Moons. Everywhere. 2
An attempt at a fic in the Frasier continuum. The canon says that Daphne has seven brothers. Only three appeared in the series. One other was referenced but never seen. And there's the mysterious Nanny, or Granny, or sometimes Grammy, Moon. Hold me back. I see "Tim Moon" as being played by David Rasche, the man who was, and remains, Sledge Hammer. (Now are there any Sledge fanfics out there? Trust me, I know what I'm doing.)
A week or so later at KACL radio. Frasier Crane is at his desk in the radio station with Roz Doyle counting down to the end of the show.
"And that almost concludes the Doctor Frasier Crane Show." Frasier said, smoothly. "As we come into the weekend, let me just say that the exciting news for Seattle is the arrival later today of the British Royal Navy vessel H.M.S. Bulwark at Colman Dock. Her Majesty's Ship will be open to the public from tomorrow for guided tours of the vessel, and the Band of the Royal Marines will be playing for your delight. Indeed, the band will be gracing the stage of the McCaw Hall this weekend, with proceeds going to military veteran charities, so please give generously.
"Next Monday on the Doctor Frasier Crane Show, my guest will be Doctor James Alambard, an expert in obsessive-compulsive disorder, who will be talking about the one hundred and thirty-seven books he has so far written on the subject.
"That's all, Seattle, so have a good weekend, and happy mental health!"
Frasier doffed his headphones as Roz grinned and gave him a thumbs-up.
He relaxed into his chair as his producer bustled through from her booth.
"Good one, Frasier!" she said, warmly.
He smiled. He'd made it through to the top of the hour and the news without either over-running or leaving dead air. In Roz Doyle's eyes, that made for a good show.
"Anything planned for the weekend, Roz?" he asked, making conversation.
"Oh, nothing special." she said, off-handedly. "Spend some quality time with Alice, maybe hook up with Daphne and go shopping."
She paused.
"Hey, wait on. Isn't one of Daphne's brothers in town this weekend?" she asked, doubtfully. Frasier grimaced slightly. Roz grimaced, slightly. She'd had a short and nasty encounter with Simon Moon that had also prejudiced her against the Moon brothers.
"Yes. This one's Tim, the Marine." Frasier said. "The Fleet's in town. Haven't you heard? I'd have thought you'd have been among the first at the dockside, cheering the sailors home!"
Roz let her eyes narrow and she glared at him.
"Frasier, just because I'm a single girl does not mean I'm desperate!" she said.
Frasier changed tack, smoothly. Baiting Roz was always fun, but he knew he could push it too far.
"Anyway, Captain Moon's calling by tonight, as soon as he can manage it and get shore leave." he said.
"Captain Moon?" she said, pulling up short. "A Moon, in charge of a warship?" She looked horrified. "One of Daphne's brothers? All those weapons and guided missiles and stuff?"
Frasier saw the point immediately. Somebody like Simon Moon left in charge of high-tech weaponry could start the Third World War by one drunken negligient blunder. He considered Simon was not fit to be left in charge of cutlery. He shuddered.
"No, Roz. Fortunately he isn't captain of the ship. Merely in command of a unit of Royal Marines on board the ship. Apparently a lot of people make that error. (1) But we'll be meeting him later today. Let us hope he's more congenial than Simon!"
"Frasier, a drunken gorilla with personal hygiene problems would be more congenial than Simon. It isn't exactly a high bar..."
She was cut short by the clatter and cacophony of Bulldog Briscoe wheeling his sound effects trolley into the studio. Bulldog was a short, wiry, shaven-headed thuggish-looking guy with the build of a flyweight boxer. He also had an unshakeable belief in his attractiveness to women.
"Hey, Roz! What are you still doing here, didn't you know the Fleet's in town?" He punctuated it with a blast of a hunting horn.
Roz scowled and made her way towards the door.
"And speaking of hygienically challenged simians.." Frasier murmured.
"No need to rush, Roz, they're here for a week!" Bulldog added. "Hey, Doc! I sure feel sorry for all those Brit sailors and Marines in town. Next to the Bulldog, they're outclassed, know what I mean?"
He parped the horn again, then looked around.
"Hey, where's my souvenir baseball from the big World Series game?" he demanded. "This stinks! This is bee-ess! This is..."
Frasier picked it up off the trolley and handed it to him. Bulldog deflated.
"Oh...thanks, Doc..."
Frasier was rapt and lost in the music. It surged and flowed around him like a Nordic mountain stream. The strings pulsed and surged and danced onwards...
"Frase, you're gonna have to wrap it up soon!" Marty said, sourly, from the depths of his unspeakable recliner. "For one thing, Everyone loves Raymond is gonna be on the tele soon, and that's my favourite show!"
Frasier winced. He didn't like being dragged out of a reverie by his father. And in any case, truly great classical music was good for the soul.
"And my brother's due any time, Doctor Crane!" Daphne reminded him.
"I never got the hang of that Nordic chamber music, anyway." Marty added. "Sheesh, now I know why the suicide rate's so high in Sweden!"
"Dad, it is not chamber music!" Frasier objected. "Nor is it Swedish. Nor is it in any way, shape, or form, depressive! This is one of the most life-affirming things Sibelius ever wrote!"
"Sure. Like that thing about the black swan of death swimming on a cold black pond. Swan Lake, it ain't!"
The doorbell rang. Daphne, excited, went to answer it.
"Oh, doctor Crane!" she said, slightly deflated.
Niles walked in.
"Good evening, Daphne. Dad. Frasier. Has your brother arrived yet?"
"Any minute, Doctor Crane. Ooh, I'm so excited! I haven't seen Tim for nearly two years!"
The doorbell rang again. Daphne scurried to answer it. This time it was Roz Doyle.
"Hi, Daphne." she said. "Thought I'd swing by and drop Frasier the bulletins from the station."
"I'm surprised you're not down by the docks." Niles observed. She swung and glowered at him. "I mean, three thousand fresh guys in town. It must be like Christmas.."
"Not you too!" she said, irritated. "Just because I'm not dating anyone right now, you all assume I'm desperate!"
"Or else Seattle's run out of men and the new guys haven't heard yet..."
"Feel like a beer, Roz?" Marty cut in, hurriedly. She smiled, warmly.
"Any time with you, Marty!" she said, happily.
"Ah, her mating call..." Niles mused.
"Well, there's only one sailor home from the sea I want to see right now!" Daphne gushed.
"Hey, Daph! I get to see your latest brother in town?" Roz said, without too much enthusiasm.
"Oh, Tim isn't a bit like Simon." Daphne assued her. Then she paused. "Well, honesty forces me to admit he's a little bit like Simon..."
there was a sudden thunderous knocking at the door. Everyone stopped. And then the door burst off its hinges to the sound of a thunderous kick. It swung round, hanging off one hinge.
"That'll be Tim now." she said. "Well, if truth be told he's got a few things in common with Simon...he's me brother, after all..."
A small-built scruffy Marine in British Army combat dress walked in, carrying a large cardboard box in both arms, which obscured his face.
"That's Tim?" said Frasier, incredulously.
"No, Doctor Crane. This is Tim."
A rather taller, better-dressed, combat marine walked in behind the first. He wore the green beret with a certain insouciance and had the three pips of a Captain on each shoulder. His hair was brown-blonde and his smile made Roz Doyle pause in the act of pulling the ring off her beer. Daphne squealed with delight and ran to hug him. (2)
"Hey, Stilts!" he said, lifting her off her feet.
"Hey, Tim!" she said, as he set her down. Niles Crane looked on with mixed feelings clearly showing on his face, wondering what he'd need to do to get a reaction like that from Daphne Moon.
Captain Tim Moon, R.M., turned and looked sternly at the other Marine, who had set the box down on the table. He was now revealed to be a man who looked, to Frasier, like Bulldog Briscoe's long-lost English twin brother, but with a more hangdog air about him. And was that a cigarette stub lodged behind his ear? (3)
"Malone, you horrible article!" he began. "We're not doing three in the morning home calls in Belfast! (4). This is America, if you haven't noticed. The Americans are our allies, you know? Friends? We are guests in this country. We don't go kicking their doors in as if we're learning house-to-house combat, we actually wait politely to be invited in!"
He turned to Frasier and held out a hand.
"You've got to be Doctor Crane? I recognised you from Daphne's description of you."
They shook hands. Frasier was too stunned to speak.
"Sorry about your door. I'll get a chippie sent up from the ship to fix it for you."
"Ach, don't worry about it. It's only a door." Marty Crane said, dismissively. "Nice to have you boys over! Fancy a beer?" Marty, grinning widely at his sons' consternation, stood and hobbled towards the kitchen. Meanwhile, Daphne made other introductions.
"This is the other Doctor Crane. Doctor Crane, this is my brother Tim, and that's Mike Malone, one of his Marines.."
As Niles stood back, waggling sensation back into his fingers after a strong handshake, the Marine private was muttering
"I don't know, makes me carry his bloody box over for him, and this is the thanks I get..."
"Don't grouse, Marine! A nice easy duty, gets you out of a fatigue party back on ship. And you get a beer for it, even if you have wrecked the nice doctor's front door!"
And then Daphne was introducing him to Roz Doyle. And the two of them were looking at each other with frank undisguised interest.
"So you're Roz?" Tim said, taking her hand. "Stilts did say you're the outward-going one who makes friends easily."
Daphne looked away with a sudden blush.
"Oh, come on. I bet she didn't phrase it that way!" Roz said, looking at her. But she didn't pull her hand away.
"And so the female of the species draws the unsuspecting male into her web..." mused Niles.
"Yeah. And you never married Maris." she said, curtly.
"I'm new in town." Tim Moon said, diffidently. "It'd be good to have, you know, somebody who knows this city to show me around while I'm on leave."
"If I hadn't already met your brother..." Roz said, meeting his eyes.
"Simon? Oh, he's a complete waste of oxygen." Tim said, dismissively. "I can see why you're dubious, though. Anyway, think about it. No hurry."
"Hey, did I say "no"?" Roz said, hurriedly.
"Forty-five seconds, start to finish." Marine Malone observed. Niles Crane nodded. "Yes indeed. A new world record, even for Roz Doyle."
"Hey, will you quit with implying I'm easy?" she exclaimed. "There's no harm with me showing Daphne's brother some of the sights and being hospitable!"
"And I'm sure you will be very hospitable indeed!" said Niles, soothingly.
"Not to mention showing him the sights!" added Frasier. "By the way, is the music obtrusive?"
"Sibelius' Fifth, isn't it?" said Tim Moon. "Final movement."
"Yes indeed!" agreed Frasier, gratified. He preened himself. "The London Philharmonia. Sir Sebastian Wang conducting."
Malone and Marty sniggered together.
"An orchestra conductor called "Wang"?" scoffed Marty.
"What, he gets out front and conducts with his..." said Malone.
"Actually Hong Kong Anglo-Chinese, you uncultured oaf." Tim Moon said. "Conductor in Residence with the Philharmonia."
"You wouldn't believe he's my brother, would you?" Daphne remarked. "Comes from the same scruffy back entries in Manchester as the rest of us Moons with the bum hanging out of his britches, and he can talk to Doctor Crane on his own level about big band music."
Niles took a surreptitious look at Daphne's posterior, possibly to check if anything was hanging out.
"Niles!" Frasier said, making him jump. "Captain Moon, you're a cultured man?"
"Hardly that, doc." Tim said, shrugging. "It's just that we've been at sea on a big world tour for eight months. Believe me, looking out on lots and lots of bloody ocean loses its appeal after a week. The chaplain looks after the library on board and thinks he's on a mission to improve the reading and listening tastes of the Marines and the ship's company. Oh, is this coming up to the end? The Fifth ends on these six great hammer-blow notes, one after the other, like an artillery barrage... nobody talk... Malone, you're on a charge if you so much as breathe heavily..."
He hushed for silence as the Sibelius symphony ended.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang-bang.
"Great!" said Marty, breaking the silence. "Now I can watch Everyone Loves Raymond."
"So I listened to a lot of classical music, doc. Boned up on the sleeve notes. When the old Bollocks docked in Sydney, there were free tickets slurping about for the opera house. You kind of get the bug after a while."
"You have been to the Opera House in Sydney?" Frasier breathed. It was a place he'd never been to.
"Perk of the service, doc!" Tim agreed.
"Yeah, and you were seeing that classy bird at the British Consulate and wanted to impress her!" sniggered Malone.
"Well, if it wasn't for me she'd have had to make do with going out with an Australian." Tim Moon agreed. "Wouldn't do."
"What's in the box, Mike?" Daphne prompted him.
"Gift package your brother put together in England." Malone said. "Thought you'd be missing a few home comforts, girl. Weighed a sodding ton, it did. If it wasn't for you, I'd have told him where to stick it."
"Malone, your respect for your commanding officer is duly noted." Tim said.
"Oh, I'm sorry. If it wasn't for the fact I get to meet your sister again, I'd have told you, very politely and respectfully, where to shove it, sir."
"That's better, Malone."
Marty laughed.
"You two guys sound like you got an understanding going on." he observed. "I had an officer like that in Korea. When you're in a foxhole together and the Gunnery Sergeant ain't around, it's hard not to get on first-name terms! The formalities just don't matter a damn when the bullets are flying."
"Or the bricks." agreed Malone. "Take Captain Hurricane over there. Had to get him out of harm's way in South Armagh a couple of times. Silly bugger thought the bullets would just bounce off."
Marty nodded.
"Ain't that just the way with officers. You got a beer?"
"And thus the international fraternity of Marines gets together." said Frasier.
"It's a brotherhood, Frase. You wouldn't understand."
Tim Moon sighed.
"Let them save your life once and they take advantage. Anyway, Stilts. In the goodie box we have digestive biscuits. Hobnobs. Tinned Frey Bentos pies. They keep well."
"Ah, the glories of British cuisine." Frasier said. "Proving why England is at the cutting edge of culinary excellence."
"Don't knock it, Frasier." Roz Doyle said. "You've never tried British cookies? They're something else!"(5) She leant over, interested.
"I am partial to the occasional Bath Oliver, yes." Frasier agreed. Tim grinned.
"I've heard of those, yes. But we've got something better here. Eccles Cakes."
Daphne shrieked with delight.
"Oooh, I haven't had a proper Eccles Cake in years!" she said. "You can't get them round here!"
"I wonder why?" Frasier commented.
"Jaffa Cakes. Fig rolls. And... Nescafé?" Daphne lost some of her enthusiasm. "And Co-operative brand coffee and chicory mixture. How thoughtful."
"Yes." Tim said. "When you wrote and said coffee as we know it in Britain is completely unknown here, I thought I'd get some together for you."
"How thoughtful indeed." agreed Niles. "The wonders of a food parcel from England for your malnourished sister languishing six thousand miles away from the comforts of Home."
"Don't you remember, Daph?" Tim said, cheerfully brandishing the coffee and chicory instant mix. "We used to only ever drink this at home. Still do, when we're at mum and dad's!"
"Yes." Daphne said, flatly. "I remember, alright."
Niles took the opportunity to pat here on the shoulder in a consoling way.
"You'll feel so much better after that first wonderful taste." he said, keeping a poker face. "Instant coffee powder in boiling water. Why wait for it to go through all that terribly inconvenient process of grinding the beans, percolating the powder and then infusing it into hot water and milk?"
"Tim, I know where our first stop is gonna be when I show you around Seattle." Roz decided.
"Café Nervosa!" Roz, Daphne and both Doctor Cranes chorused together.
Daphne reached into the box again.
"Marmite. HP Sauce. Ooh, a full jar of dolly mixtures! And one of jelly babies! Cadbury's chocolate! And what's this..."
She pulled out a folded sky-blue shirt. It opened into a replica football shirt with "MOON" on the back above the number nine.
"Don't wear that in front of Simon." Tim warned her. "The last time he saw one of those he set fire to it." He paused for a beat, and reflected. "If only someone hadn't been wearing it at the time. It got him two months inside for criminal damage and GBH."(6)
"There's a cell-block at Strangeways Prison they call the Moon Wing." Daphne explained. "When Simon was inside, the warders said they were being good to him by giving him me dad's old cell."
"It even had Dad's old graffiti still on the walls." agreed Tim. "You know, his little poem about the young girl from Huddersfield..."
"Moving swiftly along." Daphne said, hurriedly. "And you even got me the Man City club calendar for the year! Shame it's August.."
"I should have posted that". Tim said. "Still, can't think of everything."
"And a couple of videos of City games! Tim, I love you!"
"It does include the one where they lost to Stockport County, though."(7)
"Well, you can't have everything." Daphne sighed, reluctantly.
Tim shook his head.
"So when do I get to meet Donny the lawyer, then?"
(1) A boring etymological note. The word Captain has roots in both German and Latin and originally meant nothing more than "head man", or "alpha male put in charge of other males". It took different directions in the Army and Navy rank structure, and now denotes a far higher rank in the Navy than in the Army. In both British and American usages, the Captain in charge of a ship (Navy) far out-ranks the Captain in charge of the ship's marines (Army rank used by Marines for convenience). An Army or Marine captain is in charge, usually, of a company of 100-150 men and their weaponry, and his rank equates perhaps to a senior Navy lieutenant. A Navy captain, depending on seniority, is at least the equivalent of a full Colonel in the Army. An Army lieutenant, depending on seniority, ranks below a Captain and equates perhaps to a Midshipman (Ensign) in the Navy or at most a sub-lieutenant. It does get easier to work out after a few beers.
(2) At this point, were this to have been made as a TV episode, the studio audience would pause, draw breath, and then whoop with recognition as David Rasche walks in, doing a cameo and putting on a very good British accent, reprising his role as Sledge Hammer in Marine' officer's garb.
(3) I'm thinking of Terry Pratchett's great comic creation Corporal "Nobby" Nobbs here, combined with George MacDonald Fraser's unspeakable Private McAuslan, the Scruffiest Soldier In The World, described as a combination of Gollum and Caliban in British Army uniform. Nobbs or McAuslan standing in Frasier Crane's front room... comedy gold.
(4) Some explanation. Marines take a straightforward line towards resolving little difficulties, like opening a door with both hands full. A good hard kick is the accepted door-opening method in these circumstances. Three in the morning was found to be a good time to make raids or house arrests of terrorist suspects in Northern Ireland. Time is of the essence to as to prevent suspects disposing of any evidence, so accepted practice was to go in hard and fast whilst making as much noise as possible to add to the recipient's disorientation.
(5) Apparently, British biscuits are very well received in the USA, if nothing else is. Bath Olivers are a seriously upmarket biscuit sold in places like Selfridges and Harrods. Eccles Cakes are a Manchester local speciality largely unknown in the rest of Britain, let alone the USA. They are a filling of currants wrapped inside a sweet pastry shell. Fig rolls have an American name, which escapes me for the moment.
(6) Manchester City, who play in sky blue, are the local rivals to Manchester United. It would fit Daphne's kooky maverick status for her to go against the rest of her family and support them. And Tim, for encouraging this. OK, so in later episodes she comes out as a United fan, possibly because they're the only Manchester team widely known in the USA. And of course Simon Moon would set fire to a City fan. But in the real world...
(7) At the height of Frasier's TV run, Manchester City were in the doldrums, had sunk through the divisions, and were being regularly beaten by a third Manchester side, unglamorous and unfancied Stockport County. The shame would be akin to Seattle Seahawks being thrashed at home by a local side from Tacoma.