Doctor Who_ Nightshade - Mark Gatiss [3]
boys from the girls half the time.
Kissing by the falls at Haworth. And then parting. Jack Sipping his pint thoughtfully, Jack glanced into one of the waving to Win as she stood in that lovely red dress at the shadowed corners where a hefty wooden and cast-iron table station. Waving as the steam from the engine enveloped her.
stood, its surface littered with sodden beer mats. It was in After that had come the worst time of Jack’s life: foul and that corner sometime during the Great War (1916, wasn’t it?) wretched war. Up to his knees in freezing water as star-10
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DOCTOR WHO: NIGHTSHADE
shells blossomed overhead. Half his comrades slaughtered and bitter woman she now was. They’d never even left the in that filthy mud. And then came the day he saw his best village. Despite all those plans, all those promises...
mate’s head blown off and Johnny Hun put a bullet through Something caught Jack’s eye as it flashed by the smoked Jack’s chest, sending him home within the week. Home to glass of the pub window. He turned full around and his old Crook Marsham and his mum and dad. And home to Win, neck wrinkled in the none-too-clean collar of his shirt.
who had waited for him, despite the best efforts of the local A flash of red. There was something darting past the lads.
window, the smudged red of their clothes bobbing into The year after those university men came to the moor view like a lone poppy seen through a curtain of fine rain.
looking for old relics, Jack and Win finally tied the knot.
Jack moved closer and peered through the little area of
‘We’ll have a dozen kids,’ he told her. ‘And a house as big clear glass which spelt out the pub’s name in big Victorian as Castle Howard. A garden full of roses, and chrysanths.
letters. There was a girl out there, dressed in a light summer Aye, you like chrysanths, don’t you?’
frock. A red frock. Jack sensed its familiarity and something She’d turned her big eyes to him and smiled warmly. ‘Oh, turned in his stomach.
Jack. What am I going to do with you?’
And then there was a face at the window. Pressed against Jack turned back to his pint and rubbed the ribs which the the smoked glass. A pale, lovely face with a halo of thick bullet had smashed all those years ago. They still ached a bit hair. The girl giggled lightly and was gone.
in damp weather.
Jack stood up sharply, sending both table and beer He sighed heavily. Sometimes he just couldn’t believe that crashing to the floor. Lawrence looked at him oddly.
the Win he’d loved and the woman who was now such a
‘Jack?’
thorn in his side were one and the same. They’d had their The red blur began to diminish. Over towards the moor.
ups and downs, of course, like anybody else. One kiddie
‘Jack? Are you all right?’
still-born. The other, named after his father, run down by a Jack Prudhoe turned and his careworn face was full of bus. Jack could see himself there even now, standing wonder. He suddenly knew he didn’t have much time.
helplessly as the great, lumbering vehicle lurched around
‘It’s her, Lol,’ he breathed. ‘It’s her!’
the corner. Then young Jackie running into the road. Time
‘Who?’
slowing around them, moving like treacle. That awful noise Jack let out a high, hysterical laugh and stumbled out of as the bus’s brakes howled, and then Win, turning to him the door. Lawrence hastened after him.
with such a look in those grey eyes. Accusing him. Little
‘Jack! Your coat, man! You’ll catch your death! Jack!’
Jackie breathing his last on that rain-washed street and, The policeman and the old man are tired. Their faces, in perhaps, something inside Win quietly dying. The passing tight close-up on the television screen, blurred by the crude years became like a physical weight, pressing her down, film process. The policeman’s nerves are close to breaking breaking that rare spirit, transforming her into the stooped point. ‘What do you mean, “not of this world”?’ The older 12
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man puts a comforting