Chapter 21
Rice Cakes and a Banana
For years, I've had a theory that the Doctor's capacious
pockets are as dimensionally transcendental as the TARDIS, a
bit like Mary Poppins' carpet bag. Hence his impossible
fetching out of the umbrella in the previous chapter. They
might even be portals to another universe or something called
Props Direct, a place that supplies just what the Doctor
needs, but not always in the most useful form. Maybe we could
have an entire adventure set in the Doctor's pockets, although
A Universe in my Pocket sounds like a gooey celebrity
autobiography best avoided.
So Chris is being treated to the Doctor's diverted
nightmares. I'd wondered how the Doctor's head could cope with
all that information, memory, manipulation, lateral thinking
etc, once things started getting too busy in there. If he gets
what the technically-minded call a right brainful, does a
little window pop up saying Out Of Memory? The Doctor's
symbiotic empathy with the TARDIS supplies the drastic
solution. The ship starts franchising out the data to other
local repositories - i.e. Chris's head. I suppose it isn't
programmed to ask permission first.
The Doctor's little speech about his uncomfortable feelings
over coming home is the sole survivor of the sequence that I
cut from the end of Chapter Eight in the original book. It
works a lot better here on an emotional level, as well as in
purely story-telling terms. But the Doctor is being deeply
insensitive by saying it in front of Innocet. There are things
that you do at home that you'd never do in public. But at
least he has started to apologise.
There wasn't really room for Benny in this book. But in the
tying-up of the New Adventures, it was important that she put
in an appearance, however brief, in the final walkdown of
companions. "Well Doctor, I'm afraid your old friend Bernice
Summerfield can't be with us in person this evening. But she
is on the line now, live from an archaeological dig somewhere
in your head."
The image of the well is borrowed from Maeterlinck's play
Pelleas and Melisande, another huge influence on Lungbarrow
with its stifling gothic castle, doom-laden family and tragic
lovers. As one character says "there are parts of the garden
that have never seen the sunlight." The play also contains one
of the most frightening lines I've ever come across in
anything: in answer to the child Yniold's questions "Why are
the sheep so quiet? Why don't they talk any more?", the
shepherd replies "Because this is not the way to the
sheepfold." Pelleas is all shifting moods and dark colours. It
shows you one thing, but means another. Little is defined,
everything is symbolic or by implication. Debussy's setting of
the play is arguably the greatest of 20th century operas. I'd
certainly vote for it. I first heard it thirty years ago and
I'm still always moved to tears by its melancholic beauty. The
sunlit music for Act Two, Scene One goes with what Innocet saw
by the well.
