Doctor Who_ The Romans - Donald Cotton [3]
For moreover – yet another instance, here – on my returning to the villa which has become our bivouac, I discovered that, incredibly, he has allowed Barbara and Vicki to wander off to the local town unaccompanied – to do, he says, some shopping! How about that? Which local town? He fails to remember, so I cannot even follow them.
He has no sense of responsibility whatever; and once more I can only regret the impulse of misguided curiosity which first led me to become entangled in his eccentric, tortuous, and altogether incomprehensible affairs.
Or rather, which will one day lead me to become so entangled; for, since we have been travelling backwards in time, I suppose I haven’t met him yet. How very difficult this all is! Well, in that case, when I do meet him for the first time, I shall do my utmost not to recognise him, and see how he likes that!
Meanwhile, all I can usefully do it seems, is to continue to record events in this journal; in the hope that one day in some unimaginably distant future it will enable you, Headmaster, and the school governors, of course, to realise that your science master has been trapped by history, and your history mistress snared by science; instead of your continuing to believe, as you doubtless do, that Barbara and I have eloped together!
For it is my constant fear that unless I can somehow dispel this not unnatural suspicion, it could well lead to the forfeit of our potential pensions, and then where would we be? And where are we now, come to that? I wish I knew; but meanwhile remain,
Your always loyal employee,
Ian Chesterton.
DOCUMENT II
First Extract from the Doctor’s Diary I am becoming increasingly worried about young Chesterton – if that is his name. For some time now he has been morose and uncooperative, but today has added tantrums and sulks to these melancholy qualities, and I begin to fear that his disaffection, if unchecked, may well have a deleterious effect on morale. It is almost as if he were not enjoying the unique experience of exploring time and space which I, at some personal inconvenience and to the detriment of my own weightier affairs, have been able to provide for him.
Well, to be honest, it is in fact convenient for me to slip from circulation for a small sabbatical until, as they say, the heat is off: but nevertheless Chesterton’s constant nonsense about returning to the singularly uncivilised century, where I found him, is irritating, to say the least.
One would have thought that even the merest glimpse of the grandeur that is Rome – if I may coin a phrase? –
would have been sufficient to persuade him that life under the Emperors is infinitely preferable to the squalor that was England in 1963!
Enough of this. I am not to be diverted from my primary purposes by the witless whims of a secondary school master; and, in view of his behaviour, I have decided that on no account can he be allowed to accompany me to Rome itself – for that is where I intend to go as soon as I have completed my arrangements for the journey. Besides, his fashionable passion for so-called democracy might have been all very well during the Republic, but could hardly fail to raise eyebrows and attract attack in the Empire. Suppose, for instance, that he were to advocate its transformation into a Commonwealth?
No, it would never do – as it never does, in my experience.
Further, and after some reflection, I have also decreed that Barbara Wright shall remain here with him. She and Vicki have just returned from what I intended to have been a cautious reconnaissance foray to the neighbouring market town, and what do I find? Why, that instead of sounding the ground as instructed, they have attracted undesirable attention to themselves by what I can only describe as an unauthorised orgy of public spending, and purchased enough drapery, napery, and