Dr. Who - BBC New Series 28 (6 page)

Everyone knew everyone and it was friendly, welcoming and cheerful.

It was also, in the middle of May, the recipient of stunningly good weather, and Jayne Greene thought it brought out the best in the locals. Not least of which was that Tonio was spending most of the day during the dig wearing nothing but a pair of tight denim cut-offs that left very little to the imagination (and Jayne could imagine quite a lot). The Professor had employed Tonio and his family to help them set up the dig a week or so back.

Jayne and her two fellow students, Sean and Ben, had agreed to accompany the Professor there for the summer because it would give them really good marks in the end-of-course assessments, it’d be an adventure to travel to a nice part of Italy and it was a great way to get a tan.

‘Got it!’ Sean yelled excitedly.

‘How much?’ asked Ben, sifting soil a couple of feet away from where the laptop was set up by the food tent.

‘Seventy-eight euro.’

‘Sixty-something quid. Not bad.’ Ben nodded. ‘Well done.’

‘I bloody love eBay,’ Sean smiled at Jayne. ‘Yaay me!’

‘Was it the Egyptian pot?’

Sean looked at her and shook his head, slowly.

‘Not the Iron Age spade?’

More head shaking.

Jayne dropped her own tools and wandered over to the

laptop and looked at what Sean had just committed sixty pounds to.

‘That?’

‘That.’

‘It’s a toy.’

‘Course it’s a toy,’ Ben yelled as Tonio poured some more earth into his sieve. ‘What else does Sean ever buy off eBay?’

Jayne couldn’t understand it. ‘You mean, you spent all that money, and seven days’ frustrated watching the auction, for a mass-produced toy?’

‘Action figure,’ Sean corrected her. ‘Limited edition.

Only five hundred produced, and that was eight years ago.

It’s a variant paint job, y’see, she’s wearing her red Dark Period costume instead of the traditional green one.’

Jayne just looked at Sean. ‘You are an adult. You are a grown man getting excited about a plastic toy. A figure for kids. A…’

‘Don’t say “dolly”,’ Ben muttered to himself.

‘… a dolly?’

Sean slammed the laptop shut. ‘My money, my choice.

You get excited about Roman pins and earthenware.’

‘So do you!’

‘Yeah, cos that’s a job. That’s what I do here and at uni.

But in my spare time, I have other hobbies. I have…’

‘Don’t say “a life”,’ Ben muttered to himself again.

‘… a life,’ Sean finished. ‘You should try getting one before you criticise everyone else.’

Jayne stared at Sean, then across at Ben, who made sure he caught no one’s eye and started to run his finger

pointlessly through the dirt, in an effort to pretend he had something to distract him.

The tension was broken by little Professor Rossi, stumbling back around the tents after a trip to the town for some milk and teabags.

‘Now, now, I could hear you up on the main road.

What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Sean grunted. ‘Sorry Prof.’

Rossi shook his head, scratching the scar that created a small slash across his cheek. At uni, everyone joked it was a duelling scar he’d got fighting for a woman he loved, but one day someone discovered the truth – that ten years earlier he’d been cut in the car accident that had killed his wife. Everyone lost interest in imagining romantic things about the scar after that.

‘What am I going to do with you three? I bring you out here from university for the mid-term break, to visit the family home, and to give you all the chance to improve your frankly dodgy archaeology marks. And all you do is play with the broadband, flirt with poor Tonio there and embarrass him, or drink too much orange wine. You are here to work, you know. Being sociable is a pleasant side effect but not essential. What is essential, however, is teamwork. Sean and Jayne, I don’t care if you can’t get on, but you will work together. Jayne and Ben, I don’t care if you want to fight over Tonio’s attention, you will work together. Sean and Ben I don’t care if you can drink one another under the table at night, provided you turn up fresh and able the next day. Is all that understood? I am not your parents but I am the man who will mark your

end-of-term papers, and you would do well to remember that keeping me sweet is a positive move.’ Rossi put some cartons of milk on the table next to the laptop. ‘So, whose turn is it to make tea?’

Sean volunteered as Rossi scooped up the laptop.

‘Hopefully the Bursar has forwarded some more funds to us so we can try and trace those tunnels through the hills across to the lake.’

‘How far do your family go back here, Professor?’

Jayne asked.

Rossi shrugged. ‘I’m in the process of finding that out at the library. Certainly my paternal great-grandparents were the ones who moved to Ipswich, but I suspect their roots are here right back to the fifteenth century.’

Ben headed over with his sieve. ‘So we are looking for more than fifteenth-century Italian pots and pans then? I said so! Come on, Professor, what’s the big secret?’

‘Ah,’ Rossi grinned. ‘Well, you see, somewhere in this area an entire Dukedom vanished. A whole town with a castle and everything was based around here, or in the hills or somewhere in the vicinity of that lake beyond the orange groves. I’m trying to find its borders.’

‘How do we know?’ Sean asked as the kettle boiled.

‘It’s in the records in the library,’ Tonio said in good but heavily accented English.

Jayne and Ben stared at Tonio in mute shock – and slight horror.

He grinned. ‘Oh right, you both thought I didn’t understand English,’ he laughed, a deep bellowing laugh.

So did Professor Rossi. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is funny.

Did neither of you realise?’

Dumbly, they both shook their heads as Sean busied himself with the tea, determined not to catch their eyes.

‘But that means…’ Jayne started.

‘Everything we’ve said…’ added Ben.

‘About you…’ Jayne again.

‘You… you heard… Oh God… kill me now…’ Ben put his sieve down and sat hard on the ground.

Tonio tousled Ben’s dark hair and winked at him, before throwing a look to Jayne. ‘Sorry, you lose.’

‘Course I do,’ Jayne said. ‘When does life ever go Jayne Greene’s way?’

The laptop bleeped and, leaving the students to sort out the tea and Tonio’s confession, Professor Rossi accessed his emails in response. Nothing from the Bursar, but there was one message:

From: Madam Delphi

To:
[email protected] Subject: SAN MARTINO

Professor Rossi

My congratulations, you have rediscovered your heritage, and you are indeed in San Martino, just as you hoped. Click on this link to be taken to my site for more information about this delightful Italianate kingdom and its secrets.

The Professor was about to call the students over, but thought it would be better to check that this wasn’t a hoax.

(Although how did anyone know they were searching for

San Martino? He hadn’t even told the students the name of the kingdom). So he clicked the hotlink.

Instead of a new webpage, the screen was instantly filled with a pulsating ball of bright white light, highlighted with lilac edges and spirals.

Instinctively he let his hand reach forward to touch the screen… to go into the screen, to go through the screen…

as if his right hand was being consumed by the transfixing ball of energy.

Then he withdrew his hand, and looked at it.

Crackling around the fingertips were the vestiges of purple pulses of energy, like tiny flickers of raw electrical power. He turned his hand over, studying the little pulses until they seemed to vanish for good, absorbed into his skin. He rubbed his fingers together, and then looked back at the screen. It just displayed Sean’s eBay victory again.

The Professor stood up and turned to face his students and held his arms out, hands flat. ‘We’ve done it,’ he breathed.

Instantly distracted from their own petty concerns, the four young people walked over, Jayne and Sean taking an offered hand each, excitedly returning the gesture, if unsure what they were celebrating.

After a second, they wordlessly released the Professor’s hands, and Rossi then grabbed Ben and Tonio’s hands. And they in turn took Sean and Jayne’s, the five now forming a circle.

In unison, they all raised their linked hands into the air, purple electricity building and crackling around them.

The others followed the direction of his gaze as the

Professor looked up into the sky.

‘Welcome back,’ he said quietly.

Dinner was subdued in the Noble household.

Sylvia silently put food on plates. Donna silently passed the plates from the work surface to the dining table. Wilf silently poured water into tumblers – three matching ones from a petrol station, and a larger one with Donald Duck on it. The Doctor had that.

The Doctor sat there, uncomfortable with domesticity at the best of times, utterly ill at ease right now.

‘Dubai?’ Sylvia said, suddenly sitting up.

The Doctor shot a look at Donna – what was he supposed to say?

‘With the horses,’ Wilf helpfully prodded.

‘Horses?’ The Doctor was like a rabbit caught in headlights. ‘Horses. Yes, marvellous things.’

‘The Sheikh of Dubai put us up for a couple of weeks,’

Donna interjected. ‘
Didn’t
he?’

Sylvia started eating. Something cheese-y and macaroni-y the Doctor had guessed, but he wasn’t quite sure. Something that looked like this had once tried to bite off his toes on the coast of Kal-Durunt in the Keripedes Cluster.

He gently eased his fork into it.

‘I’m sorry it’s not as posh as what you get in Dubai, with horses and sheikhs,’ Sylvia said. ‘But I had no notice from either of you that you were coming.’

‘Oh, well, we couldn’t have Donna missing today,’ the Doctor said brightly. Too brightly. Wrong occasion for

Tigger-Doctor, better to be Eeyore-Doctor tonight.

‘I thought the Emirates were run by emirs, not sheikhs,’

Sylvia said, pouring herself more water. ‘But what do I know? I just sit here every day, waiting for people to turn up out of the blue, expecting to be fed.’

The Doctor just threw a look at Donna that he thought said ‘help’ but Donna clearly took to mean ‘no, it’s OK, ignore me, oh and right now would be the time to pick a really good fight with your mum’.

So Donna did.

‘What is your problem, Mum? Most people would kill to have family around them.’

Wilf tried to intervene, but Donna was going off on one now.

‘I mean, Mooky goes away for two weeks, her parents throw a bloody party to celebrate her return. And all she’s done is go shopping in Glasgow. I get to see the gala-well, to see the world, things I never thought I’d get the chance to do, and all I get is moans.’

Sylvia didn’t look up from her food. ‘Yeah, but they probably knew where Mooky was. All I know is when your granddad there bothers to say he had a postcard. And I’m never allowed to read them, oh no.’

Donna was going to chastise Wilf for that when she remembered that said postcards were usually sent from another star system entirely.

‘OK, Mum, I’ll start sending you postcards too.

Promise.’

‘Oh it’s not just that,’ Sylvia said. ‘It’s the whole life I have. Your dad’s gone, you’ve gone, and I’m stuck here as

nursemaid for your granddad’s bit on the side.’

Donna opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again.

Then, as that comment sank in, her mouth opened again, but still no sound came out.

‘Bit on the side?’ the Doctor asked Wilf.

Wilf glowered at Sylvia. ‘She’s a friend,’ he said. ‘I’m not gonna marry her.’

‘I should hope not,’ Sylvia said. ‘Mum would turn in her grave.’

‘Ahhh, so that’s what it’s all about,’ Wilf sighed. ‘You think Eileen wouldn’t approve. You think somehow me seeing a poor, sick old lady would make Eileen sad. Well, you’re wrong. She was your mother, but she was my wife.

I knew her better than that.’

The Doctor remembered why he didn’t ‘do’ families.

‘Lovely macaroni cheese, Mrs Noble,’ he said, stuffing his mouth. ‘Mmmmm…’

‘It’s mushroom raclette,’ she snapped.

‘Not macaroni?’

‘Mushroom.’

‘It’s… great… very cheesy. And…’

‘So, who is this lady, Gramps?’ Donna asked.

Wilf smiled. ‘She’s a lady astronomer I know, from Greenwich. Helps out at the observatory there, has done for years. But about three years ago she was… well, she fell ill and had to stop working. We chatted on the phone a couple of times, met up, had dinner. You’d think I’d started dating a teenage married pregnant cousin the way Sylvia goes on about her.’

The Doctor was looking at Sylvia Noble, however.

Spotting what made her flush angrily when Wilf spoke. It had been the word ‘ill’.

He looked back at the old paratrooper. ‘Why’d she give up at the Observatory then?’

‘Ask her yourself,’ Sylvia said. ‘She’ll be here any minute. Even on Geoff’s day, my daughter brings
you round, and he brings
her
round.’

And Sylvia was up and out of the kitchen.

Donna sighed and went after her mum. Wilf made to follow, but the Doctor caught his arm.

‘I’m no expert, Wilfred, but I reckon best leave the ladies to it.’

Wilf nodded.

‘And your friend?’

‘Netty. Henrietta Goodhart.’

He smiled. ‘Most appropriate name I think she could have. But she was diagnosed with… She has Alzheimer’s, Doctor. And it’s not getting any better.’

‘It wouldn’t,’ the Doctor said quietly, just as the doorbell rang. ‘That her?’