A PAINTING LIKE . . .
They never did find that place that did the bouillabaisse, but Romana didn’t mind. The Doctor claimed that the streets of Paris were like the rooms of the TARDIS, always rearranging themselves when you weren’t looking. Romana wasn’t convinced about the analogy. She did think the Paris Metro could teach the Doctor’s ship a few things about arriving late but stylishly.
Stepping into one of the Metro’s stations was like running into the mouth of a metal Medusa, her copper green tentacles spun up into a ticket hall. The trains themselves wailed and hooted like busy behemoths as they raced between stations called things like Marcadet-Poissonniers, Tuileries and Trocadéro. Names that were so much fun the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits simply refused to translate them.
Outside, the boulevards stretched before them, clogged with motorcars honking to each other. Only Paris, marvelled Romana, could make a traffic jam look festive. Each car was a little tin sculpture, eschewing efficiency for sweeping lines, fussy details and cheery colours. Every road was blocked as though the cars had poured onto them in a tearing hurry to go somewhere and then decided ‘but where, where is better than here?’ before settling happily in for the long haul.
The leafy pavements were a delightful muddle of trees, dogs, cobbles and footworn steps that wound up to other streets, to cathedrals, or simply to a door with a cat cleaning itself slowly in the sun. The Doctor told Romana that they’d arrived at that blissful point between the invention of drains and wheelie luggage, so the streets of Paris would be at their best, and for once, he wasn’t even fibbing slightly.
All in all, she was enjoying their holiday enormously. They dashed down the Champs-Élysées, for once running somewhere without deadly robots in pursuit. They considered taking in an exhibition (‘Three million years of human history’ said the over-dramatic poster. ‘Poppycock,’ said the Doctor). They stopped off at a bookshop, looking for Ernest Hemingway (the Doctor was evasive whether it was a book by him or the actual author). There was a poetry reading going on outside. Seemingly recognised by the owner, the Doctor couldn’t resist a pressing invitation to give a performance of a Betelgeuse love song to rather polite applause. ‘Don’t drink the wine,’ hissed the Doctor as drinks were passed around in unusual metal goblets which turned out to be tuna tins.
Finally they found themselves climbing the steps to Montmartre. The domes of the Sacré-Cœur smiled down on an impossibly quaint square filled with impossibly quaint cafés. Somehow they picked one and Romana found herself, for the first time in her life, forming the thought ‘Quick bite to eat and then a spot of shopping later?’
The Doctor was in a similarly joyous mood.
‘It’s taken years off you,’ Romana confided. ‘You barely look 750.’
He’d settled down in a quiet corner of the café, banging his legs up onto a chair and leaning far far back in his own. As a waiter wandered past, the Doctor murmured something which the waiter could not possibly have heard, and yet he came back automatically with a carafe of red wine, two glasses and some bread. Ignoring the wine, the Doctor pulled the book he’d just bought from his pocket, cut the leaves with a butter knife and flicked idly through it.
‘Any good?’ asked Romana, doing the French crossword.
‘Not bad, bit boring in the middle.’ The Doctor put the book back into his pocket and peered vaguely at Romana’s crossword. He suggested a couple of answers, and, when they turned out to be wrong, helped himself to bread, and made a loud harrumph. The Doctor often made this noise. Usually it was the prelude to a pronouncement of doom, or to a confession about a small rewiring disaster. But, just this once, it was the terribly happy harrumph of a truly contented man.
The Doctor had the look of a man contemplating a nap. The café itself, like much of Paris, felt like an old friend who hadn’t bothered tidying up when you’d popped round. Warm, welcoming and a slight smell of wet dog in the air.
The Doctor waved away the returning waiter, unfolded a hat and placed it over his face. Seeing him like this, Romana could barely believe that, when they’d first met, she’d found him a little intimidating. Also, worrying. It was still a bit frightening to realise that the fate of the universe was quite often in the hands of a man with no formal qualifications. Well, none worth counting. The Doctor tried out a gentle snore, seemed satisfied with the results, and produced another one.
Romana smiled and poured herself a glass of wine. She’d heard so much about wine. She wondered what it would be like.
‘Don’t move,’ muttered the Doctor from underneath his hat.
Romana froze, worried. Normally when the Doctor said that one of them (usually the Doctor) had stepped on a landmine or pulled a trip wire. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘You might destroy a priceless work of art,’ was the Doctor’s puzzling response.
‘What?’
The Doctor slid the hat from his face, speaking urgently to her from the corner of his mouth. ‘That man over there.’ The last time he’d used that tone, Davros had been threatening to unravel the universe. ‘No! Don’t look!’ warned the Doctor.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Sketching you,’ came the exciting answer.
Romana couldn’t stop herself from turning around. As she did so, her sleeve caught her glass, knocking wine over the table. As she sprang to her feet to try and sort out the mess, she caught a brief glimpse of a man in a serious jumper, sat across from them in the café. He was scribbling furiously with charcoal on a pad of art paper.
He glanced up from his pad and noticed that Romana, instead of sitting serenely in her chair, was now scrubbing the floor with a napkin. A scowl crossed his face. Romana scrambled to get back into her chair, but she was too late. The man was already on his feet. Angrily, he tore the sheet from his pad, crumpling it up and throwing it at Romana’s feet as he stomped from the café in disgust, without paying his bill.
‘I told you not to look round.’ Well, she’d not missed the Doctor’s I-told-you-so tone.
‘But I just wanted to see!’ Romana, left with nothing but a dirty wet napkin, felt miserable.
‘Well, it’s too late, he’s gone now.’ Squinting, the Doctor tossed a handful of coins expertly onto the artist’s table.
‘Pity. I wonder what he thought I looked like,’ mused Romana.
She and the Doctor had the same thought at the same time. ‘Well, he threw the drawing over there, so we can see how far he