Doctor Who BBC852 - Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Mad Dogs & Englishmen (Paul Magrs)

Author:Mad Dogs & Englishmen (Paul Magrs)
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Eighteen

After a couple of pints at lunch time with the Doctor, Cleavis was sufficiently beguiled to invite him home.

This, as Reginald Tyler would have told him, was one of his weakest and most foolish points. Cleavis was, as Tyler knew, a brilliant linguist and critic, and a damned good writer, but he was also unfortunately easy to sway and to impress.

And the Doctor had, of course, worked on him like a charm.

The Professor had ended up telling this eccentrically-attired stranger everything about the book he was writing for children. Perhaps it was because Reginald had been so dismissive of it, but once he was sitting in the Book and Candle with a receptive audience, Cleavis had gladly held forth about his book about the old woman and the magical double-decker bus.

‘I think it sounds delightful,’ said the Doctor at last, with a slow, spreading grin.

‘Do you really, Doctor?’

‘I do. Though I do think your main character sounds like a proper old harridan. You wouldn’t want to go running into her, would you?’

‘Why not?’ Cleavis asked.

‘Well, she sounds like such a meddler. Such a selfish old woman. Involving everyone in her adventures and taking no responsibility whatsoever.’

‘Oh,’ said Cleavis. ‘She’s based on Baba Yaga, the hag in Russian folk tales. The one who flies through the air in a mortar and steers with a pestle. And she lives in a shed that runs around on chicken’s legs. And she eats babies for breakfast.’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor. ‘I know the one. But you still wouldn’t want to go on an adventure with her, would you? She’d drive you bonkers.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Cleavis glumly. ‘Though I don’t actually go on many real adventures...’

‘Oh, I do,’ said the Doctor. ‘And I know.’

Cleavis stared at him.

‘But really,’ said the Doctor. ‘I think It sounds marvellous, your book.’

‘Are you a writer yourself, Doctor?’

‘Hmm?’

Cleavis patiently repeated the question as the Doctor rubbed his dog’s ears for him.

‘Oh, no,’ the Doctor said. ‘Just a humble student. Just a reader.’

‘Just a reader!’ cried Cleavis hotly. ‘Why, there is no such thing as “just a reader”! To the writer, there is nothing better! It does my heart good to hear you describe yourself thus, Doctor. To know that there is, somewhere in the world, at least one person who happily reads without ever wanting to write pages of his own... Really, sometimes I think that everyone else in the world harbours writerly ambitions and hides scrawled-over pages away in drawers and under their beds...’

‘Really?’ said the Doctor.

‘And then they come waving them at you, just because you write, and they think that you can help them...’

‘That sounds absolutely awful,’ said the Doctor.

‘It is,’ said Cleavis. ‘And really, I’ve got enough on my hands already, what with lecturing and tutorials and my own writing... and looking after that brother of mine...’

‘It must be quite difficult,’ said the Doctor. ‘Tell me, tell me about William Freer.’

Cleavis’s expression changed. ‘Are you a reader of his then, too, Doctor?’

The Doctor’s eyes seemed, for a moment, mesmerising, and Cleavis had to blink.

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