Early Riser

Marooned

I tried to dispel my panic with denial.

‘The Merthyr train,’ I said to the stationmaster when I found her in a tiny office that smelled of coal-smoke, old socks and baking, ‘just gone for coal and water or something, yes?’

She looked at me, then at an oversized pocket watch she carried in her undersized pocket.

‘I let it go fifteen minutes early,’ she said in a curt manner. ‘They were in a hurry to get back through the Torpantu.’

‘You said I had two hours.’

‘I misspoke. But you can always take the next train. It’s at Springrise plus two, 11.31, all stops to Merthyr, light refreshments available, off peak, Super Saver not valid – but no bicycles.’

‘I can’t wait sixteen weeks. I need to be back home now.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you delayed the train in Cardiff. There’s a moral in this story, my friend. Piss around with our timetables, and we’ll piss around with yours. Enjoy your stay in the Douzey. You’ll like it here. No wait, hang on, my mistake – you won’t. If luckless circumstance, Villains, Toccata, cold or Wintervolk don’t get you, the poor food almost certainly will.’

And she smiled.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so instead told her where to go and what to do with herself when she got there – a futile comment and she and I both knew it – then walked outside the station and stood in the gently falling snow, clenching and unclenching my fists as I tried to make sense of what had just happened. I wanted to find something to kick, but there was little around that wouldn’t have been hard and unyielding and ultimately painful, so I just stood there, seething quietly, the snow gathering silently on the shoulders of my greatcoat, like great big crystallised tears.

I stood in a marinade of my own self-pity for ten minutes or so until the chill made me shiver, and more practical matters took precedence: survival. I moved to the top of the station footbridge to get a better sense of the local geography. The town was not located specifically around the town square as I had first supposed, but strung out in a line that began at HiberTech on the hill behind me, then stretched along a main road that headed off to the north-west, where forty or so Dormitoria rose in ranks on the opposite slope of the shallow valley, two or three miles distant. The only lights showing were the lanterns over the porters’ lodges, and the gas lamps that illuminated the connecting roadway. There was almost no sound, and it already felt like midwinter, even though it was still officially Autumn for another twenty-nine hours.

‘Worthing?’ came a voice below me. ‘What the hell are you still doing here?’

Below me was Aurora. She was alone, and buttoned up against the cold. It was, I confess, a relief to see her.

‘They let the train go early,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘I’ll come down.’

I walked down from the footbridge to where she was waiting for me.

‘I’d upset the stationmaster when I delayed the train in Cardiff,’ I explained. ‘Sort of payback.’

‘That’s annoying,’ she said, ‘but not unexpected. What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I was going to go back to the Consulate and see if they could get me out.’

‘Probably not the wisest of moves, especially as you’ll have to justify your actions to Toccata at some point. I know it was me that pulled the trigger, but you got into this situation because you insisted on retrieving Bouzouki Girl. While a brave act, it could be seen as reckless, and, well, you did disobey orders and a Chief Consul ended up dead.’

It didn’t sound good when she said it like that.

‘One who was involved in illegal activity.’

‘I wish things were that simple,’ she said, ‘but when Toccata’s involved, logic becomes somewhat… mutable.’

She stared at me for a moment.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘this is kind of my fault, so I’ll wangle you a Sno-Trac and you can drive yourself to Hereford; the Winter network Railplane[38] goes from there. The road is flagged all the way, so pretty easy to navigate. But don’t go in the dark as Villains have been active recently – I’ll find you a bed for a night. Sound okay?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘sounds very okay. Thank you.’

She gave me a smile that was really very charming.

‘Okay, then. Now, if you don’t mind swapping anonymity for squalor, there’s space in the Sarah Siddons, where you can crash for a couple of days in case the weather’s no good tomorrow. It’s a Beta Pay Ceiling Dormitorium so you’ll be slumming it with natural sleepers, but it’s warm and dry and vermin-free, which is more than can be said for the Howell Harris. They had rats in there a couple of years back, and three residents were eaten. It was kind of funny, actually, given the inflated rates they charge. What do you say?’

‘What you suggest,’ I said, glad that I at least had a plan of sorts – and, more importantly, shelter.

Aurora said the walk would do us good, so we started off down the road towards the gaggle of Dormitoria at the other end of town, our voices muffled, our breath showing white in the sharp air. The low rooftops of the surrounding houses were smooth-capped with snow that looked as though it had been sculpted from polystyrene foam, and a noise limit sign close by read 55 decibels,[39] a level of hush that would be unworkable in Cardiff. We only started making arrests above 62 dB[40] these days, and even a momentary spike beyond 75 dB[41] was hardly regarded as criminal.

‘I’m really sorry about Mr Hooke being such an arse,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t my choice, but sometimes you have to work with what you’re given.’

We both turned as we heard a noise behind us. It was the drowsy I’d seen earlier in the Wincarnis, shuffling through the snow. She was swathed in large and expensive badger-furs that would have looked a lot better – and fresher – when they were on the badger.

‘Good evening. Zsazsa,’ said Aurora, ‘have you met Deputy Worthing?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘delighted.’

She gave me a welcoming smile instead of an embrace, then turned back to Aurora.

‘Tell Mr Hooke from me that I don’t do non-sleepy-fun-freebies, and if he persists on asking me to recite Ozymandias pro bono, I’ll punch him in the eye.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ she said.

‘Good of you,’ said Zsazsa, and she shuffled off into the gathering gloom, stumbled on a hidden kerbstone, swore, then moved on.

‘Why does Zsazsa look so familiar?’ I asked once she was out of earshot.

‘She was the third Mrs Nesbit, the one between Gina Lollobrigida and Brenda Klaxon.’

She wasn’t the Mrs Nesbit I knew when I was a kid, obviously, but knowing all the old Nesbits was like knowing every actor who ever played Jane Bond, especially the solitary male one, something that was quite controversial at the time.[42]

‘How on earth did she end up here?’ I asked.

‘Four ill-advised marriages and some truly appalling financial advice.’

The actress playing the folksy homespun icon of the food giant in all the TV ads was periodically regenerated to great fanfare and publicity. Former Mrs Nesbits usually went on to a career in celebrity endorsements, book deals and then either panto or politics – sometimes both – which made it all the more unusual that Zsazsa LeChat, to give her her full name, had ended up eking out a living as a drowsy in the fringe sectors.

‘The fixed line will save your life in a blizzard,’ said Aurora as we walked on, indicating the cable that was running through eyelets bolted to a succession of white-painted posts by the side of the road. ‘All the arrows point to the main square, so if you get lost the default option is to go back there and start again.’

‘Useful to know,’ I said.

We passed a yard selling trailers with an ancient BP sign outside and there chanced across a man leaning against a lamp-post. He was wrapped up against the cold in a Woncho, a poncho made of heavy Welsh blanket, and was smoking a long corncob pipe that was a good three decades out of fashion, and six refills past replacement.

‘Walking to the other end of town?’ he asked.

Aurora said we were, and the stranger said he’d join us, as there was ‘safety in numbers’.

He introduced himself as Jim Treacle, bondsman and part-time Consul. He was a youngish man with dark hair, and delicate features. He coughed twice, smiled, and then clasped my outstretched hand to pull me into the Winter embrace. He smelled of mouldy string, liquorice and ink.

‘Welcome to the Douzey,’ said Treacle with a weak laugh, ‘where leaving is the best part of visiting, and staying is the worst part of anything.’

He coughed again, a deep, rattly death-knell of a cough. I’d heard it from winsomniacs, but never for very long.

‘Have you been overwintering long, Mr Treacle?’ I asked as we walked on.

‘Twelve years,’ he said, ‘but only in this godforsaken hole for four. I’d underwritten some bad Debts and took a bribe – it was a tiny one, actually, blown all out of proportion – and, well, it was here or prison. I chose prison, obviously, but the judge overruled me. Said prison wasn’t harsh enough.’

‘This is more harsh than prison?’

‘The food’s better, I grant you, but it’s the fringe unbenefits that make this place so hideous. I’ve experienced almost every terror in the last four years. A run-in with Lucky Ned’s gang, near-starvation, frostbite, irate debtors, Toccata in a rage, and a massed nightwalker attack.’

‘That’s only frightening in a languid sort of way, you big baby,’ put in Aurora. ‘They don’t move so fast, and if they’re well fed, not dangerous at all.’

‘It’s the look they give you,’ he said, with a shiver, ‘full of vacant malevolence.’

‘I heard you have a wager going with Laura,’ I said.

‘Yes indeed,’ he replied with an unpleasant smirk, ‘on the existence of the Gronk.’

‘The wager is as good as won,’ said Aurora. ‘There is no Gronk; the Wintervolk are merely myths – stories for children and idiots.’

‘I think something weird is going on,’ I said, as I’d heard a few Gronk stories over the years. ‘Six years ago on the line just south of the Torpantu, a four-man maintenance crew were taken on a moonless night without a button or a zip being undone. No one saw hide nor hair of them again. Their underclothes, shirts, belts and fleeces were still inside their overalls – and folded.’

‘The clothes in my bureau are folded,’ said Treacle. ‘It doesn’t mean the Gronk lives in the utilities.’

They’d been taken, the story went, because they were unworthy. All four had been found guilty of physical trespass and were freeworking until prison at Springrise.

‘I heard,’ I said, ‘the Gronk teases the shame from you, and then, right at the moment when you realise the crushing enormity of your actions and how nothing could ever be right again, she draws out your soul. They say that when you expire your shame and guilt are expunged and the burden of your sins is removed. You go to your maker forgiven, and pure.’

‘What a load of old tosh,’ said Treacle.

‘I concur,’ said Aurora with a laugh. ‘You shouldn’t waste your thoughts on spooks and ghoulies, Charlie.’

I suddenly felt slightly foolish, but there was no TV at the Pool, and stories had made up a fair proportion of our entertainment.

‘You must give the legend some credence, Mr Treacle,’ I said, ‘or why stop at fifty thousand for your wager? Why not a million?’

‘Because any wager has to be able to be met by both sides.’

Aurora and I exchanged glances. Laura didn’t look like she had anything near that sort of cash.

‘Jim,’ said Aurora, suddenly intrigued, ‘what actually was her side of the bet?’

‘Her secondborn in the fullness of womanhood.’

There was a sudden shocked silence.

‘For God’s sake, Jim,’ said Aurora, ‘she’s only sixteen. That makes you less of a bondsman and something closer to a trafficker, doesn’t it?’

‘I forgive you your gross impudence,’ replied Treacle in an even tone, ‘but she instigated the wager. Pleaded with me to take it. It’s all perfectly legal. You’d not bat an eyelid if she brokered her reproductive futures through Wackford’s for some upfront cash.’

This was quite possibly true and we trudged on in silence, the still air illuminated by the warm orange glow of the gas lamps. We passed the Talgarth Pleasure Gardens and boating lake, the beds and borders invisible beneath the drifts. Beyond the wrought-iron gates I could see the statue of Gwendolyn VII and a fountain which had frozen solid while still running, so was now simply a misshapen chrysanthemum of ice.

‘See the lump in the snow under the statue?’ said Aurora. ‘Roscoe Smalls. Took the Cold Way Out over that viral dream nonsense. Did you learn anything new from Fodder?’

‘Not much.’

‘I liked Roscoe,’ said Jim Treacle, ‘and Suzy too, although Moody could be, well, moody. Luckily, none of them were insured, so no loss to the company.’

Jim Treacle didn’t just offer loans, it seemed.

Behind the statue of Gwendolyn VII and the freeze-paused fountain was a large building of dark, rain-streaked stone. The entranceway was framed by four massive Doric columns stretching down from a triangular tympanum, and above and behind this was a copper-sheathed dome, dark green with verdigris. The building was dark and silent, already locked in the icy grip of Winter.

‘That’s the regional museum,’ said Aurora. ‘It’s very good. There’s Bob Beamish’s running shoes, the gown Sylvia Syms wore for the 1959 Academy Awards, lots of Don Hector memorabilia, and the remains of the first bicycle to go twice the speed of horse. Lots of stamps, too, including the “Anglesey” 2d Lloyd-George Mauve.[43] It’s the only one in the world. You can see the funfair just beyond.’

She was right. Just visible in the gathering gloom was a helter-skelter, a parachute drop and a roller coaster, the heavy wooden lattice covered by a thick blanket of snow.

We moved on and immediately on our right, once past a frozen stream, was the first of the Dormitoria. It was set back from the road and difficult to see in any detail other than that it was circular, made of stone and had a steeply pitched conical slate roof. It must have been about sixteen storeys – diminutive by modern standards – and the only sign of life was a single porter’s oil lamp outside the main entrance.

‘The Geraldus Cambrensis,’ said Aurora. ‘Built in 1236, it’s the oldest continuously-occupied Dormitorium in Wales. Worth a visit to the area on its own.’

We continued up the hill.

‘Do you get much mischief out here in the Winter?’ I asked.

‘Skirmishes with Villains are the most dramatic,’ said Jim Treacle. ‘Lucky Ned operates in the area but prefers quiet thievery rather than frontal assault – there’s a truce, apparently, brokered by Toccata. They’ve been doing some kidnapping, but not from the Sector, as per the terms of the truce.’

‘For ransom or domestic service?’ I asked, recalling Dai Powell’s experience.

‘Domestic service. Cooking and cleaning and housework and so forth. We also have pseudo-hibernatory sneak thieves,’ continued Treacle, ‘never less than two stowaways and Snuffling and Puffling is not unknown. There’s a serial roomsneaker who’s been dubbed “The Llanigon Puddler” and usually a motley collection of winsomniacs and nightwalkers, but other than that, not much.’

‘It’s the boredom and the weather that get to you here,’ added Aurora, ‘especially when the temperature plunges, the snowfalls are thicker than soup and the wind chucks up drifts the size of mammoths. Even in a Sno-Trac it can take an age to get around, and a blizzard can strand you for weeks. Been in a white-out? Scary stuff. You a brave person?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

We walked on another hundred yards in silence.

‘This is me,’ said Treacle as we reached a crossroads next to a large and slightly dilapidated billboard advertising ‘Ashbrook Garage – All makes of cars repaired, Land Rovers a speciality’. Treacle handed me his card. There wasn’t a phone number, just the time he’d be in the Wincarnis.

‘In case you need some ready cash. If you’re in a jam, call Treacle. I buy indulgences, too – Favours, Debts and so forth – so repayment doesn’t have to be like for like.’

I said that I’d be leaving almost straight away, but I’d bear that in mind.

He grinned and then headed towards a Dormitorium that was signposted Howell Harris.

‘Watch out for him,’ said Aurora once he was out of earshot. ‘A bondsman’s only motivating factor is cash. But he does take bribes, which makes him usefully compliant.’

We set off again, took a left at the advertising hoarding, walked past a petrol station, also closed and shuttered, and then took a right into what I think had once been the parkland of a stately home. We walked along a slight incline, past Summer residences, the shutters up. We were now on the other side of the valley from HiberTech, and although the facility was visible as a collection of sparkling lights, it was impossible to make out the shape in the darkness. As I was pondering this, an owl fell from the sky to the road beside us and twitched its wings feebly in the snow. Of the seven bird species on the Albion Peninsula that were hiburnal, owls weren’t one of them.

We walked further into the sleep district, where around us the Dormitoria rose out of the ground like a forest of giant toadstools. Each was larger than the Cambrensis, but all the traditional shape: circular, minimal windows, steep conical roof.

As we moved past the sunward towers and to the cheaper north-side buildings beyond, I noticed the quality of the Dormitoria become steadily worse. Six structures were no more than rubble to the third floor and two or three were merely empty concrete circles on the ground, the capped HotPot deep below still just active enough to keep the slab above from freezing. But just as I was beginning to think that Aurora would be putting me up in something no better than a Winterstock shed, she stopped and nodded towards a large Dormitorium that had loomed out of the snow-swirled gloom in front of us.

‘Welcome,’ she said, ‘to the Sarah Siddons.’