It was 1981, and Sarah Jane Smith was just stepping off a train platform in Durham. She longed for a cup of tea but didn't have time to stop before she was in a car, driven by a silent Northumberland man, to Ashington. It was a rainy morning, and it was all she could do to stay awake. Mine closures were, alas, all too common these days, and as much has things like this outraged her, it wasn't the most exciting thing she had ever covered. Not by a long shot. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen," she yawned to herself.
The driver took her through the village of Ashington, where she scribbled some notes about decline and dreary rows. "Once 'the biggest pit village in the world,'" she wrote. Then she was dropped off within sight of the Woodhorn Colliery, at the hut whose name above the door read "Ashington Art Group." She was supposed to meet one of the original founding members at eleven o'clock, but the place looked deserted. Just to be sure, she knocked on the door. It was hard to imagine a group of twenty-odd miners had met in a place like this fifty years before.
To her surprise, a voice issued from inside: "Come in."
She opened the door. There were paintings everywhere, under tables, behind chairs, against the walls. They were small and large, tucked into corners or sitting in the open. Mostly there were bright colors, and just by glancing she could recognize scenes from mining life, everyday pictures from the 1930s. She almost didn't see the young man sitting at one of the tables.
"Mr. Kilbourn?" she asked, putting out her hand and at the same time knowing Mr. Kilbourn could look nothing like this man did. First of all, the original founding member of the Ashington group must be at least 70, and this man was not nearly as ancient. Nor did he dress like any miner she knew—it was almost as if he'd escaped from a fancy dress party for Edwardians. Little Lord Flaunteroy curls, she thought a bit sardonically, even as he stood to take her hand.
"No, I'm sorry, he's just gone out." He shook her hand firmly. "Are you the journalist?"
"Sarah Jane Smith," she said, presenting the photo ID badge pinned to her jacket. "Mr. Kilbourn was to give me an interview—I'm doing a piece on the closing of the Colliery in conjunction with the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Pitmen Painters . . ."
She trailed off as she noticed him turning away and gazing at the stacks of paintings. "Sarah Jane Smith," he said, glancing at her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. What extraordinary blue eyes he had.
"You know my work?"
"Oh, yes," he said vaguely, moving away again, "but I had no idea you were artistically inclined . . . thought you were more into investigative journalism?"
He had a soft, pleasing voice and a gentle bearing. If not for the rather eccentric dress sense—she'd thought all that velvet nonsense had gone out with Glam Rock. What was he doing in a pit village, anyway? "Yes, well, it was certainly interesting enough to draw you here, Mr. . . .?"
"Like your earlier articles," he said, as if she'd never spoken. "That exposé on the Kettlewell project was riveting."
Sarah felt herself smiling, despite her best efforts to remain cool. "That was over six years ago," she said slowly.
"Now, you see, I think this piece is my favorite." The man was standing in front of a canvas—or perhaps it was just tempura on cardboard—and making it very difficult for Sarah not to approach and see what he was talking about. The way he was ignoring her was irritating, but she stood next to him anyway. The painting was of a working street, no doubt Ashington in better days, except there was a melodramatic sort of funnel cloud with waves of water crashing everywhere, coming down the street.
"What's that one called?"
"The Deluge," the man answered.
Sarah stared at him, and then the painting. "Is this one by Mr. Kilbourn?"
"Indeed it is. Mind you, I did advise him to go for more lightning, but the man was quite set on making his point."
"What?"
"But then, there's so much to love in this one," he said, racing over to pull a canvas from behind a chair. Sarah indulged him and looked at it. Another street scene, a little more developed. The subject was an old woman—she reminded Sarah of Dylan Thomas' aunt in A Child's Christmas in Wales—struggling to get home in a fierce wind. This one had a title on it, East Wind. "The subject seems a little sado-masochistic, if you ask me," Sarah said drily.
"What? No." The man was quite shocked. "Don't you think it has inspirational value? The struggling of humankind—you want her to succeed—you know she will succeed!"
Sarah regarded him curiously. "As a friend of mine once said, our race is indomitable, indomitable." He didn't respond, except for a very slight smile. He was about to leap to another part of the hut when she clocked his path. "Excuse me, it's just you never said who you are exactly."
He sighed and looked a little impatient. "Just a friend of Oliver Kilbourn's, just as interested as yourself in preserving the story you find here." He pursed his lips, looking plaintive. "The story that's in danger of disappearing."
"Oh, don't exaggerate," Sarah said, with more flippancy than she felt. "The mine's closing, it's true, but what's preventing these old artists from carrying on?"
"Time," he said sadly. "And money." He stuffed his hands into his pockets. "The younger generation just isn't interested. And—Miss Smith, can I ask you to take a guess as to the rent my friend Mr. Kilbourn pays for this hut per year?"
"I have no idea!"
"Fifty pence, at present," the man said. "Do you have any idea what they'll raise it to, next year?" He didn't wait for her to respond. "Sixteen pound."
Despite her curiosity and irritation with the man, this inequity staggered her. "He won't be able to pay," Sarah said slowly. "Mr. Kilbourn. Where will all these paintings go?" The man stared at her, almost teasingly appealing to her better instincts. "They—they could have an exhibition!" she exclaimed. "I know they did, once before! Surely that could raise some money?"
The man lifted an eyebrow. "I see you've done your research, Miss Smith. But I also think you don't really know what the Ashington painters really mean."
Sarah folded her arms across her chest. "I suppose you're going to tell me all about it."
"They didn't want to be patronized," said the man with conviction. "These were mechanics and electricians, miners, some without jobs. Week after week, year after year, they painted because they wanted to create art—not to please anyone."
"Art for art's sake," said Sarah.
"They only charged a few shillings for their work," he said. "Just enough to buy paint and brushes. Have you any idea how expensive that stuff is?" Sarah shrugged. "They didn't want to be some novelty act, some quaint genre to be fêted, then tolerated, then forgotten." He glanced at her indignantly. "Are you writing this down?"
"Oh. Sorry." She quickly took out her notebook. "I'd just rather hear it from the horse's mouth."
He looked slightly hurt. "Oh."
She checked her watch. "Is Mr. Kilbourn really coming or has he just sent you to get rid of me?"
"Get rid of you? I thought I was giving you a very nice story—thought it would appeal to you."
"Yes, but you haven't said who you are. I don't trust people when they don't say who they are."
He looked at her. "I could give you a name, but really how important is that?"
She took a few steps back. "How very poetic, but only people who have something to hide conceal their identities."
"Oh, really?" he said, slightly gloomy. He must be researching a boo, Sarah thought. How else could he be so well-informed? Or from another news outlet, maybe? That's why he didn't want to give out his name.
"That'll be Kilbourn's car, I think."
"How do you know? I didn't hear anything."
"Car door opening and shutting . . ."
"Really—"
"Now take that piece there," the man was saying absurdly, pointing with one hand, glancing over his shoulder at her and the door of the hut. "Don't you think that's extraordinary?"
She hmphed, putting hands on hips wearily. "It's a picture of men in caps with racing dogs. On their days off, I expect. Why on earth you should—"
Sarah turned around, and the man was gone. "Hello?" The door to the hut was open, but she'd heard neither its opening nor his escaping through it. She had made two bounds toward the door to give chase when—
"Pardon me, miss!" Here was a Northumberland voice, here was an old miner in suit and cap, features chiseled deeply into a kind, shrewd old face.
Sarah exhaled, extricating herself from the surprised old man. "I'm sorry, but you wouldn't be Mr. Oliver Kilbourn, would you?"
"You must be Miss Smith, the journalist."
She smiled and shook his hand, impatiently looking past him to see where the anachronistic young man had gone. "I'm very glad to see you, I've just been importuned by a very strange man. He said he was your friend. He had, ah, long hair and a sort of green coat . . ."
"Oh yes, I know that man."
"You do?"
"Well, I did, in 1936." Kilbourn smiled in a way that made Sarah feel she was being left out of some huge joke.
"That's impossible," she said steadily. "Couldn't have been the same man."
"See for yourself." He began peeling back canvases from against the wall. "I did this portrait of him myself."
Why was she not surprised to see virtually the same man represented in the realistic but simplified style the Ashington painters had adopted. A thought that had been niggling her for the last ten minutes produced itself, and she laughed.
"It can't be . . ."
The article was a success, but the painters lost the hut, as was foreseen. There was a book, a documentary, and in 2006, an exhibition of the forgotten works. Sarah couldn't attend, already caught up in her own adventures. By the time she'd seen the TARDIS in a school basement, there'd been so much running around she hadn't had the chance to ask him about Ashington. But when the portrait in question was not in the exhibition, she wondered how long before it would wind up in her possession.
Sarah Jane Smith didn't know much about art; her collection was small, one portrait and scattered still lives, which she liked because they captured a single, elusive moment in time.
A.N. Watching the Sarah Jane Adventures made it impossible not to want to write for Sarah, and having encountered at least three of the Doctors, I thought it was high time she met a fourth. The tone has more to do with Matt Grady's "Flashpoint" than with "School Reunion." I apologize that my only real knowledge of northern England in the 1980s comes from films (This is England and Billy Elliot) and Billy Bragg lyrics. I first read of the Ashington group in an article in The Guardian in 2006, and I am indebted to Paul Stanisleet's article "Painted from Life."