Chapter Two
The Doctor, Ace decided, was in need of a change. Not of clothes, nor of face (she was beginning to understand something of his regenerative powers) but of environment. Of late, he had grown irritable and sulky, fond of pacing the console room and the corridors of the TARDIS with hands thrust deep in pockets, mumbling and sighing. From time to time his bushy eyebrows would twitch and his heavily lined forehead would crease into a thoughtful frown as if inspiration had seized him.
Ace had begun to retreat to her own little room, playing 'I wanna be adored' very loudly in the hope of stirring her strange companion into some sort of activity, however hostile. In all their adventures together she'd never known him so moody and sullen.
Having nothing to do, Ace's mind turned to the drab, roundel-indented walls of her own room. She'd never been one for feathering nests, even back on Earth, and the hectic pace of her life with the Doctor precluded any thoughts of making a real home in the TARDIS. But they hadn't been anywhere exciting since the Doctor had pulled his old ship back together again. These days he seemed happier playing scratchy old records on his gramophone than talking to her.
Ace had a thought. She'd never seen inside the Doctor's room. He seemed guarded and defensive whenever the subject was raised. Would it be full of mementos? Home? Childhood? Family? Or did the Doctor have too many memories to keep track of? After all, he did claim to be over nine hundred years old. You'd tend to amass quite a bit of junk after all that time.
Not for the first time, she speculated on how the Doctor coped with his frenetic, nomadic existence. On one of the rare occasions when she and her mum hadn't been at each other's throats, they'd talked about what it must be like to live forever.
'Couldn't bear it, Dory,' her mum had said. 'All those friends, all those people you'd love. You'd have to watch them all get old and die. And you'd just go on and on. Start all over again.'
Ace shuddered at the thought. She switched off her tape deck and gazed absently about the room. She was a striking young woman with clear, soft skin and a heart-shaped, almost Edwardian face. Her thick brown hair flowed down the back of her T-shirt.
There were footsteps in the corridor outside. Ace jumped off the bed and threw open the door. 'Doctor?'
Ace glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye and set off after it.
She came upon the Doctor in a little room off one of the main arterial corridors. He was lounging on a high, padded chair, staring into space. Cold, pale grey light from some hidden source reflected off his elfin face.
'Doctor?' said Ace in a quiet voice.
He was wearing a long, muslin nightshirt and a shot-silk blue dressing gown, but his legs and feet were bare.
'Running a bath, Professor?' said Ace cheerily.
The Doctor ran a hand through his tousled hair but gave no indication of having noticed Ace's presence in the room. She began to feel awkward and looked around the grey room which was full of dust and yellowing papers. The Doctor sat amidst it all like some somnolent Buddha.
'Well, if you're going to ignore me ...' she began.
The Doctor looked up at her and fixed her with a penetrating stare.
'What do you say to a bit of exploring?'
Ace was relieved. 'Anything's better than just hanging around inside the TARDIS.'
'Good, good. I think... I think I can promise you something a little recherché.'
'Re ... what?'
But the Doctor was on his feet and off down the corridor without another word. Ace shrugged and walked after him, but he was covering ground at such an extraordinary rate that she found herself racing to keep up with the little man.
'Where are we going, Professor?'
'There's something I want you to see,' the Doctor called over his shoulder.
And so they plunged deeper and deeper into the heart of the TARDIS, taking in more shuttered rooms, alcoves and niches than Ace had seen in her short life. There were occasional delights and surprises: a big red room entirely full of hats, a patch of what appeared to be open countryside (which she could only presume the Doctor reserved for picnics) and a glimpse of the vast, mahogany-panelled TARDIS library. Ace stared in disbelief at the seemingly unending stock of bundled papers, scrolls and ancient, leather-bound tomes, all tied up with waxed string, piled against doors or sprawling like paper waterfalls down the library's spiral staircases.
'Books,' said the Doctor casually.
Reaching a junction point where four roundeled corridors branched off, the Doctor paused to get his bearings.
'We've been this way before,' sighed Ace.
'What?' The Doctor's tone was irritable.
'We've been this way already. I'm sure of it. We're lost.'
The Doctor bristled. 'Lost? Me! I know this ship like the back of... the back of...' He gazed distractedly up and down the corridor, '... beyond.'
Ace rolled her eyes and plunged her hands into her Levis.
'Maybe we should've left a trail like that Greek bloke with the minah bird.'
'Minotaur,' said the Doctor, sucking his finger. 'Anyway, we're not lost, I've found it.'
'Found what?'
Just to one side of them was a large, pearl-grey door, indented with the usual roundel pattern but possessed of a big, old-fashioned doorknob.
The Doctor bent down a little and slowly, almost reverently, opened the door.
Ace stepped back a little as a wave of icy air hit her face. Then another sensation seemed to steal over her. A deep and profound stillness. She was reminded of her first visit to church as a child when the sense of ritual and holiness almost overwhelmed her.
The room beyond the door had six crumbling stone walls, their solid roundels dappled by a warm green light. In the centre stood a massive granite console, elaborately carved like a Gothic altar. Nests of tiny, winking instrumentation crowded its pillars and panels.
'It's like sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool,' she said, gazing at the arched ceiling in awe.
The Doctor was already busy at the console, checking that the antiquated machinery was still operational.
'It has a certain charm, I suppose,' he said grudgingly. 'But it always seemed too tucked away for ready use.'
'What is it?'
'Tertiary console room. Not bad, eh?'
'Not bad? It's beautiful!'
The Doctor seemed to be warming to his theme which pleased Ace immeasurably.
'Oh yes,' he said, fussing over the console, 'a little spatial relocation and we can call this...'
He paused and began to stare into space again.
'Home?' volunteered Ace.
The Doctor said nothing.
Ace turned her attention to the rest of the room. In a corner, where clumps of wisteria were winding their way up the wall, she discovered a full-length mirror mounted on a beautiful ebony stand. She grinned at herself in the mottled silver surface.
Hanging from and scattered about the old mirror were masses of clothes. This must be some of the Doctor's centuries of junk, thought Ace. She glanced over at him but he was absorbed in his work. Shrugging, she picked up a few garments and held them in front of her.
There was a big brown duffel coat of the type the Doctor was fond of wearing, a thick donkey jacket, a funny red thing which looked like a Roman toga (and probably was), several pairs of gloves, five collapsible opera hats and a tweed waistcoat splashed and stained with green ink.
Ace pulled a face. Then her eyes alighted on a rather drab grey tunic. There was a little badge embroidered on the apron and Ace smiled as she recognised it. As quickly as possible, she struggled into the garment and turned to face the Doctor.
'Ta, da!' she announced happily.
'Hmm?'
Ace smiled hopefully. 'Gross, isn't it?'
The Doctor's face set in a rigid frown.
'Take it off,' he said in a quiet, dangerous voice.
'What?'
'Take it off.' snapped the Doctor, swinging back to the console.
Ace stared dumbly at the Doctor's back. She took off the tunic in embarrassed silence and laid it down carefully by the mirror.
'Sorry,' she said in a hoarse whisper.
The Doctor's back remained obstinately turned towards her.
'If you don't want me to muck about, Professor...'
'Doctor! I'm the Doctor! How many times do I have to tell you, you stupid girl?'
Ace recoiled as if she'd been struck. The Doctor hovered by the console a moment, his face flushed with emotion, then he stalked from the room, his dressing gown trailing behind him.
Ace could feel a rising, numb pain in her throat and hands. Familiar symptoms for the onset of tears. Familiar symptoms which she'd convinced herself she'd outgrown.
No! she said to herself, angrily. No tears. Don't give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry. If he wants to treat you like this, that's his business.
She sat down on the stone-flagged floor and gently fingered the drab grey tunic. The embroidered badge stood out in red and gold: COAL HILL SCHOOL.
That was the place where they'd had that run in with the Daleks. So why was the Doctor so upset about that? And what was he doing with one of the uniforms anyway?
In an amazingly short space of time, the Doctor returned, now dressed in a chocolate-brown belted coat, russet waistcoat and checked trousers. Ace, feeling suddenly chilly, had struggled into the donkey jacket.
'Very fetching!' said the Doctor enthusiastically, as if nothing at all had happened. He spotted the brown duffel coat on the floor and put it on. Ace glanced at the far wall as a roundel glowed into colourful life.
'Scanner?' she said, shakily.
'Yes. Neat, isn't it?'
The Doctor was all smiles now. What the hell was the matter with him?
A picture began to form on the scanner but it was vague and hazy.
'Reception's not so hot but then she hasn't been used in ages. Just getting used to it, I expect.'
It was obviously dark outside but Ace could make out a bleak, blasted landscape of moor and heather.
'Uggh.'
'Quite,' said the Doctor. 'Cold, wet and dark but at least you're home.'
Ace looked at him. 'Home?'
'Earth at any rate. Twentieth century. North of England. Plus a continuous precipitation of condensed oxygen and hydrogen compound.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning it's chucking it down. Fetch another brolly, would you?'
A few moments later they stepped outside into the darkness. In front of the TARDIS stood the rickety structure of the old bus shelter, recently home to Billy Coote, who was now pelting like a madman towards Crook Marsham.
Over towards the east, the old monastery was etched against the threatening sky and the tracking station loomed like a behemothal saucer out of the purple heather.
The Doctor put up his umbrella, plonked his hat gracelessly on to his head and walked a little way forward to where a faded wooden road sign protruded like a lightning-struck tree from the sodden ground.
'Crook Marsham: one mile.' He turned to Ace and smiled. 'How about breakfast?'
The great black prow of the ship lurches sickeningly. There are already men in the water. Water like tar. Black, dreadful, fathomless.
A flare smashes into the sky and for a moment everything is clear. Stark. Vividly white.
Men in the sea. Life-boats. Empty life-jackets. The bulk of the ship slips under the waves. A mass of frothing foam as the sea covers her gun turrets. Then the awful, chilling moan as the protesting metal buckles and snaps. Panels burst. Black water floods her engines.
And then there is screaming. Men in white sweaters. Freezing. Saturated. Screaming as the ship's pull drags them under. Young faces blanched white by the flare. A few boats left. The tall turret of the U-boat slips under the water, its job done.
Silence. Men bobbing slowly in their Mae Wests. Most of them dead already, their faces turned down as if in penitence. Some are still alive, kicking their submerged feet. The great cold, marble-smooth expanse of the ocean is revealed as dawn comes.
Alfred Beadle. Thinking of home. Thinking of his mum and dad back in York, and Betty, his younger sister. Alfred Beadle, not yet nineteen, feeling the freezing water numbing his body. Staring out at a dozen of his comrades floating silently by...
Jackie Barrett, his big face turned towards the sky, quite dead. Eddie Turnbull. Always smiling. Always joking. Slipping under the waves as his life eases away.
Alfred Beadle. Thinking of home. Would Betty be making tea right now? He could do with some tea. Steaming hot. Strong and orange like it was on Sundays in his mum's best china.
Was it raining back there? He'd have liked to have seen the Minster in the rain again.
Something tugging at his leg. A sharp, clear cold pain like frozen needles. Blood pooling to the surface. And then the panic rising and his gorge rising as he sees the triangular fin break the water and circle. Circle.
Alfred Beadle. Screaming. Screaming for someone. The shark pulling blindly at him. Going down. Going under. Arms slipping under the life-belt. Pulling. Screaming for Betty. Salt water in his mouth. But soon it'll be over. Please Christ make it soon. Water in his eyes. Stinging. His hair spreading like weed under the water. Betty... Betty... Remember me, Betty...
'Betty, love. Are you all right?'
Lawrence Yeadon clicked on the bed-side lamp and put an arm around his wife who was sitting bolt upright in bed. Her nightie was soaked in sweat and there was an awful, haunted look in her red-rimmed eyes.
'Betty?'
She turned and looked distractedly at her husband. Then she nodded, slowly and deliberately. 'I'm all right.'
Lawrence eased her back on to the pillow.
'Another dream?'
She nodded again and reached for the little brown bottle of pills which stood on the cabinet.
'Your Alf again?' asked Lawrence.
She popped a couple of pills into her mouth and managed to swallow them.
'Yes. Alf again.' Her voice was dry as paper.
Lawrence sighed and switched off the lamp. The light of morning was already insinuating itself into the room. He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling.
'You can't go on blaming yourself you know, love.'
How many times had he said that to her?
Betty Yeadon turned on to her side. She swallowed and tried to get a little saliva into her mouth. She couldn't close her eyes. If she did, she would see him again. Or what the sharks left of him. Bobbing in the water, his skin blanched and his eyes pecked out by gulls. The way the rescue ship had found him.
'I might as well get up,' she said, glancing at the clock. It was nearly half past eight. 23 December.
Lawrence closed his eyes. He felt terrible. They'd already been woken up once during the night by the siren from that bloody telescope on the moor. And now another of Betty's nightmares. Something would have to give sooner or later.
Betty slipped on her dressing gown and padded down the hall. She could hear her stepson, Robin, snoring gently in his room. Then his alarm clock clattered into life and she heard his frantic efforts to disable it. He moaned.
Placing her hand on the door, Betty closed her eyes and breathed deeply. It was as if she were drawing strength and comfort from Robin's presence. She opened her eyes and saw Nobby Stiles grinning toothlessly between her fingers. Robin's giant poster of the World Cup winners stared at her, unseeing.
Suddenly feeling a fool, she pulled her hand away and walked off down the corridor.
A pair of football socks, stiff with sweat, lay discarded on the carpet like mummified earthworms. Betty picked them up and rolled them into a ball. She continued down the corridor and tossed them into the washing basket by the bathroom. Domestic things. Robin's washing. Lawrence's washing. That's what she needed to do. Comforting domestic things. Something mundane to keep her mind off it.
Betty entered the tap room of the pub. It stank of stale beer and cigarette smoke. She found a glass, helped herself to a triple measure of whiskey and selected a seat by the window. It was the same seat in which Jack Prudhoe had supped his solitary pint the afternoon before.
Betty glanced at the tatty Christmas decorations pinned across the bar and began to cry.
The Doctor was in voluble mood despite the driving rain and had discoursed on a variety of subjects, including Gothic architecture, his favourite angling flies and the importance of a clean collar, by the time he and Ace wandered into Crook Marsham.
It was getting light at last and the hotchpotch of houses and shops became distinct as they advanced up the main street.
'Bit bleak, isn't it, Doctor?'
The Doctor was gazing across the street at a rather dilapidated Saxon church.
'Bleak? No, no. It's characterful, Ace, characterful. Just look at that church. Eighth century, I believe, with Norman and Victorian additions. Look at the crenellations!'
Ace grimaced. She couldn't stand it when he became enthusiastic.
'Didn't you say something about breakfast?'
The Doctor sighed and turned away from the church. He spun his umbrella round like a water-dowser and pointed towards The Shepherd's Cross.
'Bit early in the day, isn't it?'
The Doctor grinned. 'Mmm, with the sun not even remotely over the yardarm! ... Actually, I was thinking they might be serving refreshment of some sort. The TARDIS food-dispensers are all very well but sometimes you just can't beat a decent British cuppa.'
There was an upstairs light on but no sign of life. Suddenly, in a flurry of scarf, coat and bicycle, a young man came hurtling around the side of the pub, almost running the Doctor down.
'God, sorry. Are you OK? I'm a bit late for work. Are you sure you're all right?'
'I'll live,' said the Doctor, brushing himself down.
Robin jumped back on to his bike and grinned at Ace.
'I wonder if you can help us, young man?'
'Surely.'
'We'd like to know whether this fine establishment is open for some breakfast just yet?'
Ace found that she was staring at Robin as he spoke to the Doctor. There were disconcerting but very nice tinglings moving through her body.
'Fraid not,' said Robin. 'Mum's just up but the pub doesn't open till eleven.'
He was tall and slim with thick black hair and skin as smooth as soapstone. His eyes were an extraordinary green and his smile broad and cheeky.
'Try the café up the road,' he advised. 'Cheap and cheerful but it does the job.'
'Thank you very much,' said the Doctor.
Robin apologised again and then pedalled away like a madman. Ace watched him go all the way.
'Ace?'
Robin's slim form vanished around the corner and on to the moor track.
'Ace!'
'Hmm?'
'If you're still interested in breakfast ...?'
Ace shook her head as if to clear it and smiled. 'Yeah, of course.'
The Doctor set off towards a flickering neon café sign about a hundred yards away. Ace followed close behind him, her head sunk thoughtfully on her breast.
'I wonder if we're anywhere near Durham. Have you ever seen the cathedral?' asked the Doctor.
'No,' said Ace distantly.
'You should, you know, you really should. Of course I remember the day it was finished ...'
Ace looked up from her thoughts and smiled. She never knew whether the Doctor's tales were serious or not. At any rate, he certainly seemed to have snapped out of his depression. If anything, he now seemed a little too chatty. Almost as if he were trying to hide something...
Ace frowned.
Edmund Trevithick blinked into wakefulness. There was a band of cold winter sunlight streaming across his bed. He blinked again. For a moment he couldn't remember where he was. There was some fugitive memory prodding at his subconscious.
Lying there in the bed by the window, Trevithick began to think of his childhood. He remembered seeing the intense, thrilling white reflection off newly fallen snow as it peeked through the chinks in the curtains. And the joy of throwing back the heavy drapes to expose the acres and acres of land behind his father's parsonage, knee deep in wonderful snow.
His father (a completely different sort of chap out of church) would get into his 'civvies' and root out the old wooden sled from the outhouse. Then they would be off, Edmund, his father and Edmund's elder brother Maurice, speeding down the hill, bumping and smashing into little mounds of impacted snow or bruising their backsides on unexpected clumps of stubble, which protruded like yellow bristles from under the drifts.
The latter part of the year had always been his favourite. Better by far than the long, depressing summer evenings which stretched out like flavourless chewing gum. Better than the dull, in-between months with no special character. No, the end of the year it was, with the deliciously long run-in through the burnt turnip smells of Hallowe'en and dark smoke of November into the crisp, freezing, perfect-sunned days of early December.
And then Christmas! One huge red and green memory, packed to bursting with sensual delights. Pulled by his mother's hand into palatial department stores like castles of ice: twinkling lights, the hum of extortionately priced train-sets, the exciting smell of unfamiliar perfume, all mingling and bursting before his astonished little eyes. Going into these stores in daylight and the fantastic shock of emerging into wintry darkness - the reversal of the disappointment he felt coming out of a cinema into painful sunshine.
Trevithick recalled sitting with his father and brother in a wonderfully dark front room that smelled of tangerines. Dark as pitch. The corners of the room softened into abstraction by the orange light of the fire. His father helped him write out his list for Santa Claus and then tossed the small square of paper on to the fused knot of red hot coal. It spun briefly in the column of hot air, became temporarily transparent - he could see writing on both sides at once - and vanished up the chimney.
Then there would be tall tales from his father about winters so severe that houses vanished under drifts and match flames froze as they were struck.
That was back at the turn of the century. Then he'd seen really bad winters. The one in '47... and '63, only five years ago. That had caught him short. He'd never last another one of those if it came, especially with the ancient heating in the Dalesview Home.
A bad smell, like rotting fish, dragged him back from his memories into reality. It was the same smell from the night before. Trevithick sat up in bed and looked around. The sight of the shattered panes and billowing curtains brought back his experiences in a rush of remembrance. He swallowed hard and pressed the buzzer which would summon Jill.
Jill Mason glared at the buzzing light by her bed. Edmund again. Was he never content? She knew already that whichever side of the bed she chose to get out of would be the wrong side. She'd slept badly and was in a rather foul mood. Trevithick's remarks of the previous night had touched a raw nerve. Yes, she would rather be with those 'bloody anarchists' in Paris than rot in this dismal corner of England. She'd received an exciting letter from an old university friend only the other day, extensively detailing the French students' pitched battles with the police on the Rive Gauche. It had been a magical summer, her friend assured her, getting stoned with her strange and interesting new French lover, trying to 'find herself' by looking inward.
Jill felt an almost painful sense of missing out on something huge and important. She should've been there too, challenging reactionaries like de Gaulle and Johnson just as she had at university, not locked up in an old folk's home. Sometimes she felt more of an invalid than her charges.
Trevithick's light buzzed. Jill sighed and threw on a heavily creased dressing gown. She padded down the corridor and threw open Trevithick's door.
'What is it, Edmund?' she yawned. 'Because if it can wait I'd appreciate it. It's not time for breakfast yet and Polly has her hands full with Miss Norton's drip...'
Trevithick didn't say a word. Instead he simply pointed at the window like some dying medieval bishop catching sight of the Grim Reaper.
Jill rubbed a hand across sleep-misted eyes and turned round. The sight of the smashed window turned her cold. She remembered the time her flat was burgled and how she'd thrown up at the sight of devastation. But it wasn't the financial loss, or even the mess, which had upset her. Rather it was the sense of invasion; the idea that some stranger had ploughed through her private things, destroyed the sanctity of her little nest.
She felt the same thing now and the same desire to vomit. Trevithick looked at her, a little fear in his eyes.
Jill then became aware of another sensation. An insistent, pungent smell wafting from the shattered window. It was like bad meat. Or the rancid smell of a dead animal in the road...
The Doctor and Ace had taken Robin's advice and were now warmly ensconced in Mrs Crithin's delightful café, a pleasantly cluttered room of red plastic upholstered seats and tarnished cappuccino urns. There was a heavy, greasy smell of bacon fat coupled with the not unpleasant blue haze of Mrs Crithin's eighth cigarette of the morning.
On the wall, Ace had found a calendar which, along with Mrs Crithin's splendidly boisterous decorations, told her it was almost Christmas. Christmas 1968.
She felt a little thrill run through her. So here she was at last. The real sixties. Not '63 where she'd seen little of England except Coal Hill School and the Daleks, but '68: time of the Beatles and the Stones, Martin Luther King and the Mexico Olympics, the Paris Riots and man on the moon. No, that was '69, wasn't it?
All she'd known of this time was her mum's enthusiasm and the evidence of faded home movies. Yet even these silent figures in vibrant colours mouthing and waving on warm beaches seemed to have something of the era's indefinable presence about them. Ace's mum with high, lacquered hair and garish mini-dress laughing as Uncle Harry goosed her from behind. Harry's mint-green Hillman Minx with its Batmobile tail-fins gliding into the distance as the family waved him away. All this to the achingly comforting trill of the film projector.
The Doctor returned from the counter with two mugs of steaming tea. It was nice and warm inside the café and Ace took off her donkey jacket with some relief.
'Ta,' she said and took a deep draught of tea. It was a little too hot and burned the roof of her mouth.
The Doctor was staring into the middle distance, his inky black eyes distracted and fathomless. He drank some tea almost without thinking. Ace decided it was best to keep quiet. Mrs Crithin's tranny played a song which Ace could remember Uncle Harry humming in his familiar way. It drifted across the café as Mrs Crithin mopped up some spilled tea.
'Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end. We'd sing and dance for ever and a day ...'
Quite suddenly, the Doctor seemed to snap out of it and fixed Ace with his most charming smile.
'Well, Ace,' he mused, rubbing his finger around the rim of the mug, 'how are you keeping?'
It was such an odd question that Ace was momentarily taken aback. It was the sort of thing old aunts or distant cousins ask just before they remember they haven't seen you since you were knee high to a grasshopper.
'What d'you mean? You see me every day.'
The Doctor smiled, but it was a thin smile. 'I know, I know. But I mean ... how are you? Really. In yourself.'
Ace frowned.
'Oh, I'm not putting this very well, am I?' said the Doctor, absently rummaging through the pockets of his duffel coat. 'What I'm trying to find out is... well... whether you're happy. Whether you don't think it's time to put down a few roots.'
Ace was shocked. The Doctor was full of surprises. She had a vague impression, too, that he was really thinking aloud, trying to vocalise a debate obviously raging inside his own head.
'What are you on about, Doctor?' She drank another gulp of tea. The burnt skin on the roof of her mouth was beginning to throb.
The Doctor sighed and gazed past her again, his eyes seeing different places, different people, different times ... 'I wonder if I'm not being a selfish old Time Lord. Keeping you from better things.'
'But Doctor, you're all I've got! I don't want anything else. Not yet. Where else could I go?'
The Doctor put up his hands. 'It's all right, it's all right. I'm not about to abandon you. I just thought... perhaps... perhaps it's time to stop all this aimless wandering. That's all.'
Ace nodded slowly. She'd been right then.
'I'm not daft, Doctor. You're talking about yourself, aren't you?' she said, cocking an eyebrow. The Doctor looked at her in mock indignation and then his rumpled face collapsed into a resigned frown. 'Yes. I'm talking about myself.'
It had begun to rain again and Mrs Crithin switched on the dirty-yellow lights to brighten things up. Sheets of rain lashed against the big, plate-glass window. There was a quality of stillness in the air too, as in before a thunderstorm. Ace suddenly felt like a priest at confession.
'Go on,' she said quietly. The Doctor bowed his head and gazed at his mug of tea. In the garish artificial light he seemed much older, the lines on his wise face like the carving on some ancient crusader's tomb effigy.
'It's just that... I've been thinking lately... and if I've been difficult, then I'm truly sorry. Thinking... whether I've really done any good. All these years... all these years of roaming about. Righting wrongs. Interfering...'
Ace felt an upsurge of tenderness inside her. 'But how can you say that, Doctor? You know you've done good. The whole world... Well, everyone is in your debt a hundred times over. You know that.'
'But have I the right to take it upon myself? To act as self-appointed judge and jury?' The Doctor looked Ace in the eye.
'You know you've done good,' she said, feeling that her attempt at reassurance was hopelessly inadequate.
'Have I, Ace? Have I?'
Ace looked away. Mrs Crithin was attempting to change the station on her tranny.
The Doctor rested his cheek on one hand and his deeply lined face rucked up against his fingers like ripples in sand.
'I'm so tired,' he said with a heavy sigh. His eyes flicked up at Ace. 'I've been thinking a lot lately. About the past. About my past, I mean.'
Ace suddenly remembered the incident with the grey tunic in the tertiary console room. The Doctor nodded as if he'd read her thoughts.
'Yes. The uniform. It was Susan's.'
Ace's ears pricked up. 'Girlfriend?'
The Doctor laughed almost scornfully. 'She was my first travelling companion. We were... we are from the same planet. I enrolled her in that school when I came to Earth with the Hand of Omega. We saw so much in our time together. But she left me. As they all do. As you will... And do you know, Ace, I don't think a day passes when I don't think of her.'
'What are you trying to say, Doctor?'
He shrugged. 'I miss her, I suppose. I miss... my family. In whatever sense of the word. There've been so many over the years. Ian and Barbara. Sarah. Jo. Dear Jamie... I whisk them up and give them a quick turn around the Universe but they all go in the end. And I'm left... ultimately alone.'
Ace found herself blinking back tears. He's just like the rest of us, she thought.
'Let me get this straight, Doctor. Are you talking about retiring?'
The Doctor smiled. 'I suppose I am, yes. Settling down somewhere. For a few centuries at least. Somewhere away from death and disaster. Far from the madding crowd.'
'But where?'
Privately, Ace thought the Doctor was incapable of living a quiet life, like that old woman in the Agatha Christie books. Wherever she goes, people get bumped off.
'Perhaps it's time I went home. To Gallifrey.'
Ace was amazed. 'But you're always telling me what a dull hole it is. All those geriatrics swarming around doing nothing all day. Isn't that why you left in the first place?'
'One of the reasons.'
'So what's changed?' said Ace.
'I have. I mean... all these years of poking my nose into other people's business. Perhaps I should try and sort things out back there. It's corrupt and it's a bureaucratic nightmare but its heart is in the right place. I think it's time I stopped shirking my responsibilities.'
For once in her life, Ace could think of absolutely nothing to say.
The café door burst open and a tall Asian man with shoulder-length black hair strode inside. Ace was struck by the appealing openness of his finely sculpted face but thought it a shame he masked his features with such an ugly moustache.
Vijay Degun ran his fingers through his soaking hair and grinned at Mrs Crithin behind the counter. 'Could I use your phone, Mrs Crithin? We had a bit of an emergency up at the station last night and it blew all our phone lines. I need to get through to Cambridge.'
Ace looked out of the window and noticed the big green Land Rover in which Vijay had arrived.
'There's a phone box down the road, you know, love,' said Mrs Crithin, 'but you're welcome to use mine.'
'I tried that one but it's out of order as well.'
Mrs Crithin frowned and led Vijay into the back of the café. Ace looked at the Doctor but he seemed disinterested and deep in thought. She crept up to the counter and leaned across. Vijay was just visible in a little alcove under the stairs, fiddling with the receiver of Mrs Crithin's phone. He frowned and tapped the instrument against his cupped hand. Something was wrong. He talked to Mrs Crithin for a few minutes and then ran back into the café.
'Thanks anyway,' he called behind him. 'All the lines must be down. Probably the weather!'
He almost ran into Ace as he barged towards the door.
'Oh sorry,' he said, his eyes already looking beyond Ace to the door. He paused on the threshold and the rain buffeted him. Then, wrapping his overcoat around him, he dashed from the café towards The Shepherd's Cross.
'Did you hear that, Doctor?' said Ace excitedly.
'Mmm?'
'All the phone lines are down. We're cut off!' Ace tried to sound bubbly in the hope of cheering the Doctor up.
'Er... Ace,' he said in a quiet voice, 'I was wondering whether I could ask you a favour.'
'Yeah, of course. Anything.'
'I need some time to myself. To do some thinking. I was wondering - well...'
Ace smiled. 'Here's two bob, get yourself to the pictures? Yeah, I understand, Doctor. I'll occupy myself for a bit. Where will you be?'
The Doctor stood up and put on his hat. 'I'm going to that monastery over on the moor. Good places to think, monasteries.'
'OK, Doctor.'
'I'll see you in The Shepherd's Cross this evening. Shall we say eight o'clock? Sorry to leave you in the lurch like this.'
'Eight o'clock, in the pub. Got you. Are you buying?'
The Doctor grinned, gripped her arm affectionately and stepped out into the rain. Ace watched his little figure, blurred by the downpour, as he walked out of the village. She sighed heavily.
Now what was she going to do? She had enough trouble keeping herself occupied in the middle of London, never mind in this hole. And this might be 1968 but she doubted whether Crook Marsham ever did much swinging. Still, there were compensations. That lad on the bike for one. She smiled.
There was a long-drawn-out grumbling noise and Ace looked down at her stomach. Breakfast was a good place to start. She went up to the counter and beamed at Mrs Crithin.
'Three egg sandwiches and another cup of tea, please.'
'Betty?'
'Mm?'
'Customer, love.'
Lawrence Yeadon put down his tea towel and took his wife's hand.
'Are you sure you're all right?'
Betty smiled thinly at him. Her eyes were misting over. It was obvious she hadn't yet recovered from the night's tears.
'I'm all right. Honestly, Lol.'
Lawrence shook his head and moved to serve the old man who was impatiently tapping his ring finger against his empty beer glass.
'I'll serve Mr Medcalfe. You go and lie down.'
Betty protested but Lawrence held up his hand. 'Quite apart from the fact that I'm worried about you, you're not exactly presenting the image of barmaid of the month looking like that, are you?'
Betty shook her head, defeated.
'Now go on. Have a nap. You'll feel better for it.'
In truth, Betty was glad to leave the smoky bar and be alone with her thoughts. Robin wouldn't be back from work for a couple of hours and the upstairs of the pub was pleasantly quiet and warm. Betty glanced around the corner of Robin's bedroom and smiled at the devastated jumble of clothes and bedsheets. Not a stickler for neatness like his dad or his Uncle Alf.
Alf. Betty thought of her brother again and tears pricked her eyes. She fondled the silver photo frame which she kept on her dressing table. Auntie Jean and her mum, grinning falsely at a camera on some faraway summer holiday. Black and white seagulls circled in a black and white sky.
Why couldn't she stop thinking about Alf? He'd been dead for over twenty years. Guilt hung about her neck like an albatross.
Betty slipped off her shoes and walked across the thickly carpeted hallway to the bathroom. She turned on the tap and gorgeously hot water thudded into the pink porcelain. A few drops of syrupy bath oil completed the process and Betty felt a thrill of happy anticipation at the prospect of a restful soak. She stayed to watch the bubble bath froth from under the taps and then returned to the bedroom.
A mile away, at the tracking station, Dr Hawthorne stood up sharply as a fresh burst of data stormed through the room, sending computers and tracers haywire. He dashed to the internal phone in order to alert Dr Cooper. The line was dead. He cursed and ran from the room.
Betty took off her clothes with careful deliberation, as if she were engaged in some sort of ritual. The towelling bathrobe which she put on had been a present from Lawrence's sister Margie. It was a little too big but the freshly laundered, fluffy material made her feel warm and secure.
She still couldn't keep her mind off Alf. His image seemed to hover before her eyes like a projected film. She walked to the bathroom and stopped dead.
Under the frothy foam, seemingly deep, deep down in the water, something was moving.
Panic and a scream began to rise in her throat. A hand was fumbling its way out of the water: a vile, filthy hand, its flesh sunburnt and blistered, black scum and mould under its fingernails. And as it grasped the side of the bath, and an equally appalling body hauled itself out, Betty let go of her senses and slipped gratefully into a dead faint.
The thing in the bath hauled itself to its feet, sending water cascading on to the floor. It was a man, or the remains of a man, wearing a dark blue uniform and a filthy white sweater. The hair was lank and hung in a great wet slap over the mottled, fish-flesh white forehead. The lips were pulled back in a ghastly grin of decay beneath two empty, empty sockets, speckled and rimmed with black blood. In her shock, Betty could have been forgiven for not recognising the creature. But, in point of fact, over twenty years late, her brother Alf had come home to stay...
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