Solidbond

Old Fox's Ghost Stories: The Young Officer of Craven Street. It was Hallow'een and the Doctor had had a busy morning, making his way slowly through the heavy fog in his Riley. A healthy baby born at quarter to six, the tenth of the family, two nasty attacks of bronchitis worsened by the damp weather, and a Harvest Mouse suffering from nervous prostration due to overwork. He stopped for lunch at one, deciding to buy a pie from the bakers as it was his housekeeper's day off. There was a display of gleaming toffee apples and spice cakes in the window, and inside was packed full of bright-eyed, gossiping villagers, including Old Fox who invited him to supper that evening. "There'll be lots of nice things to eat – roast chestnuts and treacle tart - and we'll be apple bobbing and telling ghost stories and all that sort of thing." Old Fox suddenly stopped and inspected him very closely. "You look very tired, I think you should have a few days off, if you can." The Doctor was tired. Old Fox was right. He hadn't slept very well for weeks, the old dreams were back, and he had become sensitive to certain smells once more, garlic and horseradish and mustard, even onions, reminded him viscerally of the gas and he would start to cough and choke involuntarily. He hated himself for it, but more he fought it all, the worse it seemed to get. And he'd been seeing ghosts of dead friends and war-time patients again, always in the daytime, never at night, as though their youth and vitality was drawn to sun and air, to all those quotidian and commonplace things so longed for in those dark, blood-soaked, shell-torn places of the front. The week before, he'd gone up to London to attend a lecture, and had been walking down Craven Street afterwards. When he passed the Strand station entrance, a young man, an officer, in a mud-soiled great coat, came up from the booking hall, and smiled and nodded to him as he passed, saying "Good afternoon, Doctor". The Doctor nodded back, but couldn't remember his name. He knew his thin, intelligent face though, and the flickers of memory turned in their uncertain wheels, until it all came back to him. He had held that man's hand as he died, at an Advanced dressing station near Ypres. He had tried to patch him up, but he was too badly injured. He had watched his sacred soul leave his body, and then turned to another stretcher without pause. Oh god, said the Doctor, and turned back, but the man, the ghost, had gone, faded into the crowds. That evening, in a quiet moment, he told Wolf what had happened. "Coming to say thanks, he was" said Wolf, "that's all. Just coming to say thanks."

The Third Window. Five and twenty past four and Miss Rabbit and Grey Brock were settling down to tea. It was already dark outside and Miss Rabbit had lit the oil lamps and the little candles in the holly wreath which shone merrily in the dark parlour. It was the first time the two friends had sat down together since the beginning of Advent, and so they had made a little more effort than was usual with their repast. There were crumpets dripping with butter, a tall cottage loaf, half a green Cheshire round, a large Dorset apple cake and a small Plantagenet Pear cake, both served with yellow scalded cream, piping-hot cheese croquettes straight from the range, jars of tomato chutney and piccalilli, and a heart-shaped box of Fuller's assorted chocolates Miss Rabbit had been saving for a special occasion. Afterwards, they sat by the fire and talked about their doings – Grey Brock's carpentry and odd jobs and Miss Rabbit's catering, and then about the coming weeks and Christmas itself, which glittered on the horizon, full of warmth and light and companionship – for little more is needed when the larder is full, one's health is robust, and kind and stalwart friends are near.

"Politics based entirely on the persecution of fabricated boucs émissaires, of imagined scapegoats, of those most vulnerable in society, always ends one way," said Old Fox, sipping his cocoa, "in violence and cruelty and the degradations of war." "It feels desperate," said the Doctor, pausing to light his pipe, "desperate. As though everyone has forgotten where that false patriotism of flag-waving led us all before. What can one do, Old Fox?" "Flood the country with rationalism, normality, kindness, paint over the slogans, tear down the hateful flags, but move calmly and with thought, with immense care and logic, not passion. Passion leads to fighting, book-burning, riots, deaths, chaos. Exactly what they want."