QUILPS' DEBATE

Indigo Quilps hits the brick wall of reality on television

QUILPS TO THE TOP (3)

There’s nothing that makes a man more obvious and easily picked out in a crowd than the wearing of an enormous top hat, and Indigo Quilps had worked that one out years ago, when he’d been in his first school as a strange infant. Therefore it is perfectly true that he had a fascinating and huge collection of top hats, most of them tatty but a couple of them almost pristine.

So it came as not really much of a surprise to him when the chairman of the local conservative association sidled up to him, nudged him in the ribs, winked and asked him if he was up for it. He’d noted the hat and drawn his own coclusion about its wearer.

Such a strange request had happened to him before, at the orphan’s home where he was brought up, but the person making the request meant something to do with a midnight raid on the pantry, which he had declined because being caught raiding pantries was not on his mental list of things worth doing. But this time the chairman meant something very different, and midnight raids had nothing to do with it.

“Pardon?” he asked, and he twirled his cane thoughtfully.

“There’s the by-election and we’re thinking you look just the right part to represent us,” winked the chairman, “that hat of yours, and all.”

“Okay,” he nodded, without giving the matter too much thought because he’d expected to be asked sooner or later, and sooner was just right. Olive was teething at home, and his wife Marie had let the spare bedroom to a friend, a man Indigo thought might be simple minded in that when he wasn’t at work at Brumpton Foundry he stayed in his room dressed, from the few glimpses Indigo had of him, in almost nothing. Apparently, though, Marie explained to him was seeing to the poor man’s wardrobe or he might have worried that something unpleasant might be going on.

So the matter was set. Old Ackroyd, the present Member, was already in his coffin and six feet down in the Parson’s Field and could do little from that position to improve the lot of his electorate, ad a replacement was needed as soon as maybe.

Brumpton was a safe enough seat. It had been vaguely conservative since the elderly Entwhistle woman had represented it decades earlier.

“You know what we’re up against?” asked the Chairman in order to satisfy himself that he’d chosen the right man, “the socialists (spit) are putting Eva Curry up as their man, er, I mean woman, and she’s got the gift of the gab.”

“What sort of gift?” asked Indigo, curiously.

“Well, you know, it’s nonsense really. She thinks nonsense, like how the water works should belong to the people, and the same with electric and gas. But you don’t think that, do you? There’s no profit in such nonsense! Got shares in any of them, have you? Make a nice wedge of cash on the side, do you?”

Indigo didn’t but felt it incumbent on him to lie, so he grinned, winked and nodded his head, which sent the tails of his slightly oversized jacket wafting as if a breeze had come from nowhere intent on giving him the appearance of a man who enjoys a good fart.

So the stage was set, and there were hustings. A face-to-face interview in front of television cameras was the highlight, and he wore his largest hat to make sure he was noticed. There was an interviewer clutching a sheaf of papers, and he was sitting half-facing the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen. It was Eva Curry, his opposition, and he grinned to himself as he thought just how he’d like to get his mouth round a hot and tasty dish like she seemed to be, especially when she licked her own delicious lips and looked him straight in the eye.

She’s seducing me, and I’m a married man, he thought.

Then music played through a tinny speaker and the interviewer welcomed the candidates on behalf of the television company before looking at Indigo almost fiercely, and asked his first question.

“So with the cost of living unbearable to most people, what do you propose Government should do help?” he was asked.

He didn’t like direct questions because it invariably meant that the questioner had in mind what his answer would most probably be, which put him on the spot, so instead he smiled his best and most seductive smile and replied.

“That’s easy,” he said, blinking, “I’d tell them to go out and buy a decent hat for themselves. It if gets cold a decent hat keeps a fellow warm, don’t you know? Hot air rises...”

Eva Curry looked as if she was going to spit at him and butted in. “What,” she asked, “if the cost of a ridiculous hat is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and having bought one, your electorate can no longer afford food for their bellies, and there is starvation and, horribly, death?”

“What’s all this got to do with desert creatures?” he asked, “I mean, camels! I’m a man of very modest means and my wife churns out the most delicious and nutritious meals. I mean, I look healthy, donlt you think?”

Then Eva Curry came out with a killer of a statement.

“Isn’t that because she’s on the game and isn’t pressed for cash?” she asked, her face a picture of pure unsullied innocence.

On the game? What did the pretty little thing mean by that? What game might she be referring to? As far as he was aware his Marie didn’t do much in the way of playing any games, what with a baby to look after, and a lodger…

The Interviewer saw his puzzled pause and took it as concern that the socialist candidate didn’t mind if personal lives were torn to pieces out of the blue in messy debate after messy debate, but he didn’t want a punch up right at the start of his programme. He really ought to do something to help the top hatted buffoon, which is how he saw Indigo Quilp, so instead he asked Eva to withdraw her comment.

“It’s perfectly fair,” the young beauty said with a righteous smile, “everyone knows that his w***e of a wife makes her living on her back! And it’s against that sort of thing that my pensioners have to pay their gas bills!”

Crikey, so that’s what she’s up to, he thought, well, best of luck to her, but she should keep it to herself…

“Now come on! This is meant to be a fair debate,” put in the interviewer, wafting an arm around to attract whoever was directing the cameras to get them switched to something more neutral.

“It is fair,” murmured Indigo, “if what the lady says is true then we both know it now that she’s said it out loud, and we can get on with the important stuff… like, was that goal off-side last Saturday?”

He grinned, but he still had no idea what on Earth he was talking about when it came to things being off side...

© Peter Rogerson 24.07.22

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