Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [16]
* * *
Fitz would never have admitted it to Anji, or even to the Doctor, but he wasn’t feeling so normal. Usually he found pretending to be someone other than he was liberating, even weirdly relaxing, in spite of the problems it inevitably led to. But this pretence was too close to reality – he was hemmed in, with little room to manoeuvre or improvise. Everyone accepted that Anji had studied English at an English school, and the Doctor’s educated voice passed muster easily enough. But no one could place Fitz’s accent – it didn’t quite ‘do’, but it wasn’t familiarly declassé either. No one was outwardly rude about it, but he felt the curiosity. He didn’t like this focus, the way everyone was waiting to discover who he really was.
Fitz was finding Victorian England depressing in general. There was no decent music. There were no ways to meet girls. You either spent chaperoned time with young ladies of your own class, to whom he had nothing to talk about, or you patronised streetwalkers, which was a bit raw even for Fitz, or you sordidly hit on servants who were either too cowed to refuse you or ambitiously hoping you were a way to escape their dreary lives, which wasn’t his cup of tea either.
Also his shoes pinched his feet and custom demanded he wear a hat. He had balked at a topper or, even worse, a bowler (he could just hear Anji’s giggles) and settled for a soft, wide-brimmed hat like the one the Doctor was wearing during this nineteenth century sojourn. After a surreptitious posing session in front of his bedroom mirror, he’d decided that he actually looked rather dashing, but he still chafed at having to wear the damned thing all the time if he didn’t want to be stared at. It was fine being stared at by aliens who didn’t look at all like him, but too much human scrutiny had the effect of keeping him nervously checking to see whether his fly were undone, even though, with all those buttons, it wasn’t bloody likely.
* * *
In daylight, Mrs Hemming’s home was a tall, handsome terraced house, its white walls covered with leafy wisteria vine, though once they were inside, the parlour that had felt nicely cosy the night before seemed underlit and too crowded with bulky furniture.
Mrs Hemming was pleased to have news of Miss Jane and relieved she was in Dr Chiltern’s care. ‘He really has an excellent reputation. Not all of the people at his clinic are... mentally distraught, you know. Many go there simply for rest or water cures.’
‘So there aren’t any really mad people?’ said Fitz.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hemming, a bit thrown by his bluntness, ‘no, I can’t say that. He has a ward for the... disturbed. People from good families, you know, who can afford something other than a state institution. It’s very respectable. He set an example after all.’
‘An example?’ said Anji, trying not to appear too curious.
‘ “Example”,’ repeated Mrs Hemming. ‘It means... oh dear, it’s rather hard to define. You take a specific instance –’
‘How did he set an example?’ said Fitz, coming to her rescue and averting Anji’s slow burn.
‘Oh.’ She was apologetic. ‘I didn’t realise you didn’t know. It’s common knowledge. His own brother is a patient.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Anji in an impressed tone she hoped would invite further confidences.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Hemming nodded solemnly. ‘He brought him there a few months ago. It was quite tragic. The brother, that would be Sebastian Chiltern, went mad and attacked him.’
‘Do they know what’s wrong with him?’ said Anji, not sure that an answer would be meaningful to her in this particular place and time. Were they even using the word ‘schizophrenic’ yet?
‘He’s quite delusional.’
‘What?’ said Fitz. ‘You mean he thinks he’s Napoleon or something?’ He stopped at Anji’s look, struck by the ghastly notion that he’d misremembered his history and Napoleon hadn’t happened yet. No, it was all right – 1815, Waterloo, he had that straight.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hemming,