the heart of the Estates; she had been dreaming again.

  After dreams of the pits, it would have been comforting to wake up in the sunlight of a safe world. Failing that, it would have been reassuring to see the clock glowing promisingly at her. But if she could have neither, she could do without.

  Isserley stumbled over to the hearth and switched on the television. Its tarnished screen revived sluggishly, like embers fanned by a breeze; then a bright image materialized like a psychedelic fire in the hearth, as Isserley prepared to contort herself into shape.

  Two male vodsels dressed in mauve tights, ruched blouses and bizarre green hats like stuffed Loch Ness Monster toys were standing next to a hole in the ground, out of which loose earth was being jettisoned like little puffs of brown breath. One of the vodsels was holding a small white sculpture in the palm of his hand, a three-dimensional version of the danger symbol displayed on Ablach’s main steading.

  ‘… and now my lady worms,’ he was saying, addressing the sculpture in an outlandish accent stranger still than Glaswegian. ‘Chapless, and knocked about the muzzard with a sexed unspayed.’

  Isserley pondered this for a few seconds, grunting with effort as she tipped her stiff torso repeatedly against her right hip.

  The television camera took her (ugh!) inside the hole in the ground, where there was an ugly old vodsel digging in the earth. He was singing as he laboured, in a slurry voice like John Martyn.

  ‘A pee cacks and a spayed, a spayed friend, a shrouding sheet, oh, a pit of clay for to be made …’

  It was all a bit depressing, so Isserley changed channels with the fingers of her foot.

  A large crowd of vodsels was advancing down a wide sunlit street paved with stones. Each member of the procession was shrouded in a bedsheet, with a narrow slit cut out for eyes. One held aloft a placard on which was affixed an enlarged and indistinct newspaper photograph of a bedsheet-shrouded creature just like them. A reporter’s voice was saying that with the whole world watching, the big question was just how far these women would be allowed to go.

  Isserley watched the procession for another couple of seconds, curious how far the vodsels would be allowed to go, but the camera didn’t show her; it switched to something entirely different, a large crowd of male vodsels in a sports stadium. Many of them resembled the dog breeder, and some were punching and wrestling each other while police tried to shepherd them away from the others.

  The camera switched to a close-up of an impressively beefy vodsel bulging out of a colourful football shirt. He was pushing his upper lip over his nose with his thumbs, revealing the word BRITISH branded on the wet pink flesh squirming above his yellow teeth. Then he pulled his lower lip down over his chin, revealing the word BULLDOG.

  Isserley changed the channel. A female vodsel with breasts almost as big as Isserley’s was screaming hysterically, clutching her cheeks with her hands, at the sight of a creature Isserley could not identify. It resembled a giant insect and waved pincers like a crab, but advanced clumsily on two legs. A male vodsel ran into the picture and shot the insect creature with what looked like a beam of torchlight from a plastic pistol.

  ‘I thought I told you to stay with the others,’ barked the male to the female, while the poor insect creature writhed in agony. Its dying cries, barely audible above the din of animal orchestrations, were alarmingly human-sounding, as sibilant as sexual passion.

  Isserley switched the television off. More awake now, she’d remembered something she should have known from the beginning, which was that there was no point trying to orient yourself to reality with television. It only made things worse.

  Years ago, television had been a wonderful teacher, offering her titbits of information constantly, wh
ich she could consume if she was ready, leave alone if she wasn’t. Unlike the books Esswis had gathered together for her to study, the luminous box in the hearth chattered indefatigably whether she was listening or not, never getting stuck on a word or a page. In all those early months of reading and re-reading, Isserley never managed to get through more than a few paragraphs of History of the World by W.N. Weech, JP, FSA, MA (even the fearsomely detailed farming pamphlet Which Rotovator? was less daunting) but the basics of vodsel psychology had been made crystal clear by the television within a couple of weeks.

  Strangely, however, she seemed to have reached a point, years ago already, when there wasn’t room for any more titbits from the television. It had passed its prime of usefulness, and was reverting to babble.

  She still wanted to know what day of the week it was, and whether the sun was near or far. She would, she decided, go outside as soon as she was limber, and interpret the night for herself. In fact, why wait? She could finish her exercises at the beach, under cover of darkness; she suspected strongly it was the small hours of the morning. Monday morning.

  She was regaining her grip.

  Feeling her way down the banister, she descended the stairs to the bathroom. The bedroom and the bathroom were the only rooms in her cottage that she knew well; the other rooms were a bit of a mystery. But the bathroom was not a problem. She had gone there countless times in the dark – virtually every morning during the winter months.

  Isserley walked in, blind. The palms of her feet sensed the change from wood to mouldering linoleum. She had little difficulty finding the things she needed. The tub, the taps, the shampoo, the sudden pressurized torrent of water: all these things were in their usual places, waiting for her. No-one ever tampered with them.