Doctor Who: Target - Novelisations [149] - Ghost Light by Marc Platt

Author:Marc Platt
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780426203513
Publisher: Target Books
Published: 1990-11-14T23:00:00+00:00

8

Creature Comforts

Dinner had been served late that evening and it had been well into the early hours before Josiah and the Doctor had made their descent in the lift. Deprived of her master, Mrs Pritchard understood that her duty was to wait as long as was necessary until he returned. She stationed her maids beside the lift gates and stood immobile at their head, staring at the slow progress of the clock.

Distant thunder rumbled occasionally: It came not from the clear sky, which was bright with stars, but echoed in the ground on which the house stood.

At close on half past three o’clock, she was suddenly aware of a strange whimpering sound from close by. She turned to seek out the source of this annoyance and discovered Gwendoline still dressed in a gentleman’s dinner-jacket, sitting on the stairs and blubbing into her bare hands.

The maids began to cluster behind their mistress, staring coldly at the snivelling creature.

Gwendoline turned her red-rimmed eyes up to the housekeeper, twisted her locket in her hands and blurted through the tears, ‘Why did father go to Java and leave me?’ And where is my mother? I try and try, but I cannot understand.’

There was no sympathy to be had from the servants.

Mrs Pritchard responded with a harshness more fitting to a governess than a member of the domestic staff.

‘That is a wicked thing to say. Wicked! Your mother would be ashamed could she but hear you. Sitting there dressed like a music-hall trollop! It’s this Doctor filling your head with ideas.’

‘His words are so confusing,’ confessed Gwendoline. She rose to her feet and wiped her eyes with Ace’s tissue.

‘Uncle Josiah’s ideas are much easier to understand.’ With a sudden sense of purpose, she determinedly undid the bow tie at her collar.

‘Go upstairs and dress yourself properly,’ advised the housekeeper.

Gwendoline instinctively moved to obey her servant’s instruction, but halfway up the stairs she halted and looked back. Mrs Pritchard was staring up at her with a puzzled frown. For one moment, Gwendoline was tempted to treat this as insolence but the housekeeper immediately looked away and resumed her place at the head of her staff.

The clock chimed the half hour and Gwendoline made her way back to her room.

Things made sense as long as she thought of Uncle Josiah. Thus she found herself putting on a dress of dusky blue, because it suited her mood and that of the house too – it was full of secret desires and unknown gestures.

There were some that Uncle Josiah shared with her, and if she was good he might share more. But there in her room, among the familiar bric-a-brac, was the broken bird toy and the strange clothes that Ace had left behind when they had changed for dinner.

She examined the glossy material of the jacket. It felt unnatural and slippery. Of the coloured medals and badges that adorned it, the letters BSA made no sense to her, nor did Ace Roofing Co. Her ideas were becoming muddled again.

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