Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [33]
When Jack finally finished his story, the Doctor asked him what colour Eddy’s hair was. Jack was a little bewildered by the question.
‘Brown,’ he answered. ‘Almost black.’ And then he remembered his angry confrontation with Madge in the Magpie earlier that evening. Remembered that she’d sacked Eddy for dying his hair.
‘At least it was. I think he bleached it before. . . well, you know.’
‘Ah, I see,’ the Doctor interrupted softly. ‘He must have cared for you very deeply.’
‘This man needs a doctor. Hello. I know you can hear me.’
Chris peered through the grill in the door, but all he could see were the white tiles on the wall of the corridor opposite. He banged his fist angrily against the metal door, which rattled on its hinges. Several other occupants of the cells further down the corridor started shouting in response to the noise.
Most telling him in no uncertain terms to keep quiet, and a couple of others just wordlessly and piteously wailing.
Chris let himself slump against the heavy door and looked across at the other occupant of the cell. The Major sat on the edge of the long concrete bed staring straight out in front of him and rocking gently back and forth. Initially, Chris had put the Major’s condition down to shock, but it was clear that this 54
was something more than that. The old man was running a temperature and a constant stream of what sounded like nonsense escaped from his mouth.
That the Major hadn’t been sent directly to a hospital was another indication of the barbarism of the age. Chris had been astonished and angered to find the Major sitting in the cell when he’d been brought down. He’d tried to reason with the sergeant who’d escorted him, but the young Irish man took no notice of his protests, adopting a strategy of wilful deafness that Chris knew only too well.
All Chris’s possessions, as well as his jacket, belt and shoelaces, had been removed before he was incarcerated. His handkerchief had been confiscated, along with the rest, so Chris ripped the cuff from his shirt and used it to mop the old man’s brow.
‘Nothing. . . I’m nothing. . . ’ The old man’s voice was an anxious whisper. ‘I can’t feel them. . . the club. . . anything. . . I can’t feel anything. . . what am I to be?’
‘It’s all right. Try to rest, it’s all right.’
Chris jumped when the Major suddenly broke out of his melancholy trance and sat up, gripping Chris’s arm tightly. ‘It’s not all right, young man,’ he exclaimed, his fingernails digging painfully into Chris’s forearm. ‘It’s not all right at all. Mother. You must take a message to Mother.’
‘I will,’ Chris promised. ‘We can take it together when they let us out of here.’
The Major shook his head. ‘No. They won’t let me go. Disorderly house and all that. No bail for the likes of me. You must do it for me.’
The message the Major gave him didn’t make any sense to Chris, but he committed it to memory anyway. The Major’s moment of coherence was lost and he lay back against the cell wall, muttering and shaking his head.
Chris watched him for a few minutes, before curling up to try to get some rest himself. His lungs still ached from the fire and his clothes and hair reeked of bitter smoke. He’d drunk far more than he usually did and his mouth felt thick and swollen. He lay on the uncomfortable bench, thinking about the strange events of the evening. He found himself thinking about Patsy, the way it had felt when her thoughts had slipped into his mind. It had been a pleasant feeling, warm and reassuring, like the first sip of hot coffee after being out in the cold. It reminded him just how caught up in his own thoughts and feelings he’d been over the last month. How alone he’d been.
He hugged himself to try to keep warm in the cold cell. He drifted off to sleep, his thoughts full of the strange people he’d met that evening.
55
Interlude
Gilliam’s Story
The royal barge, the Jewelled Sword, floated quietly in the skies above the capital city