Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [28]
Or you. Or both of us. Major Butcher heard it – he must have good ears to have done so over the sound of Ray’s music, but then I imagine he’s heard gunshots before and recognises them. So he came dashing out, just too late to be of any use to anyone.’
‘No, I understand all that,’ said Ace. ‘What I don’t understand is why he just left us here. If he’s so suspicious of us and if there’re records being smuggled in and gunshots going off, why isn’t he interrogating us?’
‘Clearly he’s pursuing an investigation that began before we came on the scene and he knows we’re not connected with it.’
‘Are we not connected with it?’
‘Not yet.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘Now can I buy you dinner? I know that being shot at gives you an appetite.’
Dinner consisted of steak, baked potatoes and a tomato salad served at the dining room in the Fuller Lodge. Ace was just sitting back to enjoy digesting it, with the Doctor sitting across from her, eating a banana and jotting notes on his napkin, when she looked up to see that someone had joined them.
It was Professor Apple. He was holding a bunch of red roses wrapped in paper and Ace felt a terrible sinking feeling. The perfectly cooked piece of rump steak suddenly became a lump of dead meat nestling in her stomach. Apple thrust the bunch of flowers at her, ignoring the Doctor completely. ‘Acacia. I just wanted to see that you’re all right.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be all right?’
‘I mean working with him.’ Professor Apple nodded at the Doctor, taking account of him for the first time. ‘If you find you’re in any way uncomfortable or unhappy, or if he makes any demands on you you’re not entirely at ease with. . . I hope you’ll do me the honour of working with me. I’ve never seen anyone perform complex calculations with such. . . ’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ said Ace.
Her obvious impatience and irritation didn’t seem to give Apple pause. He simply changed tack. ‘Do you like the roses?’ He jutted the bouquet at her again, letting go of it, so they fell onto the plate where her steak had rested a little earlier, their red petals nodding gently.
‘Yes, the roses are beautiful,’ said Ace in a weary, rote, singsong voice.
‘They’re for you.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Ace in the same singsong voice. Professor Apple beamed at her for a long moment during which neither the Doctor nor Ace said anything to him. Specifically they didn’t invite him to sit and join them. At length Apple realised that the invitation was not forthcoming, and 50
withdrew, still beaming at Ace. When he’d left the dining room Ace looked at the roses, then at the Doctor, who was smiling wryly.
‘You were rather short with the poor fellow.’
‘He narked me off. The way he treated you as if you weren’t there.’
‘I notice you didn’t make him take the roses back, though.’
‘Nope,’ said Ace, studying the bouquet. ‘Just wait until the girls back at the barracks see these. I suppose I’d better put them in some water.’ Some water and a container – an empty Coca Cola bottle fashioned from green glass –
were duly found and the WACs at the barracks were suitably impressed or envious, or both, though Ace made damned sure none of them found out that it was Professor Apple who was her benefactor, attributing the flowers to a mystery admirer. The only WAC who didn’t take any interest in the bouquet was the ginger-haired girl with a hawk nose, whom Ace suspected of being one of Butcher’s flunkies. Ace thought she spotted the girl watching her as the lights went out and she rolled over in her bunk bed.
The following day she dutifully took her fish oil tablet as soon as she awoke, which was just as well since the Doctor put her to work immediately after breakfast. They had been given their own classroom in the schoolhouse and the Doctor had a blackboard full of his own equations, which generated a lot of numbers for Ace to apply in calculation. ‘Sorry about this,’ said the Doctor.
‘But it’s our first day here and everybody’s going to be watching us.’
‘Especially Butcher.’
‘Especially Major Butcher. And since I am