Doctor Who_ Relative Dementias Part 4

'It is indeed,' agreed the Doctor.

'How can I help you?'

'We'd like two rooms, if possible. We're meeting a friend of ours who we believe is staying here.'

'Oh,' the woman said, opening up the guest book. 'And who would that be, then?'

'Joyce Brunner. Doctor Joyce Brunner.'

She leafed through the book to find the newest page. 'Mrs Brunner. Yes. Haven't seen her since yesterday morning. Here to see her mother, isn't she?'

'At Graystairs, yes, I believe she is. How is her mother, by the way?'

'I wouldn't know, Mister...?'

'Doctor. Doctor John Smith.'

'Doctor Smith. I'm Mary Mary Christmas.' She chuckled.

'Yes, I know. Blame my husband! I'd have been plain old Mary McIntire if he hadn't badgered me into marrying him. She keeps herself to herself does Mrs Brunner. A very private person, I get the impression.' She nodded knowledgably, as if imparting some valuable piece of information to the two of them.

The Doctor just smiled as Mary started to fill in the guest book. She looked up at Ace, eyebrows raised.

'Ace,' she said simply.

'Ace?'

'Dorothy,' the Doctor stepped in with a glance at Ace.

'Dorothy McShane.' Ace pulled a face, but Mary was too busy scribbling to notice.

'And how long will you be staying?'

'Well that all depends. Just put us down for a couple of nights we'll see how it goes. If that's alright with you.'

'Fine, Doctor, fine.' Mary gave a little laugh. 'You'll have the doctors up at Graystairs getting worried, you know you and Mrs Brunner. All these medical people around. They'll be worrying about their jobs.'

'I don't think they need to worry about that,' Ace said. 'I expect they're proper proper doctors.' doctors.'

The Doctor threw her a look.

Mary seemed slightly surprised that they had no luggage, but the Doctor told her that all their stuff was 'in their transport'

down in the village. Soon, the two of them were tucking into a full English breakfast (well, full Scottish Scottish breakfast the Doctor insisted on haggis with his, only to change his mind when he discovered they didn't have vegetarian haggis); and between mouthfuls, the Doctor told Ace about his days at UNIT, his friends.h.i.+p with Joyce and his first meeting with Countess then Miss Gallowgla.s.s. Their paths had crossed when one of Miss Gallowgla.s.s's customers, annoyed that a parcel from some distant planet had got lost breakfast the Doctor insisted on haggis with his, only to change his mind when he discovered they didn't have vegetarian haggis); and between mouthfuls, the Doctor told Ace about his days at UNIT, his friends.h.i.+p with Joyce and his first meeting with Countess then Miss Gallowgla.s.s. Their paths had crossed when one of Miss Gallowgla.s.s's customers, annoyed that a parcel from some distant planet had got lost en route en route, had decided to declare war on the Earth out of spite; and, as a totally unfathomable first step, had stolen one of the Crown Jewels. A clever bit of improvisation had led to the Doctor replacing it with a fake.

'I never found out whether they discovered it,' he said, wiping the egg from his plate with the last of his bread. 'But these days I tend to give the Tower of London a rather wide berth.'

Ace realised that she was laughing along with him as he downed his fourth cup of tea, and wondered if the whole tale had been a load of rubbish to take her mind off the fact that he still hadn't told her what had been happening on board the TARDIS. Comfortably stuffed, they thanked Mary profusely, and the Doctor decided that the village pub should be their next port of call in their search for Joyce.

Far from being the country tourist pub that Ace had expected, The Two Foxes The Two Foxes was more like something from a Hammer film a low ceiling, a miserable-looking fire trying to burn in an admittedly quaint fireplace, and a few s.h.i.+fty-looking locals in dark pullovers and hats who fell silent as they walked in. was more like something from a Hammer film a low ceiling, a miserable-looking fire trying to burn in an admittedly quaint fireplace, and a few s.h.i.+fty-looking locals in dark pullovers and hats who fell silent as they walked in.

'You don't want to be around these parts after dark, miss,'

Ace whispered over the Doctor's shoulder in her best rural accent.

Obviously she hadn't whispered it quietly enough. As the Doctor strode up to the bar, someone behind her, in exactly the same voice, muttered 'There's things things in them woods that no man were meant to see.' in them woods that no man were meant to see.'

Ace whirled around to be faced with the broadest and daftestlooking grin she'd ever seen. A man probably not much older than herself, maybe twenty-five tops was smirking at her, leaning against the doorframe with a pint of lager in his hand.

His hair was cropped in an almost military style, and his eyes were wide-set and pale blue. Instinctively she smiled back, felt herself flush with embarra.s.sment, and hurriedly joined the Doctor at the bar. She peered back to see the man, still smiling.

Looking around the bar, she saw that everyone else had resumed their conversations or dominoes or plans to burn down the Count's castle or whatever it was they were doing. It seemed that the idiot at the door had been the only one to have heard her. With a puzzled look in the direction of Ace's stare, the Doctor whispered: 'Friend of yours?'

Ace gave him a dirty look, taking the proffered gla.s.s of Irn-Bru. 'Inside or out?' he asked.

'Out,' she replied, trying not to smile back at the man who was watching her.

'The weather is lovely,' he agreed, and followed her, gla.s.s of water in hand. They plonked themselves down on the bench that ran along the front of the pub, and the Doctor took a sip of his water. 'Welsh,' he said thoughtfully, after a few moments.

'You'd have thought they'd only have gone for homegrown around here.'

The Doctor ummed.

'How can you tell, anyway?' Ace asked.

'Accent.'

'Eh?'

'The barman's accent. Welsh. Probably north Anglesey, maybe.'

'Oh. I thought you meant the water.'

The Doctor took another sip. 'No, definitely Scottish.

Straight out of the tap under the bar. Looked at me as if I was mad when I asked for a mineral water. And unfortunately didn't know anything about Joyce.'

'It is 1982, Professor. Mineral water might be what you'd get in your fancy London wine bars, but we're hardly at civilisation's hub here, are we? Anyway, it's probably laced with toxins from some local paper mill that's what's making the locals act like morons. That or the inbreeding.'

'Ace..,' admonished the Doctor, taking off his hat and fanning himself gently with it, despite the sharp, cool morning air. He pulled out his s.h.i.+ny new fobwatch and glanced at it.

'So... Alzheimer's,' she said. 'Apart from it being what old folks get, what's it all about then?'

'It's a form of degenerative disease,' the Doctor said.

'Amongst other things, knotty tangles of protein start clogging up the brain. Memory and personality start to dissolve.' He paused, gazing into the distance. 'Very sad, very tragic. Not only for the sufferers, but for their families and friends as well.'

'Do Time Lords get it?'

'Oh, we get far worse things than Alzheimer's disease, Ace.

The dementias that plague us are much, much darker.' He stopped, lost in his own thoughts. Ace said nothing for a few moments, watching his face for a sign that he'd come back to the present, back to the conversation.

'And is there a cure for it?'

'There's a cure for everything, if you look hard enough even incessant curiosity and questions.'

'But you must know what happens. It's 1982 now, right. And this Graystairs place seems to have a cure for it. We've just come from 2012, and you've been all over the future, so you must know whether this is a real real cure, or just the usual load of charlatans taking advantage.' cure, or just the usual load of charlatans taking advantage.'

'Oh yes, there's a cure. But I'm not convinced this is the time or place for it.' He gave her a deliberately enigmatic smile.

'Besides which, I shouldn't be telling you about the future of your species, anyway.'

'Professor! How come you can take me all over the place the future, the past, outer s.p.a.ce and all that; let me see things that haven't happened yet, and then tell me you can't let me in on a secret that I could have found out just by picking up a medical book in a bookshop a few hours ago?'

'Context, Ace, context. It's one thing letting you experience the future, seeing how it all fits together, how events of the past have inexorably led to that future and just dumping a load of anachronistic information in your lap. It's all about consequences '

'Webs of time, yes, I know,' she laughed knowingly.

'Think of it this way: if you knew what was going to happen to you say you got a peek just 24 hours into your own future what would you do?'

'When the future finally came around?'

The Doctor nodded, eyes narrowed, chin tilted back just a little, as if he were testing her. Ace shrugged. 'Make sure it happens the way I saw it, I s'pose.'

'But what if you could improve it, make it better in some way because of what you'd seen was coming?'

It was Ace's turn to narrow her eyes. 'This is a trick question, right? Well...' She pondered it as the Doctor sipped his water.

Then she smiled: easy! 'Seeing as it's my future and not my past, I can change it, right...? It hasn't happened yet, so nothing's fixed in stone.'

His face gave nothing away for a few moments as he stared into the spring suns.h.i.+ne. Then he turned back to her and gave her a sad look of disappointment.

'Wrong answer, eh?' She sighed.

'Every moment in time is the past from someone's perspective, Ace. Just because it hasn't already happened to you yet, doesn't mean it hasn't already happened to you then then.'

'This,' she said wryly, 'is the point where I start to glaze over, isn't it? And you tell me not to go mucking about with time.'

'Usually,' he agreed sagely. 'Just remember: I have a lot more experience of mucking about with time than you do.'

Ace eyed him dubiously. 'What about Joyce's message, anyway?'

The Doctor pulled out a rather dog-eared postcard yellowed and oddly brittle, like the newspapers that her mum had found lining the floor when she'd decided to splash out on a new lounge carpet and handed it to her. Instinctively, she raised it to her nose and sniffed. It smelled old old. But then, she remembered, it had been waiting for him with Countess Gallowgla.s.s for 30 years. The picture on the front was of rolling green and purple hills, an intense blue sky above them. She flipped it over. As informative messages went, it left a lot to be desired: in hurried and quaintly old-persony handwriting it said that something odd was happening at a place called Graystairs where her mother was receiving treatment. It gave the address of the B&B and that was about it.

Ace handed the card back. 'Not giving too much away, is she?'

The Doctor hmmed to himself again, putting the card back in his pocket.

'So maybe we should go straight up to this Graystairs place.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'I'd like to know more about it first. How about if you-' he tapped her on the nose '-ask around the village about it while I go back to the B&B and find out what time lunch is.'

'Tell you what,' Ace said. 'How about if I ask around the village, and you go back to the B&B and find out what time lunch is.' She grinned at him. 'And have a snoop around while you're there.'

He looked offended. 'Snooping is for amateurs,' he said. 'I'd prefer to call it a reconnaissance mission. But yes, there may be a clue or two in Joyce's room.'

Throwing her a smile, the Doctor jumped to his feet. 'Come on. Things to do, scones to jam, teas to cream.'

'If I didn't know better,' she said as they set off, 'I'd think you had an obsession with food.'

Half an hour later, Ace was beginning to get bored. Despite the gentle spring warmth, the clear air and the soft tang of heather in her nostrils, she was starting to look back fondly to the heavy, noisy warmth of London in 2012. She wasn't a country girl at heart, she knew. Still, she had a job to do.

Since the Doctor had headed back to the B&B, she'd been accosting anyone she could find, asking them if they'd seen Joyce or if they knew anything about Graystairs. For inhabitants of such a small village, either the locals were very good at minding their own business, or Joyce had kept herself to herself. The women were polite, even as they looked her up and down with that slightly disapproving air. At least the inhabitants of Muirbridge were polite enough not to comment on how it was no way for a young girl to dress.

The men, unsurprisingly, were more than happy to chat to Ace even though they had little more to add than the women.Yes, they knew that some professor woman had come up from London; yes, they knew that she'd come to visit her mother up at the loony-bin; but no, they hadn't seen her since she arrived a few days ago although they invariably knew someone who had. Ace was beginning to think that she should go straight to Graystairs and cut out all this faffing around, but she remembered what the Doctor had said although why she should play by his rules when he still refused to tell her what he'd been up to in the TARDIS, she didn't know. She had decided to give the pub one last go (and, she hoped, get herself a pint without the Doctor around to act as nanny) when she saw a familiar face coming out of the village shop, carrier bag in hand.

It was the bloke from the pub who'd embarra.s.sed her earlier.

For a moment, she thought of ducking into the post office, but by the time she'd decided that that was just silly kids' stuff, it was too late anyway. He'd seen her, and was advancing towards her with a wry grin on his face.

'h.e.l.lo again!' he said, coming to a halt.

She smiled back. 'Been shopping?'

'Oh, just a few basic rations. Milk, bread. Listen,' he said, 'sorry about the pub business earlier.'

'Don't worry about it. Just messing about, really.' She felt her cheeks redden and had a desperate urge to run away. G.o.d, thought Ace, this is going from bad to worse. She cast around desperately for an excuse to be off, but before she could, the man stuck out his hand.

'Michael,' he said. 'Michael Ashworth. Nice to meet you. I'm camping down on the edge of the village.' He gestured past the pub. She shook his hand. 'I'm Ace. No, honestly.' She saw the slight disbelief in his eyes. 'Well, not honestly. I mean, what kind of parents would name their daughter Ace. But my proper name's too naff.'

'Fair enough. Ace it is. Up here with your dad, are you I a.s.sume it was your dad? Grandad?'

'Oh, the Doctor? Nah, just a mate. I look after him. Sort of bodyguard, really.'

Michael looked momentarily confused, as if mentally juggling to correct some preconception he held about the Doctor and Ace's relations.h.i.+p. She jumped in, too quickly. 'Oh it's not like that he's old enough to be my grandad!'