Dr. Who - BBC New Series 28 (7 page)

Wilf nodded and went to let her in.

A moment later and the Doctor was grinning at a vision of eccentricity, charm and humour that only certain English women of a particular age and bearing could carry off.

She was dressed from head to foot in brown – knee-length corduroy skirt, tan blouse, chocolate-coloured jacket – and carried a tan handbag. On her head was an amazing hat with at least half a dozen brown feathers of different shapes and sizes. Wilf was removing her long

dark overcoat, and Netty offered her hand to the Doctor before Wilf had got the coat off her, meaning one sleeve, the handshaking sleeve, was still on.

‘Doctor, how marvellous to meet you. Hooray and huzzah, it’s a real pleasure.’

‘Mrs Goodhart.’

‘Miss, please. Better still, just Netty. Never been married and, despite what Wilfred’s daughter believes, have no intention to ever be married.’

Wilf finally got the coat off her, and Netty slid neatly into a chair, grabbing a glass of water in an obviously well-rehearsed manoeuvre.

‘I never married,’ she went on. ‘Seemed such an alarming waste of time. I live in Greenwich you know, bit of a trek out here, but my local cab firm, they know me and my little ways, so it’s never a problem if I forget to have money. Or where I’m going.’

The Doctor had taken to this gregarious lady instantly.

‘You can’t beat a reliable taxi firm, Netty,’ he said, managing to get a sentence in before she blithely carried on.

‘Are they rowing yet? It’s all they ever do. And it’s about me. I was so ashamed to start with, now I just treat it as a ritual, and in ten minutes Sylvia’s back to her normal charming self, full of tea and crackers.’

The Doctor smiled. ‘Sylvia Noble? Charming? Words not often in the same sentence.’

The look he got from Netty showed him how he’d misjudged the situation between the two women.

‘Oh, don’t disappoint me, Doctor. Not after all I’ve

been told about you. That woman out there is a saint.

She’s just lost her husband, she’s got a daughter you drag halfway to God knows where on a whim, and has to tolerate that marvellous Wilfred, who can be just as stubborn and cantankerous as her. More so in fact. I like her a lot. Besides which, and I know she complains, but that’s just her way of letting off steam, she’s bloody terrific with my… you know…’ Netty tapped the side of her head. ‘My condition. Bless her, last weekend she drove Wilf all the way to Charlton. Apparently I was found in someone’s back garden, trying to convince them I used to live there when I was six!’

‘And did you?’

‘Good gracious, no. I was brought up in Hampshire.’

She dived into her handbag and brought out an A5-sized red notebook and showed it to him. ‘My life,’ she said simply. ‘So I can remember things.’

The Doctor looked her straight in the eye and saw, briefly, a very scared but very proud old lady. And he liked her even more than before.

‘Without that book, without the likes of Sylvia Noble, I’m nothing. I’d left my bag in a shop on Greenwich High Street, so I’m in this garden, unable to know who I am, where I’m from. Sylvia found a receipt in my pocket, found the shop, got my bag back where I’d left it, sorted it all out with the police. She wants to put me in a home, you know. The brochures are in that drawer next to the cooker.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Wilf won’t hear of it. Says he’ll have me move in

here first. Daft old fool, as if I’m going to go from one house I can barely cope with to another. But a lovely nursing home, where I’ll be looked after? How marvellous is that?’

The kitchen door opened. Donna and Sylvia trooped in, and Donna immediately introduced herself.

As Sylvia put the kettle on, the Doctor crossed and stood behind her. ‘Does Wilf know all you do for his friend?’

‘Does Donna know you’re poking your nose into her family’s business?’ Sylvia responded.

‘I’m not your enemy, Mrs Noble,’ the Doctor said.

Sylvia turned and smiled at him. The most insincere smile possible. ‘For my daughter’s sake, Doctor, I tolerate you in this house. But that’s all. For my dad’s sake, I’ll do the best I can for Netty Goodhart. I don’t think I’m a selfish woman, Doctor. I’ve worked hard, I built a life, I never had much money, and I tried to give Donna a decent life. But then one day, I lost my husband. My rock. And since then I’ve tried to do what both of us did, but with a daughter who one minute won’t get a job, the next can afford to be in a different hemisphere, but can’t afford a stamp, and an old dad who seems to have decided it’s time to replace my mum once and for all.’

‘Are you sure you’re not worried he’s replacing you? I imagine he let your mum go a long time ago.’

The silence that followed the slap around the face he received seemed to go on for a few hours, but was probably only a few seconds.

‘I didn’t mean it like that…’ the Doctor started. ‘I

genuinely wondered—’

Sylvia ignored him. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you take the Doctor up to the allotment, eh? Donna and I can catch up with Netty while you two have an hour or… a few hours up there, yes?’

Wilf took the hint and was all but dragging the Doctor out of the kitchen as the women watched.

The last thing the Doctor heard was ‘Tea, everyone’

from Sylvia, before Wilf had thrust them both out into the night air.

‘Allotment. This way,’ the old man said.

Babis Takis hoiked the largest bale of hay onto the back of the station wagon and stopped to rest. He wasn’t getting any younger, and this was really Nikos’s job.

But Nikos wasn’t here, he was probably around the back of the farm, messing with that Spiros girl. Typical.

There was work to be done – they had to get this consignment over to Faliraki, where so much building work was still going on. Hotels, apartments, shopping malls, everything the whole Dodecanese would benefit from because of the continued tourism it would bring.

Babis yelled out Nikos’s name a couple of times as he hauled up more bales of hay. He glanced at his watch. It would take an hour or so to drive across the island to the Petaloudes, where they would collect Kris, before going on to Lindos and along the coast to Faliraki. They’d drop off the hay at the depot, then it was off to Erik’s Taverna for the night.

Still no sign of Nikos.

With a sigh, Babis walked away from the station wagon. ‘I am an old man, Nikos,’ he called out. ‘I fought in the war, you know, so people like you could be independent and have your luxuries. Just once, it’d be nice if you could pull your weight.’

He had reached the rear of the farm, when he heard a noise from inside one of the stables – a short female gasp of surprise, almost fear. Certainly alarm.

Babis was inside the stable in a second.

Nikos was on the ground, holding his head in his hands, silent but clearly dazed.

Standing over him, a shovel in her hands was a pretty young girl, who Babis recognised as Katarina Spiros.

‘You all right, girl?’ Babis asked, reaching for the shovel.

Katarina swung around to face Nikos’s grandfather, and he realised how scared she looked. ‘What happened?’

Babis asked.

He was surprised when Katarina explained. ‘He took a call…’

She was pointing at Nikos Takis, who was now beginning to stand up, abandoning the cell phone on the ground by his foot. He looked at his grandfather, causing Babis to take an involuntary step back.

Babis Takis had fought in the latter days of the war as a youth, kicking the Nazis out of Crete and keeping Greece for the Greeks. He had faced the wrath and pain of his parents, who had so hated and eventually rejected him for falling in love, marrying and having children with one of the hated Italians who had occupied the Greek Islands for

seven hundred years before being sent packing after the war. He had done some time in prison for a barroom brawl in Diagoras, and he had once had to face the embittered son of a German he’d tied a live grenade to back in 1944.

But nothing had ever scared him as much as the look his grandson gave him right now.

Nikos wasn’t there any more. That carefree, funny, clever grandson he had nurtured after his father’s death was just not there.

Babis didn’t know how he knew that. He didn’t know how it had happened. But he’d never been so sure of anything in his life.

He was still sure of this when a flash of purple fire, hotter than the heart of a sun, extinguished his existence in less time than it took Katarina Spiros to draw breath to scream.

A second later, a handful of ashes dropped to the ground where the young girl had stood.

And Nikos Takis threw his arms towards the sky, purple electricity buzzing around his fingertips, as he threw back his head.

‘Welcome back,’ he yelled triumphantly.

Donnie and Portia were on their honeymoon. It was Donnie’s first, Portia’s second, but both were enjoying themselves enormously.

Donnie’s son had been his best man. His grandson had been pageboy. Portia’s granddaughter had been the flower-girl. They’d had two ceremonies, a full-on Jewish one and a simpler Christian one to reflect both their chosen faiths. Portia had always stayed in the Jewish faith,

whereas Donnie’s family had pretty much abandoned it within weeks of arriving at Ellis Island a century and a bit earlier.

They had overcome the odds – a cancer scare for Donnie, some severe frowning by Portia’s more traditional relatives and the death of their 8-year-old cat, Mr Smokey, a week before the ceremonies. After knowing each other for fifteen years, courting for the last six, they were finally together for ever.

And here they were, in Donnie’s jeep, having bombed along the 8, passing through Danbury, before turning off the freeway and into the Connecticut countryside for their honeymoon.

They had taken a nice colonial house outside Olivertown, thirteen miles from Danbury. The house belonged to one of Portia’s clients (she was a dog-walker, traipsing three times a day around Central Park with a variety of canines). The Carpenters were on FM radio, telling the world how they’d like to teach the world to sing, and the happy couple were singing along.

They’d got through Abba, Dr Hook and the Medicine Show, Jo Stafford, and were nodding their heads gently along to Helen Reddy singing about how good it was to be insane: ‘No one asks you to explain’ they sang in unison as they pulled up outside the house they’d rented.

Portia looked at her new husband. ‘Well, Mr DiCotta, we’re here.’

‘We sure are, Mrs DiCotta.’ Donnie winked at her.

‘Gotten used to that yet?’

‘Never will, I reckon,’ she laughed. ‘But I like it just

the same.’ She leaned across the car and kissed Donnie as he switched the ignition off.

And the radio kept playing.

As they separated, they both looked at the fascia of the stereo.

‘That’s not good, Donnie,’ Portia DiCotta said. ‘Must be a short somewhere.’

He nodded. ‘Darn it, I’d better get it fixed up now, hon.

Otherwise we’ll have a flat battery tomorrow which would not be good as I want to take you up to that restaurant in New Preston. The food’s gorgeous, the hospitality’s first class and the view is to die for. You can look right down over Lake Waramaug and it’s real romantic.’

Portia nodded. ‘You sort the car, I’ll put some coffee on.’

Donnie reached out to feel under the dash for a loose wire. There was a tiny spark of electricity and the radio fell silent.

‘Well done you.’ Portia smiled. ‘Now you can help me get the cases out the back.’

Donnie DiCotta said nothing. He just kept his hand under the dashboard of the jeep, staring ahead.

‘Donnie?’

Nothing.

Portia reached out to touch his shoulder, and he swung his head round to face her. Portia saw his eyes – not the beautiful blue eyes that she’d fallen in love with. These had been replaced by two solid orbs of burning purple light, minuscule tongues of electricity sparking from his tear ducts.

She couldn’t say a word because he grabbed her head and kissed her on the mouth. Full. Hard. But not at all passionate.

After a second or two, they broke apart.

And now Portia DiCotta’s eyes were blazing with the same eerie purple energy.

Wordlessly, they got out of the jeep and walked to the porch, studying the night sky above them, until Donnie pointed up to the right, to a blazing star that, had he been an expert in such things, he’d have known hadn’t been seen by human eyes for many centuries.

He and his new wife held hands and stared at the star.

‘Welcome back,’ they breathed together.

The Doctor was looking down on London.

‘I can see why you like it up here, Wilf,’ he said to the old man fussing beside him, sorting out a second little canvas seat for him to sit on. ‘It’s terribly… peaceful.’

Wilf Mott nodded. ‘Been coming here for years. Used to stare at the sky at night when I was in the forces. Used to navigate by the stars as well as the charts and stuff. The other lads thought I was mad, but you know what, Doctor, we never got lost. Not once.’

The Doctor smiled at the older man and sat on the proffered seat. ‘Thank you.’

Wilf sat beside him and poured him a mug of tea from the thermos. The Doctor sipped it gratefully. ‘Used to slip a bit of Mr Daniels’ finest in there,’ Wilf said. ‘But her ladyship cottoned on and that was the end of that. Bleedin’