The Day After the Doctor

Supplementary standalone fiction · one complete chapter. An imagined, previously untold stop in the Doctor's travels. Norhaven and its residents are created for this story. It is not assigned to the novels' chronology and does not alter their events or advance the current adventure.

The borrowed pump

By seven in the morning, someone had put flowers where the blue box had stood.

Nera moved them. The bucket underneath was hers, and she needed it to catch the oil dripping from the pump.

She set the flowers against the wall of the customs shed. They were yellow, with their heads bent by the rain. Whoever had cut them had tied the stems with good binding wire. She considered taking that too, then left it.

The pump occupied most of the quay on a trolley with one square wheel. It had belonged to the salt works before the salt works failed, then to the harbour authority, which had failed less completely and still sent invoices. A brass plate on its housing declared it suitable for continuous service. Beneath the plate, somebody had written NOT REALLY.

Her father had written that. She could recognise the pressure of his pencil, though she had not seen him in three years.

Yesterday the river had come over the wall.

Yesterday a stranger had climbed the warning mast in a coat entirely unsuitable for climbing anything. He had shouted for people to get off the old bridge, and the bridge had lifted from its piers a moment after the last cart reached the bank. Then there had been light upstream, an ugly sound, and the river had begun to fall.

Nera had been under the stair of the harbour office with three other people and somebody's terrier. She had seen very little of it. By the time she emerged, the stranger was arguing with a boatman about whether a particular knot could reasonably be called a knot.

He had left before dawn. There were numerous accounts of what he had said. Nera preferred not to add another.

She turned the pump's shaft by hand. It moved half a revolution and stopped.

“Can you mend it?”

Iven stood behind her in boots full of river mud. He carried two loaves under his arm, wrapped in a flour sack.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Can you?”

“I haven't decided whether it's broken yet.”

He looked at the bucket.

“It's expressing an opinion.”

“That's from the oil cup. Someone filled it to the top.”

“Me.”

She put out her hand. He gave her a loaf.

It was heavy, damp along the bottom and still warm. She tore off the dry end with her teeth while holding the shaft. Iven watched her work with the earnest, obstructive attention of a man who wanted something quickly.

“We need the lower road cleared,” he said. “The houses can't drain while it's full.”

“I know where the road is.”

“Seda says you're taking the pump to the landing.”

Nera removed the inspection cover. A strip of sailcloth had wound itself around the impeller.

“Seda says quite a lot.”

“My mother slept sitting up in a chair.”

She set the loaf on its flour sack.

“Is she out now?”

“Up at my sister's.”

“Good.”

“Her chair isn't.”

He said it as though apologising for the smallness of the thing. Nera took a knife from her pocket and began cutting the cloth away, one turn at a time.

She knew the chair. Iven's mother had sat in it outside the shop throughout the summer, making disparaging remarks about the price of pears. It had a red cushion and a repaired arm. There were sixty houses below the road. She could not remember every chair in them.

Footsteps sounded on the quay. Seda came around the customs shed carrying the harbour ledger in both hands, as if the book were hot.

“The landing first,” she said.

Iven closed his eyes.

“Before you start,” Seda continued, “the relief boat draws more water than the punts. If we cannot get the floating stage away from the warehouse doors, they'll have nowhere safe to unload.”

“We can carry things from the north bank.”

“Across what?”

They all looked towards the gap where the bridge had been.

“We have small boats,” Iven said.

“Four with sound bottoms. Two without oars. One belongs to a man who won't lend it because he thinks the harbour owes him money.”

“The harbour does owe him money.”

“I know. It's in here.” She lifted the ledger.

Nera pulled the last strip of canvas free. Water pattered from the open housing onto her boots.

“The pump isn't a boat,” she said.

“The stage is sitting on a trapped pocket,” Seda replied. “Drain the warehouse yard and we can reach the retaining chain.”

“And then?”

“Cut it. Tow the stage out.”

Nera looked past her at the warehouse. The floating stage leaned against its doors, tilting slowly with the water. A long pale stripe showed where it had scraped the brickwork.

“If you drain the yard, you'll lower the stage onto the chain.”

Seda stared.

“It's underneath,” Nera said. “You'll pin it. Pumping there makes your problem heavier.”

For a while only the oil dripped.

“I asked Harrel,” Seda said.

“Harrel's a pilot.”

“He said—”

“I don't care what he said. Look at it.”

The words came out more sharply than she intended. Seda had mud on one side of her face and the imprint of a sleeve across her cheek. Nera doubted she had slept anywhere comfortable either.

She put the inspection cover down.

“We can go and look together.”

They left the pump beside the flowers.

The warehouse yard smelled of wet grain and lamp fuel. Nera stopped them at the gate while she checked the water with a wooden pole. Under the brown surface, paving stones had lifted from their beds. She followed the wall instead, testing each step.

Seda stood on the gate's crossbar and held the ledger above her head. Iven climbed onto a bollard. Both arrangements looked temporary.

The chain ran from a ring low in the warehouse wall, under the stage and out of sight. A timber from the old bridge had wedged across the stage's far corner. Its weight held that side down. On the near side, the deck rose just enough to make the retaining chain tight.

“Take the timber off,” Iven said.

“With what?” Seda asked.

He looked at the warehouse lifting beam. It stood above them, its tackle hanging slack.

Nera shook her head. One of the beam's supports had pulled away from the brickwork.

“Not that.”

“Then we're back to the pump,” Seda said.

“No. We're back to finding out what we've got.”

She made them return to the gate. Iven slipped as he stepped off the bollard; Seda caught his sleeve and swore at him. He thanked her without looking up.

Outside, Nera sat on a dry capstone and took off her boots. Her socks had turned the colour of the river.

“The timber floats,” she said.

“Not well,” said Iven.

“It doesn't need to float well. It needs someone to stop it grinding against the stage while the water falls.”

Seda shifted the ledger to her knee.

“We can pull from the quay.”

“If you have a sound winch, sound rope, and someone who knows where not to stand.”

“Harrel.”

“That part, yes.”

Seda opened the book. Several pages had stuck together. She eased them apart with a fingernail, then shut it again.

“I can arrange that.”

Iven looked towards the pump, visible through the gate.

“So the road?”

Nera wrung out a sock.

“The road, if the engine starts. Find me a clean strainer. Not a flour sieve. Something that will keep more sailcloth out of the inlet.”

He was already moving.

“And don't start pulling anything until Harrel checks the gear,” she called after Seda.

Seda raised the ledger in acknowledgement. For once, she did not write anything down.

By nine, they had the pump above the lower road, with its inlet hose disappearing into water that reached the windowsills of the first houses.

The engine started on the fourth attempt, ran for six seconds and stopped.

A crowd offered advice.

Nera removed the fuel bowl. Water sat beneath the fuel in a perfect, treacherous layer. She emptied it into a jar and showed the jar to the crowd. The crowd examined it as though it were a specimen from a much rarer disaster.

“Fresh fuel,” she said.

“There's a drum at the smithy.”

“Above flood level?”

Nobody knew.

“Find out before you bring it.”

A woman in a green apron began directing people away from the hoses. Nera did not know her name. When a man suggested pouring spirits into the engine, the woman asked whether he planned to replace it personally. He went to help at the landing.

Iven arrived with a wicker eel basket.

“Strainer.”

“Too fine. It'll clog.”

He held up a second basket with most of its weave missing.

“This one?”

She grinned before she could stop herself.

“That one.”

They fixed it around the intake. Somebody brought tested fuel. The engine coughed, found its rhythm and began to work. The outlet hose stiffened. A brown stream struck the channel beyond the road and ran downhill towards the open river.

The crowd applauded.

Nera checked the belt alignment. The applause did nothing to improve it.

For twenty minutes the pump ran beautifully.

Then the leather belt came apart at its old splice, slapped the frame twice and fell into the mud.

Nobody applauded that.

She shut off the engine before a helpful hand could reach inside the guard.

The woman in the apron caught the owner's wrist.

“Wait until she says.”

Nera took the broken belt into the shade. Its inner face was crazed all the way around. She had expected the splice to fail eventually; she had hoped eventually would be tomorrow.

“Can you join it?” Iven asked.

“I can join it. Then it will break somewhere else.”

“How long would that give us?”

“Enough time to believe it's fixed.”

He sat down beside her.

Across the water, a curtain moved in an open upstairs window. Nera watched it snag and release on a splinter in the frame.

“He could have stayed,” Iven said.

She knew whom he meant.

“Perhaps.”

“One day. He could have stayed one day.”

She scraped mud off the belt with her thumb. She had nothing useful to offer about the stranger. Yesterday, when she emerged from under the stairs, she had wanted to embrace him. This morning she had wanted the patch of quay back. Both feelings seemed straightforward enough.

“Is your sister's house dry?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then your mother can stay there tonight.”

“They quarrel.”

“So do dry people.”

He gave a short, unwilling laugh.

The woman in the apron came over. She looked at the belt, then at the pump, then at Nera's hands.

“What size?”

Nera told her.

“We have one on the hall mixer.”

Iven stood up.

“Excellent.”

“No,” the woman said. “Not excellent. We have bread to make.”

Her name was Maret. She ran the hall kitchen, though before yesterday she had apparently been a bookbinder. Nera wondered whether the appointment had been made by anybody except Maret.

“How many loaves?” she asked.

“Two hundred before evening. People are coming down from the ridge.”

“We can knead by hand,” Iven said.

“We can. Have you done it?”

“Not two hundred.”

“Neither have most of the volunteers. The mixer isn't a luxury because you haven't had to feed everyone with it.”

Nera looked at him. He sat down again.

Maret folded her arms.

“I came to ask how long you'd need it. I didn't come to donate it permanently.”

Nera laid the broken belt along the capstone.

“I don't know.”

“An honest beginning.”

“I can measure how quickly the water falls. I can't promise when a road full of cellars will stop draining into itself.”

Maret considered the houses. She knew some of their chairs too, perhaps.

“One batch in the mixer now,” she said. “Then you can have it until two. At two, I want the belt back, whether your road's dry or not.”

Iven opened his mouth.

Nera put her hand on his sleeve.

“At two,” she said.

The mixer belt was narrower than the pump belt, but sound. Nera checked the pulley groove and set the engine to a lower speed. She and Iven refitted the guard while Maret watched.

“Who returns it?” Maret asked.

“I do.”

“Not someone you send. You.”

“Me.”

At half past eleven, Nera marked the waterline on a wall with a bit of broken brick.

At noon she marked it again, four fingers lower.

The road was beginning to reveal itself in strips: a kerb, the upper edge of a doorstep, the curved back of a bench overturned in the current. Someone recognised the bench and began to cry. Someone else thought it was theirs.

Iven took both people away from the intake.

From the quay came a cheer. The timber had shifted. Nera could see the warehouse stage moving clear of the doors, slowly, with two boats attending it. Seda stood well back from the working rope and waved a red cloth over her head.

Nera raised an oily hand.

Then the engine changed note.

She stopped it.

“What now?” Iven demanded.

The inlet basket had gathered a mat of leaves and fabric. They cleared it, checked the hose and started again.

“That's normal,” she said.

“None of this is normal.”

“Normal for the pump.”

A little later, the woman who had recognised the bench returned with a measuring cord. Her name was Brell. She had tied a knot in the cord at the length of her kitchen table.

“For the door,” she explained. “If I can get the table through, we could put it up at the hall.”

“You can't go in yet,” Nera said.

“I know. I'm ready for when I can.”

Brell held the cord loosely, with the knot turning between two fingers. Nera had mistaken her readiness for impatience. There was a difference, though after a morning of questions she had begun to answer everyone as if there weren't.

“Which house?”

Brell pointed. It was one of the higher ones. Its threshold had just begun to show, but the cellar hatch beside it had lifted at one corner.

Nera stopped Iven as he went past with a length of board.

“We need that hatch marked. Nobody stands on it.”

He looked at the line of paving between the barrier and the house.

“I could get across.”

“You could. Then the next person thinks it's safe because you did.”

They fetched two long poles from a fence that had already fallen and laid them from the dry bank, crossing them above the hatch. Brell tied a strip of her apron at their intersection. She did it carefully, making a knot she could undo.

“The table was my husband's,” she said.

Neither of them answered. Brell glanced up and understood their faces.

“He's at the hall. Complaining about the benches. He made the table twenty years ago and hasn't let anyone forget it.”

Iven laughed. Nera found herself laughing too, though nothing had been especially funny except the relief of having guessed wrong.

“Tell him he'll have to wait,” she said.

“I'm enjoying that part.”

Brell stayed to help. When newcomers arrived, she showed them the crossed poles and explained the hatch. Unlike Nera, she did not sound irritated at having to say it again. She borrowed a slate from a girl on her way to the hall and wrote CELLAR beneath a rough drawing of the street.

Then she asked Nera which other doors should be marked.

They walked the dry edge together. Nera knew two houses with cellars and a third with a coal hole. Brell knew a fourth. Iven added a drain whose iron cover had disappeared last winter and been replaced with timber. They found its replacement floating against the barrier.

The resulting slate looked untidy. It was better than the clean map pinned inside the harbour office, which showed none of those things.

Nera checked the pump while Brell redrew the drain larger. For the first time that morning, somebody approaching the road stopped to read before calling out a question.

At one, a boy brought them soup in a kettle. He had been sent to collect the kettle again, and regarded their drinking from mugs as an unnecessary delay. Nera made him sit beyond the barrier while they ate.

“Were you here when he left?” he asked.

“No.”

“My aunt says the box disappeared.”

“Did she see it?”

“She was asleep.”

Iven made a noise into his mug.

“It was there,” the boy insisted.

“I saw it,” Nera said. “I didn't see it leave.”

He seemed dissatisfied with the distinction, but he accepted the kettle.

At quarter to two the lowest doorstep emerged.

Iven's mother lived three doors beyond it. Her front room remained full of brown water. He stood with his hands on the barrier, watching the lintel as if he could persuade the whole house to rise.

Nera checked the time.

“We have fifteen minutes.”

“Another hour.”

“I promised.”

“Maret can manage another hour.”

“You can ask her.”

He turned towards the hall, then stopped.

“She'll say no.”

“Then you know the answer.”

“You'd stop now?”

She looked at the waterline. Every minute the machine ran mattered. She could feel that fact in the steady vibration beneath her boots.

“At two.”

He walked away without replying.

She kept the pump running until five minutes before the hour, then shut it down and waited for the moving parts to stop. She removed the belt, cleaned it and wrapped it in the flour sack.

Two men beside the barrier began arguing about who had given her the right to stop. She offered them the broken belt to examine. Neither accepted it.

She carried Maret's belt back herself.

The hall kitchen was warm and extraordinarily loud. Wet coats hung over the backs of chairs. People chopped, washed, fetched and disagreed. Maret stood at a table measuring flour into bowls with a chipped blue cup.

She glanced at the clock.

“Thank you.”

“I'll fit it.”

Maret nodded towards the mixer.

Nera worked on her knees in a drift of flour. The belt settled over the pulleys cleanly. She checked the guard and stood aside while Maret switched the machine on.

It turned.

Nobody applauded. Three bowls arrived immediately.

Nera was washing her hands when Iven came through the door carrying a sack of potatoes.

He put it down beside her.

“Where?” he asked Maret.

She pointed with the cup.

He did not look at Nera. After a moment, she picked up another sack and followed him.

They worked for an hour. He carried water and she peeled potatoes, badly at first. The woman beside her showed her how to take less flesh with the skin. Her name was Ulla. Her house was on the lower road too.

“The pump helped,” Ulla said.

“Not enough.”

“I didn't say enough.”

Nera put another peeled potato in the basin.

At three, Seda arrived with a coil of rope over one shoulder.

“The stage is clear. Boat's expected before dark, if the channel stays open.”

She saw Iven at the sink and hesitated.

“Your mother sent me to find you.”

He dried his hands on his trousers.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. She's furious you haven't eaten properly.”

“I've had soup.”

“Tell her. I'm not carrying that argument.”

He left. Nera watched him go, then returned to the potatoes.

Seda lowered the rope onto the floor.

“We found another pump in the boatyard.”

Nera closed her eyes.

“No engine. Cracked casing. Don't look at me like that. I thought you might want the belt.”

The belt was far too short.

They went to see it anyway. It lay beneath a workbench alongside three sound hose clamps, a tin of grease and a proper strainer. Nera took the strainer and clamps after asking the yard owner. He made Seda write them in her ledger.

“Loan,” he said.

“Loan,” Seda agreed.

“You still owe me for the boat.”

“I know.”

On the way back, Nera stopped at the customs shed. The flowers had been put in a glass jar. Her bucket stood where the pump had been; somebody had brought it back thinking it lost.

She picked it up.

“Was it your father who used to service that thing?” Seda asked.

“Yes.”

“We should have paid him sooner.”

Nera looked at her.

Seda's face had gone red.

“Before my time.”

“Still your book.”

“Still my book,” Seda said.

It was not an apology from her father, who had left Norhaven with a suitcase and taken his best tools. It was not even payment. Nera discovered she was willing to hear it nevertheless.

At four, Maret came to the road with the mixer belt over her shoulder.

“Last batch is rising.”

“You're sure?”

“I've checked my own kitchen, thank you.”

Nera accepted the belt.

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Six. And clean.”

Iven returned as the engine started. His mother had sent a folded blanket, wrapped in oilcloth, for anyone who needed it. She had also sent instructions about the chair.

“She says if the cushion's ruined, leave it,” he told Nera.

“And the chair?”

“She wants the chair.”

They watched the outlet stream gather strength.

“I shouldn't have tried to keep the belt,” he said.

Nera tightened a clamp.

“You didn't keep it.”

“I wanted you to.”

“I know.”

He nodded, accepting the space she left around the answer. Then he fetched the marker brick.

By evening, they could reach the first three doorsteps without wading. The rest of the road still held water. They put barriers across the damaged paving and made a list of houses whose occupants needed somewhere else to sleep. Seda wrote names, not property numbers. Ulla corrected two spellings.

The relief boat sounded its horn from the river bend. Nera stayed beside the engine while most of the crowd went to the quay. Unloading would take hours. She could hear Harrel shouting already.

Iven brought her bread with a smear of jam on it. This loaf had a dry bottom.

“There'll be a photograph tomorrow,” he said. “At the mast. For the Doctor.”

“Will he get it?”

“I don't know.”

She ate the bread. Across the road the snagged curtain had come loose from the window and hung almost still.

“You going?” he asked.

“If somebody watches the pump.”

“I can.”

She showed him the oil level, the shut-off and the sound that meant the strainer needed checking. He listened without interrupting. When she asked him to repeat it, he did.

They agreed on shifts. Nothing about the agreement felt permanent. The road would need filling, the houses cleaning, the borrowed equipment returning. Nera wanted paying. Iven wanted his mother's chair. Seda would have to open the ledger again.

For the next two hours, though, she could go and wash.

She left the marker brick beside Iven's boot and walked back towards the quay. The jar of yellow flowers caught the last light against the customs wall. A little of the binding wire had come loose from the stems.

This time she straightened it.

Then she took her bucket home.