Doctor Who: Rags (16 page)

Others gazed at him too, all with the same uniform blankness.

The Doctor had never had much time for sheep. But they had never filled him with dread before. Of course that was nothing to do with the sheep.

But with what they reminded him of.

Then the church bells began to ring as if all hell really had broken loose.

She knew she would have to go back. There really was no choice in the matter. Had there ever been, from the moment she’d woken up in Plymouth on the morning of the Princetown massacre?

She’d sensed something as she brushed her teeth and stared at her fine-boned features and slightly lost-looking blue eyes in the mirror. She’d somehow known that day would bring about a change in her life. Now all she could do was follow the path she’d 114

chosen; see where it led.

She had to go back to the truck. Had to see what that filthy grey eye belonged to.

Sod that! Go back to your cosy flat and boring job on your local rag, girl. Do it now before you change your mind again. Go now.

Please..?

What else could she do but ignore the voice? So back to the cemetery she went.

She approached it from the south side this time, from the narrow residential street at the top of the hill that gave access to the overgrown burial ground via a narrow single gate. Of course it was manned by UNIT soldiers. But there were only two of them, and she knew she’d be able to get past them.

She flounced up to them, all blonde hair and beautiful smiles.

She had undone a couple of buttons on her blouse for added effect, and she was not ashamed at all. One of the soldiers looked at her cleavage before looking at her eyes. The other watched her impassively. He might be a problem.

‘Sorry, miss: no entry,’ the impassive one said. The other smiled at her. She smiled back.

‘You have to help me: I left my purse in the cemetery yesterday, and I don’t want any of those hippies to find it.’

‘What were you doing in there yesterday?’

‘Your officer let me in specially,’ she lied smoothly. ‘It was the anniversary of my husband’s death. I wanted to visit his grave.’

The impassive one stared at her shrewdly. It was obvious he didn’t believe a word of it. His companion came to her rescue, winking at her patronisingly.

‘I’ll take her in to look for it, Geoff. She’ll be all right with me.’

‘I’ll need to contact the sarge,’ Geoff said, not looking as enthusiastic as his leering companion about the situation.

‘She’ll be all right. Trust me.’ The soldier was already swinging the gate open, and ushering her through. ‘Just keep right behind me miss; it’s so overgrown in there you could easily get lost. And there’s lots of weirdos about.’

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Losing herself was so much easier than even the dim-witted squaddie could have realised, though of course it was entirely on purpose. She simply slipped behind an obelisk wrapped in ivy and hollyhocks and plunged down a bank into the depths of the wood, hopping over half-buried graves and dodging round headstones squeezed by python-like tree roots. She could hear his indignant shouts from above, but he would never find her in this thicket.

All she had to do was fight her way down to the bottom of the slope through the jungle of tombs, nettles and beeches, then locating the truck would be easy. Five minutes later, after sinking through a thin veil of undergrowth that covered the broken lid of a sunken vault, legs kicking frantically in space while she clung desperately to a network of roots, she realised she should have taken more care.

She managed to haul herself out, cutting her hands on the jagged edges of the sepulchre lid, and staggered to her feet. She could hear the anguished yelps of the soldier further away than ever now. She smiled ruefully as she imagined what the moustachioed officer with the swagger stick would do to him.

Serve the perv right. That reminded her to button herself up again; after all, like the man said - there were a lot of weirdos about.

She followed the overgrown footpath through nettles glinting with fine strands of web, then through a glade of garlic lilies and finally emerged from the wood into bright sunlight. The crematorium reared above her with Doric columns and tall, murky windows. The sweeping marble steps, split by weeds, were occupied by punks, hippies, bikers and skinheads. They watched her as she came out of the trees, but let her pass unmolested.

There was something about their eyes, all of their eyes.

Something... vacant. Nobody said a word.

It was a gauntlet. A crowd sitting on the steps to her right, a crowd squatting round camp fires and vehicles to her left. Nobody said anything to her, or to each other. Silence, except for 116

the eerie wailing of a lone cassette player. ‘Silver machine’ by Hawkwind.

All eyes upon her.

She knew she’d made the wrong decision. She should turn round, go back in search of the soldiers.

She turned round.

The gauntlet had closed.

Teenage punks of both sexes, rock chicks and bearded hippies on the wrong side of thirty, were closing the gap behind her. All staring impassively, vacantly.

‘I knew you’d seen something you liked.’

The voice was low, mocking. She didn’t need to turn to realise it was the giant roadie. Then his huge arms were closing around her, dragging her towards the cattle truck. The crowd watched as though they hadn’t registered what was happening, or simply didn’t care. She screamed at them to help her. The roadie laughed, slung her over one shoulder and opened the rear doors of the truck.

Darkness rushed at her as she was bundled inside.

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‘You’re the laziest bastard I’ve ever known.’

‘Good for nothing’s what my dear mama used to call me.’

Kane was stretched out on a tomb in Cirbury’s churchyard, enjoying the mid-June sun and a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale.

Cassandra was standing over him, carrying a wreath. He was sloppy in black T-shirt, ripped jeans and biker boots; she was elegant in pastel blouse, white slacks and Harmony hairspray.

She had ostensibly come to visit her mother’s grave; Kane was there because he had nothing better to do.

‘If the cats can sit around on graves all day, why the shit can’t I?’

‘I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.’

‘Is that for me?’ He waved a boot at the wreath.

She smiled. ‘Simon’s play starts in a couple of days. Are you going to cause any trouble?’

‘Not if you shag me right here, right now.’

She sighed. ‘You really go out of your way to prove you’re no good, don’t you?’

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you, don’t fall for the bad boys?’

‘My mother’s dead, Kane.’

He winced, and lunged upright to snag a fag out of the packet on the grass beside the tomb.

‘Sorry.’

‘What?’ she put a hand to one ear. ‘Did I hear right? Kane Good For Nothing sawyer said sorry?’ she turned her back and walked through the graves to her mother’s memorial. He called after her.

‘No kiss, no promise. On your head be it.’ He lay on the tomb smoking and drinking for a while, watching her from across the churchyard.

They had started kissing in the classroom. He must have seen herdawdling in there after the rest of her year had filed out followedby the teacher, Caston, who he’d always hated. She’d known he

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would come; she’d seen him through the glass in the door as she sat listening to her boring biology lesson. Of course she’d known he would come. She was one of the cutest girls in the school, even if she did say so herself.

That was the first kiss. she was thirteen and well developed for her age, he was fourteen and wise beyond his years - at least she’d thought so at the time. A dark sort of wisdom, maybe a confused sort of wisdom. But that was just part of the attraction.

He’d picked up on her signals and now at last he was going to act on them.

Of course he was the bad boy, the one her mother would have turned white over if she’d known. He was weird, and scruffy, had an attitude, and his hair was unfashionably longer than that of any other boy in the school. He wasn’t clean. He didn’t care. His eyes were a little frightening in their intensity, and his face a little wolfish, but she liked him.

She’d snog him.

So she did.

Of course his hands started to go everywhere, and she had to sort that out, but it was only what she’d expected after all. His predictability in that respect disappointed her a little, but what the hell, he was a wild kisser.

Then he suggested they go out in the playing fields. Nobody would see them out there. They left the classroom flushed and excited, and she didn’t think they’d been spotted. It was home time and there was no reason to suspect big brother had guessed what was going to happen and would be looking for them.

He waited until she and Kane were under the old oak tree and lying on the grass, kissing as if their lives depended on it. Then he had come out of nowhere. And he’d brought his friends.

That was it. The end of her and Kane’s little... ‘thing’ - the only word she could think of to describe it. It had been so long ago.

Her brother had made her go home... alone. The next day she’d tried to speak to Kane, to find out what her brother had said, but he wasn’t having any of it, wasn’t having any of her.

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Seventeen years ago.

And now?

She reread her mother’s memorial, and time seemed so insubstantial. It felt like she could just walk around the corner, down the lane, into the playing field and under the oak, and he’d he lying there waiting for her - fourteen again, and almost innocent. She pictured him now, considered the lifestyle he had chosen for himself. There was no way back, even if she had never been quite able to forget that kiss. Her first.Her best.

She was nearly thirty, and had no one. Not for want of offers -

she knew she was beautiful. There was just something inside her forcing her to wait for the right one to come along.

And that right one would never be Kane.

He watched her lithe figure as she stood over her mother’s grave, and scratched his chin ruefully. I know you want me, Cassandra Girl, and let’s face it, there’s nothin’ wrong with that. You’re only female, after all. But well, a bloke’s got to play it cool. Don’t want folk thinking old Kane’s an easy lay, now do we? Don’t want to spoil his good rep. He grinned, slid off his perch and wandered over towards the church itself, drawn by idle whim. Or maybe not. He felt drawn to the building, in a way he certainly never had before. He’d only been in there twice in the past: once at his christening; the second time pissed at midnight mass when he’d drunk the blood of Christ in one gulp, emptying the cup, and thanked the vicar for the free tipple.

What brought him here now? A desire to get out of the hot sun?Maybe. He pushed open the wooden door and entered the church, still clutching his Newky Brown.

He hated it immediately. The sanctimonious gloom, the ascetic pews that gave you back - and arse ache. The hassocks - how he wanted to lob those around.The stained-glass windows. Hadn’t he tried to smash one the other day? Perhaps he’d make up for that now. Who was there to stop him? No soddin’ vicar in sight. He strode up the nave, heading for the pompous pulpit, the Bible 121

lying closed upon it. He scooped the book up and flung it across the church.

What had God ever done for him? He toasted the pulpit with his Newcastle Brown. ‘Here’s my God, arsehole.’ He finished the ale and propped the bottle on the lectern. On impulse he crossed to the altar and hawked a lump of phlegm into the holy water. Then minced back down the nave to the curtain that hid the bell rope.

Pulling aside the curtain, he grinned wolfishly at the dangling rope.

‘Let’s rock...’ he rasped, and leapt on to it.

The bell clanged sullenly far above him. He kicked and swung madly like an overgrown kid, eliciting discordant peals from above.

Tiring of his childish sport, he released the rope and wondered what to do next. He didn’t wonder long: there was a closed door next to the open one that led up the stairs to the belfry. What pushed him towards this door? Was it the same impulse that had brought him inside the church in the first place? Kane didn’t know, didn’t care. He had to explore.

Maybe because he had nothing better to do.

Maybe because he was bored.

The door was unlocked and he opened it and followed a short flight of stone steps down into a crypt. His boots kicked up grating echoes. It stank of earth and it was dark, but light from a small window showed him the dirt floor and another curtain, this one crimson velvet, drawn across an alcove at the far end of the crypt.

He wasted no time pulling back the curtain. The latticed window was at the far corner of the crypt and only threw a little pale light over what lay within the alcove. Kane reached for another cigarette.

A girl of stone, lying in state and clutching a baby, sculpted into the lid of a solitary tomb. Her eyes were blank marble and yet conveyed such an aura of sadness that Kane froze, cigarette lifted to his lips.