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, which 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.
Isserley showered with care and patience, giving special attention to the scar-lines and alien clefts in which she had a dangerous lack of sensation: places where infections could grow and where wounds that had never quite healed could slyly venture open. Her hands smoothed great foams of lather back and forth across her body, spongy slathers of creamy detergent which she imagined as more copious than they probably were. She pictured herself wreathed and haloed in foam, little clouds of it like the frothy spume of pollution carried on the waves sometimes at Ablach Beach.
Abstracted, she drifted away from consciousness, slowly revolving under the warm cascade of water. Her hands and arms continued to slither around on her flesh, slick with lather, settling into a regular rhythm, a regular route. She closed her eyes.
Only when she realized that some of her fingers had strayed between her legs, searching blindly for what was no longer to be found there, did she come back to her senses and rinse herself with businesslike efficiency.
Fully dressed as if for work, Isserley walked through a tunnel of trees towards the sea. Her boots made soft crackling sounds in the frozen mud; her wet hair steamed in the chill air. She moved carefully, measuring her steps in the dimness, her hands hovering away from her hips, ready to break a fall. At one point she turned, waiting a moment for her cloud of breath to clear so she could see how far she had come. Her cottage was a vague silhouette hunched against the night sky, with two upstairs windows reflecting moonlight like the eyes of an owl. She turned back to the firth and kept walking.
After the avenue of trees, the land was opened up to the atmosphere; the size of Ablach Farm became obvious, and Isserley walked a long grassy path snaking between great fields of dormant barley and potatoes. The sea was already visible from here, and the sound of waves seemed all around her.
The moon hung low over the firth, and countless tiny stars shone clearly from the darkest, furthest reaches of the universe; the time must be about two or three in the morning.
Back in the steading, the men would most likely be loading the ship at last. That was a good thing. The sooner they finished, the sooner it could leave. The moment would arrive when Amlis Vess was sent back where he had come from. What a wonderful release of tension that would be!