Doctor Who_ Ghost Light - Marc Platt [20]
It was filled, as she expected, with chintzy antiques, a dressing-table, a delicate porcelain washing bowl and a jug.
There was a stack of hatboxes on the wardrobe. Prominent among all the objects, however, was a beautifully intricate and detailed doll’s house. Looking closer she saw that it was peopled by a family of stuffed red squirrels in Victorian dress.
Gwendoline seated herself at the dressing table and suggested that Ace might try on anything in the wardrobe that took her fancy.
At first glance, Ace could see only a load of Victorian fancy dress. All of it had full skirts and tight bodices, none of which could be worn without a corset. She decided that getting through to Gwendoline would be hard going.
She was about to give up on the clothes too, when Gwendoline suddenly gave her the weirdest look and began to giggle.
‘O, Alice, we shall be friends, shan’t we?’ she said, opening an enamelled box on the dressing table and holding it out. The box was full of cigars.
‘Go on, take one,’ she insisted, going through the brands. ‘Regalia, Aurora, Eureka... Uncle Josiah chose them especially for me.’
Well weird, thought Ace. She muttered some excuse about trying to give them up, but the ice was broken and she burst into giggles too.
‘You can call me Ace,’ she said. ‘And I thought Victorians would be stuffy!’
‘That’s just uncle’s collection,’ said Gwendoline. They fell about laughing.
As they started going through the dresses again, Ace plucked up courage to ask about Gwendoline’s guardian.
The girl looked confused again and began to finger her locket.
‘Father... he went to Java,’ she said.
‘Java?’
‘Yes. He went away so suddenly... and my dear Mamma.
I don’t really remember her.’ The plaintive look that she gave suggested that perhaps Ace might know better than she did. Gwendoline added quietly, ‘Sometimes I wish I’d gone to Java too.’
The last remark was said with such resigned despair that Ace was momentarily lost for words. Parents were a subject that she always kept well to the back of her mind.
‘Look. These clothes...’ she said hurriedly. ‘I mean, no offence, but they’ve no style, have they? You wouldn’t catch me dead in them.’
Gwendoline buried her face in her hands and began to sob helplessly.
Me and my mouth, thought Ace. ‘I’m sorry, Gwendoline. I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t think,’ she said, putting an arm round the girl’s shoulders.
‘It’s not you,’ Gwendoline choked.
‘Well, who then?’
‘The Reverend Ernest Matthews told me that if I stay here in this house, my soul will be consigned to eternal damnation.’
‘Self-righteous toerag!’ exploded Ace. She pulled a grubby tissue out of her sleeve and passed it to Gwendoline.
‘He is... very disagreeable!’ concurred Gwendoline between sobs.
Ace hugged her for a second and thought about the best way to get revenge on Ernest.
‘Take no notice of him,’ she said. ‘He’s just a stuffed up bigot; he can’t hurt you. He had a go at me too.’
She looked at the wardrobe. It was no good. She would have to find something to wear or the Doctor would throw a wobbler. She began to root through the clothes again, seeing nothing she remotely liked, until she found just what she hadn’t been looking for right at the back. She knew it was right.
Outside the thunder, which had relented for a while, unleashed itself with fresh fury.
It took a couple of minutes to convince Gwendoline that she could wear what Ace had found and not much longer to change their clothes. Despite fits of giggles, Gwendoline was surprisingly proficient at pinning a few neat tucks in the material and the effect was better than Ace had expected. She had just struggled with an unco-operative bow tie and beaten it into submission when a frightened voice behind her whispered her name.
She turned to see Gwendoline staring at the long curtain covering the window. Something was moving about halfway up behind the drape. Gwendoline paused for a second, reckoning she knew the cause.
‘Redvers? Is that you?’ she said.
The curtain continued to move, not slowly, but