Chapter 9

"I think I've got it," he said, pulling up the mp3 of a new song. "I mean, the song is called Irénée, and it takes place in Costa Brava - what are the odds this isn't it?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You soon will. How's your French?"

"Also rusty, but not as bad as my Spanish."

"Here we go," he sighed, hitting play. A flamenco guitar began to play a gentle tango-like beat, and a whiny woodwind instrument came in moments later to give the song a fleshy flair. Then, a light, airy woman's voice began to sing a Spanish-tinged melody, in French.

Elle s'appelait Irénée, elle était envoûtée
Par le charme hidalgo, les castagnettes et le tango
Son souhait le plus ardent, de prendre pour amant
Un beau
caballero, un vrai, tout en chair et en os

AÏ, aï, Irénée, pourquoi n'es-tu pas née
En pays latin, plutôt qu'en pleine Vendée
Aï, Aaï, qué dolor, de n'avoir pas le corps
Des andalouses, que l'on jalouse et qu'on adore
C'est pourquoi, pas à pas, elle envia les appâts
Qu'elle n'avait pourtant pas, aï, aï, quelle déception!

Consumée par sa passion elle tenait toujours bon
Dansant le flamenco sur son parquet à coup d'sabots
Mais un jour, n'y tenant plus elle reprit le dessus
En bateau s'embarqua direction la Costa Brava

Aï, je suis folle de voir tant d'espagnols!
Criait l'hystérique en Péninsule Ibérique
Mais l'allégresse fit place à la détresse
Quand dans un bal, elle découvrit l'ampleur du mal
Les madones endiablées se raillaient d'Irénée
Car tous les espagnols la trouvaient mollassonne!

Tel un taureau dans l'arène fonçant sur tout c'qui bouge
Irénée hors d'haleine, furieuse, finit par y voir rouge
Saisissant les éventails, les cheveux en bataille,
Irénée frappait fort, avec la grâce d'un matador

Mé qué, mé qué qué, mais quelle mouche l'a piquée!
Bégayaient ainsi les conchitas qu'on tapait
Aï,
ay caramba, mama, qué corrida!
Bissaient les gars qui, ma foi, n'en revenaient pas
D'assister à ceci, tout ça sans sourciller
Se gardant bien d'y mettre le holà, olé!

C'est donc en perdant la tête qu'Irénée fit la conquête
De la population mais surtout d'un certain Ramon
Quant au bellâtre, elle eût dit, "Oui, tu es le mâle de ma vie."
Elle en profita aussi pour avoir le mal du pays

Aï, je voudrais tant revoir ma Vendée
Aï, mon Ramon ramène-moi si tu es un homme

Le pauvre gars, ma foi, n'eût pas le choix
Avec Irénée franchit donc les Pyrénées
Et voilà, qu'en Vendée, l'on se vante,à tout va
D'avoir tous les soirs de la s'maine une
corrida chez soi

The Doctor smiled at key parts of the song, but Martha found the lyrics complex, the vocabulary broad and the song too quick to be completely understood on the first hearing. On the second hearing, she used the back of the sheet of paper she had been writing on to jot down the lyrics in English as she understood them, and it took a third listen to get it down cold. The Doctor encouraged her to read out what she had gleaned from it.

"Her name was Irénée, she was captivated by gentlemanly charm, castanets and the tango. Her most ardent wish was to take as a lover a handsome caballero- a real one, all in flesh and bone Oh, oh, Irénée, why were you not born In Latin country instead of in the middle of Vendée? Oh, oh, what pain not to have the body of the Andalucian girls that they lust for and adore! This is why, step by step, she envied the bait, although she didn't have it, oh, oh, what a disappointment!"

"Right," said the Doctor. "Someone told me that when Irénée first came to town, she told some bartender that she had always wanted to live in Spain with a Spanish lover. And Irénée herself told me she was from Vendée, and any idiot could tell that she felt bitter about not looking like all the other girls."

"So you actually met Irénée?"

"In the flesh," said the Doctor. "Well, more or less. Keep reading."

"Consumed by her passion, she always held onto her goodness while dancing the flamenco on the parquet, with steps like hooves. But one day, not holding on anymore, she took the upper hand, and on a boat embarked in the direction of Costa Brava. 'Oh, I'm crazy about seeing so many Spaniards!' cried the hysterical girl on the Iberian Peninsula."

"This is a decision she would come to regret," the Doctor commented.

"But her vigor found its place in distress, when, at a ball, she discovered the magnitude of evil. The innocent little devil girls were mocking Irénée, for all the Spaniards found her tedious."

"Yeah, so she pines for a life in Spain, gets on a boat and goes there, only to find that all these hot little flamenco ballerinas are snooty and hypocritical, to the highest order, and none of the guys like her."

"Were you at this ball?" Martha wondered.

"It was a club, more like, but could have passed for a ball," the Doctor told her. "She came up to me, thinking I was one of the locals, and flirted a bit, asked me to dance, but I was too busy looking for you. She asked if she was boring me, and even that, I sort of brushed aside."

"Doctor!"

"I know, I know," he confessed. "But I didn't understand who she was, or what would happen. And I didn't know where you were, Martha."

She cleared her throat and continued. "Like a bull in the arena, charging into anything that moves, Irénée, out of breath, furious, ended up seeing red. Seizing their fans, their hair a fright, Irénée was hitting hard with the grace of a matador! 'My my, what a fly! Get her out of the air!' stammered thus the conchitas that she was tapping. 'Ay, caramba, what a bullfight!' repeated the boys, who, my goodness, never recovered from ..."

"Yes!" the Doctor cried out, interrupting a climactic verse of the story, remembering a split second too late that he was in a library. Several people turned and looked, scowling at the enthusiastic man in the suit. He switched to a whisper. "Yes. She started shoving people and knocking them down - just went into an all-over rage. I suppose it makes sense that someone might compare it to a bullfight. And everyone just stopped what they were doing and watched!"

Martha continued. "It was therefore in losing her head hat Irénée made her conquest of the population..."

"Oh yeah, so, she wasn't just bashing into people," the Doctor explained. "She kind of annihilated their character. It was rather a brilliant display of rhetoric... but vulgar."

"What does that mean, annihilated their character?"

"It means, she started in with personal attacks," the Doctor related, eyebrows fully up. "She was asking the men whether all that really mattered to them was... what did she say? Having a five-foot-seven mannequin who dances like a robot (or something) and has lips for sucking."

Martha chuckled. "Ah. Well, I guess some guys think that's all that matters..."

"And she outed one girl's pregnancy! And revealed that the father could be one of three different men with whom the girl had... well, we'll just call them, ever-so-brief relationships. One night at a party. "

"All three? At one party?"

"Apparently," the Doctor answered with distaste.

"Classy girl."

"Mm. I suspect that when the song says the men never recovered it's that their lives changed forever after that point... though perhaps the song itself meant something much less dire, before ol' Vance Ray came in and made it weird."

"Yeah, the song doesn't say anything about a girl with three guys in one night."

"No, I guess that was added for fun, like the beachside kiosk, and all that rubbish about Ana's dad threatening Miguel. Oh, but here's the best bit: I was one of those three guys, and a friend to the family! So the girl's brother tried to take my head off."

"Oh! Yikes!" Martha exclaimed. "How could you be one of them?"

"I don't know! How did we end up in a Louisiana marsh in the middle of a territorial conflict down there? How could you be Ana's favourite handmaid? How could I be a fisherman alongside Miguel? If I knew how any of this worked... if we could just slow down for a bit and work out how he's doing this..." The Doctor had pointedly trailed off.

"Doctor, you've gone catatonic," Martha said, waving her hand in front of his face.

"Sorry," he said, snapping to. "It's just... I think we ought to try and seek out this Vance Ray. Work out how he's doing it. I mean, this is the fourth time this sort of thing has happened to us, and we've never bothered to try and go to the source!"

"That's true," Martha admitted. "That's not like you."

"I know, what's been the matter with me?"

There was a pause, while they both separately considered the implications of what they were going to try and do. After a time, Martha's thoughts shifted again, and she asked, "Shall I finish the song?"

"Oh, yeah. Please."

"Okay, so I left off with: It was therefore in losing her head that Irénée made her conquest of the population, but most definitely of a certain Ramón. As for the handsomish guy, she said,'Yes, you are the love of my life!' She took advantage of the caprice of the country. 'Oh, I would like very much to see my Vendée again! Oh, my Ramón, take me back there if you are a man!' The poor guy, my goodness, didn't have a choice! With Irénée he therefore breached the Pyrenees, and there it was, that in Vendée that they praised everything that goes...To have, every night of the week, a bullfight at home!"

"That's right, so, Irénée saved my life in the end, by calling off the brother of the girl I had allegedly knocked up... though not me, that Spanish guy they all thought I was..."

"Got it. Go on." She rolled her eyes.

"And this guy, Ramón, he comes out of the loo and sees the whole thing, and offers to buy her a drink," the Doctor exclaimed. "It was fantastic! He was the only guy in the whole place who seemed to have any spark of brains or self-awareness, and she looked like she'd melt into a puddle when he asked her... it's all she had wanted, and dancing had got her nowhere, but when she made a scene... then she finally got her Spanish gentleman!"

"Oh, but it looks like she got him to take her back to France," Martha commented, looking at her notes.

"Well, good for them," the Doctor said. "Good riddance to Costa Brava. In every possible way."

"And have further bull fights... at home," Martha sang. "Sounds kind of saucy."

The Doctor smiled. "Good for them there too."

Martha was contemplative. "Doctor, do you think Vance Ray meant for you to die this time? I mean, to put you in that position with a girl like Irénée, she was bound to try and help you out."

"Yeah, but I did have to do a lot of dodging first," the Doctor remembered. "I did almost get hit in the noggin about four times with a lead pipe before she stepped in, and that was only after I sort of got her attention... but maybe you're right. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's more lessons..."

"I was thinking that too," she sighed.

"Because when I was there, and Irénée was pushing people about on the dance floor, I felt, like, a pit of guilt in my stomach. I felt like a cad. I realised what I had done to her, how I was probably the fifteenth guy that night to do the same thing - completely ignore her and look over her head for someone I'd rather be with. I'm not that guy - at least, I don't want to be that guy anymore. I thought I had learned from you... Don't get me wrong, I was on my guard, but feeling contrite, to be sure."

"Contrite."

"Of course. But not about her - I knew she wasn't real. I was feeling you, and our past."

"So, angst," Martha sighed. "These aliens are really not done making us pay for the first two years we knew each other."

"But S'Dromer gave me this message, the same one, Martha," he reasoned. "One of the siblings. She wanted me to see that I'd been wrong about you. After all we'd been through, I love you - of course I'd love you, and how could I not? I got the message then - why would they be giving me the same routine?"

"Well, Doctor, Vance Ray said something at the festival, just before you got blipped away to Irénée's world," she confessed. "And it really got to me. And this is getting to you."

"What was it he said?"

"I'm sure it was meant for me. I'm sure he was trying to do the same thing to me, that he tried to do with you, with Irénée. He said something about how Ana, at least, had someone to love her in return. Not everyone could claim that. Some people chase around the object of their affection like an idiot."

"He meant Irénée. She was in the next song."

"No, it was aimed at me, Doctor, I could feel it. Just like you could feel the message coming at you about paying attention when a..."

"Martha, don't be stupid," he told her flatly, dismissively.

She was so shocked, she couldn't even respond. She tried to shake it off, but the Doctor was already off and running again, mentally. She hadn't felt this way around him since before...

"So, we said we were going to go the source," the Doctor said. "Go try and find this Vance Ray character so he can show us what he's doing."

"Erm, okay," she choked out, her insides starting to churn.

He squinted. "And I think I have an idea how to find him. Come on."


Irénée is sung by Paris Combo. I highly recommend ALL of their music, even if you don't understand French! You'll have a blast with them!