Already out of the car, he hesitated to slam the door before he had found the right words to leave her with.
‘And you’re’ – he drew a deep, rasping breath – ‘beautiful,’ he beamed.
Isserley smiled back, bone-weary all of a sudden.
‘Bye for now,’ she said.
Isserley sat in her car for a long time, engine off, in the pool of light near the thatched bus stop in Edderton village. Whatever was needed to enable her to leave, she lacked it just now.
While waiting for whatever it was to be granted her, she rested her arms on the steering wheel, and her chin on her arms. She didn’t have much of a chin, and what little she did have was the result of much suffering and surgical ingenuity. Being able to rest it on her arms was a small triumph, or maybe a humiliation, she could never decide which.
Eventually, she removed her glasses. A stupid risk to take, even in this somnolent village, but the sensation of tears collecting inside the plastic rims and leaking through onto her cheeks was unbearable in the end. She wept and wept, keening softly in her own language, watching the street carefully in case any vodsels strayed out. Nothing happened, and time stubbornly refused to pass.
She looked up into the rear-view mirror, adjusting the angle of her head until what she saw reflected was just her moss-green eyes and the fringe of her hair. This little sliver of face, poorly illumined, was the only bit she could look at nowadays without self-loathing, the only bit which had been left alone. This little sliver was a window into her sanity. She had sat in her car like this many times over the years, staring through that window.
A pair of headlights glimmered on the horizon, and Isserley put her glasses back on. By the time the vehicle arrived in Edderton, quite some time later, she had pulled herself together.
The vehicle was a plum-coloured Mercedes with tinted windows, and it winked its lights at Isserley as it passed through the village. It was a friendly gesture, nothing to do with warning or the codes of traffic. Just one vehicle saluting another of a vaguely similar shape and colour, in ignorance of the contents inside.
Isserley started her own car and turned it round, following her unknown well-wisher out of Edderton and into the forest.
All the way back to Ablach, she thought about Amlis Vess and what he might think when he learned she had come back empty-handed. Would he assume that the reason why she was hidden away in her cottage was embarrassment at her lack of success? Well, let him. Perhaps her failure, if that’s how he chose to see it, would make clear to him that her job was not an easy one. Pampered dilettante that he was, he probably imagined it was like picking wildflowers from the side of the road, or… or whelks from the sea-shore, if he had the faintest notion what whelks were, or what a sea-shore looked like. Esswis was right: fuck him!
Maybe she should have taken the woodcutter after all. How massive his arms had been! – such massive chumps, bigger than any she’d ever encountered. He would have been good for something, surely. Ah, but the cancer… She really would have to find out whether cancer made any difference, for future reference. It was no use asking the men on the farm, though. They were thick; typical Estates types.
Ablach Farm was snowy pale and as quiet as ever when she drove up its overgrown private road. There were actually two roads leading into the farm, one nominally for heavy machinery, but both were cracked and bumpy and wild with weeds, and Isserley used either depending on her mood. Tonight she turned into the one supposedly for cars, though no cars except hers ever drove on it. Already at the mouth of Ablach, a cluster of signs warned of death, poison, and the full penalty of law. Just passing these signs, Isserley knew, triggered alarms in the farm buildings a quarter of a mile ahead.
She liked this road, especially one gorse-infested stretch of it which she called Rabbit Hill, where colonies of rabbits lived and could be depended on to hop across at any time of day or night. Isserley always drove very slowly here, taking great care not to run over these winsome little creatures.
Through the camouflage of trees at the top of the road she glimpsed the lights of Esswis’s farmhouse, remembered their awkward conversation that morning. Hazily though she knew him, she could well imagine his back would be torturing him by now, and she felt pity, contempt (he could have said no, couldn’t he?), and a queasy pang of kinship.
She drove past the stable, illuminating its blistered door in a flash of orange and black. There were no horses in there, only a pet project of Ensel’s.
‘It’ll work, I know it will,’ he’d told her, just days before abandoning it and letting Esswis tow it away. She’d shown no interest, of course. Men of his sort could bore you to death if you encouraged them.
The main steading, when she pulled up to it, was ridiculously white, its fresh paint glowing in the moonshine. As soon as she’d switched off her engine, the great metal door rolled open and several men hurried out. Ensel, first as always, peered into the passenger window.
‘I couldn’t get anything,’ said Isserley.
Ensel poked his snout inside the cabin, much as the woodcutter had done, and sniffed the alcoholic upholstery. ‘I can smell it wasn’t for want of trying,’ he said.
‘Yes, well,’ responded Isserley, hating herself for what she was about to say, but saying it anyway, ‘Amlis Vess will just have to appreciate it isn’t as easy as all that.’
Ensel noted her discomposure, smiled. His teeth weren’t so good, and he knew it; for her sake, he lowered his head.
‘You got a big one yesterday, anyway,’ he said. ‘One of the best ever.’
Isserley stared into his eyes, yearning to be sure whether, just for once, the compliment was sincere. As soon as she caught herself yearning, she yanked this contemptible little shoot of sentimentality out by the root. Estate trash, she thought, looking away, determined to get herself locked up safely in her cottage as soon as possible. She’d had far too long a day.
‘You look exhausted,’ said Ensel. The other men had already gone back inside; he was attempting a private moment with her, the way he sometimes did, always at lamentably inopportune times.
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘It would be fair to say that.’
She recalled another occasion, a year or two ago, when he’d had her trapped like this – him leaning into the car, her foolish enough to have turned off the motor. He’d told her conspiratorially, almost tenderly, that he’d got her a present. ‘Thanks,’ she’d said, taking the mysterious little parcel from him and tossing it onto the seat beside her. Unwrapping it later, she’d found an almost transparently thin fillet of braised voddissin – a delicacy which Ensel must surely have stolen. Nestled in greaseproof paper, it winked at her, still moist and warm, irresistible and disgusting at the same time. She’d eaten it, even licked the juices from the creases in the paper, but she never mentioned it to Ensel afterwards, and that was the end of that. Still he tried, in other ways, to impress her.
‘Amlis Vess will probably arrive in the early hours,’ he was saying now, leaning further into the car. His hands were dirty and gnarled with scabs. ‘Tonight,’ he added, in case there was some misunderstanding.
‘I’ll be asleep,’ said Isserley.
‘Nobody knows how long he’s coming for. He might leave again, on the same ship, as soon as the cargo is loaded.’ Ensel used one hand to mime a ship departing, a precious opportunity swallowed up into the void.
‘Well, I guess all will be revealed when the time comes,’ said Isserley brightly, wishing she hadn’t switched off the ignition.
‘So… shall I let you know?’ suggested Ensel.