Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [27]
There’s a sense here that the babewyn attacks were becoming more random, less predictable. And not all of them involved prostitutes. In the months that followed, there’d be similar ‘savage animal’ stories as far afield as Ostend and the French West Indies. Like cautionary tales, there was to be an underlying theme in these folk stories that the victims had been attacked because they’d done certain things which were best left alone. It’s notable, too, that the Coffee-Shop incident occurred in a dirty alley. In the old days, no real gentleman would have considered such a tryst outside a House, and it was the lure of these female-run Houses that had made many women in London rich enough to own vast tracts of Covent Garden… far more than a supposedly respectable woman would have been allowed to achieve. A Puritan might have argued that with the arrival of the apes, the professional women of London were paying the price for their success.
Evidently the Doctor felt that he was capable of holding off the beasts, at least in small numbers. Scarlette calls his method for dispelling the apes a ‘banishing’, and it’s possible he may have taught the technique to Rebecca soon after his arrival on Henrietta Street. It’s also possible that he was attempting to teach Juliette the same thing, which might be why, despite his great regard for her, he brought her to attend the Coffee-Shop manifestation. In Lisa-Beth’s notes, there’s the implication that the ring he gave to Juliette was in some way a weapon, or at least a protection against the monsters, despite the fact that by April Lisa-Beth knew full well what the real significance of the item was.
Emily states that Juliette ‘was ask’d once more by Doctor _____ after that whether she wished to assist him further’ (notice the emphasis on assist, implying something much greater), and Juliette did her duty, as usual, by telling him that she did. Perhaps significantly, Emily also records that ‘my friend came away from the terrible thing with her dress splashed by its beastly blood, from jaws where it had bit its kine to be first into the lite’. Again, the image of blood and blooding, the hint that from this point on Juliette was marked and that there was no way back for her now.
Perhaps the Doctor wished there had been. There was certainly a lot on his mind. By April he’d been at the House for six weeks, but he understood that it wasn’t his real place of power. Scarlette’s journal relates that one evening, she found him staring into the looking glass on her dressing-table. She watched him for a while, before realising that his attention seemed fixed on his beard and moustache. From time to time he’d raise his hand to stroke it, as if he couldn’t quite believe the reflection was his own. It’s worth repeating their conversation in full.
SCARLETTE: Do you feel well?
DOCTOR [after some hesitation]: It’s all right. I think I’ve just worked something out.
SCARLETTE: Oh yes?
DOCTOR: I think I know how to change myself into pure energy. Which means, I suppose, that I could move as fast as light.
SCARLETTE [playfully]: Impressive. How would you do it?
DOCTOR: Well, it wouldn’t be easy. It’d need a lot of concentration. I’d have to slowly self-adapt my biology. The tricky part’s forcing my body to convert the cell formations without disturbing the overall balance. It’d take a lot of practice and meditation.
SCARLETTE: Oh? How much meditation?
DOCTOR: I’d say it should take me about… ohhh… three thousand years. Less, if I could find a way of stopping myself getting distracted. SCARLETTE: Three thousand years. To become a creature of pure light.
DOCTOR: I’m trying to decide whether it’d be worth the bother.
Odd as it might sound, there is a connection between this conversation and the Doctor’s beard. It’s hard to escape the