Doctor Who_ The Adventures of Henrietta Street - Lawrence Miles [96]
But Who was most notable for his philosophical services. Contrary to the usual stereotype of the Chinese, he rejected the teachings of – as he put it – ‘the cow-dung merchant’ Confucius. Though he may have been a charlatan in terms of medicine, he used his curatives simply as props, part of a system of psychological well-being in which his clients would genuinely discover new (or at least forgotten) states of consciousness. It’s debatable, in today’s world, whether this was genuinely helpful or just a parlour-trick. But those who paid and paid well for Who’s methods maintained that during their ‘sessions’, they experienced… well, it wasn’t so much that time slowed down, they said. It was that they found themselves in a blissful, serene environment of no-time‐at-all.
It’s possible, but by no means certain, that marijuana was involved in this practice.
The Doctor believed, from all he’d heard, that Who could help him in his quest to recover the TARDIS. He and Sabbath returned to England on September 5. The next day the Doctor risked the streets of Soho to find Who’s emporium, a tall-but‐narrow black-brickwork shop tucked away in a sidestreet, with Rebecca at his side once again.
When they arrived at the shop they found Sabbath already there, his bulk taking up much of the space as he perused the shelves in the cramped, smelly, damp-aired spaces of the shop (legend had it that Who would spray the place with tiger’s urine every morning, though his reasons were foggy at best). From Rebecca’s later accounts to her friends, the Doctor was a little put out that Sabbath and Who had already struck up a professional relationship, with Sabbath inquiring about the properties of some of the concoctions and Who giving him technical descriptions in flawless English. This bothered the Doctor chiefly because when he and Rebecca entered, Who immediately went into character and asked them how their ever-so‐humble servant could possibly help them on this fine morning, perhaps by selling them a genuine vial of tears of the dragon, yes?
Sabbath soon explained that the Doctor wasn’t to be toyed with, however. The Doctor made quite a lot of notes in early-to‐mid September, perhaps intending to write a follow-up to his Ruminations at some stage, but (perhaps mercifully) giving up the idea only weeks later. His brief note on meeting Who:
I imagine the Dr. [Who] likes to be thought of as old, but his wrinkles look like the wrinkles of someone who’s spent too many weeks in a cellar with nothing but fumes for company… I sympathise. Don’t be put off by his robes, he wears a silk dressing-gown in his shop just to see if anyone will mention the fact. He knows a great deal… I asked him whether he was afraid that his meditations would incur the anger of the ‘bloody apes’, but he thinks otherwise. ‘The beast will attack those who understand the shape of the future,’ he told me. ‘But my meditations are the meditations of no-time‐at-all.’ They have little interest in clocks in China, so that might explain his lack of concern.
Rebecca never spoke at length about the discussions made in the shop, or the deal that the Doctor struck. All she seems to have gathered was that Who agreed to make preparations for a certain procedure, the suggestion being that the Chinese quack’s ‘no-time‐at-all’ methods could recover the TARDIS without the risk of summoning the beasts.
But Rebecca would have had other things on her mind. The vote of the women in the House being chief amongst them.
When the Doctor had returned to the House the previous day, he’d come alone. Scarlette hadn’t been there, and hadn’t been seen since her return to England. The women had been getting edgy, especially