Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [17]
mounds of impacted snow or bruising their backsides on That was back at the turn of the century. Then he’d seen unexpected clumps of stubble, which protruded like yellow really bad winters. The one in ‘47... and ‘63, only five years bristles from under the drifts.
ago. That had caught him short. He’d never last another one The latter part of the year had always been his favourite.
of those if it came, especially with the ancient heating in the Better by far than the long, depressing summer evenings Dalesview Home.
which stretched out like flavourless chewing gum. Better A bad smell, like rotting fish, dragged him back from his than the dull, in-between months with no special character.
memories into reality. It was the same smell from the night No, the end of the year it was, with the deliciously long run-before. Trevithick sat up in bed and looked around. The in through the burnt turnip smells of Hallowe’en and dark sight of the shattered panes and billowing curtains brought smoke of November into the crisp, freezing, perfect-sunned back his experiences in a rush of remembrance. He days of early December.
swallowed hard and pressed the buzzer which would And then Christmas! One huge red and green memory, summon Jill.
packed to bursting with sensual delights. Pulled by his Jill Mason glared at the buzzing light by her bed. Edmund mother’s hand into palatial department stores like castles of again. Was he never content? She knew already that ice: twinkling lights, the hum of extortionately priced train-whichever side of the bed she chose to get out of would be sets, the exciting smell of unfamiliar perfume, all mingling the wrong side. She’d slept badly and was in a rather foul and bursting before his astonished little eyes. Going into mood. Trevithick’s remarks of the previous night had these stores in daylight and the fantastic shock of emerging touched a raw nerve. Yes, she would rather be with those into wintry darkness - the reversal of the disappointment he
‘bloody anarchists’ in Paris than rot in this dismal corner of felt coming out of a cinema into painful sunshine.
England. She’d received an exciting letter from an old Trevithick recalled sitting with his father and brother in a university friend only the other day, extensively detailing wonderfully dark front room that smelled of tangerines.
the French students’ pitched battles with the police on the Dark as pitch. The corners of the room softened into Rive Gauche. It had been a magical summer, her friend 50
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
assured her, getting stoned with her strange and interesting The Doctor and Ace had taken Robin’s advice and were new French lover, trying to ‘find herself’ by looking inward.
now warmly ensconced in Mrs Crithin’s delightful café, a Jill felt an almost painful sense of missing out on pleasantly cluttered room of red plastic upholstered seats something huge and important. She should’ve been there and tarnished cappuccino urns. There was a heavy, greasy too, challenging reactionaries like de Gaulle and Johnson smell of bacon fat coupled with the not unpleasant blue just as she had at university, not locked up in an old folk’s haze of Mrs Crithin’s eighth cigarette of the morning.
home. Sometimes she felt more of an invalid than her On the wall, Ace had found a calendar which, along with charges.
Mrs Crithin’s splendidly boisterous decorations, told her it Trevithick’s light buzzed. Jill sighed and threw on a was almost Christmas. Christmas 1968.
heavily creased dressing gown. She padded down the She felt a little thrill run through her. So here she was at corridor and threw open Trevithick’s door.
last. The real sixties. Not ‘63 where she’d seen little of
‘What is it, Edmund?’ she yawned. ‘Because if it can wait England except Coal Hill School