Forever Shores

by Peter McNamara

  Doctor Who? (or The Day I Learnt to Love Tom Baker)

  Ben Peek

  At fourteen, I had never seen my father’s face. It wasn’t that I didn’t try to see it, only that he was very good at hiding it. Behind the black-and-white print of his newspaper, underneath the grease and red of our car, and up the steel legs of his ladder where he perched over the clogged gutter: Dad had hundreds of ways to hide his face. Even surprise didn’t work. The one time that I was sure that I had caught him unaware—I had burst into the toilet by accident—I found Dad looking at me through the Batman mask he was wearing.

  That incident had been at a fancy dress birthday party for one of his girlfriends, and I like to think that it was merely a coincidence, rather than a planned deception. It had been Mandy’s party, the one with blonde hair, I think, but Dad had also been seeing a brown-haired girl called Andy. I had always gotten the two of them mixed up. So much so that once I thanked Andy (or was it Mandy?) for a gift that the other had given me. But I refuse to be blamed for that. It’s not my fault if my dad can’t date one girl at a time.

  That mask in the toilet was a perfect example of how Dad managed to keep his face hidden from me. It occurs to me, every now and then, that it is possible that the government has been swapping fathers on me for years, and that they have a collection of stocky, middle-aged men wearing seventies rock T-shirts who come and go through my house at monthly intervals.

  I’m not too sure what the reason for this could be, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Not today, anyway. I had the day off school to go with Dad to Grandpa’s funeral and, besides trying to peer through the straggly brown hair that is the back of Dad’s head, I’m not really in the mood for conspiracies. Grandpa’s dead. In the back of the car is my inheritance, while in the front of the car is Dad’s current girlfriend, twisted around on the front seat so that she can talk to both of us.

  Her name is Angela, and she is another one of the tall, dark-haired girlfriends that Dad brings home from university. There are two kinds of girls that Dad brings home: the tall blondes, and the tall brunettes. I like to think that there are some short, red-haired girls there too, but overall I think it’s healthier not to think of my Dad, his girlfriends, and whatever it is they are doing at two o’clock in the morning. (I know what they’re doing, okay? I just refuse to say it.)

  I wouldn’t really say that there is anything great about Angela, but at least she hasn’t tried to win me over with presents, or said to me, like either Mandy or Andy said, ‘You can call me Mum’. I didn’t like that one bit, and I even found that it cheapened the lunches that Mandy (or Andy) had made for me to take to school. Not to mention the presents. Actually, when I think about it, Angela is okay, except for the fact that she has given me the nickname Holden, which she and Dad think is a riot. Ha ha. So funny. And for the record, my name is Matt.

  Angela has been speaking to Dad for most of the ride home, asking questions about Grandpa and what it was like for Dad when he was growing up. Cue boredom. Unable to fake interest any longer—and looking for an easy distraction—Angela turned her attention towards my inheritance, and then said to me, ‘You know, it really isn’t that bad.’

  ‘Do you want it then?’

  ‘Matt,’ Dad warned.

  I rolled my eyes at his back and silently dared him to turn around. But he didn’t, so I took another look at the curly head that poked over my seat from the back of the station wagon. I sighed.

  It was still Tom Baker.

  It was a life-sized, black-and-white cardboard cut-out of Tom Baker—whoever he was—complete with silly curly hair, a scarf, and geeky clothing. This was what my Grandpa had left me, believe it or not. Dad got some money and I got a cardboard cut out of Tom Baker, which I suppose shows just how deranged the old man was when he died. Which isn’t a nice thing to think, and I regretted it cause he was a nice Grandpa and I didn’t wish that he was dead.

  But still: a cardboard cut out of Tom Baker! A whole house full of things and he leaves me this?

  ‘He was in Doctor Who,’ Angela said, shaking her head at my eye rolling.

  ‘Doctor what?’

  ‘Doctor Who.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, but that didn’t clear up anything. I had the sneaking suspicion that Doctor Who was going to be one of those television shows that she had watched when she was my age.

  ‘I watched it all the time when I was your age,’ Angela said. ‘I thought it was cool.’

  ‘Do you still think it’s cool?’

  ‘Matt,’ Dad warned again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Be nice.’

  ‘I was!’

  ‘I know that tone.’

  Angela said, ‘I think it’s still cool, yes.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest that maybe she’d like to take Tom home, but I could almost hear Dad’s warning. I bit that back and said, ‘What kind of show was it?’

  ‘Science fiction,’ Dad answered.

  ‘Did you watch it too?’ Angela asked, giving him the smile that girls gave my Dad when he had watched their favourite TV shows.

  ‘Yeah.’ Dad sounded like he was smiling too.

  ‘Did it have any cool special effects?’ I asked, sliding over in my seat to try and see if he was.

  Avoiding me by checking his mirrors, he said, ‘At the time.’

  ‘So, no is the answer.’

  ‘You got to remember how it was at the time, Matt.’

  ‘Dad, can I explain something to you? They have good special effects now, and it’s time for you to stop making excuses for those shows you watched when you were my age.’

  ‘Matt, don’t—’

  ‘It’s true, Dad.’

  Dad sighed as Angela laughed. He said, ‘How’d you become so cynical?’

  I didn’t reply. Dad asked me that all the time, and while I had a few theories on it, I also knew that it wasn’t the sort of question that I was meant to have an answer for.

  When we got home, Angela helped me carry Tom Baker upstairs. Dad and I live in a pretty big place out in Eastwood, and Dad spends most of his spare time mowing the lawns or working in the garden, which I think are his hobbies. Most of his time is spent either with his girlfriends, or out at his job at Sydney University.

  Once we got into my room with Tom Baker, I began kicking my clothes out of the way and clearing a spot. Yes, I do have a messy room, but it’s not because I get any joy out of dumping my clothes, toys, magazines and books around it like I do. And I don’t enjoy having dust on my TV or on my computer. But I do let the clothes pile, and the dust crawl, and when it gets to the point that it needs to be cleaned, that’s usually around the time that I get into trouble. Well, trouble is such a strong word, because I don’t set out with the thought in my head that yes, today, a Tuesday, will be Trouble Day. It really is just a misunderstanding, even if it does result in me being punished, and having a messy room stops Dad from having to think of something interesting. This is why I let the clothes pile, and the dust crawl, and why there was a pile of clothes next to the TV that I had to kick away before Angela and I could place Tom Baker.

  He still looked like a geek, and I said as much to Angela.

  ‘That’s how he looked in Doctor Who,’ she said.

  I stared at the cardboard cut-out. The more time I spent staring at it, the more uninteresting it became. There was just something about his clothes, and that scarf, and, yes, his hair, which was really … boring. Where were his weapons? What about the monsters? What could Grandpa have been thinking when he left me this?

  Yes, I’ll leave this to Matt. I think he’d really enjoy this. Absolutely. He can dance with it around his room.

  Or:

  Matt doesn’t look like he has many friends. Perhaps a cardboard cut-out of Tom Baker would really help him in that department.

  Somehow neither struck me as right. Grandpa had always liked his things weird, that was true, but there was a reason for it. Maybe there was a map to bur
ied treasure on the back of Tom’s head? Would it show itself tonight under the moonlight? Somehow I doubted it.

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’ Angela said.

  ‘What can I do with it?’

  She looked at me, then looked back to it. ‘You could sell it.’

  ‘You want to buy it?’

  ‘What would I do with it?’

  ‘Dance?’

  Angela laughed, but it wasn’t hard to get a laugh out of Angela. She, unlike Mandy or Andy, had a sense of humour. She said, ‘I don’t really like dancing enough to dance with Tom Baker.’

  ‘He could be a dinner companion for those lonely nights,’ I suggested.

  ‘I eat here most nights.’

  ‘And don’t you think it’s time to cut down?’

  I probably shouldn’t have said that—I could practically hear Dad warning me from downstairs, but Angela just smiled. Then she said, ‘Well, whatever you decide, it’s yours. Have fun.’

  When she had left the room I checked the back of his head, just in case there was a map there. There wasn’t.

  I had decided, after a few dance steps with Tom Baker, that he wasn’t really good for anything, and I was going to head back downstairs when I heard a whisper. I had settled Tom down next to the TV again, and the sky outside the window was dark. The tree outside rustled but the night was otherwise quiet, and there was no one left in the room to make the whisper. Except me.

  I breathed onto my hand, listened. I wasn’t given to whispering without being aware of it. It could have been my imagination? I never had control over that. I waved at the cardboard cut-out and left my room, heading downstairs.

  I had a strange dream that night. I blame Dad, because he had done the cooking and whatever he had made—there was some name for it, but it didn’t sound particularly believable—gave me that dream. It has happened before, and I’m pretty good at blaming Dad.

  In the dream, I was sleeping in my bed. It was peaceful and quiet and dark, like how I imagine the middle of the night usually is, when I was awoken by a whisper. It sounded just like the whisper that I had heard before, but louder.

  I sat up in my bed and looked straight at the cardboard cut-out of Tom Baker. The light from outside had slanted right through the window and when I looked at him, really looked at him, I could see his cardboard mouth moving.

  ‘My first film appearance was in A Winter’s Tale,’ he said, and his voice sounded mushy, as if it was being pushed through wet cardboard. ‘I had originally been in the stage production of the piece two years earlier.’

  Well, I remember thinking very clearly, that’s nice. In the dream, it didn’t seem very strange that Tom Baker was speaking. In fact, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. So natural that I fell back to sleep and didn’t let the whispering bother me.

  I was late waking up the next morning, which was, of course, going to make me late for school. I pulled on my uniform without a shower, grabbed my bag, waved at Tom Baker and ran down stairs, jumping the last five as I aimed for the door.

  ‘Hey!’

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. Angela rushed down the stairs with her own bag slung over her shoulder. ‘Need a ride?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  That’s the other thing I like about Angela. Mandy or Andy had never given me a lift to school unless Dad was around, and they always made sure to point it out to him. But not Angela. She would sometimes take me to school three, four times a week because she had her own morning classes to attend, and had not once made a special point of waking up early to take me.

  Angela drove a blue hatchback with a lot of rust paint around the doors, and the inside smelt strongly of her perfume. Her driving was … well, I liked it. Dad referred to it as an amusement park ride, and there was that quality about it when Angela began weaving through cars.

  When we got to school, Angela said, ‘I think your dad is going to rent some Doctor Who episodes for you this afternoon.’

  ‘Tell him to rent the 1978 season,’ I replied without hesitation.

  Angela laughed, told me I killed her and drove off.

  Personally, I was little concerned, because that hadn’t been a joke. I really did think that Dad should rent the 1978 season, and what was worse was that I even wanted to watch it. By lunch time, I had decided that it was a combination of the dream I had had and the stress that I constantly lived with from not ever having seen Dad’s face.

  When I got home, Dad’s station red wagon was in the driveway. I found him in the kitchen with his head stuck beneath the sink and a toolbox next to him, and his hand was trying to reach it, but couldn’t.

  ‘That you Matt?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can you pass me the socket wrench?’

  ‘It’s right next to you, Dad,’ I said, looking where his head was. It was too dark to see anything but the pipe he was fixing. ‘All you’ve got to do is look around.’

  ‘Matt,’ Dad said with that tone.

  ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Matt, just pass me the wrench!’

  I put it into his hand. ‘Dad, where did Grandpa get Tom Baker?’

  ‘I don’t know. A shop, I guess.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Dad tightened something, then said, ‘I rented some Doctor Who episodes, they’re on the counter there.’

  ‘The 1978 season?’ I asked, alarming myself again.

  ‘What?’

  I found the videos on the counter, and began shuffling through them. ‘Dad, none of them have Tom Baker in them.’

  ‘The store didn’t have any of them.’

  I was disappointed. Part of me couldn’t believe that I was disappointed, while the other half of me was dealing with the actual disappointment. Behind me, I heard Dad standing, but by the time I turned around, he had already left the kitchen and was making his way outside.

  We watched the videos after dinner. Dad and Angela sat on the couch and I lay on the beanbag in front of them. Dad had rented six videos, each with a couple of episodes on them, and I must have been really tired or they must have been really boring, because I fell asleep through the middle of the second one. The Doctor was this old guy, and there were these robots that were supposed to inspire fear but just looked very, very lame. I could have made better costumes. I could have even made better sound and special effects. Angela and Dad, however, thought it was great: they laughed and pointed out all these things to each other, which couldn’t have been very interesting either because even they couldn’t keep me awake.

  I dreamt again. It was probably because of those Doctor Who episodes: I dreamt that I was in my bed, that Dad had lifted me off the beanbag and taken me upstairs. Even in my dream I couldn’t see his face, just the bottom of his jaw. He took me upstairs with Angela and the two of them put me in my bed, and in the dream Angela said, ‘He’s a good kid,’ which she would have never said in reality. Dad agreed, and they left, and that was when the strange things began.

  Except that, like before, it didn’t seem strange. When Dad closed my door, the cardboard cut-out of Tom Baker began to move.

  He had no legs to walk, and was thus forced to waddle and rock his way across the floor. He navigated through the junk, bumping toys and magazines to the side, and came up beside me.

  And then he did something that I would have sworn that a cardboard cut-out of Tom Baker couldn’t have done: he bent over. Right over, until his cardboard face was pressed near my ear. Then, in his mushy cardboard voice, he said, ‘In 1972 I was in a production of Troilus and Cressida.’

  I awoke with a start. It was morning and the sun was well and truly up. I was late, again, but I didn’t feel like rushing out the door today. It was Thursday. Dad and Angela would have left early, and I didn’t feel well—my body ached, my head hurt—and I decided that I’d either stay home or go to school late. I had done that before, and it wasn’t a big deal, and besides which, I did feel sick. I didn’t feel like doing anything, except for watching the 1978
season of Doctor Who, which I was a little uncomfortable with admitting. Especially with Tom Baker staring down at me from next to the television, and the dream touch of his cardboard face still against me.

  I figured that I might as well watch some TV, so I leant to the floor for the remote … and paused.

  There was a trail on the floor.

  It led through the clothes, magazines, toys, and books: a thin line that looked as if it had been caused by something sliding along the carpet. The trail lead down around the far end of the bed and I knew without even checking, that the trail would end right at Tom Baker’s cardboard feet.

  I sat up, holding the remote tightly.

  Tom Baker’s cardboard lips moved slowly: ‘My final season as the Doctor in Doctor Who was season eighteen in 1981.’

  His voice sounded exactly like it did in my dream, and for a moment, I thought that I was dreaming. A talking cardboard cut-out wasn’t that strange in a dream, was it? I could just lie back and go to sleep and everything would be fine. Except that I would be going back to sleep—that was what stopped me. If I went back to sleep, Tom Baker would still be speaking with his mushy cardboard voice and I would still be hearing him.

  And when I woke up, I might even want to watch Dungeons and Dragons for his appearance. Or I might find myself watching re-runs of The Kenny Everett Show, Medics or even the 1983 movie The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood.

  I couldn’t stop making references to Tom Baker! It didn’t matter that I had never seen them, I knew, absolutely knew that The Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb, The Book Tower, and Doctor Who Night were fantastic productions of television and theatre. There was no room for doubt in my mind. Why should there be? Tom Baker kept speaking, and I kept learning.

  I jumped from my bed and ran out of my room, pulling the door shut behind me and slumping against the hallway wall. I could still hear Tom’s soggy whisper from my room, but I had no idea what to do. What kind of insane cardboard cut-out had I been left? I sat in the hall and tried to block out the voice, but it crept past my fingers, filling me with its information.