Ghosts
of
India
MARK MORRIS
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Published in 2008 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.
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© Mark Morris, 2008
Mark Morris has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner Series Producer: Phil Collinson Original series broadcast on BBC Television. Format © BBC 1963. ‘Doctor Who’, ‘TARDIS’ and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.
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ISBN 978 1 846 07559 9
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For Nel, for everything
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‘ Where now?’ the Doctor said. He was like a kid at a funfair, trying to decide which ride to go on next. He stood poised, waggling his fingers, his face glowing green in the light from the TARDIS console.
Donna thought he looked like a string bean in a blue suit. A string bean with trainers and sticky-out hair.
‘Dunno about you,’ she said, ‘but I could do with a breather.’
‘A breather!’ he said, aghast.
‘Yeah, we’re not all Martians, you know. Us humans need a little sit down and a nice cup of tea every so often.’
All at once her eyes widened. ‘You know what I’d really like?’
‘Astonish me.’
‘A curry.’
‘A curry?’
‘Yeah, I could murder a curry. I’m starving.’
The Doctor looked at her as if she was a prize pupil who had handed in a sub-standard piece of work. Then inspiration struck him, and he was off again, bouncing round the console, slapping and poking and twiddling things.
‘Curry, curry, curry,’ he muttered. ‘If I can just… yep, there we go.’ The grinding bellow of the TARDIS’s engines started up and the Doctor straightened with a grin.
‘Donna,’ he said, ‘prepare yourself for a taste sensation.’
In a narrow alley between two tenement blocks, dust began to swirl. The trumpeting groan of ancient engines rose out of nowhere, and as they built to a crescendo the faded outline of an old blue London police box began to solidify. No one saw the box arrive except for a famished yellow cat, which ran for its life. For a few seconds the box stood, immobile and impossible, dust settling around it. Then the door flew open and the Doctor sprang out, still in his blue suit and trainers, and now also wearing a red plastic sun visor on a piece of black elastic.
‘Come on, Donna,’ he shouted. ‘You were the one who couldn’t wait to stuff your face.’
‘And you were the one who said I should dress for a hot climate,’ she retorted, emerging from the TARDIS in a flowery long-sleeved sundress, sandals and a wide-brimmed hat. She looked around. ‘Where are we?’
‘Calcutta,’ he said, ‘1937. Brilliant city, full of bustle and colour. Still ruled by the British Raj, but it’s the heart
of India. Centre of education, science, culture, politics—’
‘What’s that smell?’
She was wrinkling her nose. The Doctor sniffed the air.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the scent of burning cow dung.
Bellisimo. Come on.’
He strode off, Donna hurrying to catch up. She looked around at the shabby tenements with their peeling shutters and corrugated iron roofs. The ground was hard-packed earth. Flies buzzed around her head.
‘Not exactly salubrious round here,’ she said.
‘Well, we don’t want to be ostentatious. Don’t want to frighten the goats.’
He grinned and she smiled back, linking her arm with his.
‘So where you taking me?’
‘Select little eatery. Belongs to an old mate of mine –Kam Bajaj. Helped him out once with an infestation of Jakra worms.’
‘Wouldn’t have thought pest control was your kind of thing,’ Donna said.
The Doctor shot her one of his sidelong, raised-eyebrow looks. ‘Jakra worms are from the Briss Constellation. They’re eight-foot-long carnivores. Imagine a Great White Shark sticking out of a hairy wind sock and you’ve pretty much got it. Anyway, old Kam said any time I fancied a free dinner…’
‘Oh, charming,’ said Donna. ‘Cheap date, am I?’
‘That’s one advantage, yeah,’ the Doctor said, smirking, ‘but the food is out of this world. Macher jhol that melts in your mouth, beguni to die for, kati roll,
phuchka. And the puddings… caramba! Rasagolla, sandesh, mishti doi…’ He kissed his fingers like a chef.
‘Chicken korma and a poppadom’ll do me,’ Donna said.
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ he replied.
They walked for twenty minutes, the Doctor leading them through a labyrinth of streets without once hesitating. Gradually the streets widened as they moved away from the poorer areas of the city, but even the change of surroundings didn’t help Donna shake off a feeling of unease, a sense that something was not right.
The Doctor didn’t seem to notice the shuttered shops and burned-out buildings; the debris scattered on the ground; the rats crawling around the stinking piles of uncollected rubbish; the gangs of young men who glared at them in baleful silence as they strode by. He kept up a constant jabber about Calcuttan life, one second talking about the August monsoons, the next about how he was once voted man of the match at the Calcuttan Polo Club.
As they passed yet another group of silent men, some of whom brandished staffs or simply thick branches stripped of leaves, the Doctor raised a hand and called, ‘Hello there!’
None of the men answered. One spat on the ground close to the Doctor’s feet.
‘Probably just shy,’ the Doctor muttered as Donna took him by the arm and led him away.
‘Blimey, for the biggest genius in the universe you can be incredibly thick sometimes,’ she said.
‘Oi!’ he protested, then asked her more reasonably,
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just look around you. Even a mere earthling can tell that some
thing’s about to kick off here. You can virtually smell the testosterone in the air.’
The Doctor’s eyes darted around. ‘I suppose the atmosphere is a bit tense,’ he admitted.
‘Maybe we ought to head back to the TARDIS,’ she said, ‘settle for the Taj Mahal on Chiswick High Road.’
‘Kam’s place is only a couple of minutes from here. It’s a lot closer than the TARDIS.’
Two minutes later they were standing outside Kam’s place, looking up at it in dismay. It had been gutted by fire, the interior nothing more than a burnt-out hollow.
Face grim, the Doctor placed his hand on a door frame that was now just so much charcoal.
‘No residual heat,’ he said. ‘This happened a while ago.’
‘Two weeks,’ said a cracked voice to their left.
Donna looked down. An old man was squatting on his haunches in the shaded doorway of the building next door.
He wore nothing but a turban and a pair of loose white cotton trousers. His skin was lined and leathery, and an unkempt grey beard covered the lower half of his face.
The Doctor darted across and squatted beside him.
‘What happened?’ he asked softly.
The old man shrugged. ‘When men fight,’ he said, ‘their judgement becomes clouded. They bombard their enemies with stones and kerosene bombs and beat them with clubs. But if they cannot find their enemies, they simply destroy whatever is close by. They claim they fight
for a just cause, but when the madness takes them they don’t care who they hurt.’
‘Yeah,’ the Doctor murmured, ‘I know the type. But what about the people who lived here? Kamalnayan Bajaj and his family?’
‘They are gone.’
The Doctor’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t mean…?’
The old man shook his head. ‘No, no, they are alive and well. But they have fled Calcutta. I don’t think they will return.’
‘Not to this address anyway,’ said the Doctor ruefully.
‘But this can’t be right. I know for a fact that Kam was here in 1941. I came for Navratri. I brought fireworks.’
‘What’s Navratri?’ Donna asked.
‘Hindu festival. Lots of dancing.’ Thoughtfully he said, ‘So either someone’s mucking about with time or…’ He turned back to the old man. ‘What year is this?’
‘1947,’ the old man said.
‘ Forty-seven!’ the Doctor exclaimed, and jumped to his feet. ‘Well, that explains it.’
‘Does it?’ said Donna.
‘Course it does. Think of your history.’
‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t born in 1947.’
‘Not your personal history,’ said the Doctor. ‘ Earth history. Didn’t they teach you anything at school?’
Donna gave him a blank look. ‘I only liked home economics.’
The Doctor made an exasperated sound. ‘Remind me to buy you a set of encyclopaedias for your next birthday.’
‘Only if you remind me to punch you in the face,’
Donna said.
The Doctor carried on as if she hadn’t spoken, talking rapidly, almost in bullet points. ‘Last year there was a famine in India. The people got desperate and angry.
When the British Raj did nothing to help, the population rioted. Now the Brits are about to give India home rule, but instead of solving the problem it’s only making things worse. Different religions are fighting amongst themselves about how to divide up the pie, and Calcutta is at the centre of it. At this moment it’s one of the most volatile places on Earth. Thousands have been killed, many more made homeless. It’s a massive human tragedy, and I’ve landed us slap-bang in the middle.’
He looked so anguished that Donna felt compelled to say, ‘Well, nobody’s perfect.’
He smiled sheepishly. ‘The Taj Mahal on Chiswick High Road, you say?’
She nodded. ‘There’s a pay and display across the road, if you need somewhere to park.’
They said goodbye to the clearly puzzled old man and headed off down the street. It was still hot, and flies were still buzzing around their heads, but the cloudless sky had deepened, and the shadows were lengthening.
As the sun crept towards the horizon, more and more men were gathering in the streets. Almost all of them silently watched the Doctor and Donna pass by, their expressions ranging from bemusement to hostility.
‘Just look confident,’ muttered the Doctor. ‘Usually works for me.’
‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ Donna said. ‘Once you’ve been
to a few West Ham/Millwall games, there’s nothing much that can frighten you.’
They were walking down a quiet street, past a pile of straw and steaming dung, when they heard gunshots from somewhere ahead of them.
‘Although in my time,’ Donna said, ‘people don’t usually shoot each other at the football. What shall we do?’
The Doctor halted and half-raised a hand. ‘We could always stand here for a minute and hope it’ll go away.’
The gunshots grew louder – and were now accompanied by the din of an approaching crowd.
‘Any more bright ideas, Einstein?’
The Doctor pointed at the pile of straw and dung.
‘Well, we could always hide in there.’
Donna gave him an incredulous look. ‘I think I’d rather get a bullet through the head than cover myself in—’
‘Shift!’ yelled the Doctor, grabbing her hand.
The panicked cries of the crowd had suddenly become much louder. Donna turned to see that soldiers on horseback had appeared at the end of the street, and were driving a rampaging mob before them.
A mob that was heading straight for her and the Doctor!
‘Where is that dratted Gopal?’
Dr Edward Morgan consulted his fob watch with a frown, then dropped it back into the pocket of his waistcoat. He looked tired, Adelaide thought, and with good reason. He worked such long hours at the camp that
he barely allowed himself time to sleep. He could easily have settled for a cushy practice in the ‘White Town’, treating overfed English diplomats with the gout, or old ladies with the vapours. Instead, despite many of his fellow countrymen scoffing at him for wasting his medical skills on ‘coolies’, he had decided to ply his trade on the front line.
Adelaide had been so inspired by his commitment that she had openly defied her father, Sir Edgar Campbell, to help him. Sir Edgar continued to assert that tending to the ailments of Indians was ‘a most unsuitable position for an Englishwoman’, but at least he was fair-minded enough to allow his daughter to make her own decisions. The work was arduous and the rewards minimal, but Adelaide had the satisfaction of knowing that she was trying to make a difference.
‘He’ll be here, Edward,’ she said. ‘Gopal is reliable and dedicated.’
Edward used a crumpled handkerchief to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead. He was unshaven and his white doctor’s coat was stained and dusty. He was in his late twenties, only five years older than Adelaide herself, but just now he looked closer to forty.
‘I know he is,’ he said, his irritation fading. ‘I do hope nothing has happened to him.’
‘Well… my tonga-wallah did tell me that there has been trouble in the north of the city again today,’ Adelaide said. ‘I believe Major Daker and his men are attempting to restore order. It could be that the streets are simply difficult to negotiate.’
‘Yes, I’m sure that’s what it is,’ Edward said wearily, and swayed a little on his feet. Adelaide, who had just arrived at the camp for the night shift, reached out to steady him. Her touch made him blink in surprise, and the look he gave her caused her to blush. To cover her embarrassment, she looked around the medical tent with its two cramped rows of beds and asked, ‘Has it been a difficult day?’
Edward smiled without humour. ‘No more than usual.
We’ve had another fifty people in today, most suffering from malnutrition.’ He wafted his hand in a gesture that somehow carried an air
of defeat about it. ‘The fact is, Adelaide, we simply don’t have the resources to cope. I feel so helpless, having to stand by and watch children starve in front of my eyes… but what can you do?’
Again, Adelaide felt an urge to put a hand on her colleague’s shoulder, but this time she resisted.
‘You’re doing your best, Edward,’ she said. ‘It’s all anyone can reasonably expect.’
He shrugged and looked around the tent once again.
Despite the best efforts of the overburdened medical staff, it was a squalid place. The patients slept beneath unwashed sheets, with swarms of flies hovering above them and cockroaches scuttling across the floor. The interior of the tent smelled of sickness and sweat and, even with the flaps pinned back, it was as hot as an oven during the day and barely cooler at night.
The tent was one of three, situated side by side on a slight rise at the north end of the camp. The tents housed the most seriously afflicted of the refugees, who, over the
past six months, had been arriving here in their hundreds, on this flat, dusty area of scrubland two miles outside Calcutta.
‘How many deaths today?’ Adelaide asked bluntly.
Edward sighed. ‘Fifteen.’
She nodded stoically. ‘Anything else to report?’
‘We had another one brought in.’
She knew immediately what he meant and her fists tightened. ‘The same as the others?’
Edward nodded wearily. ‘She was a young girl, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. Two men brought her, bound like an animal. They didn’t know who she was, and she was in no fit state to tell them. She has the same protrusions on her face and body as the others. The men say she was like a rabid dog, attacking people in the street. They told Narhari they believed the girl was possessed by demons.
‘She had bitten one of the men on the hand. I treated the wound and tried to place him in quarantine, but he refused to stay. I only hope she hasn’t passed the infection on to him.’
‘We still don’t know that it is an infection,’ Adelaide said.
‘And we don’t know that it isn’t either,’ replied Edward, ‘apart from the fact that none of us has yet been taken ill.’
She was silent for a moment, then she asked, ‘Can I see the girl?’
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