Doctor Who: Black Orchid (4 page)

‘Yes, mother, of course. But, please! Don’t go just yet!

There’s someone you’ve simply got to meet, both of you.

The Doctor brought some friends with him. Don’t go away and I’ll find them.’ And Cranleigh moved off in search of the Doctor’s companions.

Some of Tegan’s enthusiasm for the Doctor’s prowess at the wicket had infected Nyssa and she too now watched the game with a sense of excitement. Even the replete Adric was showing some interest and both, by now, understood the rudiments of the complicated game and not a little about its niceties. The Doctor continued to dominate the play, conscious that he’d passed his century - though not that he’d beaten a record - and enjoying himself hugely.

The umpire called a no-ball and the Doctor lofted it high over the long-on boundary for six.

Tegan was explaining a ‘no-ball’, with her eyes on the spectator who was obliging by fielding the Doctor’s mighty stroke, when her attention was caught by someone moving among the trees that fringed the ground beyond the marquee. She blinked and shielded her sight against the glare of the sun not able, at first, to believe her eyes.

Threading his way through a copse of young beach trees was a man with shoulder-length black hair held in place by a broad yellow head band. He wore a white jacket and baggy white trousers but the really remarkable thing about the man, and something that strained Tegan’s belief, was that his lower lip protruded a good four inches beyond his upper lip. His progress through the trees was furtive, something that made his aspect even more sinister. Tegan had vague memories that some tribes of South American Indian so disfigured themselves. She was about to point him out to her companions when Cranleigh called to them.

‘Hello, there!’

‘Hello.’

‘Your friend’s doing magnificently.

‘Too right,’ agreed Tegan. ‘He’s almost as good as Alan Border,’ she added, forgetting in her enthusiasm that neither she, nor the Australian Test captain, had been born yet.

‘Who?’

‘An Australian I know,’ said Tegan demurely.

‘Ah! D’you know he’s broken the record time for the century?’

‘He has?’

‘Indeed he has. He’s beaten thirty-five minutes set by the captain of Surrey five years ago.’

‘Wow!’ Tegan was so impressed her mind emptied of the strange figure she’d seen in the trees.

‘I’d like you all to come and meet my mother,’ said his lordship with his eyes firmly on Nyssa. ‘Do you mind?’

He guided the Doctor’s three companions towards the pavilion where Lady Cranleigh and Sir Robert were joining in the applause for yet another fine stroke from the hero of the day. ‘Mother, may I introduce Tegan and Adric?’

Lady Cranleigh smiled a polite welcome with her mind on the preparations she should be superintending at the Hall. ‘How d’you do?’ she said, and then, ‘What enchanting names!’

Nyssa was a little hidden behind the taller Tegan and Cranleigh encouraged her forward. ‘And this is Nyssa,’ he said.

He looked searchingly at his mother and wasn’t disappointed at the expected flutter of astonishment. The poised dowager Marchioness was caught quite off balance, thinking for a moment she was the victim of a practical joke. Then her wide eyes took in Nyssa’s tumbled, shoulder-length hair. ‘Tegan, Nyssa and Adric are friends of the Doctor,’ explained her son delightedly.

‘How extraordinary!’ gasped Lady Cranleigh.

‘Isn’t it?’

Sudden realisation came to the startled woman and she looked at the equally fascinated Sir Robert as if seeking support.

‘Worcestershire!’ she offered by way of explanation.

‘Nyssa, did you say?’

‘Yes,’ said her son.

‘Nyssa Talbot?’

‘Just Nyssa, actually,’ said her son who had pursued that possible explanation earlier.

‘Just Nyssa?’ echoed the lady of the manor. She looked directly, almost accusingly, at the increasingly embarrassed girl. ‘I beg your pardon, my dear, you must be a Worcestershire Talbot.’

‘No,’ said Nyssa, ‘I don’t even know what that is.’

Lady Cranleigh again looked at Sir Robert for help.

‘Robert?’

‘Uncanny,’ volunteered the mesmerised knight. ‘Quite uncanny.’

‘Two peas in a pod,’ announced Lady Cranleigh emphatically, ‘positively two peas in a pod.’

Nyssa looked in mounting desperation at Tegan who smiled back at her limply. So, Nyssa looked like somebody else. Big deal! Lady Cranleigh’s sense of shock subsided enough for her suddenly to become conscious of Nyssa’s embarrassment and she was overcome with contrition. ‘My dear, you must forgive a pardonable curiosity. Where are you from?’

Nyssa looked her inquisitor straight in the eye and, without batting a lid, said, ‘The Empire of Traken.’

The dowager Marchioness was clearly impressed by the answer which had a reassuring imperial ring to it, but she was far too well bred to indulge her curiosity further. She allowed herself to be diverted by the Doctor once more middling the ball to the boundary. She joined the applause and then excused herself graciously. Acknowledging salutations from her tenants she made her way towards the Hall.

In the shadow of the bordering trees the Indian with the grotesquely extended lip stood very still and watched her progress.

2

With the home side’s score at two hundred and sixty-three the inevitable happened. Fortune certainly favours the brave but it’s also certain that fate can be tempted once too often. The Doctor’s luck ran out - literally. In another end-of-the-over scamper to capture the bowling, the stumps were shattered by a brilliant throw in by the visiting skipper with the Doctor two yards from the crease and two runs short of his hundred and fifty.

The pitch was immediately invaded, with a host of cheering small boys well to the fore. Congratulations were showered upon the Doctor from all sides for, by now, word of his record-breaking century had spread far from the cricket field to the four corners of the estate. The Doctor modestly fought his way to the pavilion where Cranleigh, beaming from ear to ear, wrung him by the hand.

‘Ripping performance, old man! Allow me to introduce Sir Robert Muir, the Lord Lieutenant of the county.’

‘First rate, sir! First rate!’ enthused Sir Robert. ‘A superb innings! Never seen anything like it. I doubt the master could have done better.’

The good Doctor hiccoughed in the middle of a self-deprecatory murmur, unable to believe his ears. ‘The Master?’

‘The other Doctor - W.G. Grace.’

Relief assuaged the Doctor’s shock as he remembered the legendary leviathan of that name who had dominated the game a generation earlier.

‘Oh, yes! Of course! Thank you.’

The Doctor’s companions succeeded eventually in penetrating the laudatory crowd surrounding the hero to add their congratulations. Both Nyssa and Adric announced themselves warm converts to a game they had found incomprehensible an hour earlier and Tegan, who had never seen the Doctor engage in her national sport, smiled upon him with a face that worshipped. The Doctor was quite embarrassed.

‘That’s more like a score,’ said his lordship gratefully with a glance at the board. Secretly, he was equally grateful that ‘Smutty’ Handicombe had been detained by that emergency operation in London. He’d seen ‘Smutty’ in spectacular form with the bat many times but nothing to equal this. Dare he hope the man was half as good with the ball? He was soon to find out.

When the home side took the field, Cranleigh resisted the strong temptation to open his attack with the Doctor for fear of being thought ostentatious, such was his instinct that he had an all-rounder of rare talent in his side. At the tea interval the county eleven had made fifty-six runs without loss and had clearly taken charge of the bowling.

When play resumed Cranleigh tossed the ball to the Doctor and, in consultation, set an aggressive field with three slips and a short leg. The county’s stylish number one was lucky to survive the Doctor’s opening delivery which, on a sizzling line and length, beat the bat and must have grazed the off stump. The batsman looked so shattered that his lordship had to call upon all his willpower to stop himself smiling. But the partisan audience had no such inhibition and a concerted gasp developed into warm applause. The shaken batsman prodded respectfully at the Doctor’s next three deliveries but failed abysmally to keep out the fifth ball which flattened his middle stump.

Lord Cranleigh joined in the rapturous ovation and ran to join the handwringing, back-slapping circle that enclosed the flushed Doctor.

‘Where on Earth have you been hiding yourself, man?’

he chortled. ‘What side do you normally turn out for? Not Guys’ Hospital, surely?’

The Doctor smiled inwardly at the adverb, aware that his curiosity and love of the game had, at last, led to the very edge of dangerous ground.

‘If you don’t mind, Lord Cranleigh,’ he said, ‘I think it would be better if I remained incognito.’ His Lordship was immediately contrite.

‘Of course, my dear fellow! Of course!

The captain of the county side, batting number three and no longer languid, came out to the crease determined to put a stop to this nonsense. Dammit, the man wasn’t even properly dressed. He took guard and stood erect to take stock of the field, exchanging a tight smile with the man positioned at short leg just four yards behind him.

The Doctor’s last delivery was on a length and came back off the seam. The determined nonsense-stopper was forced to play at the ball giving an easy catch to the man at short leg whose tight smile relaxed in triumph as the batsman made his way, as languidly as he was able, back whence he’d come amid great whoops of joy from the onlookers.

Cranleigh had inherited the traditional good manners that forbade expressions of jubilation at an opponent’s defeat. Not so Tegan. She began jumping up and down to the amazed amusement of Nyssa and Adric.

‘He’s on a hat trick! He’s on a hat trick!’

Nyssa and Adric exchanged a look. Hat trick? And the Doctor not even wearing his hat? Tegan saw their incomprehension not without a little irritation, knowing that she had to embark again on an explanation of what everybody else present knew as a matter of course. She explained patiently that the Doctor had taken two wickets with two consecutive balls and that if he took a wicket with the first ball of his next over he would have made a hat trick. Nyssa looked troubled; Adric positively unhappy.

Tegan sighed: ‘If you get three wickets with three consecutive balls you get a hat trick.’

‘Is that good?’ asked Nyssa.

‘Of course it’s good!’

‘How many runs does it score?’ asked Adric.

‘It doesn’t get any runs.’

‘Then what
does
it do?’ persisted Nyssa.

‘It doesn’t do anything.’

‘But you said it was good,’ blurted Adric.

Tegan puffed out her cheeks and clenched her hands, resenting bitterly the diminution of her joy at the Doctor’s achievement. ‘It’s the honour,’ she said peevishly.

‘The honour,’ echoed Adric.

Tegan waved her hands about, mistrustful of words to communicate the depth of her feelings. ‘Yes. The honour.

The cleverness.’

‘Oh,’ said Nyssa flatly.

Tegan fumed.

The next over was delayed because the new batsman was late getting to the crease. Number four in the batting order had been taken completely by surprise at the unprecedented dismissal of his captain with a single delivery and had to panic himself into his pads. The field buzzed with excited anticipation as busily as a hive of honey-bees working a single flower bed.

The news of the Doctor’s phenomenal performance had penetrated the Hall and one after another of the staff of servants gathered together on the terrace for a glimpse of the distant game.

None of them there assembled saw the Indian break from the cover of the trees and run to the north side of the Hall, the side that gave access to the servants’ quarters. He let himself in by a basement door at the foot of mildewed stone steps and made his stealthy way to the back stairs. He climbed carefully to the third floor and padded his way noiselessly down deserted corridors in a methodical but covert search of all the rooms.

The bowler who shared the attack with the Doctor completed his over in a taut hush of expectation. The fact that seventeen runs had been scored from it was treated almost as an irrelevance. The new batsman, who during that over had got off the mark at the first ball and subsequently hit two comfortable and elegant-looking boundaries, now faced the Doctor. The proverbial pin could have been heard to drop on grass in the silence that heralded the Doctor’s run up. The anxious batsman distributed his weight evenly and watched the ball in the Doctor’s hand with devotional concentration. The Doctor dug the ball in and it rose sharply. The batsman straightened and attempted to pull his bat away to no avail.

The ball touched the inside edge of the bat and smacked into the wicket keeper’s gloves. The instant appeal was echoed by a good proportion of the onlookers and the umpire’s finger went unhesitatingly up. The Doctor had made his hat trick.

The spectators applauded ecstatically. Tegan yelled,

‘Good on you, Doc!’ and flung her arms around a startled Nyssa. Lord Cranleigh was overcome by the Doctor’s success and his joy knew no bounds at the quality of the day’s entertainment. Sir Robert declared that this performance could have no equal in the annals of first class or club cricket and resolved to telephone the Marylebone Cricket Club at the earliest opportunity and to delve deeply into Wisden’s Almanac - the Bible of the game.

The Doctor’s over was responsible for yet another wicket and the rot rapidly set in as the morale of the visitors deteriorated during what remained of their innings.

The Indian had worked his clandestine way to the first floor and the family bedrooms. His stealthy passage down the long corridor was suddenly halted by the sound of a door handle turning. He slipped unhurriedly into the shadow of a large pedestal as Lady Cranleigh came from Ann’s room attended by a maid. He watched the two women move to the staircase and begin to descend. He followed at a careful distance.