Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [13]
Possibly he doesn’t want to destroy the world so much as change it.’
The Brigadier stood up and offered his hand to the Doctor. ‘Change seems to be on everyone’s mind today,’ he noted. ‘I’ll leave the theorising to you. I’ve already sent two of my best men to California to find out what Sanger is up to, but I’d like your help.’
‘What can I do that your crack agents can’t?’ asked the Doctor.
‘With you,’ said the Brigadier, ‘it’s like throwing a lighted match into a box full of fireworks. Something’s bound to happen.’
The Doctor understood. ‘In times of change,’ he said, standing up to leave,
‘learners will inherit the earth, whilst the learned can find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. I’ll be in Los Angeles when you need me.’
Turlough returned with a bloodied swollen nose and a smile on his face. Tegan knew better than to ask too many questions. But, as they sat by the Thames on the terrace of a small tavern in Putney where the Doctor always seemed to take them whenever they were in London, a conversation of sorts began.
26
As usual, it didn’t last long because trying to read Turlough was like trying to read another language. But snippets of information did occasionally surface.
In Little Hodcombe during three weeks of exploring the Dorset countryside on their own. Tegan had learned from a chance remark that Turlough’s mother was dead. She had died when he was young and, he said, he hadn’t seen the rest of his family in a long time. So, she began to tell him about her own.
A sick and wan-looking sun was seemingly trying to decide whether to stay in view for another few minutes, or just crawl off behind the horizon and hope that no one would notice. ‘You’ve never mentioned your childhood much before,’ said Turlough cautiously. This idea of small talk was obviously as alien as Earth to him.
There was always something shifty and furtive about Turlough, even when he was trying to be supportive. It was possibly the omnipresent school uniform. Tegan had often meant to ask him why he constantly needed to be reminded of a place that he made no bones about hating so much. (It was the equivalent, she thought, of her touring the universe with her own loathed gymslip reminding her of an unhappy childhood. No. Thank. You.) But, as with many aspects of their lives (the Doctor’s celery, for one), there just never seemed to be the time to ask the obvious questions.
Thin-faced, with short, cropped, copper-coloured hair and a cruel glance when his mood supported it, Turlough was a complete enigma. He could have been the school bully or the school sneak. Which made the Doctor’s friendship with him all the more puzzling.
‘Not much to tell,’ Tegan said, taking a sip of her vodka and orange. The ice in the glass caught a loose filling and made her wince with an accompanying sharp intake of breath. Typical suburban small-town Aussie nightmare. You ever heard of Caloundra?’
‘No.’
‘Exactly. Population forty thousand. Not including the sheep. Seventy miles from Brisbane, but it might as well have been seventy million . . . ’
‘You felt trapped?’
Tegan was slightly suspicious of the question, but answered it anyway. ‘I didn’t know any different. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t a very bright kid.
I was always the one that would take the blame for others because I wasn’t smart enough to think up my own excuses. The girl who lived next door, Felicity Spoonsy, “my best friend”, got me more hidings than enough by making sure that I always had a fag in my mouth. I was a weird kid. When I was thirteen, I made a deal with God that I’d be good if he would kill my mad old cow of a grandmother. Six weeks later she died from a coronary thrombosis.
But I couldn’t get a boyfriend for love nor money.’
Turlough raised his eyebrows.
27
Tegan, meanwhile, was running her wet finger around the lip of her glass, making it squeal with rage. ‘In the metaphorical sense,’ she continued, ‘Flis had, like, all of her claws into the only boy I fancied, Gary Lovarik, so I resigned from