The Winter Sickness

  ‘Hello, Deputy,’ said the landlady of the Stovian Sunset Boarding House. Toby’s room had been reserved three months ago; if not thirteen years ago, for he had been in the same one each year he’d returned. Except for those three years he’d missed, of course, the ones he didn’t like to think about.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to have you back.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said. They shared a smile as he took his key. ‘How has your year been?’

  ‘Good, good. Thank you for asking. There’s been a new gas line laid up to the pipeline junction. It’s taken extra men to dig it, so I’ve been booked out all year. And yours? The College?’

  ‘Oh, lots of exciting things. All manner of new research.’ Toby remembered she enjoyed hearing of it.

  ‘I always wanted to go to Carvel,’ she mused. ‘See a show, go horse riding. Stay at a nice hotel – have someone wait on me for a change. But, you know...’

  ‘Life.’

  ‘Life.’ She smiled resignedly, and shrugged. ‘We’re just too busy here.’

  ‘You could pay a flying visit,’ he suggested then. ‘You’d only be away two nights.’

  ‘I’ll send you the tourist brochure,’ he said, as he did every year. But how far away Carvel felt at that moment. How much they had to live through before he was released.

  Toby turned for his room, but the landlady called after him before he’d got very far up the stairs,

  ‘The Sheriff’s left a note for you. Council’s been moved forward to tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’ he asked, turning to face her. ‘I thought it was tomorrow?’

  ‘That was this morning. It’s been moved forward again since then. The forecasts worsen hourly. They’re saying the snow could come tomorrow now.’

  Toby was struck dumb. Council was tonight, that was one thing. But the snow coming so soon was bad, he knew. It was only Friday still. The designated Returners’ Weekend hadn’t properly started yet, and might mean that others wouldn’t get there in time.

  He resumed his uphill climb.

  ‘Your uniform’s been pressed too,’ his landlady called after him with a touch of pride in her voice. ‘It’s been laid out on your bed.’

  Toby didn’t needed telling where his uniform was, his Old Familiar. He could hardly have missed it when he entered the room – it could not have been more conspicuous against the soft cream bedspread had it been stitched together of grizzly bear hide and carrion crow’s feathers.

  Looking up at him, in its dry-cleaners’ polythene wrapper, was the Stove Sheriff’s Office, Special Deputies’ Winter Uniform. What a mouthful.

  Laid before Toby was a tunic in black, flawless black, as if left soaking in a bathtub of thick inky dye all night. The stars in that night sky were polished-silver buttons down the front and on the cuffs. And his number – 214 – pinned to each epaulet. On the left breast pocket was a gold-embroidered town crest. While that dual-pointed mountain motif was also cast in silver studs and pinned to each lapel.

  Laid beneath the tunic were matching trousers, tapered as like jodhpurs for tucking into the polished jet-black boots that were standing beside the bed.

  Toby saw the single folded piece of notepaper beside the clothes, and picked it up. The Sheriff had hand-written:

  Hello Toby,

  Glad you’re here. Sorry I’m not going to be able to see you before Council. It’s been put forward to tonight (Friday). Hope you’re reading this in time? Things are happening quickly this year. And Council’s not the start of it. Two places I’d like you to show your face beforehand...

  Below were written two sets of names and addresses. Families with dinner guests, expected Toby. It was something of a tradition for the more-established households of the town to meet with friends before the season started, a kind of au revoir to carefree living for three months. It wasn’t uncommon for them to like to have a Deputy visit on these occasions, to chew the fat, take their praise, and remind everyone present of the seriousness of things.

  Toby had fulfilled these appointments many times before, might even have been requested by these families by name. It wouldn’t be a problem. Yet the speed at which the machine had gotten moving shook him.

  It had been a long day; and the bringing-forward of events would make it even longer. Looking at the uniform, Toby wanted to shove that junk off the bed and sleep. But he knew better than to think he had the strength to resist the forces now controlling him. And so he only lifted the clothes up and onto the back of the dressing-table chair.

  He lay down, groaning with relief to do so. Kicking off his shoes, he felt the cool air through the fabric of his socks. ‘Half an hour,’ he told himself, ‘half an hour before I have to dress for that first dinner.’ Even with his busy evening, he could put it off for that long surely? Only half an hour, just a short half-hour...

  Toby was woken by a knocking at his door.

  ‘Deputy, Deputy?’ called the landlady. Toby looked at the clock – he’d been out for ninety minutes. ‘The Sheriff told me you’d be dining out tonight,’ the woman called from the corridor. ‘But did you want coffee before you left?’

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ he shouted back through the thick wooden door.

  She said, ‘I’ll leave it outside for you.’

  At least he’d had the waking wits to thank her – Toby knew that for the coming months she would be running ragged after him and the other Deputies staying there. Yet she would be glad to do so, and, like many in the town, thought of looking after the Deputies’ wellbeing as a grateful duty.

  Her job had other responsibilities too, some specific to her. Year-round her establishment catered for out-of-town workers at the pipeline station. Such tenancies ceased at winter, of course, leaving her rooms empty for a very different clientele, and that was where her role changed.

  All Stovians were liars to the world, knew Toby. That was their pact, although most had other townsfolk around them for support. Some, like Toby, left for towns where no one knew there was a lie to tell. Yet this poor woman was surrounded by outsiders three seasons of the year, and ran her show alone. This left the activities of one part of her life shuttered-off and secret from the other part. Toby had the utmost respect for his landlady. He considered that you’d have to reach into the spy novels of John le Carré to find another figure living such a splintered life.

  Toby sat upright on the bed. His face felt dusted by some substance that had dried and then hardened. He slapped himself lightly to wake the senses – another nodding-off would be disastrous.

  ‘Get your game-face on, Toby,’ he said to himself alone in the room, not caring if it was the first sign of madness. He got up and went to fetch in the coffee.

  Chapter 9 – Battle Dress

  There was a reason that the uniform was black, and the reason was that winter was their friend. The townspeople of Stove may have decided on their seasonal conspiracy, but they could have had no happier co-conspirator than the weather.

  In part, this was down to the heavy snow their mountain town received each winter being a good excuse for closing the roads and felling the phone lines. But it also let them dress the way they did.

  ‘Contrasting visibility against the snow’ was the explanation that the Sheriff’s Office gave for changing the Deputies’ uniforms to black each winter. That was the official version anyway, as it had always been explained – for there was never anything written down. Yet Toby knew it was hogwash, and that if ‘visibility’ was the reason then they’d all be wearing Day-Glo tabards by now.

  No, they wore the black Winter Uniform because they loved it. Loved the power of it, the authority it gave them striding through the town. Not to mention the way a man in uniform could make a woman weak at the knees, or so the banter went at the Sheriff’s Office.

  Toby sat before the dressing table, looking up from the boots he had just pulled on. He saw himself in the table mirror, half-transformed. New Toby was dead; long live Old Toby, the Toby he had been in secret since
aged eighteen.

  He stood to complete the job, pulling on his tunic – a little tighter than last year. ‘It must have shrunk,’ he tried to joke as he did up the buttons. He even managed an odd and crooked smile. But then he was becoming an odd and crooked creature.

  Not crooked in stature, of course. Toby turned to see himself full-length in the tall mirror on the wall. And as he did so, he pulled on his hat – the peaked cap that they found so much more practical than the almost-decorative ten-galloner the Sheriff and his men wore the rest of the year.

  The picture completed, Toby paused a moment to check the details. The buttons were numerous, and all in the right place. The jacket’s lapels were straight – small and high for buttoning up tight around the neck. Only the knot of his tie and the collar of his shirt were visible beneath his dark outer-cladding. They were tan, the only part of the Summer Uniform that Toby ever got to wear.

  Whoever thought this outfit up had had some kink, Toby had always suspected. Now Mr Monroe, who he’d met on the bus, might be able to tell him who that was. Toby looked again in the mirror – he hated himself. He closed his door behind him, and clumped down the stairs.

  Chapter 10 – Diversion

  Toby had a busy evening ahead, then. Though not so busy that he couldn’t fit in one other appointment he had promised himself he would make.

  Come eight in the evening, and he was standing outside the Stove School for Girls. He was beneath trees, hidden in the shadows, with no snow yet for his dark clothes to contrast against. Except for light glinting on his insignia, there was no way of anyone seeing him. Which was just as well, as he didn’t want to think how it might look if he was caught there.

  Yet it was really very innocent, he reassured himself. This time of year there weren’t any boarders. He was also at the back of the School, outside the building where the House Mistresses lived. He was looking for a woman, one he couldn’t get to see any other way. And he wanted to see her only to assure himself that she was well.

  Toby stood there for twenty minutes, despite all else he had to do that night. There was no snow, but the sun had left early and the night was cold. Twenty yards ahead of him were two lit ground floor windows, those of a lounge and a kitchen. In the lounge were two women, neither of whom was the one he wanted. One of these had come in from the kitchen with a bowl of food, leaving the light on, and Toby was glad of its transmitted warmth.

  He wished he was in that kitchen making food, taking it into that snug lounge. He felt excluded in every social sense. Before him was a vision of homeliness, of soft-lit rooms that had felt a woman’s touch. He had no access to these things – for the next three months he had only the snowy streets, the wrecked houses, the Sheriff’s Office, or the draughty rooms of the Stovian Sunset.

  It was no use – Toby had to get on. He checked that neither woman was looking out in his direction, before moving quickly down the drive. Yet as he did so, something in the corner of his eye made him stop, and turn again toward the windows. Looking out now was a third woman, one with chestnut hair falling to her shoulders. Not quite tumbling over them as it had once done, but unmistakably her, even from that distance.

  Toby was in the open now, without tree cover, though still hardly visible against the night. He could be no more to that watching woman than a moving shadow, despite her looking right at him. He didn’t feel her gaze, the same he imagined as if stood behind mirrored glass.

  He stayed like that for a couple of seconds, before he turned along the drive, and into the night.

  In the warm room, Toby hadn’t heard that soft classical music was playing. A Junior put down her food and spoke to the just-arrived House Mistress,

  ‘I thought there might have been someone out there earlier.’

  ‘Yes,’ the Mistress agreed. She was still standing at the window and looking out for the first flakes of the promised snow.

  ‘Council’s tonight,’ said the younger woman. ‘Maybe they’re keeping watch already?’

  ‘I think they are,’ said the House Mistress. And she smiled.

  Chapter 11 – House One

  Toby could have blamed his hanging around outside the School for his lateness. Instead he cursed his earlier tiredness – was that what happened when you hit thirty, he wondered? That some dormant dad-dozing-in-the-armchair gene suddenly activated, and turned an urgent young man into one who craved ‘forty winks’?

  ‘I’m too old for this,’ Toby found himself saying out loud. Talking to himself again – and still he didn’t care if that marked him out as mad. For he knew he was already – mad to even be there, mad to be participating in that charade.

  He arrived outside the house unseen, the same shadow on a different driveway. Hearing music and the sounds of conversation from inside, Toby felt as if he was arriving at a costume party with himself as Adolf Eichmann.

  ‘Deputy, come in.’ Someone was already at the door. Toby stood still at the end of the drive. Things were beginning to feel surreal to him.

  The man shook his hand as Toby entered, saying,

  ‘It’s good of you to come. I understand your schedule is moving forward. Myself, I wouldn’t have had that last brandy had I known it was Council at ten.’ He was a round and jolly man, who looked as though he had enjoyed his supper.

  Toby recognised him then,

  ‘Councillor.’

  Like a lot of the Town Council they owned these larger houses, and were managers of the pipeline and the pumping station, or of businesses that had developed as the town had.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve finished the main course. We guessed you were delayed.’

  ‘I was held up,’ lied Toby.

  ‘Won’t you come in?’

  Toby took off his cap and gloves, leaving them on a small table in the hall, then entering the dining room as directed. He found the mistress of the house standing by the table to greet him. The family’s three children, out of order, stood beside her. They were awaiting him expectantly. She began,

  ‘Deputy, thank you so much for coming. It’s an honour to have you here.’

  He took her offered hand and bowed his head respectfully,

  ‘The honour is all mine.’

  ‘How polite.’ She smiled. ‘How polite you are. Won’t you let me introduce our children? Now, children. You remember how I explained about our Deputies, and the important work they do in our town?’

  If there was a flicker of something in her tone as said this, she quickly righted herself,

  ‘Well, tonight we’re honoured to have one visit us.’ She turned back to Toby, introducing her brood in a line like a sports captain to a visiting VIP before a big game,

  ‘This is Elizabeth. She’s ten.’

  He leaned down, ‘Hello Elizabeth, I’m Toby.’

  ‘Well, say hello back,’ urged her mother.

  ‘Hello Toby.’

  ‘You’re at the School for Girls?’

  Her mother answered, ‘And gets top marks in every class, don’t you, love?’

  ‘Except for maths,’ the girl giggled.

  ‘Don’t go telling the Deputy things like that!’

  ‘I’m sure your teachers are very are proud of you,’ he said.

  The girl smiled back at Toby, enjoying his visit as much as her mother; who continued,

  ‘Now, this is Toby too.’

  ‘Hello little Toby.’

  ‘I’m not little Toby – I’m six.’

  ‘Well, hello big Toby. I’m big Toby too.’

  ‘You’re a Deputy,’ the boy said suddenly. ‘You beat people up.’

  ‘Toby!’ screeched his mother. ‘Deputy, don’t listen to him.’

  The boy continued, ‘Patrick Doyle told me last year a Deputy beat his brother up.’

  His exasperated mother said, ‘Well, we don’t go listening to what naughty boys at school say.’

  But her son was undimmed,

  ‘I like beating people up. Last week I punched Thomas Cramer on the nose and made it bleed
. Didn’t I, Mom?’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t. And I certainly wish you hadn’t chosen now to share it with the world.’

  But bigger Toby only smiled, ‘We’ll make a Deputy of you yet.’

  ‘And here’s our eldest, Letitia.’ Her mother placed her hands on the young woman’s shoulders and moved her pliably forward toward their guest.

  ‘Hello, Letitia.’ Toby had seen her at the end of the line, and had been keeping back his full attention for her. ‘You’ll be boarding again soon?’

  Her mother answered, ‘She’ll be going to the School tomorrow, before the snow falls. We won’t see much of you for a while then, will we, Dear?’ The mother brushed her daughter’s hair back tenderly.

  Toby went to ask, ‘I wonder, when you go back. Could you..?’ and then paused.

  ‘No, go on.’ Letitia seemed to brighten at Toby tentatively asking her assistance. Toby continued, buoyed by this,

  ‘Well, at the School, do you know Miss Thompson?’

  ‘Yes, she’s Lettie’s House Mistress,’ answered the mother. ‘She’s your favourite, isn’t she.’

  The daughter asked, ‘Do you know her, sir?’

  ‘Please, I’m no one’s “sir”. And yes, I do. Or I used to.’

  ‘I’ll say hello to her for you.’

  ‘No, please. There’s no need.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ But Toby knew it was too late, and that Letitia was looking forward to her task too much not to carry it out.

  Chapter 12 – Sebastian

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said the father of the house, who’d been watching the introductions from the doorway. A minute later he brought in another family just as smartly dressed as their hosts: parents, and a teenage son. The latter instantly took Toby’s attention.

  ‘Ah, thank you for coming!’ called their hostess. ‘I am so glad you could make it for drinks at least.’

  The arrived husband answered,

  ‘You know that had it not been for Sebastian’s allergy we would have been glad to come to dinner.’