Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [44]
‘Is the Doctor about?’ Jueves asked.
‘Oh, er, no. He went off somewhere. Driving out to visit someone at the front, or something.’
‘So you’re free to have lunch with me?’
Anji blew air out through her teeth. There it was. The question, or a variation of it anyway, that he always asked her. She was sure he wanted more than lunch. The smiles and the careless way his hand would fall over hers, or how he would guide her through a room with one hand at the small of her back. All of those she was sure she was reading correctly. He was pleasant company, of course, as charming as the Doctor but without the bouts of moodiness. She just wasn’t interested that way.
‘Well, I –’
‘Just lunch.’
‘I have to go up to Parc Güell to talk to a guard about something he saw,’ she fudged. His mouth was already opening, so she played the killer card, knowing his face would fall and he’d give up. ‘Eleana is coming with me.’
* * *
They’d borrowed McNair’s small Citroën. Technically, it was the ILP’s Citroën but as McNair was one of only three ILP workers in Barcelona, Alberto thought of it as McNair’s. Anji had conspired with McNair to get the Doctor to drive them up, privately admitting that she was worried about his compulsive behaviour. As the Doctor had driven them along the long dirt roads towards Huesca, the academic was pleased to see the other man’s shoulder’s relax a little even as his own tensed. Back to the front, back to the cold and noise.
The sky above the rocky hills was white, deceptively sunny, and he reluctantly admitted that getting away from the grey city felt good. It was what would be waiting for him that made him sit back and stare blindly at the scrubby landscape. He glanced at Eileen, Blair’s wife, who sat in the passenger seat next to the Doctor and was looking about with interest. Why did she want to come up here to see her husband? He preferred to think it was safer in the city but he knew that wasn’t true. At least out here, he felt he made a difference. One afternoon, he had huddled in a REFUGI with his little niece Isobel, unable to see or hear the attack that had them cowering in the wavering gloom and it made him long to be out on the hillsides again, where the enemy was easy, visible, defined. Until the hills started to unroll before him and he started to recognise contours and dread the future again.
They slowed as they reached a checkpoint. The militiaman walked over casually.
‘Buenos dias, comrade. This road is closed.’
‘We’ve permits to visit.’ The Doctor dug into the pocket of his dark red duster and produced the flimsy slips. The militiaman read them slowly and then handed them back.
‘Take the next left and then stop at the third farmhouse. They’ll send you on by foot.’
The track grew rougher, the car bouncing on its worn shocks, and the Doctor slowed to compensate. The boxes of supplies next to Alberto jolted about, knocking into him and forcing him to shift. He glanced at Eileen again. She was in her thirties, heavyset as so many English women were and dressed in sensible warm clothes and boots.
‘It’s just up here, I think,’ she said to the Doctor, pointing ahead.
‘You must be looking forward to seeing your husband again?’ Alberto ventured in English.
Eileen shrugged, turning in her seat to look at him. ‘It’s not the first time he’s headed off to do what he thinks is right, sometimes I don’t see him for weeks on end. When he gets like this, I wonder why I put up with it. Then I see him again and I remember. So yes, even thought I dread to think of how this war will have affected him, I’m looking forward to seeing him again.’
Another militiaman on the track was waving at them, directing the Citroën towards the yard of an abandoned farmhouse. The walls were shelled, the glass in the remaining frames shattered. The Doctor leaned out to address a heavyset man washing under the yard pump.
‘Hola, comrade. We’re looking for Bob Edwards’s men.’
‘And you