Harvest
This has been written for the "five first sentences" challenge posted by
the_sandwalker at
time_and_chips.
CHARACTERS: Ten, Martha, OC's
RATING: FRC
I seem to have hit a rich creative stream writing about The Doctor and Martha's unscheduled stay in 1969. It's just a wonderfully rich chance to develop their friendship/relationship in all kinds of interesting ways. This one came to me yesterday while I was digging my vegetable patch.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Zucchini are popularly known as courgettes here in Europe, but I've used the Italian/US term here. Coriander is, I believe, known as cilantro in North America. And Einstein really did have an allotment. But the Doctor helping him with the weeding is own invention.
Martha wished she’d listened to her instincts from the beginning. Several beginnings. Starting with a crazy time traveller inviting her aboard for just one trip. Followed rapidly by watching the console blow up while he pressed buttons with his feet and mentioned that he’d failed his driving test. Or later, when he’d come running in with the Family chasing him and asked her if she trusted him, before vanishing into 1913 gabbling about some residual awareness getting her in.
Even that hadn’t been quite enough to teach her a lesson. She’d let him take her to the Moon Landing not once, but four times, and watched him running around screaming like an idiot about blowing on the flag and 53 conspiracy theorists punching the air for the next 40 years. There was no good way for that to end, in fact there were many worse ones than an indignant cry of “Someone’s nicked my motor!” followed by a rather more desperate one of, “Martha, you wouldn’t happen to have any ten-bob notes on you, would you?”
Admittedly, since then he’d tried very hard to make it up to her. He’d tried, and failed, several times, to find a job. He’d pawned just about every strange and wonderful thing in his coat pockets, followed by the coat itself, to get them a place to live, and even gone to the trouble of picking a few flowers and sticking them in a jam jar on the table, with a forlorn little note saying “Welcome to Paradise Towers. Furnished by Shabbitat.”
That just about summed the place up.
The first few weeks, he’d been full of confidence and bounce and endless plans for the building of the brilliant device that would get them back to the TARDIS in - ooh, two weeks at most. Oh, all right, three weeks. Well, make that three months. Probably.
He wasn’t smiling quite as much these days. 1969 didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. Although it was midsummer, he had a cold that just wouldn’t clear up and cuts on his hands that refused to heal. He seemed tired all the time, and his veneer of cheerfulness was beginning to look as frayed as the collar and cuffs of his only shirt.
“I think you’re suffering from vitamin deficiency,” she told him.
“Oh, come on,” he grumbled, “less of the diagnosis, Dr Jones. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Nothing that wouldn’t be fixed by fresh air, exercise and five portions of fruit and veg a day,” she said. “I don’t think you eat at all while I’m out at work, and the only places you ever go are the market and the rubbish tip to poke around for parts.”
“That’s not true. I went to see Giovanni upstairs this morning,” he protested.
“Went to see Rosa, more likely,” Martha muttered, wondering whether she’d feel better disposed to their neighbour if she had a different name. Living underneath a noisy Italian family was one of the many things she would like to change about their domestic arrangements, but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. She looked around the flat; it was certainly looking homelier than when they’d arrived a few weeks ago. There were posters covering the damp patches on the walls, a colourful rug over the hole in the carpet and home-made curtains (red and white gingham at ninepence a yard), concealing the view of the dustbins outside. But, in the end, a cheap basement flat was a cheap basement flat, and not a healthy place to be spending the day hunched over the kitchen table trying to build a Timey Wimey Detector.
“Just look after yourself a bit better, that’s all,” she said. “I know you have this thing about me supporting us and you won’t spend a penny on yourself if you can help it, but what if you get ill? We can’t take you to a doctor or we’ll have UNIT snooping around wanting to know where you got your extra heart from.” She knew that had to be avoided at all costs. If one of his previous incarnations saw this dump he’d never live it down. And besides, the universe might implode.
“At least we’re better off than that lot upstairs,” he pointed out. Martha had to admit he had a point; the Petrellis had to manage with five children under eight, the long-suffering Rosa, her disabled husband and their elderly father in a space barely bigger than the one they found so cramped for the two of them. She didn’t know how they did it, to be honest - they’d nothing coming in apart from family allowances and Silvio’s meagre sick pay. She suspected that Rosa, who spent her life half-submerged by a never ending pile of nappies and mending, lived for Il Dottore’s daily visits.
The friendship had started when the Doctor had met Rosa in the hall, struggling with a mountain of laundry, and carried it in for her with a heart-stopping smile and a perfectly accented, “Buona mattina, signora. Permetta che me gli trasporti quelli per voi, per favore.” His grasp of languages - even without the TARDIS translator - and his genuine kindness, had both come as a surprise to Martha. He never let a trivial matter like nationality get in the way of his delight in finding out about the human beings around him. Rosa, whose elderly father-in-law barely spoke a word of English, had invited him in at once, almost weeping with relief. Soon he was rigging up toys for the children, playing cards with Silvio most days and generally making himself indispensable. And the Petrelli kids thought there was an island called La Gallifraia in the Mediterranean.
The kindness didn’t all travel one way, and to Martha’s delight, she came home from work one day to find pots of basil and oregano on their windowsill and the Doctor waiting enthusiastically to share a plate of golden zuccini flower fritters with her. In the London of 1969, these were not things you found in the kind of supermarkets she could afford to go to.
“They always look well fed,” she remarked, her mouth full of sugary golden batter. “Is that just an Italian thing?”
“Apparently they have an allotment,” explained the Doctor. “Old Giovanni looks after it; he took me down there once. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they’ve got growing down there. Pumpkins, broccoli, zuccinni, beans, and enough tomatoes to start a ketchup factory. Little glass house full of fresh herbs. They’ve even had a go at grapes, and they’re not half bad.”
“What’s an allotment?” Martha asked.
“You’ve never heard of an allotment?” said the Doctor, amazed. “I know this planet better than you do. Back in the 1900s, the Government started worrying about people not getting enough fresh food to eat, and they put aside land for local authorities to dish out to people so they could grow their own. You lot would have starved in the Second World War without ‘em.”
“Can anybody have one?”
“Yeah, if they pay the rent. Einstein had one, you know. Kolonie Bocksfelde in Berlin-Spandau. We used to have some great chats over the weeding, and the restaurant served the best pumpkin soup you ever had in your life.” He winked at her over his glasses. “Relatively speaking, of course.”
“We should get one,” said Martha. “That’d sort out your case of impending scurvy. Get you out as well. Vitamin D, that’s what you need.”
“Martha, I do not have scurvy, and the only Captain Jack I ever sailed with was a 25th Century conman, not a swashbuckler played by Johnny Depp. Anyway, what’s the point of buying all those forks and rakes and things when we’ll be out of here any day now?”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Martha sighed, under her breath.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” said the Doctor, licking his fingers and returning to the calibration of his machine.
************
Martha picked up a leaflet about allotments from the library, but there was a waiting list, and even the modest rent and the cost of tools would be beyond their means. Anyway, it all sounded far too permanent.
Coming home to the Doctor looking worried was becoming a regular occurrence. The machine building didn’t seem to be going well. And, being the stubborn character that he was, he was coping by denying that their problems were anything but a temporary blip. He still refused to buy a change of clothes, even second hand, and he was beginning to look a little too like the professionals turned down-and-outs they’d met back in the Hooverville. None of his efforts to hold down a job, so far, had lasted more than a day or two.
Most times, she could jog him out of his gloom with the offer of a walk, a shared bar of chocolate or a bag of chips - all treats he resolutely denied himself. Martha hated seeing him so down, and she knew what he really needed was some purposeful, preferably income-generating activity, to deal with his huge, unspoken inferiority complex and give him back some self-respect. Or, at least, take his mind off how much he was missing the TARDIS.
This particular evening, there was obviously something on his mind, and he hardly spoke as they tucked into their beans on toast. Finally, he said, “They’re going through it a bit upstairs. Old Giovanni’s had a heart attack.”
“Oh no!” Martha said, in dismay. “Is he going to be okay?”
“He’s out of hospital, but he’s got to take it easy,” the Doctor sighed. “No gardening. And it’s the height of the growing season, too. It takes hours just to water all the stuff.”
“They’ll go hungry without that allotment,” Martha reflected. “And Rosa doesn’t have the time. Maybe we could help them out a bit?”
The Doctor looked at her. “You know, you’ve really changed, Martha. Or perhaps you were always like this, and I just didn’t notice.”
“Me, changed?” she said, surprised.
He looked at her more directly than he usually did. “You’ve a lot of compassion,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d get along without you to be honest, sometimes.”
He put out his hand and she took it in her own over the table.
“Thanks,” she managed to say, after a minute. The physical contact with him meant so much to her, she could hardly breathe. And to be called compassionate - the quality he’d so often attributed to Rose - was praise indeed. She bit back a remark to that effect, and looked up and smiled at him.
“I suppose,” she said at last, “when you go through stuff like this, and you see what other people have to deal with…….At least we have our ticket out.” And she looked into his eyes, and willed her own optimism into them.
“Yeah,” he said, looking suddenly awkward and vulnerable. She felt that he’d been on the verge of saying something important to her, but embarrassment had held him back.
“Thanks for looking after me,” he told her, finally.
“We look out for each other,” she reminded him. “Team TARDIS, that’s us. There’s this girl at work, she’s having a twenty-first party on Sunday and the caterers have let them down. They’re desperate for help. One to wait on tables, one to wash up, cash in hand, no questions asked, and all the vol-au-vaunts you can eat. Are you up for it?”
“Okay,” he agreed. “And I thought I might buy a new shirt. Or even two T-shirts.”
“Oh, don’t go mad,” she said.
*************
Sunday evening came, and they got in late, both a little tipsy and sightly queasy after eating far too much Black Forest Gateau. “I think we need some healthy food tomorrow,” Martha said. “Told you we should’ve got an allotment.”
“I haven’t a clue about gardening,” he objected. “Never been in the same place long enough to watch things grow. The TARDIS has a garden, but it’s self-sustaining and I never really had to get involved. I still wouldn’t mind helping the Petrellis out, but I don’t think I’d be much use.”
They fell silent, their cheerfulness draining away. Martha couldn’t help thinking about the Petrelli children going off to school in their hand-me-downs and plimsolls, or playing out barefoot in the summer. Her parents had told her stories about poverty back in Trinidad, but she’d never expected she’d see it up so close. Travelling with the Doctor had been a real eye opener - not the whirl of excitement she’d expected when she’d come on board the TARDIS, but something deeper and more grown-up. She’d seen Elizabethan beggars disfigured with pustules, people camping out in cars and reduced to drugs and kidnapping to give their children a shred of hope, and hobos fighting in the Hooverville over a stale loaf of bread. She’d scrubbed floors. She’d washed mould off her own kitchenette walls, not once but week after week, and rescued saucepans from a skip to set up home because they’d been so broke.
And the funny thing was, she wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
“I was thinking about the Petrellis,” she told him. “Silvio’s got a wheelchair, hasn’t he? Why don’t you take old Giovanni down to the allotment in it every day and he can sit there while you do his gardening, and tell you what to do? It’d get him out, give Rosa a bit of a break. And it’s nearly August. Think of all the people going on holiday who might pay you a few quid to water their plants.”
He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. “Martha Jones, you are about seventeen kinds of awesome,” he declared. “And a genius, as well.” Then - almost certainly because he was slightly tipsy - he sort of fell against her and gave her a kiss.
He should get sloshed more often, she decided.
*******
It was a beautiful evening towards the end of September, and as usual Martha dropped in at the allotments on the way home from work. It was like the United Nations there. Caribbean families growing okra, Bangladeshis worrying about their coriander plants’ tendency to run to seed too quickly, middle aged Irishmen swopping tips for dealing with potato blight. There were one or two old-timers who muttered about wogs and Iti’s taking the place over, but nobody listened to them any more. And admittedly, this close to Brixton you were bound to get a few problems with vandalism and petty crime, but they’d decreased considerably since the allotmenteers’ self-appointed security guard had begun his nightly patrols. It was surprising what a little jiggery-pokery with an electric fence and a Time Lord’s chilly stare could do.
Giovanni was up on his feet again, which was a good sign, and he and the Doctor were having their usual friendly argument about the dangers of him overdoing it. Martha wondered what their neighbours would say if they knew that was an alien standing in their midst, looking only slightly more eccentric than the rest of them in his checked shirt and a pair of Giovanni’s old cords, a makeshift belt of garden twine wound around his slender waist. You could almost believe he was plain John Smith, she thought; the only giveaway was his grass-stained Converses, which had somehow not fallen apart despite hours of muddy digging in all weathers. Like him, they must be tougher than they’d looked.
Martha thought about the other John Smith, the one who’d wanted to stay human for ever, marry and raise a family; just fit in and be ordinary. She remembered the tears in his eyes as he held his fate in hands, and the terrible coldness that replaced them as he embraced it again. Would he be that cruel now if he encountered the Family, she wondered? She hoped not, and looking at him sharing a joke with the Rastafarians on the next plot, asking them whether that stuff in their polytunnel was legal or not, his arms wiry and strong and his face relaxed, it was easy to hang on to that hope.
He looked happy, and a bit odd, and perfectly at home.
He saw her, greeted her with a smile and a wave, and came over, ready to show off the day’s harvest. Bizarrely shaped squashes, huge malformed beefsteak tomatoes, fragrant herbs and the very last of the autumn raspberries. His hands, as usual, were ingrained with dirt, and that didn’t bother her one bit as he put his arm around her shoulder.
“Good day?” he asked.
She nodded, happily. “How about you?”
He started telling her about his brilliant new bird-scaring device (“It goes ding when there’s starlings and stuff”), how to make liquid fertiliser from pigeon poo (she really didn’t want to know, but anyway), the ongoing war on slugs, and how he was trying to persuade Giovanni to try asparagus next spring. Get it going now, and you could make a fortune when TV cookery takes off, he told him.
Next spring. They wouldn’t be here next spring, surely not. And that was good, wasn’t it? They didn’t want to be stuck in that miserable little flat all winter, even if his occasional translation work and other odd jobs had given them enough financial leeway not to worry constantly about feeding the electric meter. They’d be thousands of miles away, hundreds of years, the Universe their playground and the pinching and scraping of these few months a distant memory.
And, probably, they’d never be as close again as they were now. There was no such thing as forever with the Doctor; even Rose had discovered that, much as he’d loved her. There was only now, and the pleasure of seeing the man you loved look fit and tanned and happy, and not have the haunted look of ancient and forever in his eyes.
“Right,” he said, brightly, “Back home to Paradise Towers, then?”
“What’s for dinner?” she asked.
“Zucchini risotto again. That all right?”
the_sandwalker at
time_and_chips.
CHARACTERS: Ten, Martha, OC's
RATING: FRC
I seem to have hit a rich creative stream writing about The Doctor and Martha's unscheduled stay in 1969. It's just a wonderfully rich chance to develop their friendship/relationship in all kinds of interesting ways. This one came to me yesterday while I was digging my vegetable patch.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Zucchini are popularly known as courgettes here in Europe, but I've used the Italian/US term here. Coriander is, I believe, known as cilantro in North America. And Einstein really did have an allotment. But the Doctor helping him with the weeding is own invention.
Martha wished she’d listened to her instincts from the beginning. Several beginnings. Starting with a crazy time traveller inviting her aboard for just one trip. Followed rapidly by watching the console blow up while he pressed buttons with his feet and mentioned that he’d failed his driving test. Or later, when he’d come running in with the Family chasing him and asked her if she trusted him, before vanishing into 1913 gabbling about some residual awareness getting her in.
Even that hadn’t been quite enough to teach her a lesson. She’d let him take her to the Moon Landing not once, but four times, and watched him running around screaming like an idiot about blowing on the flag and 53 conspiracy theorists punching the air for the next 40 years. There was no good way for that to end, in fact there were many worse ones than an indignant cry of “Someone’s nicked my motor!” followed by a rather more desperate one of, “Martha, you wouldn’t happen to have any ten-bob notes on you, would you?”
Admittedly, since then he’d tried very hard to make it up to her. He’d tried, and failed, several times, to find a job. He’d pawned just about every strange and wonderful thing in his coat pockets, followed by the coat itself, to get them a place to live, and even gone to the trouble of picking a few flowers and sticking them in a jam jar on the table, with a forlorn little note saying “Welcome to Paradise Towers. Furnished by Shabbitat.”
That just about summed the place up.
The first few weeks, he’d been full of confidence and bounce and endless plans for the building of the brilliant device that would get them back to the TARDIS in - ooh, two weeks at most. Oh, all right, three weeks. Well, make that three months. Probably.
He wasn’t smiling quite as much these days. 1969 didn’t seem to be agreeing with him. Although it was midsummer, he had a cold that just wouldn’t clear up and cuts on his hands that refused to heal. He seemed tired all the time, and his veneer of cheerfulness was beginning to look as frayed as the collar and cuffs of his only shirt.
“I think you’re suffering from vitamin deficiency,” she told him.
“Oh, come on,” he grumbled, “less of the diagnosis, Dr Jones. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Nothing that wouldn’t be fixed by fresh air, exercise and five portions of fruit and veg a day,” she said. “I don’t think you eat at all while I’m out at work, and the only places you ever go are the market and the rubbish tip to poke around for parts.”
“That’s not true. I went to see Giovanni upstairs this morning,” he protested.
“Went to see Rosa, more likely,” Martha muttered, wondering whether she’d feel better disposed to their neighbour if she had a different name. Living underneath a noisy Italian family was one of the many things she would like to change about their domestic arrangements, but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon. She looked around the flat; it was certainly looking homelier than when they’d arrived a few weeks ago. There were posters covering the damp patches on the walls, a colourful rug over the hole in the carpet and home-made curtains (red and white gingham at ninepence a yard), concealing the view of the dustbins outside. But, in the end, a cheap basement flat was a cheap basement flat, and not a healthy place to be spending the day hunched over the kitchen table trying to build a Timey Wimey Detector.
“Just look after yourself a bit better, that’s all,” she said. “I know you have this thing about me supporting us and you won’t spend a penny on yourself if you can help it, but what if you get ill? We can’t take you to a doctor or we’ll have UNIT snooping around wanting to know where you got your extra heart from.” She knew that had to be avoided at all costs. If one of his previous incarnations saw this dump he’d never live it down. And besides, the universe might implode.
“At least we’re better off than that lot upstairs,” he pointed out. Martha had to admit he had a point; the Petrellis had to manage with five children under eight, the long-suffering Rosa, her disabled husband and their elderly father in a space barely bigger than the one they found so cramped for the two of them. She didn’t know how they did it, to be honest - they’d nothing coming in apart from family allowances and Silvio’s meagre sick pay. She suspected that Rosa, who spent her life half-submerged by a never ending pile of nappies and mending, lived for Il Dottore’s daily visits.
The friendship had started when the Doctor had met Rosa in the hall, struggling with a mountain of laundry, and carried it in for her with a heart-stopping smile and a perfectly accented, “Buona mattina, signora. Permetta che me gli trasporti quelli per voi, per favore.” His grasp of languages - even without the TARDIS translator - and his genuine kindness, had both come as a surprise to Martha. He never let a trivial matter like nationality get in the way of his delight in finding out about the human beings around him. Rosa, whose elderly father-in-law barely spoke a word of English, had invited him in at once, almost weeping with relief. Soon he was rigging up toys for the children, playing cards with Silvio most days and generally making himself indispensable. And the Petrelli kids thought there was an island called La Gallifraia in the Mediterranean.
The kindness didn’t all travel one way, and to Martha’s delight, she came home from work one day to find pots of basil and oregano on their windowsill and the Doctor waiting enthusiastically to share a plate of golden zuccini flower fritters with her. In the London of 1969, these were not things you found in the kind of supermarkets she could afford to go to.
“They always look well fed,” she remarked, her mouth full of sugary golden batter. “Is that just an Italian thing?”
“Apparently they have an allotment,” explained the Doctor. “Old Giovanni looks after it; he took me down there once. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they’ve got growing down there. Pumpkins, broccoli, zuccinni, beans, and enough tomatoes to start a ketchup factory. Little glass house full of fresh herbs. They’ve even had a go at grapes, and they’re not half bad.”
“What’s an allotment?” Martha asked.
“You’ve never heard of an allotment?” said the Doctor, amazed. “I know this planet better than you do. Back in the 1900s, the Government started worrying about people not getting enough fresh food to eat, and they put aside land for local authorities to dish out to people so they could grow their own. You lot would have starved in the Second World War without ‘em.”
“Can anybody have one?”
“Yeah, if they pay the rent. Einstein had one, you know. Kolonie Bocksfelde in Berlin-Spandau. We used to have some great chats over the weeding, and the restaurant served the best pumpkin soup you ever had in your life.” He winked at her over his glasses. “Relatively speaking, of course.”
“We should get one,” said Martha. “That’d sort out your case of impending scurvy. Get you out as well. Vitamin D, that’s what you need.”
“Martha, I do not have scurvy, and the only Captain Jack I ever sailed with was a 25th Century conman, not a swashbuckler played by Johnny Depp. Anyway, what’s the point of buying all those forks and rakes and things when we’ll be out of here any day now?”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Martha sighed, under her breath.
“Oh, ye of little faith,” said the Doctor, licking his fingers and returning to the calibration of his machine.
************
Martha picked up a leaflet about allotments from the library, but there was a waiting list, and even the modest rent and the cost of tools would be beyond their means. Anyway, it all sounded far too permanent.
Coming home to the Doctor looking worried was becoming a regular occurrence. The machine building didn’t seem to be going well. And, being the stubborn character that he was, he was coping by denying that their problems were anything but a temporary blip. He still refused to buy a change of clothes, even second hand, and he was beginning to look a little too like the professionals turned down-and-outs they’d met back in the Hooverville. None of his efforts to hold down a job, so far, had lasted more than a day or two.
Most times, she could jog him out of his gloom with the offer of a walk, a shared bar of chocolate or a bag of chips - all treats he resolutely denied himself. Martha hated seeing him so down, and she knew what he really needed was some purposeful, preferably income-generating activity, to deal with his huge, unspoken inferiority complex and give him back some self-respect. Or, at least, take his mind off how much he was missing the TARDIS.
This particular evening, there was obviously something on his mind, and he hardly spoke as they tucked into their beans on toast. Finally, he said, “They’re going through it a bit upstairs. Old Giovanni’s had a heart attack.”
“Oh no!” Martha said, in dismay. “Is he going to be okay?”
“He’s out of hospital, but he’s got to take it easy,” the Doctor sighed. “No gardening. And it’s the height of the growing season, too. It takes hours just to water all the stuff.”
“They’ll go hungry without that allotment,” Martha reflected. “And Rosa doesn’t have the time. Maybe we could help them out a bit?”
The Doctor looked at her. “You know, you’ve really changed, Martha. Or perhaps you were always like this, and I just didn’t notice.”
“Me, changed?” she said, surprised.
He looked at her more directly than he usually did. “You’ve a lot of compassion,” he said. “I don’t know how I’d get along without you to be honest, sometimes.”
He put out his hand and she took it in her own over the table.
“Thanks,” she managed to say, after a minute. The physical contact with him meant so much to her, she could hardly breathe. And to be called compassionate - the quality he’d so often attributed to Rose - was praise indeed. She bit back a remark to that effect, and looked up and smiled at him.
“I suppose,” she said at last, “when you go through stuff like this, and you see what other people have to deal with…….At least we have our ticket out.” And she looked into his eyes, and willed her own optimism into them.
“Yeah,” he said, looking suddenly awkward and vulnerable. She felt that he’d been on the verge of saying something important to her, but embarrassment had held him back.
“Thanks for looking after me,” he told her, finally.
“We look out for each other,” she reminded him. “Team TARDIS, that’s us. There’s this girl at work, she’s having a twenty-first party on Sunday and the caterers have let them down. They’re desperate for help. One to wait on tables, one to wash up, cash in hand, no questions asked, and all the vol-au-vaunts you can eat. Are you up for it?”
“Okay,” he agreed. “And I thought I might buy a new shirt. Or even two T-shirts.”
“Oh, don’t go mad,” she said.
*************
Sunday evening came, and they got in late, both a little tipsy and sightly queasy after eating far too much Black Forest Gateau. “I think we need some healthy food tomorrow,” Martha said. “Told you we should’ve got an allotment.”
“I haven’t a clue about gardening,” he objected. “Never been in the same place long enough to watch things grow. The TARDIS has a garden, but it’s self-sustaining and I never really had to get involved. I still wouldn’t mind helping the Petrellis out, but I don’t think I’d be much use.”
They fell silent, their cheerfulness draining away. Martha couldn’t help thinking about the Petrelli children going off to school in their hand-me-downs and plimsolls, or playing out barefoot in the summer. Her parents had told her stories about poverty back in Trinidad, but she’d never expected she’d see it up so close. Travelling with the Doctor had been a real eye opener - not the whirl of excitement she’d expected when she’d come on board the TARDIS, but something deeper and more grown-up. She’d seen Elizabethan beggars disfigured with pustules, people camping out in cars and reduced to drugs and kidnapping to give their children a shred of hope, and hobos fighting in the Hooverville over a stale loaf of bread. She’d scrubbed floors. She’d washed mould off her own kitchenette walls, not once but week after week, and rescued saucepans from a skip to set up home because they’d been so broke.
And the funny thing was, she wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
“I was thinking about the Petrellis,” she told him. “Silvio’s got a wheelchair, hasn’t he? Why don’t you take old Giovanni down to the allotment in it every day and he can sit there while you do his gardening, and tell you what to do? It’d get him out, give Rosa a bit of a break. And it’s nearly August. Think of all the people going on holiday who might pay you a few quid to water their plants.”
He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. “Martha Jones, you are about seventeen kinds of awesome,” he declared. “And a genius, as well.” Then - almost certainly because he was slightly tipsy - he sort of fell against her and gave her a kiss.
He should get sloshed more often, she decided.
*******
It was a beautiful evening towards the end of September, and as usual Martha dropped in at the allotments on the way home from work. It was like the United Nations there. Caribbean families growing okra, Bangladeshis worrying about their coriander plants’ tendency to run to seed too quickly, middle aged Irishmen swopping tips for dealing with potato blight. There were one or two old-timers who muttered about wogs and Iti’s taking the place over, but nobody listened to them any more. And admittedly, this close to Brixton you were bound to get a few problems with vandalism and petty crime, but they’d decreased considerably since the allotmenteers’ self-appointed security guard had begun his nightly patrols. It was surprising what a little jiggery-pokery with an electric fence and a Time Lord’s chilly stare could do.
Giovanni was up on his feet again, which was a good sign, and he and the Doctor were having their usual friendly argument about the dangers of him overdoing it. Martha wondered what their neighbours would say if they knew that was an alien standing in their midst, looking only slightly more eccentric than the rest of them in his checked shirt and a pair of Giovanni’s old cords, a makeshift belt of garden twine wound around his slender waist. You could almost believe he was plain John Smith, she thought; the only giveaway was his grass-stained Converses, which had somehow not fallen apart despite hours of muddy digging in all weathers. Like him, they must be tougher than they’d looked.
Martha thought about the other John Smith, the one who’d wanted to stay human for ever, marry and raise a family; just fit in and be ordinary. She remembered the tears in his eyes as he held his fate in hands, and the terrible coldness that replaced them as he embraced it again. Would he be that cruel now if he encountered the Family, she wondered? She hoped not, and looking at him sharing a joke with the Rastafarians on the next plot, asking them whether that stuff in their polytunnel was legal or not, his arms wiry and strong and his face relaxed, it was easy to hang on to that hope.
He looked happy, and a bit odd, and perfectly at home.
He saw her, greeted her with a smile and a wave, and came over, ready to show off the day’s harvest. Bizarrely shaped squashes, huge malformed beefsteak tomatoes, fragrant herbs and the very last of the autumn raspberries. His hands, as usual, were ingrained with dirt, and that didn’t bother her one bit as he put his arm around her shoulder.
“Good day?” he asked.
She nodded, happily. “How about you?”
He started telling her about his brilliant new bird-scaring device (“It goes ding when there’s starlings and stuff”), how to make liquid fertiliser from pigeon poo (she really didn’t want to know, but anyway), the ongoing war on slugs, and how he was trying to persuade Giovanni to try asparagus next spring. Get it going now, and you could make a fortune when TV cookery takes off, he told him.
Next spring. They wouldn’t be here next spring, surely not. And that was good, wasn’t it? They didn’t want to be stuck in that miserable little flat all winter, even if his occasional translation work and other odd jobs had given them enough financial leeway not to worry constantly about feeding the electric meter. They’d be thousands of miles away, hundreds of years, the Universe their playground and the pinching and scraping of these few months a distant memory.
And, probably, they’d never be as close again as they were now. There was no such thing as forever with the Doctor; even Rose had discovered that, much as he’d loved her. There was only now, and the pleasure of seeing the man you loved look fit and tanned and happy, and not have the haunted look of ancient and forever in his eyes.
“Right,” he said, brightly, “Back home to Paradise Towers, then?”
“What’s for dinner?” she asked.
“Zucchini risotto again. That all right?”