Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [82]
Anji seems to have been implying that Scarlette was initiating Juliette in mysteries of her own, and what’s remarkable is that the Doctor doesn’t seem to have been bothered by the thought. It’s possible that his determination on finding the TARDIS was becoming an obsession.
True to what he’d said at the Royal Academy, by this time the Doctor had taken up painting. In the last days of August he sat in his cellar for hours on end, brush in his hand, brow furrowed, staring intently at a wet canvas. Business had dropped away so badly that the House was almost like a haunted mansion, with the Doctor as its subterranean mad-artist‐in-residence, and on some nights the sound of his brush was the only sound to be heard. Only once did Scarlette, along with Fitz, interrupt the Doctor while he was working. They were surprised to find him painting rather than toying with scientific equipment, but by then most of his experiments had been moved to the Jonah.
It was Fitz who was first to risk looking over the Doctor’s shoulder at his work. It was a portrait, of ‘an old man serious in appearance with a great red beard’, according to Scarlette’s journal. When Fitz asked who it was supposed to be, the Doctor replied: ‘My grandfather.’
‘Really?’ responded Fitz, with some surprise.
‘No,’ announced the Doctor.
It transpired that the Doctor was anxious about his family, anxious that none of them would be able to attend his wedding on the grounds that ‘none of them had ever existed’. He’d therefore decided to paint himself a family instead. Fitz asked no more questions after that, for fear of awakening the past.
‘A family of elementals,’ Scarlette notes in her journals. ‘Such a thing hardly bears consideration.’
So it was that the Doctor occupied himself. In retrospect, though, Anji’s warning had been right. Juliette was indeed picking up new ideas from somewhere, and they were only adding to the intensity of her dreams.
The best indicator of this is a letter, one of the very few documents (the dream diary being another) in Juliette’s own hand. The letter was written to an individual whom Juliette had come to think of as her closest friend, and although it doesn’t directly relate to any of the dream-visions it’s clear from the text that certain images were preying on her mind. If the language of the letter seems mature for one of Juliette’s age, it has to be remembered that this wasn’t unusual for a young woman of the era, especially not for an acolyte of Scarlette.
I told you that _____ [the same symbol as in the dream about the grave] is with me all the time. He is and I do not think I can escape him or would want to. More and more I sense that the things around me in the House are part of the very same process that gave me life and blood and body… I am placed [i.e. connected?] on this Earth now and I sense that he also wishes to be placed here. He knows it is his true place and perhaps by coming together we will both come to understand what parts we will play in the fate of this world.
I love him. It seems strange to me to have to write down such a thing as it is as natural as being alive on the Earth. I do not love him in the way that _____ [another symbol, probably meaning Rebecca] has told me a romance should be conducted. I love him as you would love the experience of waking up and taking a breath if you had not forgotten how important it is by doing it so much. I have tried to speak to _____ [another symbol, possibly Fitz] and he is very sweet but cannot help me in this. I have heard that priests also love God and that soldiers love their country… it must feel very much the same.
There is no greater love than this. Yet I know that I have been wielded [manipulated?] into this position and despite all I have been told I am in love with the consequences as much as with the act itself.
The ‘friend’ to whom this letter was addressed was none other than Emily, the same young, enthusiastic sixteen-year‐old who’d first suggested that Juliette should keep a dream diary.
But all this took place