charleygirl | Waxing Lyrical

Have finished a story! Yay! :)

This is what comes of reading far too much about the history of waxworks.

WAXING LYRICAL

“Smoke, candles, stripy wallpaper…well done, Doctor, looks like you’ve missed Blackpool, 2006, again. You doing this on purpose or what?” Lucie Miller glanced back into the TARDIS to see the Doctor looking vaguely apologetic as he reached for his velvet coat. “Where – and when – are we this time?”

“Earth, first quarter of the nineteenth century. For some reason the TARDIS’s integral chronometer is on the blink. I can’t pinpoint our location any nearer, I’m afraid.” He joined her at the police box door, patting his pockets to make sure – Lucie guessed – that he had all the junk he habitually carted around with him. Those pockets seemed to contain the contents of at least one small suitcase, and yet never spoilt the lines of the coat – Lucie had a sneaking suspicion that they worked on the same principle as the TARDIS, and were actually bigger on the inside, but when she’d asked the Doctor about it he became cagey and changed the subject. He did that with quite a few questions, she’d noticed.

“Great. Just two centuries out. You’re getting worse at this, not better,” she told him now.

He bristled, just as she’d expected. He never could stand any criticism of his skills as a pilot. Or of the TARDIS. He was like an uncle of Lucie’s, who had a rusting old car on his drive that he continually tinkered with and assured everyone he’d getting running again soon because it was ‘a classic’. “It’s no easy thing trying to bypass a temporal barrier, you know. It takes skill, lightning reflexes, tenacity - ”

“Blind luck?” Lucie offered.

“I’d like to see you try it,” the Doctor retorted, stung.

“OK. Show me how it works.”

“What?”

“Show me how this crate flies and I’ll have a go,” Lucie said, adding, “Can’t do much worse than you.”

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, his habitual response when he thought she was being ridiculous. “Let’s see where we are,” he muttered, slipping past her and through the door.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then,” Lucie called after him. She grinned. Winding him up was so easy. She followed, stopping to pull the TARDIS door shut behind her. When she turned to see where the Doctor had gone she found herself colliding with the back of a person she hadn’t even noticed before. “Oof! Oi, mate, that’s a really daft place to stand, y’know,” she said loudly, prodding the man between the shoulder blades. To her surprise, he didn’t react. A bit nonplussed by this, Lucie prodded him again, a bit harder. Still nothing. In her experience, he should have been giving her a right bollocking by now. “Hey! I’m talking to you, deaf-aid!” she snapped, narked by his silence. “Anyone ever tell you how rude it is to ignore people?”

The man still gave no indication that he was even aware of her presence. It was as if she didn’t exist. Lucie glanced round the room: there were plenty of people around, standing alone and in groups, but none of them seemed to be paying the little scene in front of the TARDIS any attention whatsoever. They didn’t appear to have noticed the sudden arrival of a police box in their midst either.

A brief panic gripped her. Had she – and the TARDIS – suddenly become invisible? Could no one see her? She waved a hand in front of her face – she certainly seemed visible enough, but how could she tell?

Experimentally, she dug her finger hard into the back of the man standing in front of her. “Oi, mate, you going to get out of my way or what?” she demanded at the top of her voice.

“I don’t think he can hear you,” said the Doctor quietly, behind her left ear.

She spun round with a yell, to see him standing there with his hands in his pockets and an amused expression. “Don’t do that! I nearly hit the bleedin’ ceiling!”

He gave her a mischievous smile, and said, “Sorry,” evidently not meaning it in the slightest.

It took Lucie several seconds to get her thumping heart under control. It was only when she did that she registered what he’d said. “What d’you mean he can’t hear me? Is he deaf or something?”

“In a way. He can’t hear anyone. Or see them, for that matter.” The Doctor reached out and tapped the man sharply on the head. There was no reaction. “He’s a dummy.”

“You can say that again,” Lucie agreed, giving the man her extra-special glare.

“No, no, no, I mean he’s not real. He’s a waxwork. Come and look.” He led her round to the front of the figure. Now Lucie could see that it was a man in a stupid wig and the kind of out of date clobber the Doctor always wore, like something from a very old and very boring painting. He was staring straight across the room, eyes blank and glassy.

And they were glassy, she realised, because they were actually made of glass. Lucie waved a hand in front of his face – he didn’t blink. “That is seriously creepy,” she said. “He looks real!”

“I know. Voltaire. French philosopher,” the Doctor added when she just looked at him. “It’s an excellent likeness – the sculptor should be commended. In fact,” he said, stroking his top lip thoughtfully, “I think I’ve seen this figure before somewhere.”

Lucie looked around. Now she could see that the figures she’d taken for real people a few minutes before were posed, like shop window dummies. Their clothes were ornate and incredibly fussy, antique like those worn by the waxwork of Voltaire. There were candles everywhere, which she couldn’t help feeling might be more than a little dangerous with so much wax about. “So, we’re in a waxworks then?”

“Not just any old waxworks, Lucie, the waxworks.” The Doctor smiled delightedly. “Weren’t you ever taken to Madame Tussaud’s as a child?”

“Nope. The one in Blackpool always looked way too naff. Is this it, then? Looks a bit different to what I’d expected. Where’s David Beckham?” she asked innocently.

The Doctor shook his head in mock desperation and Lucie grinned. “This is the original Tussaud’s,” he said, going into what she had mentally termed his ‘school teacher mode’, the one he used when he wanted to impart what he thought was some fascinating knowledge. Lucie thought he just liked the sound of his own voice. “The travelling show Madame Tussaud took on the road when she made the decision to move from France to England. She travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles for over thirty years.”

“She must have been pretty tired at the end of ‘em. Hang on, you mean there actually was a Madame Tussaud? A real person?”

“Of course.” The Doctor looked at her curiously. “What did you think Madame Tussaud was?”

Lucie shrugged. “Thought it was a brand. Y’know, like Mr Kipling, or Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire puddings.”

He stared at her for a moment, as though trying to decide whether she was having him on or not. When he evidently concluded that she was, in fact, telling the truth, he shook his head again. “Lucie, Lucie, Lucie,” he said, “You amaze me sometimes, you really do.”

“Good. Nice to see I can have some sort of effect on you. There was I thinking that the all-knowing, world-weary Time Lord had seen everything.”

“The more time I spend with you, Lucie, the more I realise I’ve hardly seen anything at all,” said the Doctor dryly.

Lucie gave him a suspicious glance. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“Maybe a little of both.” With a crooked smile he balanced on tip-toe, trying to see over the heads of the waxworks, evidently looking for something.

Lucie watched him in amusement. “Shall I get you a ladder from the TARDIS?” she asked. “What’re you looking for?”

“I was trying to see Marie – she’s usually taking the money.” He nipped round the figure of the bloke he’d called Voltaire and hopped up onto one of the big daises in the middle of the room. In his Victorian fop’s get up he didn’t look out of place next to the silk, satin and lace the waxworks were wearing.

Lucie followed, trying to pretend at the same time that she wasn’t really with him. A rather snotty-looking couple perusing the exhibition gave the Doctor a funny look as they passed. Lucie shrugged apologetically and smiled. “Sorry. I can’t take him anywhere.”

The woman sniffed and walked on, nose in the air. Her companion gave Lucie a very interested glance, the kind that usually got the bloke delivering it a punch up the bracket. As he was pulled away, she opened her mouth to give him an earful before she realised that he’d probably never seen a woman in a mini-skirt and knee-boots before. She turned to the Doctor, finding him still balanced above her like a lookout in a crow’s nest.

“Doctor,” she said, tugging on his coat tails, “pack it in, you’re embarrassing me.”

The Doctor sighed in frustration. “She must be outside. I’ll go and look.” He jumped down, thankfully before someone mistook him for part of the display. “Wait there and don’t touch anything.”

“Oi, as if I would! Who’s Marie, anyway? Old flame?”

He pulled a pained expression. “Please. Marie is Marie Grosholtz. Well, she was until she married Francois Tussaud, anyway. We’re old friends.”

“I take it you haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Not since the French Revolution.” Distracted, the Doctor had spotted someone familiar by the entrance. “I won’t be long. Don’t - ”

“ – touch anything, yeah, you said that already,” Lucie reminded him. “Go on – don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“I’ll try not to,” he said, and vanished into the increasing crowd of visitors.

Lucie stuck out her tongue at his retreating back. “Great. Now what?” she wondered aloud. Unsurprisingly, considering her nearest companions were pretty much overgrown candles, no one answered. She turned to the figure of Voltaire. “So…any good clubs round here?”

***

“Ugly…ugly…terrible hair…God, that looks like a poodle sitting on her head! How could anyone go out the front door looking like that? Daft clothes…that one obviously got dressed in the dark…”

Lucie was thoroughly bored. She’d mooched around the figures, despite the Doctor’s instructions to stay put (and who was he, telling her what to do like that anyway?), trying – and failing – to identify any of them. History wasn’t exactly her strong point – as she’d told her humanities teacher at school, why did she need to know about a bunch of people who wore funny hats and had been dead for hundreds of years? There were far more useful ways of spending time.

Where was the Doctor? He’d been gone for ages, and she was beginning to get extremely fed up with the looks her (as far as she was concerned, perfectly reasonable) clothes were earning her. OK, so there wasn’t even a bare ankle on display and her skirt was probably scandalous, but did everyone have to stare like that? She decided that if the Doctor didn’t reappear in the next five minutes he could stick his waxworks because she was going back to the TARDIS.

Wandering vaguely back in that direction, she noticed a curtain that hung over the far wall. Certain she hadn’t seen it before, she drew closer. It almost looked as though it was hiding something. As she reached it, she saw a notice:

SEPARATE ROOM

ADMISSION 6 /d

Lucie stood looking at the notice for a moment. She didn’t know what 6 /d meant, and was pretty sure she wouldn’t have it even if she did know what it was. However, anything was better than wandering around waiting for the Doctor, whatever it might be. And there didn’t seem to be anyone collecting the money at the moment. Curiosity finally getting the better of her, she drew back the curtain, and, glancing left and right to check if anyone was watching, slipped inside.

Beyond it was much darker, far fewer candles in comparison with the room she’d just left. In here shadow was being used very much for effect, with – much to her surprise – blue and green lighting illuminating some of the figures. The figures themselves were different, too – no poncy lords and ladies, all togged up in their silk and velvet. These were more ordinary people, most of them men who looked thoroughly unpleasant, leering out at the visitors. It was all evidently supposed to be ghoulish – in one corner a body hung from a noose, the face contorted into a death mask. There were instruments of torture on display, and a rather interesting line of what appeared to be severed heads, with fake blood dripping from them.

Lucie passed a couple near the exit. The woman, a tall blonde in a bonnet, seemed upset about something. Her companion was talking to her in a low voice, motioning towards a chair, but she shook her head, waving him away. He passed her a handkerchief, which she accepted, wiping at her eyes. Lucie couldn’t see what there could be to frighten or upset anyone amongst this lot of Halloween rejects. To anyone used to gory slasher films it was all pretty tame.

She turned back the way she had come, intending to head back to the TARDIS and see if the Doctor had finally remembered her existence, only to find a figure barring her way. It was pretty ugly, even by the standards set by the rest of the room’s occupants – a fat, leering bloke in a dodgy wig and a suit that looked too tight for him. Funny, she hadn’t noticed a dummy like that before. Shrugging, she stepped round it

and yelled in alarm as the dummy suddenly reached out and grabbed her by the arm.

“Oi!! What d’you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Let me go, or I’ll punch your lights out!”

The fat man smiled at her, and he looked even worse than before. His face was red and sweaty, his teeth crooked and browning. He didn’t smell too good, either. Lucie recognised him as the man who had given her such a lecherous look when she had been with the Doctor earlier. “Ah, such spirit!” he said, evidently delighted by her struggles, “I knew you would be the moment I clapped eyes on you. You’re a forward little baggage and no mistake, displaying yourself in such a fashion…it’s entirely plain to me what you want, my dear.”

“I think you have a pretty funny idea about what I want, mate,” Lucie told him, “And I’m not your dear. Now let go of my arm before I scream the place down. I’m a very good screamer, y’know.”

He ignored the threat, running a lascivious gaze over her. She felt her skin crawl. “I know exactly what you are, dear girl. Who could fail to see it? To flaunt yourself so, and in a public place, amongst such company…”

“You what?” Lucie stared. “Are you saying you think I’m a tart?”

“Call it what you will, there’s no need to pretend with me! Just name your price, and it shall be yours, most assuredly it shall.”

“More than you could afford, mate, that’s for sure. Be seeing you!” Lucie pulled away, but he wouldn’t let go. He grabbed hold of her, bodily, pulling her tight against his chest. She struggled to get free, but he was holding her too hard.

“Girls like you are in no position to choose. We are alone here; in the dark…don’t come all maidenly modesty now!” There was a snarl in his voice that told her he really meant business.

Lucie thumped his chest, hard, but that just seemed to encourage him. He leaned in, trying to kiss her – revolted, Lucie leaned back from him as best she could, face screwed up as she tried not to inhale the rank smell of his breath. Doctor, where the hell are you?!

She found that she couldn’t pull way any further, and was bracing herself to try and knee the fat man in the ghoolies (wherever the hell they were) when a familiar voice said,

“I think that’s far enough, don’t you? Let her go.”

At last! Lucie’s heart leapt in relief as the fat man looked up, face creased in piggy-eyed anger.

“Who are you to intrude upon my pleasure?” he demanded. “Find your own woman, sir, and take yourself elsewhere!”

“I regret that I find myself unable to do so. I find it deplorable to see a fellow man reduced to forcing himself upon defenceless females. Are there not enough lightskirts in the town to take your fancy?”

The fat man snarled again. “Have a care, sir, I am - ”

“I know who you are, sir.” There was heavy sarcasm invested in the last word. Lucie couldn’t see him, there were too many shadows, but she was grateful he was there, even if she didn’t understand why he was suddenly talking in such a funny way. “I suggest that you let the young lady go and get back about your business before I call the constable.”

There was a moment of stalemate, neither side apparently willing to back down, with Lucie in the middle. She held her breath despite herself. At length, she felt the fat man’s grip loosen, and she lost no time in prising herself free. She was quick to put as much distance between herself and him as possible, hurrying over to the side of the figure that stood in the shadows of the curtain.

“Wanton! Slut!” the fat man hissed as he stalked past, adding, “I’ll see you never have any business again in this town. And you, sir, I shall report to your commanding officer. I’ll have you up on a charge!”

“I don’t think so, sir,” came the calm reply.

“That’s not much of a threat, is it?” Lucie remarked as her tormentor disappeared. Without waiting for a reply, she said in as an accusatory tone as she could manage, “You took your time! That fat git almost assaulted me!”

“I’m sorry. I would have come sooner, but I only heard your cries as I reached the door.”

“Well.” Lucie sniffed, deliberately giving him a hard time. There was no way she was going to let on how relieved she’d been when he turned up. “You came in the end, I suppose, like you always do. I was just about to deal with him meself.” She pushed the curtain aside. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I could murder a sticky bun.”

There was a pause. Then he said, “Forgive me, but you do seem to have me at a disadvantage. Have we met before?”

“Oh, come on, Doctor. Stop mucking about. You can cut out all the Jane Austen talk now, he’s gone. I said, let’s go back to the TARDIS - ” Lucie turned back, expecting to see him looking at her with one of those infuriating smiles of his. As she did, the light from the outer room fell on his face and she stared in amazement. The voice was the same, and the face was the same – the long nose, blue eyes, the characteristic lines that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth – even the height, the build and the hair colour was the same. But it wasn’t the Doctor. Instead of wild curls, his hair was pulled neatly back in a long plait at the nape of his neck, and although his clothes were still as old-fashioned to Lucie, he wore what looked like a uniform, dark blue with white piping, and he rested one hand on the sword that hung at his hip. Clocking the weapon, she realised he was the man she’d seen comforting the tall blonde earlier. He was smiling a slightly bemused smile at her, very different to the Doctor’s manic grin.

“Oh.” she said. “Oh, er, I…” She felt herself flushing with rare embarrassment. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, because you’re not the Doctor and you’ve never met me before.”

He gave her a little bow. “Lieutenant William Bush, HMS Lydia.”

“Lucie Miller, pleased to meet you. You don’t have a long-lost twin brother, do you? Looks just like you – got bad hair and stupid clothes?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said apologetically. His voice wasn’t quite the same, she noted absently – it was lower, gruffer, his words far less hurried than the Doctor’s.

“Right. OK. Great,” said Lucie, for once at a loss for words. The Doctor would really take the piss if he could see me now, she thought. Eventually she regained her wits enough to say, “Y’know, I think I’d better go. I feel like a prize prat so there’s no point making it any worse.” She smiled quickly. “Thanks for sorting out that bloke for me. Wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of you!”

He smiled too. “It was my pleasure. I hope you find your friend.”

“Yeah. Thanks. See ya!” Completely weirded out by the whole experience, Lucie made her escape.

***

William Bush watched her go, a slightly perplexed frown creasing his forehead.

“Who was that?” Anna asked when Lucie had passed her in the doorway. She was thankfully more composed now – the sight of the guillotine blade that had very probably executed her uncle had broken her usual self control – and glanced after the strange young woman with an arched eyebrow.

“I don’t know. She mistook me for someone else.” He smiled and shook his head as his wife took his arm. “Odd girl. You know, she thought I was her doctor.”

***

“Ah, there you are! I thought I told you to stay put?”

Lucie nearly jumped in the air again as the Doctor came up behind her without a sound. “How do you do that?” she demanded. “Are you a cat burglar on the side or something?”

“No. Well, not in this life, anyway. Where have you been?”

“Over there.” She gestured to the curtain. “Doctor - ”

“Ah, the separate room!” He grinned. “Have fun? Got scared? That’s the forerunner of the Chamber of Horrors, you know – the name was coined by Punch in 18 - ”

“Doctor, that lot wouldn’t horrify anyone,” Lucie told him firmly. “There was a bloke in the bath, for God’s sake! What’s up with that?”

The Doctor had his knowledgeable expression on. “That would be Jean Paul Marat. Very unpleasant French revolutionary who suffered from a debilitating skin disease, hence the bath. It was only soothed by immersion in warm water. Charlotte Corday fatally stabbed him, and was later guillotined for the crime.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “You don’t find that horrifying?”

“Well.” Lucie thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose it is rather horrible when you put it like that. But the rest of it wouldn’t scare a ten year old!”

“Lucie, Lucie, Lucie…you have to stop looking at the past from the standpoint of 2006. History is a foreign country!” the Doctor declared expansively.

“I’ll do that when you stop pontificating at me, OK? Did you find your ‘friend’, Marie?”

He smiled, slightly sheepishly she thought. “Yes. We had rather a cosy chat. I suggested that if she was thinking of settling down at any time in the future, Baker Street might be a good location for the exhibition.” When he noticed Lucie looking at him with a raised eyebrow he added defensively, “It never hurts to give things a little…nudge here and there.”

“Says the interfering Time Lord. Now who’s judging things from the future?”

“It’s different.”

“Oh? How?”

“I know what I’m doing. Centuries of experience,” the Doctor said loudly, drowning out her disbelieving protests. “Come on, let’s go back to the TARDIS. I need a cuppa.”

That was a plan Lucie was happy to go along with. They wove their way between the figures, Lucie keeping an eye out for the fat man and half hoping to see Lieutenant Bush again, if only to prove to herself that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. When they finally stood outside the battered old police box, the Doctor rummaging in his pockets for the key, she said,

“Doctor, do you think it’s possible that there’s someone out there who looks just like me? I mean really like me, like a twin?”

He paused, considering the question. “I suppose so. In a universe this big, it’s even probable that there are doppelgangers of everyone out there. Aha!” He held up the TARDIS key, eyes gleaming triumphantly, and put it into the lock. With a clunk, the door opened.

“Even you?” Lucie asked, following him over the threshold.

“Oh, now, come on, Lucie, there has to be a line drawn somewhere!” She could tell he was grinning again, that big, mad grin, as he spread his arms theatrically. “After all, I’m unique!”

Lucie shook her head as the TARDIS door boomed shut behind her, remembering the quiet smile of a dark-haired double. “You’re that all right…”

FIN