Doctor Who: Rags (24 page)

Jimmy was at the wheel, his dash player hissing on a dead tape.

‘Why are we going this way?’

Jimmy didn’t answer Nick’s question. He was staring through the windscreen at the cattle truck directly in front of them, driving on autopilot.

‘Jimmy! Half the convoy went after that roadie. So what made you decide to go this way?’

‘Huh?’

Nick could see Jimmy’s face in the rear-view mirror. It was blank. His eyes were dead.

‘Jimmy!’ Nick got out of his seat and made his way up to the driver’s seat. ‘What’s happened to you, mate?’

‘What?’ Jimmy turned to face him, and suddenly the cheeky grin was back on his face, his eyes were lit with their old mischief. He cocked his Confederate cap back on his brow and scratched his spiky hair. ‘It’s only rock ‘n’ roll...’ he said in a bad Jagger impersonation as he fumbled for a new tape. It was one of his favourite catch phrases.

‘Shit, Jimmy, get a grip. You must have some idea where we’re going and why?’

Jimmy blew Nick a mock kiss and slammed the tape in. ‘...But I like it, like it, yes I do’

Nick gave up, and took his seat again. Confusion and not a little fear seized him. But he was damned if he could do anything about it. Quailing again. He glanced at Jo and sin. They were staring at him like two evil but hardly identical sisters. He pulled a cigarette as UK Decay blared out from the tinny speaker.

The Six O’Clock News was just starting. Derek Pole’s face was splashed across the television screen.

174

‘Will the monarchy recover?’ the studio newsreader was asking a royal correspondent on an OB screen live from outside Buckingham Palace.

Jeremy Willis wasn’t listening. He didn’t care about the correspondent’s answer. In one hand he held a newspaper. Pole’s face was on it, next to a black-and-white shot of Willis himself.

The link between them had been revealed by police once Pole’s identity had been ascertained. The offices of Class Hate held papers and other things Pole should have destroyed which tied the two irrevocably together. Cheques paid into Pole’s bank account, issued by a certain member of the shadow cabinet, were also offered up for public scrutiny in a police statement to the press that bordered almost on the smug. Money to finance Class Hate.It was a glorious revelation for the Government.

Glorious.

Ashes. Willis’s career had been poured into a cremation urn.

The telephone had been ringing all day, since the very early hours. Now it was silent. But that was only because Willis had yanked the lead from the wall. He had drawn the curtains too, but he could still hear the impatient rapping on the glass. His doorbell trilled intermittently.

It was enough to drive a sane man mad.

The newspaper with the glorious revelation on the front page was in his left hand. In his right hand, a gun. Willis couldn’t remember the make or model. It didn’t matter.

What the hell did, any more?

He lifted the gun to his head.

He saw his own face fill the TV screen just as he pressed the trigger.

175

Side Two

‘ ... Now we’re gonna dance to a different song...’

177

"Rat!" he found breath to whisper; shaking. Are you afraid?"Jo was sitting next to Sin by the camp fire and staring coldly at Nick as she spoke the words long-remembered from childhood. Her mouth curved into a cruel but sexy smile as she continued:

“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. Afraid! Of HIM. 0, Never; never! And yet - and yet - 0, Mole, I AM afraid!”

Nick pulled a cigarette from his pack, keeping his gaze level as he returned the blonde girl’s stare.

The Doctor was sitting in the stern of a rowing boat travelling slowly upstream. He held an oar in each hand, but he was not using them; they trailed little wakes through the dimpled water as the craft slipped along. Ahead of the boat a great stone bridge with three arches loomed out of the purple twilight - or was it the darkness before the dawn, he wondered idly. The banks on either side were largely invisible in the shadows, but he could smell the intoxicating odour of the meadowsweet. The river gurgled on by as his companion pulled gently at the sculls. The Doctor was thinking of Jo, wondering what she was doing right now, and so he wasn’t paying much attention to the rower until that person spoke aloud, just as a solitary predawn bird chimed sleepily.

Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,’ his companion said, and the Doctor glanced over at his friend, at the large water rat dressed in human clothing. He smiled a bewildered smile as the Rat continued.

‘0, Mole! The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clean happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.’

179

And the Doctor, entranced by his friend’s words, set to with the oars. And soon they were passing under the central arch of the great mossy bridge and a deeper darkness closed them in, and the dripping and truckling of the river echoed eerily around them and the Doctor was afraid. But just as quickly they were out again, and a purple horizon skirted the meadow bank to their right, and from ahead there came a soft and distant rushing of water. The river divided and they were now following a long backwater, and the first flush of dawn was expanding enough for the Doctor to be able to see the banks on either side, drooping with osiers and silver bushes.

The gentle rushing sound grew clearer as the two rowers propelled their craft through the dawn. Suddenly the Rat dropped his oars and sat up stiffly, head cocked in a listening posture.

And now, at last, the Doctor could hear what his friend had already heard: a distant, eerie piping, haunting and beautiful, floating over the reeds and willow herbs from some point ahead.

A semicircular weir awaited them, curving its foaming arms around a small island mysterious with dense willow and silver birch and alder. The piping was clearer still, calling them on, filling their hearts with fearful joy. The Doctor said nothing at all as his companion steered the craft into the island’s osier-decked bank and moored it carefully. He followed the Rat ashore and the panpipes ceased playing and silence fell around them. No birds sang as yet, and even the sound of the weir seemed hushed.

Together they passed through the foliage towards the centre of the small island, and there they found a lawn glowing bright green in the dawn light and on the green, sitting under a crab apple tree, He awaited them.

The Doctor saw his great furred limbs first of all, and the cloven hooves resting on the grass. Above the goat legs, the naked chest was broad and pale, the silent panpipes clenched against one nipple. The Time Lord’s awed gaze travelled upwards, taking in the grey boulder of a head, crowned with twisting life, and the cruel slash of a grinning mouth. The eyes blazed ferally while 180

curved horns swept back from the play of the writhing worms.

Rat,’ the Doctor found breath to whisper, shaking. Are you afraid?’

‘Afraid?’ murmured the Brigadier, standing stiffly in the water rat’s clothes, and arching an eyebrow at his companion. ‘Why on Earth should I be afraid, Doctor? And look, we’ve found Miss Grant, at last.’

The Doctor peered in the direction the Brigadier was indicating with his swagger stick and, sure enough, in the shade of the crab apple tree, nestling in between the hooves, Jo’s pretty head lay on the grass, severed messily at the neck. Her eyes fixed accusingly on the Doctor’s as if to say -

But the Doctor was falling to his knees, hands clasped around his white head, and he could hear as he closed his eyes in torment that the monster was piping once more at the gates of dawn.

Jo, sin, Nick and Jimmy sat around the fire beneath one of the great stones and watched as the mummer moved from group to group, playing his lute. They had not seen him for some time, and Jo struggled to remember when exactly that last time had been -

things were getting so hard to recall, she thought with some confusion. She remembered Mike, and a little pang of something like remorse touched her heart - and that confused her even more, because he was a traitor to the cause; he was the enemy, the Establishment. He was everything they had to destroy, stood for everything she no longer believed in. The sight of the mummer in his gaily coloured tatters, mincing across the meadow in cracked old leather boots and minstrel cap, chased away such disconcerting thoughts and lifted her spirits once more. He was nearing their camp fire now, and she shifted her gaze to Nick as he sat slumped beside Jimmy, miserable and afraid.

What, exactly, was his problem? Couldn’t he see what was going on around them? They were all caught up in the most monumental moment of change this land would ever know - and he was running scared. They had the chance to put all wrongs 181

right, to level the playing field so that this country, and then maybe the world (and why not?), could be free of bigotry, prejudice, inequality, brutality, selfishness, greed. The mummer was going to show them how. Couldn’t Nick see that? Or was his reluctance and antipathy purely down to the fact that he no longer had Sin? selfish bastard. He deserved everything he had coming to him, then.

And what was that, exactly?

She ignored the quiet, rebellious question, and touched Sin’s hand. The Chinese girl smiled carefully at her, and continued rolling a spliff. Jimmy was singing tunelessly to himself, patting his knees arhythmically as if to confirm his complete lack of talent. But then that was all right - in the world that was coming his previous social unacceptability and status as number one pariah would be completely assuaged.

The mummer was coming. He was stepping between the stones, through the daisies, eyes shining darkly as he strummed his lute.

The merry air played across the meadow as stars spun through the dark skies above and a slight breeze ruffled the grass. A few hundred yards behind him, in Cirbury’s public car park, Jo could see the silhouette of the cattle truck surrounded by its entourage of dilapidated vehicles. The village nestling beside the car park and the field of stones seemed not unduly perturbed by this mass arrival of dubious characters - aside from sending a deputation of local policemen backed up by curious villagers to investigate the rare phenomenon. They now stood watching from the fringe of the encampment, as if all this were some bizarre Midsummer Eve fête they were looking forward to.

Jo gazed up at the moon riding towards fullness. It was half-past midnight on the day of the twentieth of June. Tomorrow would see the summer solstice, and anything could happen really, couldn’t it? She felt like saying so to Sin, but just then the mummer finally reached them and instead she fell silent and listened to his words. Even Jimmy stopped drumming impatiently on his knees and lay back on the grass to take it all in. Nick stayed

182

slumped, head drooping, eyes clouded.

The mummer’s eyes were upon Jo, or so she thought; but they seemed so all-encapsulating she was sure the others were just as certain that they were the sole object of his attention. She could see herself small and waif-like in his dark shark eyes, and she was smiling into the depths.

Shark eyes? Yes, maybe; but they promised so much. They promised an end to that old tyrant, the Doctor - and it had been so long since she’d even bothered to think of him that she hardly needed to wish for an end to him now. The mummer would take care of it for her anyway. He was the tidier of loose ends, the leveller. Now she could live her life the way she wanted to, instead of being dragged from one horrendous conflict to another by a man who purported to be on the side of freedom, yet needed the narrow-minded might of the military and all its conservative, stifling authoritarianism to back him up.

Sod him!

Let him be blown away in the wind like... like the spore of a seeding daffodil. Oh yes, the mummer would tidy that loose end all right.

His long fingers played softly with the strings of his lute as he stood in the centre of the little group, looking at one, looking at all. The tune was sad and stirring, gently medieval and brutally modern all at once. The spikes of his straw-coloured hair peeking from beneath his cap seemed to stir slightly in the breeze and Jo gazed, fascinated. His prominent nose quivered as he breathed in the night air and his large, voluptuous mouth widened to an astonishing degree as he smiled and spoke of the world that would soon be theirs.

And as he spoke in rich, melodious tones, quaint and rustic, eloquent and sharp, Jo was a pupil again and, for the first time ever, she was actually listening.

Sin was a child too, and his words transported her to some innocent place she had long since forgotten existed. Although most of his words had little direct pertinence for her, she 183