Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [15]
penitence. Some are still alive, kicking their submerged feet.
Her nightie was soaked in sweat and there was an awful, The great cold, marble-smooth expanse of the ocean is haunted look in her red-rimmed eyes.
revealed as dawn comes.
‘Betty?’
Alfred Beadle. Thinking of home. Thinking of his mum She turned and looked distractedly at her husband. Then and dad back in York, and Betty, his younger sister. Alfred she nodded, slowly and deliberately. ‘I’m all right.’
Beadle, not yet nineteen, feeling the freezing water numbing Lawrence eased her back on to the pillow.
his body. Staring out at a dozen of his comrades floating
‘Another dream?’
silently by...
She nodded again and reached for the little brown bottle Jackie Barrett, his big face turned towards the sky, quite of pills which stood on the cabinet.
dead. Eddie Turnbull. Always smiling. Always joking.
‘Your Alf again?’ asked Lawrence.
Slipping under the waves as his life eases away.
She popped a couple of pills into her mouth and managed Alfred Beadle. Thinking of home. Would Betty be making to swallow them.
tea right now? He could do with some tea. Steaming hot.
‘Yes. Alf again.’ Her voice was dry as paper.
Strong and orange like it was on Sundays in his mum’s best china.
44
45
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
Lawrence sighed and switched off the lamp. The light of corridor and tossed them into the washing basket by the morning was already insinuating itself into the room. He bathroom. Domestic things. Robin’s washing. Lawrence’s put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling.
washing. That’s what she needed to do. Comforting
‘You can’t go on blaming yourself you know, love.’
domestic things. Something mundane to keep her mind off How many times had he said that to her?
it.
Betty Yeadon turned on to her side. She swallowed and Betty entered the tap room of the pub. It stank of stale tried to get a little saliva into her mouth. She couldn’t close beer and cigarette smoke. She found a glass, helped herself her eyes. If she did, she would see him again. Or what the to a triple measure of whiskey and selected a seat by the sharks left of him. Bobbing in the water, his skin blanched window. It was the same seat in which Jack Prudhoe had and his eyes pecked out by gulls. The way the rescue ship supped his solitary pint the afternoon before.
had found him.
Betty glanced at the tatty Christmas decorations pinned
‘I might as well get up,’ she said, glancing at the clock. It across the bar and began to cry.
was nearly half past eight. 23 December.
Lawrence closed his eyes. He felt terrible. They’d already The Doctor was in voluble mood despite the driving rain been woken up once during the night by the siren from that and had discoursed on a variety of subjects, including bloody telescope on the moor. And now another of Betty’s Gothic architecture, his favourite angling flies and the nightmares. Something would have to give sooner or later.
importance of a clean collar, by the time he and Ace Betty slipped on her dressing gown and padded down the wandered into Crook Marsham.
hall. She could hear her stepson, Robin, snoring gently in his It was getting light at last and the hotchpotch of houses room. Then his alarm clock clattered into life and she heard and shops became distinct as they advanced up the main his frantic efforts to disable it. He moaned.
street.
Placing her hand on the door, Betty closed her eyes and
‘Bit bleak, isn’t it, Doctor?’
breathed deeply. It was as if she were drawing strength and The Doctor was gazing across the street at a rather comfort from Robin’s presence. She opened her eyes and dilapidated Saxon church.
saw Nobby Stiles grinning toothlessly between her fingers.
‘Bleak? No, no. It’s characterful, Ace, characterful. Just Robin’s giant poster of the World Cup winners stared at her, look at that church. Eighth century, I believe,