Doctor Who - Big Finish Short Trips - 29 by RECollections

Author:RECollections [RECollections]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Matthew Sweet

An Adventure ofthe Third Doctor,

with Sarah Jane Smith

It was the corset that bothered Sarah Jane Smith - and not just because

it had been a two-person job. She'd expected the Doctor to leave her to

it, but no - he hadn't shown the least sign of embarrassment as he

laced the thing around her waist, fussing and flapping and singing Jolly

Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier in his best Palace-of-

Varieties baritone.

'I suppose you wear a lot of frilly things yourself,' she'd said,

willing herself not to blush.

The Doctor's appearance had only required the smallest adjustments

to comply with the sumptuary codes of nineteenth-century London: the

bottle-green smoking jacket, the Adam Adamant cape, the shirt with

two strips of embroidered lace escorting the buttons up to his

monstrous collar - these alone would have allowed him to pass for a

minor Pre-Raphaelite. His physical features - the flurry of Arctic curls,

the fuzzy sideburns, the prodigious nose, strong as a dodo's beak didn't

detract from the image. And now that the TARDIS wardrobe had

furnished him with a velvet-lined topper and a silk tie to match his

jacket, perhaps, thought Sarah Jane, he looked a bit too Victorian.

Perhaps people would think he was taking the mickey.

The TARDIS had washed up under one of the arches of Covent

Garden market. Stallholders were packing away their crates. Boys were

sweeping up stray cabbage leaves and spirals of discarded orange peel.

A dog nosed around with a disappointed air, as if he wished he'd gone

to Smithfield. Sarah took a lungful of pleasantly frosty air. 'So what's

there to do on a Saturday night in Victorian London?' she asked.

'Besides staying in to read religious tracts and listen to the lady of the

house playing Schubert?'

The Doctor closed the police box door behind him. 'You've watched

too much costume drama on television, Sarah Jane. Staying-in scenes

are cheap. All you need is a pianoforte, a few nice frocks and Nyree

Dawn Porter. They never show you what Victorians really got up to at

night. How about a trapeze show? Or a play about Derby Day with six

live horses on a conveyor belt, galloping away like bllly-o?'

He bowled out over the cobbles, lifted a copy of The Times from the

hands of a newspaper vendor, and scanned the front page. Sarah

fumbled in her bag for a coin and pressed it into the boy's hand. The

alacrity with which the lad scuttered down the street suggested that she

had picked the wrong denomination.

'What takes your fancy?' the Doctor demanded. 'We could go for a

curry in Berkeley Square. I think Dean Mohammed's place is still open

- or perhaps he's downshifted to Brighton by now and become a

masseur. We could take the train down to Sydenham and catch

Blondin. If we're lucky we might see him pushing a lion across the

highrope in a wheelbarrow. Or the business with the kitchen stove... '

The Doctor's eyes glazed with pleasure. 'I was there, you know, when

he tried that trick for the first time. He wheeled his little cooker across

the rapids at Niagara Falls, cracked an egg into his pan and whisked up

an omelette - a

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