Toby had a drink in his bag and an ebook in his pocket – he would be fine for the trip. Yet no sooner had he opened both, than he caught a pair of eyes looking at him over the top of the opposite seat. Their owner quickly moved around the seat to sit on it.
‘Is this your first time back?’
The young woman had evidently seen in him what he had missed in her. He wasn’t sure where she’d been sitting before.
‘Alison,’ he remembered.
‘Toby, right?’ She jumped around the table to sit right beside him.
‘Right. And to answer your question: no, I did miss a few, but started coming back again three years ago.’
‘I haven’t been for five.’
They spoke quietly, familiarly. Each had noted that the table opposite them was empty, and that behind their seats was a bulkhead wall.
She continued, ‘I remember you not being there one year. I think you’re a few ahead of me.’
It was coming back to him now,
‘You were one of Janey’s girls at the School.’
‘I remember you visiting her, when she was my Junior House Mistress. She really missed you after you left.’
‘I know she did.’
‘Are you pair still..?’
‘Together?’ He went quiet. ‘I’m only back for the winters now. We don’t see each other much.’
Alison looked genuinely sad at the news. ‘But you were really good together.’
‘Maybe in another time, another life.’
‘Another town?’
‘Yeah, another town.’
After a pause to watch the landscape go past, Alison continued,
‘You know, when I was a girl I envied you two. I wanted to be her and have a boyfriend like you.’
Alison said this in a way that Toby instantly knew to have no erotic edge. She was just that little girl again, remembering him as a kind-of elder sister’s boyfriend: calm, safe, protective. In this mode she then half-hugged him, leaning in and tightly holding his arm.
He said, ‘You don’t know what we do though, Alison. Us men. You don’t see it at the School for Girls.’
‘I have a younger brother,’ she answered, thus confirming that she did know.
‘Is he okay?’
‘Yes, he’s grown out of it now. He’s left town too. I don’t think he’ll be back though. He fell out with our Pa quite badly.’
Toby thought aloud, ‘It’s hard isn’t it, coming back after you’ve left.’
‘You did,’ she noted.
‘And so are you.’
She tensed, confessing her reason,
‘I’ve got a sister too. She’ll be twelve this year.’
‘So it will just be starting for her.’
Still holding onto Toby, Alison cried.
‘This is why we come back,’ he whispered for both of them. ‘This is why we come back.’
Chapter 5 – Approaching Shadows
As Toby had said those words to Alison, he’d smiled. And through the tears, she had too. Yet as they sat there she became restless. She broke away from holding his arm, before claiming to have a friend in a nearby town that she needed to visit first on her journey. They were nearing the last big town before the mountains, the one you took before the stop for Stove.
As they pulled in she jumped up, grabbed her bag, and said smilingly,
‘She lives not far from here. I’ll only be a day or two.’
‘I’ll see you in town then?’
Toby asked Alison this to test her reaction, and that reaction – nervous, hesitant – had told him all he needed to know.
‘Yes, we may do. Bye now.’ She smiled a little less easily than before, and left along the corridor.
At the empty table, once the train was carrying on its way, Toby caught himself. Although still half an hour from the mountains, in one way he had already arrived there; for as the sun moved behind them, so the peaks would soon be casting their long afternoon shadows in his direction, rather than out toward the coast.
He hadn’t yet pulled on his uniform, but already he bore some kind of authority. Officialdom was running through his veins. He had begun talking to Alison as Toby the Lab Tech, nice guy, the sort you’d kill an hour with chatting on a train. He had ended as an agent of the town, a man not to be trusted or confided in except at your own peril, who would infer motive from your answers and use your words against you. He was now a Special Deputy, pleased to be of service, Miss. You hurry back now from your friend’s house, or you’ll be missed in town. Mark my words, your absence will be noted.
Toby hated himself. He hated himself all year around, yet for nine months of it he could try and pretend otherwise. The human mind was easily fooled, and could imagine away monsters not present to its senses. He was the monster.
Alison wouldn’t make it into town, he judged. She was bolting. And frankly, who could blame her? What was there for her in Stove but pain and the memory of earlier pain?
Toby wished her well, and hoped that if she didn’t make it then she wouldn’t beat herself up too badly about it. It wasn’t her fault, he could fully understand. He was ever-close to taking that same action himself. But he wouldn’t take it. He could cope with almost anything – that was his curse.
Alison had no need to feel bad. Toby blamed no one for staying away from Stove. Her sister would be cared for by those trained to do so. Probably by Janey, who was a full House Mistress now. A saint of a woman... and this gave Toby another reason to feel bad.
He felt like Tom Jones in the old song, seeing again the green, green grass of home, his family, the woman he once loved... though now they were only in his mind.
Toby found his face resting on the window, his cheek wet against the glass. Tears, the secret enemy, the stealthiest of assassins – how they crept up on you from nowhere. He looked out toward the passing farms, as if he was the young Tom returning to any one of them. They were falling under golden shadows now, and giving way to rocky barren uplands.
Toby shook himself up. It was okay though, he had time to get his game face on. He would be fine once in his uniform. He had his hours in Gaidon, the town he’d leave the train at, before the bus ride up the mountain. He’d be fine.
The train was almost empty now – there wasn’t much call for coastal passage this time of year. Toby wished he could remember where he’d seen the locomotive double-picture now – if he could find it again he’d pin a postcard of it up in his locker in Carvel. No, that wouldn’t be right. It would be more fitting tucked under the edge of the mirror in his room in Stove, the room he occupied in winter.
For the others at Carvel might like the cleverness of the painting, might admire the artist’s skill – bread-vans becoming ambulances, sandbags around the tea room doorways. But they wouldn’t get its meaning, its meaning to him.
Toby closed the cover of his ebook, for there was no reading to be done. Even distraction from his destination seemed a cop-out. It was his lot, and he wondered if it would kill him, if only from a wounded heart?
Chapter 6 – Gaidon
Gaidon was the stop you took for Stove. It was a good town. Tough, mountainous, but homely. The kind of place in which you wouldn’t mind being snowed in for a length of time. Toby didn’t tell the waitress at the diner that he came from their near neighbour further up the mountain. He didn’t tell the cook who put his food out on the hotplate, or the man with a medical bag who sat down opposite him with coffee. Yet he felt they must have known, that he bore a certain look.
Toby didn’t want to know what the townsfolk of Gaidon thought of their strange neighbours up the hill. On previous incognito visits he had heard the place whispered of in hushed tones, looks given over the speaker’s shoulder as if by villagers living in the shadow of Dracula’s castle. As he tucked into his ham and eggs this made him think of the actor who often played The Count, Christopher Lee; and then of another of his films, The Wicker Man. Toby’s mind was racing with images of isolated communities le
ft to go weird.
‘Is everything all right with those eggs?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘More coffee?’
‘Please.’
‘Coming right up.’
Toby felt next like an occupying soldier in a subdued land – then cursed that as a ridiculous thought! He looked at his arms on the table, expecting to see them sleeved in black with polished buttons on the cuffs. He couldn’t put it off much longer – the mountains wanted him, were pulling him out of his nice-guy disguise. There was only one place he could be now.
Toby ate and drank up, heartily so. He even bought an Irish coffee and a shot of brandy to go over his ice cream. He thanked the staff, left a five-spot tip, and exited for the bus stop.
Stood alone in the centre of town, there was no longer any pretence. Buses from that side of the street went in only one direction – up. For those ten minutes Toby was an open symbol. Hurry up, bus.
When it came, two other passengers emerged from the eaves of nearby buildings to join him – so that was what the clever ones did, left some other passenger to stand there on display, while they pretended to peruse shop windows? How many years had Toby been catching that bus, and he’d never noticed it.
Once the bus doors had clanked shut though, with the driver also being a Stovian, it was as though a membrane had sealed across the vehicle’s entrance with a sucking squelch. Outside the bus was sunny Gaidon, inside was stony Stove. They sat there not speaking, before the engine finally grumbled and they slowly pulled away.
Toby was inside the beast now, the heart of his fear. And yet his first reaction was to let out an almighty sigh of relief – he didn’t have to lie now. This collective feeling was instantly voiced by a large man sat at the front,
‘Well, another damn season here we come!’
‘Welcome, Deputy.’ An older man leant across the aisle with hand outstretched for Toby to shake.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he returned. Toby was being recognised – he was among his own kind.
‘Sheriff Thornton will be glad to see you,’ the older man suggested, as the shops and shoppers of Gaidon passed by the bus’s windows. The man was smartly dressed in a blue-flecked three-piece suit.
‘I’m sure,’ answered Toby, though he was far from certain of his reception. But he wouldn’t worry about that for now – the internal politics of the Sheriff’s Office stayed within those walls. This was all the better to maintain public confidence. For if the public lost faith in the Sheriff’s Office... and with everything else going on at wintertime...
The bus soon left the town behind, to begin its rise up through twisting gorges and mountain passes. As he drove, the driver also stood up at his seat. There he turned the lever to rotate the sign above his windscreen. There were no more stops to come now, and this was the last service of the evening.
The blue-suited man continued his train of thought,
‘You’re back in the nick of time, Deputy. Council’s booked for tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? Saturday? I thought I’d have a week?’
‘Snow’s forecast for Sunday. I know you wouldn’t think it from the weather we’re having – I’ve been near sweltering in this suit. But that’s why I was in Gaidon today. It might have been my last chance.’
‘Tomorrow.’ Toby tried to adjust.
‘And your colleagues will be glad to see you.’
‘Oh..?’
‘Well, there are less of you back this year.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Maybe they’ve been caught out by the timing, as you almost were. But the date set for Returners’ Weekend is well-known, and, well, look around you.’
On the bus were six passengers, four male, though only Toby was young enough to be an effective Deputy.
‘I guess you’re right, sir.’
Of the women, one had smiled adoringly at Toby from the moment he had boarded. The other only looked out of the window, and was harder to read. That was the thing with Special Deputies, they raised mixed reactions.
‘Just male returners, or female too, sir?’ asked Toby.
‘Both, I’d say. Oh, the School will be fine. They have enough teachers to look after the girls. But the Sheriff’s men will be stretched.
‘You’re batting with a smaller team this season,’ called the loud man sat at the front.
An unfortunate metaphor, thought Toby, who could bring himself year-round to play no sport with a club.
Chapter 7 – On the Bus
Saturday then, considered Toby. So much for having time to settle in and see old friends. Or for another meeting he was hoping to get around to doing properly this year.
‘The School for Girls,’ mused the blue-suited man then. ‘Say, Deputy. Didn’t I used to see you stepping out with one of the House Mistresses?’
Toby braced himself, ‘Yes, sir. Janey Thompson. She was a Junior House Mistress then.’
‘Janey, dear Janey. And I suppose with your leaving..?’
Toby let his silence speak.
‘A shame, and happens more and more. I never left.’
‘No?’
‘I don’t mean that to be critical of you, Deputy. I know, you young people can see the world on your computer screens nowadays. You can’t stay in a small town in the mountains all your life. Some of the older generation don’t understand that, but I do. I’m only glad so many of you come back each year. And when you must have such bad memories of the place.’
‘Such sad memories,’ echoed the kind-eyed lady, with a bitter-sweet look, the only thing she’d say all journey.
The man continued, ‘I myself stayed through of a sense of duty.’ The woman nodded. ‘And if I’m honest, one of guilt.’ Another sympathetic nod. ‘I arrived here with the oil company when the town first sprung up around the pipeline junction. I was one of those who worked on the laying of it. It was that first winter, after my family came to live with me, that my children got the sickness. That was before we even knew what it was. I remember my girl was in tears dawn till dusk, inconsolable – it’s a shocking thing when you see it the first time.’
The woman nodded throughout in support.
‘And when it caught my boy... well, I’d never known anyone, even a full-grown man, be as wild. Not in Korea, or in all the years since. I’m afraid... I’m afraid it took three of us to contain him that first night he was stricken.’
Toby opened his arms in a gestured of support, saying,
‘Well, of course. You didn’t know the best ways then. The techniques hadn’t been developed.’
‘I’m afraid we got tough with him, Deputy. I fear we were very tough.’
‘We’ve all got our scars,’ said the man at the front.
‘Well, I haven’t,’ said the man in blue to Toby. ‘I hadn’t lived through it myself, like you did, Deputy, and like all the other children who’ve grown up in the town. I asked my son to bear what I had not. There is no way around that feeling.’
Toby had been wearing a look of surprise. He said,
‘I hadn’t realised...’
‘What?’ answered the man. ‘That I’d been knocking around these mountains so long?’
‘I don’t think I’ve heard the story first-hand before, of the early days.’
‘It’s not a happy one,’ said the man.
The listening lady shook her head, steeped in the sadness of it all.
Toby said, ‘I didn’t believe it would be.’
‘You don’t need to hear the story,’ said the man sat up front suddenly, who Toby was beginning to realise was drunk. ‘It wouldn’t benefit you to hear it. It doesn’t pay a Deputy to think. You’re there to do your job. It doesn’t help you stopping to think. Too much brains, these kids.’
He went on, apparently talking to himself, ‘They think they know it all. Too many damn brains.’
Toby noticed the man hadn’t turned to face them the whole time he’d been talking.
‘You’ve no business hearing it,??
? he thundered. ‘No business at all.’
Toby guessed the blue-suited man was half-minded to have words with the fellow. Yet he clearly thought better of it – for no man had yet come out of an argument with a lush with his dignity intact. Instead, upon disembarking a while later, the old man said,
‘Monroe’s the name. You come and see me on Hillcrest sometime. We’ll toast your health with Uncle Jack.’
‘Thank you. I will.’
‘Oh, there’s a lot I could tell you. A lot I could tell you, to be sure.’
As they disembarked from the bus, the drunk rambled off to pester the driver for change for the payphone. Meanwhile, the kind-eyed lady came to Toby and took his hand, saying,
‘I wish you and your boys a good winter.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I wish you a good one too.’
‘Sometime, if you have the chance, come and see us too. We’re up on Laurel. My daughter would love to meet you.’
The woman’s look left Toby under no misapprehension of her motives where her daughter’s courting status was concerned. Being away, he’d forgotten that among a certain kind of townsperson Deputies were movie stars.
The man in the blue suit gave Toby a raised eyebrow and a smirk at overhearing the lady’s offer, before he left for home. Soon Toby was alone beside the bus, its engine cracking in the dusk as it cooled.
The sky was less bright now. Evening was encroaching of course, but it seemed darker even than that. Something like a haze was descending, the precursor of a fog perhaps. Yet it felt nowhere near cold enough for fog.
The atmosphere between the town’s two mountain peaks was contracting. Toby remembered the sensation. For weeks now it would be like this. It was the air pressure, the moisture condensing – or something like that, he forgot exactly. He only remembered the feeling that would last all winter, of being a dog with a wet nose, no matter how hard you wiped it.
He exhaled harshly. It was time to face the town.
Chapter 8 – Stovian Sunset
‘We’ve all got our scars,’ had said the man at the front of the bus. At that moment Toby had instinctively reached for the cobweb line across his eyebrow, the result of his own teenage wildness, subdued under a Deputy’s club. Now he was the Deputy, taking from hard-pressed fathers the responsibility of managing half-mad sons.