This, for his sins, was what Toby did each winter.
Toby claimed no special knowledge on the nature of the illness, deferring to his friend the Doctor, who himself bore teenage scars from where his ribs had come through his side.
‘It is my speculation,’ he had said to Toby, ‘and only a speculation, as I’m no neurologist. That it affects those minds that are soft and still forming, which are reaching adult capacity but which have yet to settle into their final shape. It catches us as we reach peak-power, but before our neural pathways have hardened, before we know yet who we want to be.’
‘It sounds like teenage angst writ large,’ said Toby then. The Doctor replying,
‘In that respect it is insidious, and I hate it, as I hate all disease.’
Chapter 19 – Fighting Frank Hinklin
Toby repeated those last words out loud now, as he stood in the doorway of a room where the evidence of spiking was all around him. It was usually the lounge they were called to. It was often the largest room on the ground floor, and so adapted for that purpose.
Around the edges of the room was moved everything that would have filled it – armchairs, lamps, a rolled-up rug, a coffee table. Most of it now only needed a rag and bone cart to carry it off. Amid the mayhem Toby saw a shattered cocktail cabinet. About the only recognisable feature of it was a ripped picture, once held within its back frame, of a smiling woman in a grass skirt, holding a tray of brightly coloured drinks.
‘“No glass,”’ said Toby, shaking his head. ‘Every year we tell them, “No glass.”’
The wooden floor was smeared with mud and blood, and gouged and marked from the leather of the Deputies’ flailing boots.
Sprawling in a wrestling hold across that floor – so commonplace a sight that Toby hardy needed to register it – was Job. He had the build of a pole-vaulter, all knees and elbows, but was none the less effective for his lack of upper-body strength. He was holding what Toby had to remind himself was still a child, so ferociously were they fighting.
Toby formed his final thoughts before entering the fray: the father’s injury meant the house had no protector, and would have to be added to the Deputies’ daily rounds. They’d already been putting in longer shifts than usual – for only three more Deputies had made it back on Returners’ Weekend.
‘Little help?’ grunted Job, out of breath. He had his arms in a bear hug around Frank Hinklin’s midriff. Frank had pushed himself up onto all fours, lifting Job up on top of him. To Toby they looked like spiders in a mating ritual.
Toby took off his jacket, revealing the tan shirt underneath – he always preferred to work unhindered by the extra layer, even though this left him only a thin shirt to protect against cuts from sharp objects. Arms wide, half-crouched, he approached the scene,
‘Ready? One, two...’
On the count of ‘three’, Job jumped off the boy as Toby jumped on him.
Toby replaced Job’s grip, and used his inertia to try and knock the boy Frank off his feet. He didn’t succeed, as Frank’s star-shaped stance resisted any attempt to have him upturned. Toby however was now facing the other way around to Job, and so risked freeing a hand to punch Frank in the back of his left knee.
The knee buckled and, with Toby above him, Frank collapsed. The sound of his kneecap hitting the wooden floor-beams rang through the structure of the house.
The pain in Frank’s leg seemed to limit him for a while, and Toby hoped that that was that. Yet he knew better than to think a spiker couldn’t get their wind back up; and so it proved. They were soon back in full wrestling mode.
‘Have you hit his kidneys?’ asked Toby.
‘Yes, and twice on the right,’ said Job by the door.
‘Damn,’ said Toby, who couldn’t risk hitting him there again. Secretly though he was glad, as he hated raining blows. Others would though, he knew. Others would have no problem with that at all.
Frank wasn’t getting himself very far up off the ground anymore, and Toby feared what he’d done to his knee. Still though he was fighting, and able to move with Toby’s full weight over him. With Job stood watching and getting his breath back, Toby couldn’t say what he wanted to Frank, which was,
‘Stop fighting back, Frank. Lie still, stop making me have to hurt you.’
But it wouldn’t have made any difference. A spiker wouldn’t listen and remember for next time. Toby would remember though, and he wondered how he’d done this job all those years? Deputies burned out, he knew. Was that what was happening to him?
Amid his exertions his mind was free, and Toby pondered:
When he was a younger Deputy he could engage with it, embrace it, treat it almost like a work-out (there was a gym back in Carvel that offered ‘Boxercise’ these days.) Among the younger staff there had always been comparison of technique and remembrance of their longest, toughest bouts.
However, Toby could remember older colleagues drifting away from the Sheriff’s Office chatter. The youngsters would think these ‘old-timers’ were bored or tired. They would brand them ‘old miseries’, and return to their discussions. For why would you not get a thrill from being a Deputy? It was an exciting thing for a young man – still barely a boy – to suddenly be involved with. Here were the keys to the town, the chance to join the adult ranks.
Toby knew now though that it wasn’t being an ‘old misery’ that had men drop out of those conversations. It was the fact that people thought more deeply as they aged, and may have started questioning the world they’d previously felt so proud to have been accepted into. And they may have begun to wonder: ‘Why are things done the way they are? Were previous generations necessarily wiser than our own? Or were today’s traditions once the panicked, rushed decisions of people just as young and scared as we are now? And why have we never thought to question this before?’
Chapter 20 – Reflections
Toby looked at the clock. It was high up on the wall and so unaffected by the damage below. Frank and he had been fighting for an hour. No wonder he felt dog tired. But Frank was tiring too, and when Toby readjusted his hold he felt no instant exploiting of the weakened grip. Repositioned, Toby could see Frank’s eyes were glazing, and he recognised the sign. Soon Frank would fall into a deep and dreamless sleep, and wake to groaning semi-consciousness, and not knowing what the fuss was all about.
Releasing his grip and withdrawing, Toby slithered away on his side, till he was far enough away to get up onto his feet. No sudden movements, he knew. Let the lad the rest now. Toby felt especially unsettled though, and it wasn’t only fear for the harm he’d done. At first he scanned his own senses for the ache of unacknowledged injuries, before realising it was emotional – he hadn’t shared a word with Frank Hinklin throughout the ordeal.
This was a thing Toby always tried to do, for it helped him keep in mind that his opponents were human, and that he was there to help them.
He hadn’t said a word because he’d been embarrassed of Job overhearing. Job, his trusted lieutenant, who’d watched him fight countless times before. Why would Toby start fearing a friend’s reactions? He realised that he was falling apart.
Job was already in the kitchen when Toby walked in to meet him, grabbing a towel to wipe over his hair, and knocking back a slug of gin – the only bottle saved from the smashed cocktail cabinet. Fitch had already been called away again, and the Hinklins were at the town clinic being looked over by a nurse.
‘Have you gotten hold of the Doctor?’ asked Toby.
Job shook his head,
‘He’s not at the clinic. He’s been over on Crawley’s patch all night.’
Job and the recovering Toby shared a serious look. Neither wanted to break cover though, and say something like, ‘It sounds like Crawley’s up to his old tricks again.’
There was no official second strata of management in the Sheriff’s Office organisation. However, Toby and Crawley were the two Thornton trusted to oversee the different sides of the town. In his case, Toby hope
d this was for his good sense and the authority he seemed to carry quite naturally among the men. In Crawley’s case, Toby guessed it was down to the man’s sheer uncrossability. Sometimes you really needed someone that strong on the ground.
Crawley got ‘Town-side’, the main community, containing the schools, clinic, and Sheriff’s Office building. Toby had ‘Mountain-side’, the arm of town that stretched into the hills, and which consisted of fewer houses scattered further. This two-prong method kept them far apart. This was fine by Toby though, and he had enough else to keep him busy. Yet there was a lingering sense, reflected in the townsfolk’s private mutterings, that if you had to have the sickness, then have it on Toby’s side.
Toby didn’t know if the Sheriff had ever heard those same worried murmurs. Though if he had, then Toby liked to think he kept Crawley Town-side where he could keep a better watch on him. Toby was the one left to his own devices, and this implied trust, and this made Toby proud. Though it could just as easily have meant that the Sheriff preferred to have Crawley near him in the town, and wanted Toby out of their way.
‘You get on home then,’ he said to Job. ‘I’ll keep an eye on Frank until the parents are back.’
And that Toby did, pulling a kitchen chair to the door of the sitting room. There he watched Frank sleep where he had given up fighting. A knock-out by submission – wasn’t that the term? Toby thought so; Toby thought that was the one.
Chapter 21 – A House in Winter
It was a fortnight later. Christmas, such as it was in Stove, had been and gone. New Year’s was days away. A call had gone up at night, and Toby was responding.
Toby was wired, was striding down the road, jacket buttoned up, cap pulled down tight. He was affecting some kind of meanness, a caricature of what a Deputy should be. His boot-heels crunched against the grit and ice. He swung his club on its short loop of string, systematically whipping the short padded cosh into a spinning frenzy then releasing the pressure against his thigh. He liked the firm slap of it through the heavy fabric, its dull thud connecting with his person.
He had been called away from one house to attend at another, not to rest or be relieved but because demand outstripped supply. He’d had to leave the last boy with his father, and hoped the man could contain him.
This next house was a new one to Toby. He opened the door straight onto the front room, and saw in the centre of the cleared floor a mother holding a really very young-looking son within her arms and wrapped in her shawl.
‘Step away,’ said Toby. ‘I can handle him from here.’
But the mother didn’t move or loosen her grip. Toby stepped into the room to be nearer to her and ask again. He was trying to bring himself down, at the same time as focus on the scene. For the woman’s reaction was not right: the boy, or Toby, should have been the centre of her attention. Yet her eyes flickered from Toby to a point just behind him.
Too late, Toby realised the mother wasn’t scared of the boy but for him, and that the object of that fear was behind Toby himself. He was almost standing over the mother as he spun to see it.
It wasn’t even a figure that moved at him then, but a shape, a blur, grey around the edges it moved so fast. Instinctively, Toby went to swing his club at it, but stupidly was still holding it by its cord and not its handle. As he went to swing it, it flapped around his hand like toy nunchuks. He tried again and the club jumped about ridiculously, dancing on its string. He hadn’t the couple of seconds he needed to get his grip around the handle. All in slow motion, the shape was almost upon him.
Toby swung a third time, and the cable cracked tight. The string tautened, the tension was just right. The club moved through the air in an arc parallel with his hand. And with the grey shape’s face just feet from him, Toby caught it on the side of the head.
The counterbalance of the swing took Toby out of the creature’s path, although it also lost him his footing. As he fell he watched the creature’s flight, in one continuous motion as it fell across the floor in an unconscious sprawl.
Toby went onto his backside with a painful thump. The mother looked at him imploringly, as if saying, ‘There! That’s what I was trying to warn you of!’
What it was she was trying to warn him of was cruelly shown to be a girl, perhaps thirteen, in a full length nightdress. Her hair was dark and long, and splayed around her head now like a peacock’s feathers.
Toby’s senses grabbed him, and he scrabbled over the shiny wooden floor to reach the girl. She was breathing though, even moving in her odd landing position, as if in an unpleasant dream. He had socked her one across the cheek, and a welt was forming. Nothing that would scar though. Some might even say a job well done. Yet Toby had to tell himself he could breathe again. Frank Hinklin’s knee had swollen to the size of a melon for three days – Toby hoped this girl would suffer no worse.
‘Is she yours?’ he asked the woman.
‘Yes. She came back tonight, screaming like a wild thing. Not a thread on her feet. I don’t know what they thought they were doing at the School for Girls, letting her get out in that state.’
‘I’ll get her back before she wakes,’ said Toby.
‘Take her to the Doctor’s first,’ said the mother. ‘Get her sedated.’
And that was what Toby did.
Chapter 22 – The Doctor’s House
It had been an odd battle, over in an instant with one blow. The experience had sobered Toby though. As he walked with the girl limp across his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, he felt a soreness in his leg where he’d earlier been hitting it with his club. It was the dead of night, and not a person stirred. He knew the streets though, and hardly had to look where he was going. Nor did he feel the cold too badly.
Toby reflected that sometimes of a winter a kind of intensity could consume him, the kind he’d been feeling earlier as he reached the house. He’d seen something like it in the eyes of heavy metallers still stoked from a bout of headbanging, or sportsmen slapping each other’s shoulders after a successful play.
It wasn’t necessarily violent, yet intensity and physicality played a big part in it. It wasn’t even a bad feeling, as those examples demonstrated. It could be a healthy release of adrenalin and energy, a burn-off of a week’s frustration at a rock club or on a sports field. But not in Toby’s case, not in his sport. He would have asked the Doctor for something to calm him down, had he not been fearful of it slowing his reactions.
The Doctor hadn’t slept for days.
He would have hired a partner for the winter, but another trained medical professional was hard to find from such a small community. And how could he recruit from outside?
As it was then, the Doctor’s staff was two nurses, assisted by as many auxiliaries as could be rustled up. These were kids from town who worked in shops and such during summer season. The town had not produced a new medical student though. At least not one who’d then returned.
Job happened to be there with another case when Toby arrived, and the Deputies spoke as the medic did his work. Eventually he put Toby out of his misery,
‘She’s fine, just knocked out cold.’
‘I really didn’t know,’ said Toby, relieved.
‘She’s not the first like that I’ve seen. A girl can become a banshee when the winter spirit grabs her.’
‘So why don’t we see more of them?’ asked Job.
The Doctor answered, ‘Because they’re closeted. The House Mistresses have their ways of managing them.’
‘You’ve seen inside the School for Girls then, Doc?’ asked Job, who evidently hadn’t – not many men had.
‘Indeed I have. Girls get ill all times of the year. The staff may know their stuff there, but they need me sometimes. And there can be injuries, when the urge takes one, like with this poor wretch.’
‘It’s not the same for women though, is it?’ the gangly Deputy went on.
‘Not very much is, Job,’ joked the Doctor.
‘I mean the sickness, it gets them d
ifferently. That’s why the girls are put away.’
‘Something like that.’
‘But in what way?’
‘You haven’t got a sister?’ he asked Job, who evidently hadn’t. ‘Well, you can think of it a bit like cars, Job. We all drive, but men are likely to drive differently to women. But that doesn’t mean you don’t see a woman in a Mustang or a man in an easy-parking citycar. He nodded to the girl breathing lightly on the bed, ‘What we have here is a woman in a Mustang. Now Toby, I’d get her moved before she’s back behind the wheel.’
‘To the School?’
‘To the School. And Toby, you don’t want to hang around. I’d say she’d be awake again already if it wasn’t for the sedative I’ve given her.’
Toby noticed afterward that it had been the Doctor whom Job had asked what the School for Girls was like, when Job would have known that Toby had stepped out with a House Mistress for half his adult life. Toby guessed it was for that very reason that Job hadn’t asked him. ‘Toby loves Janey’ was forbidden ground, though never stated as such. His friends were just being understanding.
However, when it came to carrying the injured girl back there, that was obviously Toby’s job. And, though he wished it wasn’t so, he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Chapter 23 – Stove by Night
With the girl wrapped in a blanket and put back over his shoulder, Toby moved as quickly as he could across the wet and messy sidewalks. She wasn’t old, but the weight was becoming enough to bring out every ache on that side of his body – and by that time in winter, there were a lot of aches. Toby held her legs within the long white nightgown that draped over him like a one-shouldered cloak. And as he walked he could see her hair hanging down and swishing against the back of his leg.