Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [22]
It was the first time anyone had called her that since she had been a child. And the name felt utterly familiar. It felt like she’d remembered her own name, after years of bafflement and defeat. And she looked at the Doctor, sitting on a pub bench, in his black coat and silk shirt, and suddenly he wasn’t ordinary. He was... more than ordinary. More than human, but less than human at the same time.
He looked lonely.
Mrs Castle bent in and kissed him on the forehead, then leaned back, looked at his face.
He smiled down at her, calmer than he’d been.
‘Thank you,’ she told him.
The Doctor opened his mouth, and her husband’s voice came out of it.
‘Who’s this?’ Barry asked.
A heavy-set man in a tracksuit and parka was standing behind the Doctor, staring at them. He hadn’t shaved, and his wiry, thinning hair hadn’t been brushed.
He’d spoken before the Doctor could. And he hadn’t seen her kiss him. It was an innocent kiss, not the sort of kiss that a wife gives a husband or a girlfriend gives a boyfriend, but she knew that Barry wouldn’t have seen it that way.
‘Hello, Barry,’ Mrs Castle said. ‘Doctor, this is my husband.’
‘The bloke that fixed the Cortina?’ Mr Castle asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘You did a good job,’ Mr Castle conceded grudgingly.
‘Thank you.’
‘Come inside. You play snooker?’
‘Er...’
Mrs Castle and the Doctor followed him back in.
Mr Castle pointed over to the table. ‘I’ll set up.’
The Doctor’s smile flickered.
‘It’s his way of saying thank you. But let him win,’ Mrs Castle suggested. ‘He likes to win. Thinks it’s important.’
‘Right,’ the Doctor said, his mind elsewhere. He was watching the other snooker table.
‘Looks easy enough,’ he decided.
‘You’ve never played before?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘Barry’s got a table at home. He made me learn. I think he did it just so he could win all the time. Do you know the rules?’
‘You hit the balls with that –’
‘– cue,’ she supplied.
‘Cue. The object is to get the balls into the holes. Right. Sounds tricky.’
‘It is. I keep potting the white by mistake.’
‘Right. So the white ball has to stay on the table.’
The Doctor downed his mineral water in one and walked over to the table.
Barry had finished setting up. He ushered the Doctor over and handed him his cue.
The Doctor weighed it carefully, then paced around the table.
‘Do you want to make it interesting?’ Barry said.
The Doctor frowned. ‘Is that actually possible?’ he asked.
‘Put a pound on it?’ Barry suggested, holding up a pound note.
‘Barry,’ Mrs Castle objected, ‘this isn’t fair. The Doctor’s never played before.’
‘He can fix cars, can’t he? He plays chess? Snooker’s not going to be a challenge.’
‘Yes, yes. All right.’ The Doctor dug into his pockets and pulled out a pound in change. Barry put his pound note down on the cushion, and the Doctor piled his coins on top of it.
‘You wanna break?’ Barry asked. ‘Go first,’ he clarified, when the Doctor looked confused.
The Doctor nodded. Barry smirked.
The Doctor tapped the end of the cue with his finger.
‘It’s more complicated than it looks,’ the Doctor confessed. ‘On the face of it, this is a simple Newtonian system, but there are quite a few complicating factors. The felt isn’t even, the balls have slight manufacturing defects, the tip of the cue isn’t quite right.’
‘You can chalk it if you want.’ Barry handed the Doctor the cube of blue chalk.
The Doctor examined the chalk, then used it to smooth the tip a little.
‘Hurry up, Doctor,’ Barry said. ‘It’s not like chess where you spend ten hours on every move.’
The Doctor bent over, perched the cue on his left hand, and tapped the cue ball with it.
It rocketed forwards, breaking the reds, scattering them, sending them bouncing off every cushion.
‘Whoa! Too hard,’ Barry bellowed.
The first red ball fell into the pocket, followed by the yellow, another red and the black. The other red balls were ricocheting from cushion to cushion, catching the other balls as they went. Two more reds, the green, the pink