Doctor Who: Bad Therapy (34 page)

The Doctor found Chris a little further down Frith Street. He was bent over in the doorway of an empty shop. The Doctor winced as he heard Chris retching violently. He walked up to Chris and placed the flat of his hand on his back.

‘It’s Patsy, isn’t it?’ he guessed.

Chris nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘I imagine that this must have come as a bit of a shock.’

Chris made a guttural noise in his throat, somewhere between indignation and vomiting. He wiped the bile from his lips with his shirt cuff and turned to face the Doctor. The expression of anger on Chris’s face was so intense that the Doctor physically recoiled, taking a couple of steps backward.

‘How could you be involved in this? I don’t understand how you can be helping them. What could you be thinking of?’

‘If they don’t have partners they’ll die.’

‘So it’s all right to allow people to be duped into relationships with creatures that are no more than their fantasies. Crukking hell, Doctor, what did you think you were doing?’

‘You don’t understand, Chris. I want to save lives. I don’t have another way of doing this. They can become more than Toys, I know they can. Some of them are already complete individuals. They just need some support and some time to make the transition.’

‘And the end justifies the means does it?’ Chris yelled. ‘It’s all right for people to get lied to along the way?’ He poked the Doctor hard in the chest.

‘Goddess, that’s not a pretty attitude. When I think of Patsy now, I can actually see the other people in her. It’s so crukking obvious now that I know. Forrester, 197

Ishtar, old girlfriends, even little bits of Bernice. But. . . oh shit. . . but mostly Roz.’

The young Adjudicator pushed past the Doctor and staggered a few steps down the street before coming to a faltering stop and resting his head against the window of a shop. He started to laugh, coldly and without humour. The sound was ugly and made the Doctor tense up inside. At that moment, he would have done anything to make the sound stop.

‘I wanted her back so much that I conjured her out of the crukking air.

I turned Patsy into her. Goddess, I feel so. . . ’ Chris thumped his forehead against the glass, making the window pane shake in its frame. He scrunched up his face, fighting back tears. ‘I feel so. . . so humiliated.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize,’ the Doctor said helplessly, moving to comfort his friend.

‘Don’t,’ Chris said, firmly. ‘Don’t you even come near me, do you hear?’ His voice was edging towards hysteria. ‘I don’t want your support, thank you very much. I’m too angry with you for that.’ He took a deep breath and, suddenly aware that he was hugging himself tightly, straightened up. ‘Can’t you see,’ he said, screwing up his face again. ‘I’m going to have to lose her all over again.

It was hard enough once and now it’s going to start all over again. All over a-crukking-gain. Goddess, I’m right back where I started.’

‘Surely you don’t have to lose her at all.’

Chris’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Goddess, you actually think I should stay with Patsy, don’t you? You actually think I could do that. Could you?’

‘I don’t. . . you know I don’t get involved. Not like that. Not any –’

‘Shit,’ Chris interrupted, prodding the Doctor hard in the chest. ‘You’re so messed up, do you know that? I’m going to find Patsy and sort this out.’ He gave the Doctor a look of utter contempt and then spat, ‘I’ll leave you to your heroics.’

The Doctor was left standing outside the dance hall on Frith Street. Alone.

The preparations for the party were almost complete. The sparse, modern look of Ronnie Scott’s – all Formica table tops and vinyl seats – had been transformed with balloons, garlands and streamers. Jack thought the whole place looked like something out of
South Pacific
.

Tilda was busy ordering everyone about. The woman psychiatrist from the hospital was there, as well as Gilliam and Inspector Harris. The Doctor and his friend Christopher were nowhere in sight.

Mikey and Dennis had gone home. Mickey had decided that he didn’t want to attend the party. Jack could understand why.

Jack hung back in the doorway, unable to bring himself to enter the room.

Masked and costumed figures lined the edge of the dancefloor. There were 198

harlequins, pirates, princesses, lions. All motionless, like wallflowers just waiting for someone to invite them to dance.

The Doctor walked up behind Jack, looking preoccupied. ‘Jack, I need to talk to you. It’s about Chris –’

Jack couldn’t take his eyes off the costumed figures. ‘If I stepped into that party tonight and danced with one of those things, they’d turn into Eddy Stone wouldn’t they?’

The Doctor nodded, hesitantly, as if he wasn’t certain. ‘Maybe.’

‘I could bring him back just by going in there, couldn’t I? That easy. That’s why Eddy’s hair changed colour, isn’t it? He could somehow sense that I fancied blokes with blond hair just from being with me.’

‘Do you want to bring Eddy back?’

‘No!’ Jack exclaimed. ‘I don’t know. I want him back more than anything I’ve ever wanted. But not now. It wouldn’t be the same, would it? I’d know he wasn’t real, wouldn’t I?’ Jack shivered. ‘I need to get out of here for a bit.

I’m gonna go for a walk.’

Jack turned and ran out of the dancehall. Too wrapped up in his own emotions to see the expression on the Doctor’s face.

The Doctor strode on to the empty dancefloor, dug his hands into his trouser pockets, and tried to look nonchalant as he surveyed the circle of costumed mannequins which surrounded him. He noticed Gilliam sitting on the stage, scrutinizing him. He winced, inwardly.

‘Pre-party nerves?’ she asked. ‘Or are you just at a loose end?’

The Doctor forced a smile. ‘Both, I think. I’ve got just one last thing to do for the party and then I’m done,’ the Doctor said, fingering the party invitations which were still in his pocket. ‘So,’ he began, ‘what do you think of the 1950s?’

‘Well it makes a change from the deserts of Kr’on Tep. A welcome change.’

The Doctor didn’t miss her tone. ‘I thought you were happy there. I was told you were in love.’

‘Well, you were misinformed. I was so sure that you would return, I made Yr’canos wait on Thoros Beta for a month. And even when we finally left I didn’t once stop believing that you would come back. Right up until the day of the wedding I was certain that you would come for me.’

‘It wasn’t my choice. Please believe me. I was snatched out of time by my own people. Imprisoned. Forced to stand trial. It was a drumhead. If I’d had a choice –’

‘You did have a choice. You could have come back afterwards. Isn’t that the whole point of being able to travel in time?’

‘Yes, yes I probably could have. But by then I’d learnt that you were a Warrior Queen and I was caught up in other battles. Time runs away with 199

itself. It runs away with me.’

‘I thought we were friends.’

‘We were. We
are
.’

She shook her head. ‘That’s the trouble with you, isn’t it, Doctor? You’re so busy trying to deal with the big picture, the big conflict, that you can’t see anything else. You can’t see what it does to the people around you. Like your friend Christopher or –’

‘Why am I the only person who seems to care whether an entire species is given the chance to survive?’ the Doctor interrupted, bitterly. He took his hat off and fiddled with the brim. More quietly, he added, ‘I just can’t bear the idea of anyone else dying, that’s all.’

‘I heard that you’d lost someone close to you,’ she said, coolly. ‘And I think, to be really honest, it’s clouding your judgement.’ Gilliam gestured around them at the mannequins. ‘They’re not exactly alive now, are they? They’re just possibilities. You can’t just expect people to take them on without knowing what they are. You’ve got to offer people a choice. Look at what the deception has done to Chris and Jack. They’re hurting, Doctor. What’s the point in bringing this lot to life if it ends up creating so much pain?’

‘I. . . don’t know,’ the Doctor mumbled and turned and hurried from the room.

‘You’re a human being, aren’t you?’

‘Is that a trick question, darling?’

The Doctor smiled, uneasily, at Tilda’s barman. ‘I mean you’re not one of Tilda’s people? You’re not a Toy?’

Andrew gave him a puzzled look. ‘Does it make a difference?’

The Doctor exhaled heavily. ‘That’s the question. Would you sit with me for a moment, I need some company and my friends are all. . . busy.’

Andrew nodded. ‘All right. I could do with a ciggie. I’ve been working flat out all afternoon. Well,’ he added, grinning a bit sheepishly, ‘for an hour, at least.’

The Doctor found himself smiling. He guessed that Andrew was in his late twenties. The young man wore his hair cropped close to his head, and had light blue eyes that sparkled with good humour.

They sat huddled in their jackets on the cold front steps of Ronnie Scott’s watching the Soho evening begin. Every now and then, Andrew would pass comment on the young men that walked past the club. He offered the Doctor a cigarette before lighting his own.

The Doctor shook his head. ‘They’re terribly bad for you, you know. Cancer, bronchitis, premature hair loss.’

The young man didn’t seem to hear.

200

The Doctor pulled the thick wad of envelopes from his pocket. ‘I’ve still got all these invitations to deliver. I wonder if Tilda’s friends will come.’

‘It’s not much notice, is it?’

‘Oh, time isn’t the problem. Not this time, anyway.’

‘Really?’ The barman said, glancing at his watch. ‘The party’s meant to start in a couple of hours. Mind you, knowing the punters at the Tropics, I should think they’ll all come running once they hear about the free booze.’

The Doctor read the name which had been hurriedly scrawled on the front of the first envelope. Did he really have the right to trick all these people, to lie to them, in order to let another race be born?

‘I need someone to tell me that I’m doing the right thing,’ he murmured out loud.

‘Darling, if you need someone else to tell you that then you already know that it’s not. Otherwise you could tell yourself, couldn’t you?’

The Doctor’s face broke into a toothy smile. He felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. ‘You’re a wise man, Andrew.’

‘I know,’ the young man agreed. ‘I know.’

Andrew watched the strange little man step back inside the dancehall. He took a drag on his cigarette, and then considered it for a moment before grinding it out beneath his heel.

Premature hair loss? he thought and gingerly patted the back of his head.

‘I just hope that everyone turns up,’ Julia Mannheim said, as the hour of the party approached. ‘We hardly gave any notice.’

‘Don’t worry your little psychological brain,
deah
,’ Tilda laughed, putting up the last of the bunting. ‘I’ve invited all my regulars and told them to bring their mates. And that lot would walk a hundred miles barefoot on broken glass if there was a free drink in it. Besides, the Doctor’s promised to go back in time in that little closet of his and put them in last week’s post.’

‘No one’s coming,’ the Doctor said quietly from beside her.

‘Little Miss Doctor’s an optimist, isn’t she?’

‘I didn’t send the invitations. I’m not going to send them. I can’t.’

A tense silence descended upon the dancehall.

Julia and Harris both

stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at the Doctor.

Tilda climbed slowly down the ladder. ‘Has your time machine blown a gasket or something?’

‘No, the TARDIS is fine. I can’t be party to the duplicity. It isn’t fair. I’m sorry, Tilda, truly.’

Tilda stared at him, a look of total incomprehension on her face. ‘Can’t be party to the duplicity?’ she repeated under her breath, shaking her head.

201

‘Do you know what you are doing?’ she demanded, her voice filled with suppressed anger.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Yes. Finally I do.’

She poked him in the chest with a thin finger. ‘You are sentencing all of my people to death. Don’t you understand, you stupid little man, that without partners my people are nothing. You have condemned each and every one of them to a blank empty nothing. Well, I hope your fancy morals and ethics keep you warm at night.’ Tilda stamped her foot angrily. ‘We’re not like you.

We can’t be whole on our own. We need others. We need people to bond with.’

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. ‘What about you? Who are you bonded with?’

‘Me?’ Tilda looked at him blankly. The thought had clearly not occurred to her. ‘Frankly, I don’t have the time. I’m too busy looking after this little lot.’

‘So why are you still alive?’

Jack had almost left Ronnie Scott’s and gone home several times. Almost.

But he was still hovering in the hallway when the music started. He knew the song – it was an old show tune. His mother used to sing it when she cleaned the house on Sundays. The words were curious, simple but affecting.

A woman politely asking her lover how she could be expected to go on living without him. The sentiment was haunting.

Jack slipped into the back of the dancehall, and stood quietly in the shadows. Patsy was standing on the small stage on the other side of the room, singing. A narrow spotlight picked her out on the stage, isolating her from the band.

She wasn’t wearing make-up and her hair, usually carefully coiffured, was tied back in a simple ponytail. Instead of her cocktail dress she was wearing a gentleman’s suit, a couple of sizes too large. She looked awful. Her eyes were sunken and the skin on her face seemed loose and bloated. She let the words of the song tumble out with little care for how they fitted to the music.

Jack knew that the Doctor hadn’t sent out the invitations. In the end, only about forty people had turned up for Tilda’s party. All of them couples: mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, lovers. Jack had no idea how they had known to come here. He wondered if the Toys had some kind of link to each other. Watching them, Jack was a little envious of the sense of community in the air. They didn’t look like they had come to a party. They looked like they had made a pilgrimage to some strange, non-canonical church. He recognized several of them from evenings he had spent at the Tropics with Eddy.