QUILPS AND A QUESTION

Why did Melissa's granny die?

“Just remember,” came the voice of Melissa Townbridge from a seat just behind him where he was sure that not she or anyone else could possibly be sitting, “just remember that my granny died in a queue of cars trying to get to Dover, and dying was the last thing on her mind… That’s important, that is, so don’t forget it.”

It was a good thing that the road was quiet because Indigo Quilps jerked his steering wheel in what other road uses might well call an irrational way, and pulled to a skidding halt onto the hard shoulder.

Then he looked behind him and was that her? The woman who seemed to like sitting on bonnets of cars? The one who’d complained to the police that he’d actually molested her when he might have stroked a lovely leg? The attractive young thing with a dead granny, and sitting there with haf a smile on her lovely face?

“How…?” he gawped.

“Just remember how granny died, and see if you can work out who to blame…” she said, and then she opened the door and glided out of the car, seeming not to touch it. Her parting smiling comment was, “I won’t come back so you’re probably safe. Just work out who killed my granny, and do something about it…”

Then she was gone, but Indigo’s heart was thumping as if all it wanted to do was burst and he knew he couldn’t drive safely on until he calmed down. He even wondered if he was about to have some sort of seizure, a heart-attack, maybe, he felt so odd with palpitations running wild in his chest.

Is this dying? Is that what I’m doing?

Then another thought started ricocheting round inside his head, a question that wouldn’t go away

It rung in his mind like a bell.

Who was responsible for the death of Melissa's sweet old granny? And how did he know she was sweet and old? She might have been a harridan! A b***h scared of the universe gazing upon her underclothes, and why was that? These days, in summer on hot days, it was almost as if panties were part of the uniform, peeping naughtily from beneath pretty tiny frocks. But granny came from a different age. She was too modest by half and preferred to suffer and die rather than climb out of the car and relieve herself against one of its wheels or even in a nearby ditch. And that would have been okay, wouldn’t it? Who’s going to stare at a little old granny peeing at the roadside?

So whose fault had it been?

Could he blame the religious nuts who decided all girls should be modest and keep their private parts to themselves, and drive a perverse morality into their heads until it kills them in old age? Of course not. They hadn’t caused a miles long queue outside Dover, had they? So who had?

The French! That’s who the Government blamed, but he couldn’t quite grasp why it should be them and anyway didn;t the Government always blame someone who wasn’t responsible if things went wrong? The French officials were doing their jobs, stamping passports and checking on passengers before they got onto a ferry. If they got that far that is.

That’s what Melissa’s granny was supposed to be doing: driving onto a ferry for France and what promised to be a last holiday for her. Not die in an endless queue on the ay to Dover and the ferry terminal.

It didn’t used to be like that.

But then, the British public hadn’t voted to leave the EU, hadn’t been swayed by arguments that, on reflection, were probably not that true, and too many voted the way they had because they trusted the Eton Boys in government.

But he hadn’t gone to Eton, so what was he doing hoping to get into Number Ten? He’d be out of depth, surely?

And Melissa’s granny had died in a pool of her own piss because of Eton lads and the things they wanted.

Now relatively calm, he rejoined the traffic and made for London.

The question went round and round in Quilps’s head as he joined the M25 and found himself stuck in a queue.

I should never have had that last coffee, he told himself, because I don’t half want a piss. It’s thinking about that old granny…

“So you know how granny felt,” whispered Melissa from the back seat..

Not quite. His queue was on the move again, slowly true, but he’d get to a public convenience before he embarrassed himself. Either that or he’d unzip and wee onto the road.

“If I’m lucky and make it to number ten,” he mumbled to Melissa who was and wasn’t there, “I’ll try to do something about it. I promise.”

“That’s all I ask,” tweeted the dove that flew through the glass of a rear window and, cocking its head, winked at him. Sweetly, like doves do.

And then he was where he’d been told to go. There was a cameraman outside the building, so he knew he was there.

On the seat next to him was his enormous top hat. It wouldn’t fit on his head when he was driving because, as he always thought, the car’s roof was too high.

There’s more than one perspective to everything, he thought, maybe the hat’s too tall and the roof of the car’s all right. I love this hat, but really it’s daft me wearing it in a heaving twenty-first century London! I know what: I’ll leave it here and go to the interview bare-headed!

And he did just that. He carefully and rather lovingly stroked that hat before climbing out of the car having parked it in a parking slot reserved, it seemed, especially for him. Then he climbed out of his car and looked straight into the face of the man who had scurried to help him park, “where’s the bog” he asked, “I need a piss…”

© Peter Rogerson 10.08.22

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