The Doctor materialised the TARDIS in the
dark drawing room of an ordinary three-up-three-down house on the outskirts
of Bolton. He stepped out very quietly and looked at the Christmas tree
by the modern gas fire. There were gaily wrapped presents under the tree.
A scent of unusual spices and the skins of citrus fruits hung in the air.
A small dog lay on the fireside rug. It looked up at the sound of the
TARDIS and gave a soft growl of warning to The Doctor as he stepped out.
“There’s a good boy,” The Doctor whispered, scratching
the dog’s ears gently. “Good old dog protecting your house.
But I’m not here to steal anything. I’m just delivering a
Christmas present for your master.”
The dog wagged its tail as if he understood The Doctor’s words.
Perhaps he did in his own way.
The Doctor put the wrapped package he brought under the tree and petted
the dog again before he stepped back into the TARDIS, his job done at
this address.
In the master bedroom the man of the house heard the sound
of the de-materialisation in his sleep. He sighed and dreamt of old times
when that sound was almost a part of his daily life, when he was a part
of U.N.I.T. and the sound of a police box disappearing was the least extraordinary
thing that might happen to him.
The immaculate drawing room of a country villa in Berkshire set within
a sizeable and well kept garden was The Doctor’s next stop. Again,
a dog warned him against burglary before accepting that he was only there
to deliver a gift on Christmas Eve.
The master of that house didn’t hear the TARDIS dematerialise. He
would never admit it to anyone, but he was starting to go a little deaf
in one ear.
His wife stirred in her sleep but fell back into a deeper sleep again.
A flat in the exclusive Docklands area of London was the
next destination. The Christmas tree was a designer one with satin ribbons
and hand-crafted baubles. The presents under it were all wrapped in gold
and silver paper. The package The Doctor left was in green and red holly
patterned paper. It stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb from the
rest.
The Doctor left the TARDIS at the end of a quiet and surprisingly
leafy street in busy Ealing and walked to the old house that stood in
a large patch of garden. The other houses in the street were modern semi-detached
houses that all looked alike, but one of The Doctor’s dearest friends
lived in the one house that had survived the 1970s concept of town planning.
Another London house, this one in the East End, the streets The Doctor
used to know so well when he and his granddaughter had lived a settled
life there for a little while. This house used to be regarded as a slum,
one of those two bedroom terraces with a front door opening onto the pavement
and a tiny yard at the back with the outside toilet near the wall.
The street had been scheduled for demolition, but then somebody had the
idea of refurbishing the houses instead, building extensions that made
the yard even smaller but provided indoor bathrooms, installing central
heating and double glazing but otherwise preserving the character of the
late Victorian terraces.
Two old friends of The Doctor lived here. They had never had any children
of their own so the small house near their place of work suited them fine
even though they could afford something bigger in a ‘better’
neighbourhood.
He left their gifts under their tree and departed as quietly
as he had come – which is to say as quietly as the TARDIS allowed.
The sound once familiar to the occupants of the bigger
front bedroom woke them from their sleep. They looked at each other and
wondered at first if they had dreamt it.
“If we did, we both dreamt the same thing,”
said Barbara Chesterton, who was still known as Miss Wright at Coal Hill
school where she had always worked apart from those two very strange,
exciting and often perilous years they had spent in The Doctor’s
company.
“Could it be….” Ian, her husband, replied. “After
all this time?”
He got up from the bed and pulled on a dressing gown. Barbara was already
looking for her slippers. They both crept down the stairs to the room
most people in the East End called the front parlour but they always knew
as the drawing room.
They were just in time to see the blue police box vanish into thin air.
They looked at the place where it had been, then looked at each other.
“Why didn’t he stay to say hello?” Barbara asked. “I
would have liked to see him again after all this time.”
“So would I,” Ian answered. “But you know what the old
boy is like. He never does what you would expect.”
He glanced at the Christmas tree and immediately saw the two presents
there that they hadn’t bought for each other. He picked them both
up and passed the smaller one to Barbara.
“He dropped in like Father Christmas, with presents!” Barbara
was amazed. “I suppose that explains why he didn’t stay. He
wanted to vanish into the night in the same style.”
“The Doctor and Father Christmas,” Ian noted. “Two men
everyone on planet Earth know they can trust.”
“Yes,” Barbara laughed. “I wonder what he brought. Do
you think it’s all right to open his presents? It’s only five
o’clock….”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I know,”
Ian admitted. He sat in an armchair and pulled at the wrapping paper that
had been very neatly wrapped up. His present was squashy, like folded
fabric of some sort. In the light of a standard lamp by the chair he pulled
out a piece of brightly coloured silk-satin that proved to be a Chinese
style shirt with a rounded collar and delicate embroidery all down the
front.
He recognised it at once. He had worn that very shirt when they travelled
with Marco Polo to the court of Kubla Khan.
“This silk is over a thousand years old,” he said. “Can
you imagine what it would be worth in these days in such marvellous condition.”
“It would be hard to prove it IS that old,” Barbara pointed
out. “I don’t expect The Doctor has had it for quite that
long. But now you know what to wear for the mayor’s costume ball
on New Year’s Eve. You’ll be going as a Chinese nobleman.”
“Yes.” Ian chuckled and watched as Barbara opened her present.
There was a small lacquered wooden box inside the paper, and when she
opened that she gasped in surprise. There was the beautiful gold bracelet
of Yetaxa, the god worshipped by the Aztec tribe they had met on that
fateful and not entirely successful trip into Earth history. Barbara had
often thought about that time. Her efforts to change the way the tribe
felt about Human sacrifice had failed in the very worst way, and they
had only just escaped with their lives, but she remembered fondly the
good, honest people she had met there and their too easily misunderstood
and ultimately doomed culture.
“You’ll be going as an Aztec goddess, I suppose?” Ian
said to her.
“Well, maybe just an Aztec lady, like Cameca, the gardener who The
Doctor almost married.”
Remembering their friend’s dilemma about his accidental betrothal
made them both laugh. Then Barbara went to the kitchen to make coffee
and something approximating breakfast. They obviously weren’t going
to sleep again, now. They would probably sit talking over those fantastic
old times until dawn on this Christmas Day.
“Wherever he is, wherever he has been, wherever he’s going
next,” Ian said, holding his coffee cup as if making a toast. “Good
luck and Godspeed to him.”
“I agree,” Barbara said, holding her cup to
his. “God bless The Doctor, and a Happy Christmas to him.”
Mike Yates woke just after eight o’clock. That was late for him.
He was used to getting up at six and jogging before breakfast. His excuse
for letting his healthy regime go this morning would not have pleased
the old Brigadier. He and Tom had been out last night drinking heavily
along with a group of friends. They had staggered home at gone two o’clock
on Christmas morning and found their way to bed with a slightly slurred
‘Happy Christmas’ to each other.
His hangover wasn’t as bad as he deserved. A quick shower woke him
up more fully and then he made coffee in the kitchen. Tom got up and followed
his example while he was slicing a couple of grapefruits to call breakfast.
They ate at the breakfast bar before taking a second cup of coffee to
the living room where they exchanged the presents they had bought each
other.
“That’s funny,” Tom said when they had ripped apart
the wrapping paper each had carefully folded and sellotaped for the other.
“There’s another box here, addressed to you.”
Mike grinned as he accepted the gift.
“A secret present from you?” he asked. “You shouldn’t
have.”
“I didn’t,” Tom insisted. “You must have a secret
admirer. It must be the Milk Tray man. I’m sure that wasn’t
there last night, and neither of us believe in Father Christmas.”
Mike was sure Tom was kidding, at least until he opened the wrapping and
found the note inside.
“It’s… from The Doctor!” he exclaimed.
“Doctor who?” Tom responded.
“THE Doctor,” Mike repeated. He smiled at his lover and sipped
his coffee as he explained in the most plausible terms he could think
of what and who The Doctor was and what part he had played in Mike’s
life.
“Never mind all the stuff about aliens,” he said at the end
of the tale. “Or exactly where The Doctor himself came from. The
most Human thing he ever did was speak up for me when I’d been a
complete blockhead, falling for a great big fat lie and committing treason
into the bargain. Because of him pleading with The Brigadier, I avoided
a court-martial and was allowed to resign from the army on medical grounds.
I’ll never forget him doing that for me.”
“Treason!” Tom laughed, but Mike’s expression was serious.
“I’ll tell you all about it another day. It’s Christmas.
Not the time for that sort of story. He reached for the gift from The
Doctor. Inside the wrapping was a small box of the sort jewellers put
rings into. Tom raised his eyebrows in a teasing way as Mike opened the
box to see a man’s gold ring with a large blue stone set into it.
“Wow,” Tom said. “Are you sure this Doctor isn’t
an old flame?”
“No, he isn’t,” Mike assured him. “This is…
Wow. If that stone is real, it must be worth a bit. But there’s
no motive except friendship, believe me.”
“Funnily enough, I do,” Tom said. He took the ring and held
Mike’s hand. He slid the ring onto his middle finger. “With
this ring, I thee wed,” he added with a giggle.
“Silly,” Mike responded. Then he gave a soft gasp. They both
saw the stone glow momentarily. Mike looked at Tom and for a long time
he didn’t say anything. When he did, he was quite serious and solemn
about it.
“Tom, did I ever tell you I trust you completely and utterly?”
he said.
“No,” Tom answered. “Because trust is something that
doesn’t come easy to you. Love, yes. Loyalty, devotion, but you
always have trouble with trust – as if you expect everyone to let
you down in some way – even me.”
“Yeah,” Mike agreed. “You’ve summed me up good
and proper. I think it was that time back with U.N.I.T., and immediately
afterwards. I put my trust in too many of the wrong people – first
General Finch and his cronies with the Operation Golden Age project, then
Lupton and his meditation centre. I started to doubt my own ability to
trust anyone at face value. I suppose it was a lingering effect of my
mental breakdown. I know I wrecked a couple of relationships because of
it. But I don’t think I need to worry any more. The moment I put
that ring on, I felt it come over me like a warm, comforting blanket….”
“Felt what?”
“Trust…. The one thing that was missing for me. I knew I could
trust you implicitly. I knew I never need doubt you, never be afraid of
being let down by you.”
“Well, all of that goes without saying,” Tom answered him.
“I’m just glad you’ve finally cottoned on. But…
you mean the ring did that? It ‘told’ you to trust me?”
“It came from The Doctor. It probably originated on some psychic
planet where people use rings to detect other people’s feelings
or something.”
“So if you wear that ring you’ll know if somebody is lying
to you?”
“I’m not sure about lying,” Mike admitted. “You’ve
told a few lies… like when you said you’d forgotten my birthday
and you’d set up a surprise party at the club. But trust is another
matter. It can transcend the black and white of truth and lies.”
“That’s deep philosophy for Christmas morning,” Tom
said. “But I think I understand. And I think we owe your Doctor
a big thank you for ‘mending’ you.”
“Yes,” Mike agreed. “Yes, we do. Thanks,
Doctor… Merry Christmas to you, old friend.”
John Benton woke early on Christmas morning, still thinking about his
younger days at U.N.I.T. He didn’t regret leaving the army or the
fact that his civilian career lacked excitement, but in the wake of those
dreams he felt a strange kind of nostalgia.
He quietly got out of bed without disturbing his wife and slipped downstairs.
The presents for the kids were all piled up under the tree – all
except for the new bike his eldest wanted. That was leaning against the
radiator under the window.
There was something under the tree that he didn’t recognise. He
stroked the dog who came to lay at his feet and grabbed a tangerine from
the fruit bowl, peeling it one handed while examining the odd present
out. It was labelled with his name. Perhaps it was a surprise from his
wife.
Or not. He had met her after he left the army. She had NEVER addressed
him as Sergeant Benton.
He put the tangerine down and used both hands to unwrap the strange gift.
It was a book. The style of it suggested it was an old book, but it looked
and felt relatively new. The cover was in new condition and the pages
still crisp and white and uncut not yellow and thin and dog eared with
age and use.
The title of the book was printed in embossed lettering on the front and
spine of the plain blue hardcover.
The war memoirs of Lieutenant John Benton, Queens Lancashire Regiment,
1914-1918.
Lieutenant John Benton – his grandfather after whom he had been
named, and who had been his inspiration as a boy to play soldiers, and
as a young man to join up and be one for real. There had been a sepia
photograph of him as a young officer on the drawing room wall of the house
Benton grew up in. It was dated October 1917. The young lieutenant looked
handsome in his uniform and proud to be wearing it. The fact that he was
immersed in the bloodiest war British soldiers had yet fought didn’t
seem to have dimmed his enthusiasm.
Benton remembered his grandfather as an old man who no longer fitted the
uniform telling his grandson stories about the war. He had never tried
to sugar coat the horror of the trenches, even for such young ears. Benton
had known from an early age that war was no glorious game. But the spirit
of duty and honour was instilled in him and he knew he would never think
of any other career but the same one his grandfather and namesake chose.
As a young soldier himself he had often thought about his grandfather’s
stories. He had wished he had written them down when they were fresh in
his mind. By the time he was in uniform himself it was too late. The old
soldier had died before his grandson had followed in his footsteps.
But here were those stories compiled into this book. There was the familiar
picture from the drawing room wall as the frontispiece and photographs
of Lieutenant Benton and the men of his regiment on glossy pages inserted
between the text.
He turned to the imprint page, wondering where and when such a book had
been published. He discovered from the small print that this was the very
first of a numbered run of five hundred copies of the memoirs that were
printed in 1921 by a publishing house in Manchester.
Not exactly a best seller, then, Benton noted. More than likely his grandfather
had spent his savings on getting the memoirs printed then trawled around
the bookshops of Bolton trying to get them to sell copies to make his
money back.
Perhaps he did, because Benton had never known about the publication before.
No copy had been on the bookshelf in the Benton family drawing room. Nobody
had ever talked about it.
Whatever happened to the other four hundred and ninety-nine, this copy
now belonged to Lieutenant Benton’s son, and he shed a silent tear
in the quiet of the early morning because of that fact.
“Thanks, Doctor,” he whispered as he guessed just how a book
that was over sixty years old could be in such pristine condition. He
remembered now the strange noise he thought he had only dreamt about in
the night – the reason why he had woken with such memories fresh
in his head. The TARDIS had been here. The Doctor had brought this wonderful
and unique present to him.
“You should have woken me up, boy,” he whispered
to the dog, who looked up once then went back to sleep at his feet. “Never
mind, you weren’t to know.” He smiled warmly and looked at
the only space in the room where the TARDIS could possibly have fitted
– just behind the door. “Happy Christmas, Doctor, wherever
you are.”
Sarah Jane Smith woke early despite being late to bed on Christmas Eve.
She hadn’t been partying or anything. She had spent the time hunting
down an invasion of Muntlefinkles. Muntlefinkles were a variety of space
imps that liked nothing but to make mischief. The particular mischief
they had decided to make this night suggested that they had read the Dr
Seuss story The Grinch that Stole Christmas. They had been going around
stealing Christmas presents from houses all around the Borough of Ealing.
That was their fatal mistake. They chose to make mischief in the town
where Sarah Jane lived, and she had K9 the robot dog with a massive database
of information and a line in sassiness learnt from The Doctor, Mr Smith
the interactive computer with connections to just about every other computerised
system in the known galaxy, and her sonic lipstick. She was well prepared
for them. A sting operation involving K9 wrapped up as a Christmas present
under the big tree outside the church on Ealing Broadway and a portable
stasis field rounded up the mischief-makers. She deposited them back in
their ship and K9 programmed the navigation drive to deliver them directly
to a space penitentiary on the outer moon of the planet Penitus in the
Hollos V system.
It was a successful operation, over in time for her to pop into the church
and hear the midnight carols before going home and settling into bed.
Now she woke up on Christmas Day and felt a little bit empty. She had
prepared a Christmas dinner for herself, and she planned to spend the
quiet afternoon reading some of her favourite books.
But for a little while as she lay in her bed in the cold light of a grey
morning that promised snow, later, she felt the emptiness of the big house
with so many empty bedrooms. She usually enjoyed the peace of her own
company, but she had heard too many people say that Christmas was about
the children, Christmas was about the family.
She had no children. She had no family. Aunt Lavinia was her last blood
relative and she had passed away at a ripe old age. Lavinia’s ward,
Brendan, who was only loosely related to Sarah Jane through her aunt was
away in America.
Harry was gone. His untimely death had hit her hard and she missed him
more than she would admit to anyone.
All her old friends from U.N.I.T. were still around, but she didn’t
see them very often. They all had their own lives. The Brigadier was allegedly
retired and living in the country with Doris, though he was known to don
his uniform every so often and go off to do something for world peace.
Captain Yates lived in the docklands with his boyfriend. Sarah Jane still
hadn’t made up her mind how she felt about that, considering how
often he had tried to date her when they were all much younger.
Sergeant Benton was a married man with three children, working as a used
car salesman in his native Bolton. Christmas morning would be noisy and
hectic for him. Christmas was for the children, after all.
So what was Christmas supposed to be for somebody like her, a career woman
who had let relationships pass her by. Mike, Harry, even Benton had shown
an interest once, but she was too busy being a journalist, and now it
was too late for all of that.
The Doctor… well, goodness knows where he was. She thought of him
every day. She was sure he never gave her a passing thought. He had the
universe at his fingertips and plenty of people to come along for the
ride. Why would he ever think about her?
No, she told herself, deliberately making herself sit up. No, even if
everyone else forgot her, even The Brigadier himself, The Doctor would
never do that. She was getting herself into a funk. Christmas blues, that’s
what they called it. They had those phone numbers on the television for
people who felt it so deeply they couldn’t bear it any longer.
But she was stronger than that. She didn’t get the blues. She LIKED
her own company. There was no need to feel this way. She had planned a
nice, quiet, peaceful Christmas and that was what she was going to enjoy.
She got out of bed, pulling a dressing gown around herself. She went downstairs
to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee before going into the drawing
room to drink it. K9 was upstairs in the attic, of course. She would have
to bring him down later. For now she enjoyed the quiet of the morning
on her own.
There were presents around the tree. They were from old friends –
mostly those U.N.I.T. people she had been remembering, and fellow journalists
and magazine editors that she knew.
There was something else there – a wrapped gift that she hadn’t
placed there. She looked at it suspiciously, daring it to move, vibrate,
sprout hair, feathers, tentacles or claws. Nothing of that sort would
surprise her.
She looked closer and saw the label. In neat copperplate handwriting that
she once knew very well it read ‘To My Sarah Jane from The Doctor.’
Two thoughts passed through her mind in the same instance. The first was
surprise that The Doctor had given her a Christmas present.
The second was that The Doctor had been here, in the night, and hadn’t
even stayed to say hello.
That was a sad thought. He knew where she lived, but he didn’t want
to see her.
She took the gift on her lap and unwrapped it carefully. Inside the colourful
wrapping paper was a plain cardboard box. Inside that was a very beautifully
polished wooden box with an inlaid mother of pearl cameo design depicting
a double-headed woman.
She opened the box carefully, guessing that it contained something precious.
She looked at the object nestling in velvet within. It looked like a pearl,
except it was the size of an ostrich egg. She picked it up and felt the
cold solidness of it, admired the sheen that caught the light and split
it into a delicate spectrum of colours.
There was a note inside the box, beneath the ‘pearl’. Again
it was The Doctor’s handwriting. She read it carefully.
“If the past or the future troubles you, hold the Pearl of Agani
in both hands. But use it sparingly. Dwelling on the past is fruitless
and knowing too much about the future is self-defeating, but when you
feel the need, use its power to comfort your mind.”
“Different,” she murmured to herself. She didn’t waste
any time disbelieving the power of the alien artefact. She had a collection
of strange objects in her attic that did all sorts of mysterious things.
Could this really do what it promised, though? If so, how did it work?
There were no instructions, and certainly no switches. How did it know
if she was worried about the past or the future.
She wasn’t worried about either, really. The way she had been feeling
this morning wasn’t about the past and it wasn’t about the
future.
Even so, she held the Pearl of Agani in her hands and felt it warming
to her touch. She still wondered how it was going to work.
Then she heard voices, not coming from the Pearl exactly, but perhaps
augmented by it in some way, like a relay station for radio.
The voices were from the future. Without needing to be told she understood
that. And it was not just from the future generally, but her own future.
A future where two children called her mum, where Christmas Day was full
of noise and chaos and unconditional love.
She didn’t know HOW any of that was going to happen, but she felt
quite sure that it was the truth. Her future included that sort of Christmas
that everyone talked about – the one that was all about the children,
all about family.
And if that was going to happen in her future, then the quiet, peaceful,
relaxing Christmas Day she had planned was something she ought to savour
and enjoy while she had the opportunity.
She sighed happily and looked out of the window as one of her neighbours’
children passed the gate on a new bicycle, the first to be up and about,
whooping with joy at his coveted Christmas present.
Then she went upstairs to fetch K9 from the attic for company, determined
that she needed nobody else to enjoy this Christmas Day.
When her dinner was cooking and she sat and drank a small sherry she held
it up in toast to one absent friend.
“Happy Christmas Doctor, wherever you are.”
Doris Lethbridge-Stewart woke on Christmas morning to find herself alone
in the bed. That was not unusual. Alistair had ‘retired’ five
years ago, but he still had a military body clock. He was always up early.
He would walk the dog and then bring her a cup of coffee that had been
brewing while he was out. It was there on the bedside table along with
a shortbread biscuit from the Christmas tin.
She sat up and enjoyed her Christmas morning coffee before dressing and
going downstairs. She expected to find Alistair in his study, working,
despite the day, on those memoirs of his.
Instead he was in the drawing room, with newspapers over the occasional
table, hard at work with a tube of glue and some kind of model kit.
“Where did that come from?” Doris asked. “I didn’t
think anybody had given you a model kit for a present.”
Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart looked up with a wry smile.
“It came from The Doctor,” he answered.
“The Doctor?” For a moment Doris didn’t realise who
he meant. Her mind turned to the GP that both of them occasionally attended.
But he was not exactly a friend and she wouldn’t have expected Christmas
presents from him.
Then she realised he meant that OTHER Doctor, the one who had made Alistair’s
military life so much more colourful than it would have been if it had
been purely about soldiering.
“But how….”
“I think he must have come in the night and left it,” Alistair
replied in explanation. “The TARDIS can turn up anywhere, after
all. Fancy that. He came to our drawing room, just to leave me a Christmas
present.”
“A model kit?” Doris queried. “You’ve never done
anything like that in your entire life.”
“My adult life,” he answered. “But when I was a boy,
I loved them. I would make planes, ships, cars. What I wanted most was
a one in eighteen scale model of a Silver Arrow, the car that won the
British Grand Prix of 1938.”
“Grand Prix?” Doris was puzzled. “You’ve never
been interested in motor racing, either. Why would you….”
“When I was a boy… cars were my passion. I loved watching
them. I loved the smell of the petrol… unleaded, of course. I actually
dreamt of being a motor car racing driver.”
“Never!” Doris laughed. It seemed so unlike the man she knew.
“It’s true,” he assured her. “But my father disapproved.
So did my grandfather… the General.”
They both glanced automatically at the portrait that hung on the drawing
room wall. It was a Lethbridge-Stewart family heirloom, a painting of
an officer of a Highland regiment in his dress kilt. He had a stern, brooding
expression and Doris always felt that he was standing in judgement over
everything Alistair did. He must, surely, have approved of his military
career, his high rank and his courageous service to his country, and to
the whole Human race, but, of course, the expression on the painting never
changed. It always looked stern, as if Alistair’s forebear always
expected more of him.
“Does that mean that you didn’t WANT to be a soldier?”
Doris asked. The thought had never occurred to her before. Alistair was
a soldier. The military ran right through his soul like the lettering
in a stick of seaside rock. He looked, walked, sat, like a soldier. She
never imagined him any other way.
“No, not at the time. I really did want to be a racing driver, but
my father thought that was a completely frivolous career, only for playboy
sons of titled men who had nothing else to do before they inherited their
Dukedoms. My grandfather agreed. He could countenance no other career
for a first born son of his line but the Army.”
The Brigadier spoke with a strangely bitter tone then. Doris was a little
shocked. She had never heard him speak of the Army that way before. She
looked at him curiously as he put together part of the chassis of what
was going to be a very large model, indeed.
“Christmas that year… the year that this car won the Grand
Prix… I hoped for the model kit. I wanted that more than anything.
But on Christmas morning… the biggest parcel under the tree was
from my grandfather. It was a set of lead soldiers in the uniforms of
the Light Brigade. I think they might have been made at the time of the
Crimea. They were probably very valuable. But I was so disappointed I
could have thrown them on the fire and melted them down to a lump of grey
metal.”
“Oh dear.”
Alistair shook his head.
Little by little I started to play with them… I started to imagine
being a soldier instead of a driver. My ambitions were shaped by those
lead soldiers. When I was a man… I joined the army before I even
had a driving licence. I took my test through the army driving school,
and drove Land Rovers and Bedfords until I reached a high enough rank
that other men did the driving for me. By then, I had almost forgotten
that I ever wanted to be anything else.”
“Almost?”
“I HAD forgotten. Until this morning. This… reminded me…
of what might have been.”
“Then… was that really the best thing for you?” Doris
asked. “Wasn’t it painful bringing back memories of such disappointments?”
“If this WAS just an ordinary model kit, perhaps it would have been,”
Alistair answered. “But it came from The Doctor. There’s more
to it than glue and plastic. Far more.”
“I don’t understand,” Doris said with the patience she
had learnt to have since she first met her handsome Brigadier and wondered
if they really could have a life together.
Alistair picked up the steering wheel from among the pieces. He held it
in his open palm and invited Doris to touch it with her.
“Oh!” She gasped as the drawing room melted away around her
and instead she saw a vision of another place and time entirely.
“Where are we?” she asked. Alistair was at her side. He was
dressed in a tweed suit and a flat cap, as were a lot of the men around
them. The women were in smart dresses and hats. Doris felt under-dressed
until she realised that she was dressed the same.
“We’re still right where we were in our own drawing room,”
Alistair assured her. “This is a sort of dream… a very real
one, but just a dream. This is Donnington Park - where the British Grand
Prix was held in 1938 - the one won by the car my model is based on, the
Mercedes Benz W154 – popularly known as the Silver Arrow.”
“Goodness!” Doris exclaimed. “How extraordinary.”
“Stranger things have happened in The Doctor’s company,”
Alistair told her. “This is… just a holiday from reality.
Come, my dear. Let’s find ourselves a place to watch the end of
the race.”
There were only four more laps to the end. The crowd were getting excited,
and if they were REALLY there it would have been impossible to push their
way through to the fence right beside the finishing line. As it was, the
crowds just seemed to mould around them. Alistair kept his arm firmly
around Doris’s shoulders to protect her even though there was no
danger, no matter how much of a crush of excitement there was as they
heard the cars approaching for the last time.
“There it is!” Doris cried out in excitement, even though
she had never seen or heard of the Silver Arrow car before this day. She
actually jumped up and down like a girl as it streaked past the chequered
flag and won the race. She cheered as the driver, Italian champion Tazio
Nuvolari, was rewarded with a wreath of greenery to confirm him as the
winner.
“Why are so few other people cheering?” Doris asked as she
calmed down and looked around at the crowds. “He won fair and square,
didn’t he?”
“It’s October 1938,” Alistair reminded his wife. “An
Italian driver in a German car won a BRITISH motor race. Everyone knows
that they’ll be at war with those countries soon. National pride
has been badly dented.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t even realise it myself at the time – as a
boy. I just thought the Silver Arrow was a beautiful motor car. The politics
hadn’t touched me. Perhaps I was naïve in that. By the following
year I was as patriotic as any other boy, learning to spot German planes
in the sky, cursing Hitler and Mussolini in equal measure and wishing
I was old enough to do my bit for the Allies. But no wonder my father
didn’t buy me what I wanted for that Christmas. No wonder they thought
a set of lead soldiers was a better present for an English boy.”
He looked around. He was back in his own drawing room. So was Doris.
“I never thought about it that way before,” he said. “I
was just so disappointed not to get the car. I never thought about that
bigger picture.”
“By the time you became a soldier, West Germany and Italy were Britain’s
allies,” Doris noted. “You’ve worked alongside men from
both those countries.”
“Yes,” Alistair agreed. “But back then, it was so very
different. I feel… less disappointment in my father and grandfather.
I understand why they gave me soldiers for Christmas.”
“And now, at last, you have the present you wanted all those years
ago.” Doris picked up a plastic moulded engine block. Nothing so
dramatic happened this time, but she felt for a moment as if she could
smell hot engine oil and unleaded petrol.
“Thanks to The Doctor, of course… probably the only man alive
who could have KNOWN my childhood secrets.”
“Bless him,” Doris said. “Wherever he is.”
“Indeed,” Alistair agreed.
The TARDIS moved slowly through the solar system called Sol by intelligent
races outside of it. The Doctor liked the view of the planets as he passed
them by. He hummed a tune as he guided his faithful old time and space
craft disguised as a police box past the rings of Saturn. If there had
been anyone else aboard to hear – and assuming they came from Earth
- they would have recognised the tune as ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’.
The Doctor was in a mellow mood. His gifts to his old friends were delivered
-the simple ones like the souvenirs of past adventures he sent to Ian
and Barbara or the book he tracked down for Benton, as well as the ones
imbued with some unique qualities that he gave to those he thought needed
them.
Nobody had given him a present, but he really didn’t need them to.
The old adage that it was better to give than receive was absolutely true
at a time like this.
The TARDIS cleared the solar system. He set the TARDIS for a smooth journey
through the time vortex. He was going to have Christmas dinner with his
old friend Thomas Jefferson and his family at the White House. Good food
and pleasant company, just what The Doctor ordered.
|