Read Online Under the Skin by Michel Faber - Free Book Online

Baillie may have been, but he was a bugger when it came to contracts. With Esswis, a word muttered over the telephone was as good as his signature. And as for the way he tried to discourage tourists from trespassing, confronting them with barbed wire and threats, well, more strength to his arm. The Highlands were not a public park.
    Isserley walked to the main path and, sighing with relief at being rid of her glasses for a while, peered across at Esswis’s house. The lights were on in all the rooms. The windows were all shut and opaque with condensation. Esswis could be anywhere in there.
    The sensation of fresh snow crunching underfoot was deeply satisfying to Isserley. Just the idea of all that water vapour solidifying by the cloudful and fluttering to earth was miraculous. She couldn’t quite believe it, even after all these years. It was a phenomenon of stupendous and unjustifiably useless extravagance. Yet here it lay, soft and powdery, edibly pure. Isserley scooped a handful off the ground and ate some. It was delicious.
    She walked to the largest of the steadings, the one that was in the best, or least shabby, condition. A dilapidated tile roof had been replaced by sheet metal. Whenever stones crumbled out of the walls, the cavities were promptly filled in with cement. The total effect was less like a house and more like a giant box, but these aesthetic sacrifices were necessary. This building must be protected from the elements and from the prying eyes of outsiders. It was the entrance to a much larger secret just below the ground.
    Isserley stood in front of the aluminium door and pressed the buzzer underneath the metal signs saying DANGEROUS CHEMICALS and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY . Yet another warning sign hung on the door itself, a stylized picture of a skull and two crossed bones.
    The intercom crackled abstractly, and she leaned close to it, her lips almost brushing the grille.
    ‘Isserley,’ she whispered.
    The door rolled open and she stepped inside.
    ***
    Impatient to get out to the firth, Isserley didn’t linger over breakfast. She was back at her cottage within twenty minutes, comfortably full of stodge and carrying a small plastic doggie bag of the German hitcher’s personal effects.
    The men down below had seemed pleased to see her, and had expressed concern about her having missed dinner the previous evening.
    ‘It was a real treat,’ Ensel told her, in a thick provincial dialect of her own language. ‘Shanks of voddissin in serslida sauce. With fresh wild berries for dessert.’
    ‘Well, never mind,’ Isserley had said, spreading slice after slice of bread with mussanta paste. She never knew what to say to these men, these labourers and process workers she would certainly never even have met in the course of ordinary life back home. Of course it didn’t help that they looked so different from her, and stared at her breasts and her chiselled face whenever they thought she couldn’t see.
    They were busy today, and had left her to her meal. But not before passing on an important bit of news: Amlis Vess was coming. Amlis Vess! Coming to Ablach Farm! Tomorrow! He’d sent a message, he was already on his way, they were not to go to any special bother, he wanted to see everything just as it was. Who would have thought it?
    Isserley had murmured something noncommittal, and the men hurried off to make more preparations for the big event. Excitement was rare in their lives now that Ablach Farm was well established and they had time on their hands. No doubt this visit from the boss’s son was an almighty thrill compared to spending yet another afternoon gambling with bits of straw or whatever men of their sort did. Left alone in the dining hall, Isserley had served herself a bowl of gushu, but it tasted strangely sour. It was then that she’d noticed that the whole subterranean complex, as well as smelling faintly of male sweat and crap food as always, smelled pungently of cleaning agents and paint.