Early Riser Page 14

  ‘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.*

  ‘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 stamp
s, too, including the “Anglesey” 2d Lloyd-George Mauve.* 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.’

  The Sarah Siddons

  ‘ . . . The profession of nightwatchman from which the porter had evolved was by long tradition filled by eunuchs. Although no longer mandatory, the Worshipful Guild of Nightwatchmen clung doggedly to the practice, and still enjoyed popular support: sixteen weeks pacing corridors was a job that most thought better to entrust to someone who had unequivocally committed themselves to the calling . . . ’

  – Handbook of Winterology, 6th edition, Hodder & Stoughton

  The Siddons was at least thirty storeys high and unusually broad, a sure sign of a once-desirable residence. The façade had been rendered and then scored to emulate Portland stone, with a decorative doorway that represented yawning night-satyrs and snow-nymphs. It was impressive but shabby, and not assisted by the location: light industrial units had been built on the cheaper land this far from the centre of town, and the area looked run down and depressed.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Aurora, ‘a bit of a dump. When built, it enjoyed full sun and wasn’t obscured at all, but more modern dorms have been built in front of it over the years.’

  Once we’d hung up our outclothes and swapped our snow boots for slippers, I looked around. Someone had made an attempt to reinvigorate the scruffy interior, but it hadn’t really worked. Mismatched carpet and threadbare modernist furniture only made the once-impressive lobby look cheap and neglected, and the numerous coats of clumsily-applied paint stole the subtlety from the plasterwork. I sniffed the air. As in the John Edward Jones back in Merthyr, there was the subtle yet unmistakable odour of slumber in the air – gummy sweat and the eggy whiff of hibernation mixed with semi-stale air breathed out past unbrushed teeth.

  The porter was waiting to receive us. He was impeccably dressed, quite bald and wore small, gold-framed spectacles upon a face that seemed as close to a sphere as a human head is ever likely to get. I was suddenly put in mind of Bunsen Honeydew* from the Muppets, and chuckled. He stared at me and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You were just thinking of Bunsen Honeydew, weren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yes – okay, a bit. Sorry.’

  ‘Deputy Worthing,’ said Aurora, ‘may I present Porter Lloyd?’

  I must have looked surprised for he sighed and said: ‘Yes, that Porter Lloyd. Worst thing I ever did, being Volkbait for Ichabod.’

  ‘Because it was frightening?’

  ‘No, the endless repetition of the story. I’ve had the words to “Lonely Goatherd” running around in my head for two decades, and while sometimes annoying, on the plus side it does put a jaunty step in my stride when I’m feeling down.’

  Aurora yodelled the chorus and gave us both a grin.

  ‘There’s always one,’ said the Porter good-humouredly, and walked around to embrace me. He smelled of lemon soap, Hoover bags and mothballs and was a head shorter than me.

  ‘Welcome to the Douzey,’ he said. ‘It’s not as bad as people say. I was sorry to hear about Moody. Who pulled the trigger?’

  ‘Mr Hooke,’ said Aurora, ‘and in self-defence, before you ask.’

  ‘News travels fast,’ I said.

  ‘There are seventy-six porters in the Sector,’ said Lloyd as he returned to his place behind the reception desk, ‘and none of us venture out in the Winter. Having a permanently open line on the telephone network helps. Pick up the receiver and just
talk. There’s usually someone listening, and if there isn’t, there soon will be. If all else fails, you can always talk to yourself or listen to the static. To be honest, listening to static can be more relaxing than listening to many of the others – especially Mr Rubucon over at the George Melly. What can I help you with?’

  ‘A place to stay for one to three days,’ said Aurora, ‘billed to HiberTech.’

  ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ said Lloyd happily. ‘We’ve only had nine illegal bedroom incursions since 1990: three snaffles, one Dormicide and five incidents of Trespass – three visual, one tactile and an unspeakable. We’re not proud of that, obviously, but it’s the lowest rate of hiburnal outrage in the Sector. You’ll also be pleased to know that no resident has been eaten in their sleep here for almost thirty-seven years.’

  The lights flickered for a moment, went out, then came back on again.

  ‘Hydro Twelve has been on the fritz recently,’ said Lloyd by way of explanation. ‘What sort of room had you in mind? Cell, Basic, Featured, Deluxe or Super-Deluxe?’

  ‘Do you dream?’ asked Aurora quite suddenly, while fixing me with a quizzical expression. It wasn’t usually the sort of question you asked, but she was the head of HiberTech Security.

  ‘Not since I was eight.’

  She looked at me for a moment.

  ‘Suzy Watson was recently gathered into the night,’ said Aurora, ‘why not hers? The positive energy of a young sleeper will drive the bad dreaming from the room.’

  ‘O-kay,’ said the porter.

  ‘Why did you ask if I’d dreamed?’

  ‘No reason. Worthing here will also need to hire your Sno-Trac,’ she said to Lloyd. ‘We’ll get it back to you as soon as we can. And this next bit’s delicate: we’re hoping to keep Worthing’s presence as something not to be broadcast any wider than between ourselves. Worthing here was partially to blame for Jack Logan’s death and you know what Toccata’s like.’