Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [21]
Harry and Godric lunched with the Doctor at his cottage.
He‟d spent some time at sea, he said, had travelled the world, although there was a lot more of it he wanted to see. But he‟d decided to come home for a while (had there been a pause before the word „home‟?), and rent a small place in the most beautiful part of England.
The cottage was small, it was true: a living room leading on to a kitchen, leading on to a scullery, which had a door to the tiny back garden. In the front hall were stairs leading upwards.
Harry, still in the grip of an idee fixe - not that he really believed it, no, he Just wanted to make sure - had a good look around for the TARDIS. But it was not to be seen downstairs. Obviously, because it wasn‟t there, because this wasn‟t the Doctor. But Harry knew he had to find excuses to see everywhere, just so his mind could rest. He washed his hands in the scullery, gazing out of the back window - but there was just tall grass, a row of terracotta pots, and a wood and wire hen coop. It wasn‟t until Harry was drying his hands on a threadbare towel that he realised something had jarred about the view, and he went back to check. The hen coop was muddy and weathered, but here and there, where the sun hit it, the wire-mesh gleamed. And if Harry was right
- although, of course, he could be wrong - he thought he‟d never seen such a mixture of practicality and impracticality as a chicken home made of silver.
Lunch was herb omelettes. The Doctor confessed that he was a bit worried what might happen to his hens - Mary and Betty - when he moved on again; he‟d have to hunt for a good home. They‟d had eggs back in the Dark Ages, of course, and herbs, but Godric still seemed a bit confused. Perhaps it was the stainless steel cutlery, or the tea in the „Present from Scarborough‟ mug.
The Doctor insisted on doing the washing up, and although Harry would normally have protested more, this time he accepted it. While the Doctor was up to his elbows in soapy water, Harry crept out of the living room door and up the stairs.
The first door along the hallway led to a bedroom, and nothing the size of a TARDIS could be hidden there. The walls were white, the sheets on the bed were white, and there was an old oak wardrobe and a washstand, nothing more.
Nevertheless, Harry peered under the bed - nothing, not even fluff - and quietly swung open the wardrobe door. It contained two white wing-collar shirts and a hanger with three cravats in various shades tied on.
The other door, further down the hall, led to something altogether more interesting. It appeared to be a makeshift laboratory. And Harry stopped, stunned.
There, in the middle of the room, was a tall blue box.
So this was the Doctor. A young one, one who hadn‟t met Harry yet. Or a new Doctor, one who for reasons of his own had not acknowledged his one-time travelling companion.
Or a Doctor from so far in the future that he no longer remembered Harry at all.
Harry walked into the room as if in a trance. He put out a hand to the blue box. Perhaps this Doctor could take him home...
But this box was different. There was no faint hum coming from it, no slight buzz to the touch that told of a working, almost living machine. And this box was plain, it had no panels, no slanted roof, no light on top, no „POLICE PUBLIC
CALL BOX‟ or „Police Telephone Free For Use of Public Advice and Assistance Obtainable Immediately Officer and Cars Respond to Urgent Calls Pull to Open‟. It had no key hole, no door handles, no doors. It was just a box. Not even a box which might contain the TARDIS itself, just a box.
And there was nowhere else in the room where the TARDIS
could be hidden. There was a workbench - although Harry could make nothing of the device that was being constructed, or perhaps it was an experiment that was being conducted -
a jumble of cables, some of which eventually connected to the blue box. There were shelves stuffed full of electrical equipment and mechanical parts, and a small wooden desk in the corner, of the sort found in schools. Harry opened