QUILPS CHANGES HIS MIND

Melissa is in his mind

It was obviously a rushed affair because instead of a television or even newspaper interviewer Indigo Quilps found himself faced by someone he knew. It was Peter Underblue, a man he’d taken an instant dislike to since he’d become a politician because Mr Underblue couldn’t hide the fact that he was sleazy and if he wasn’t he had an unfortunate gift for dribbling whenever ladies were mentioned.

The cameras were there, though, and with Melissa Townbridge and her deceased granny still uppermost in his mind and an audience of barely a dozen, he took his place behind a podium that had seen better days and blinked at the depresssing scene around him.

So this is how they treat you if you’re nothing but a stalking horse expected to pave the way to someone else, he thought.

With a solitary camera and little evidence of anyone else unless the teenager with bulky earphones almost hiding her head was the sound recorder, Indigo was obviously there to be destroyed.

“Where’s your big hat?” started Peter Underblue, who probably, intended to use Indigo’s usual chosen head decoration as the centre of his questioning.

What would Melissa say?

He frowned, and then it came to him in a moment of almost inspiration.

“Yoiu know, Peter,” he began, “I’m so well known for my headgear that it seems I’m not thought of for anything else. But I am something else, believe it or not. Now, most of our party are immensely rich, and although I’ve got a nice big house to live in back in Brumpton, I’m not in the same category of monied souls as millionaires, let alone billionaires! In fact, when you look at me, what do you see? You see an orphaned boy who was brought up in his local children’s home, and he was brought up well. At least I know right and I know wrong.

“One of the influences on me was from the matron of my home, the excellent and wonderful, Miss Mollie Daybright, and if you want to know anything about me you’d be better off asking her! And her hobby was Charles Dickens. Now, Peter, I rather suspect you know about Dickens. The author, that is, not the social practise! And her enthusiasm was catching. I studied his books, albeit at a children’s level, and carried on in my secondary school, and even after then. And in his books he taught me one thing: money is the root to all evil.”

The interviewer spluttered and then squeaked, “but you’re addressing an audience of wealthy people, Mr Quilps, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not on the breadline yourself, are you And isn’t it on record that you consider poverty to be a crime that needs punishment? I recall tour maiden speech to the commons.”

Having got going Indigo Quilps was in no mood for pausing longer than it took the sleazy man facing him to pause himself.

“I’m often misunderstood, Peter,” he said with a smile. “and I rather suspect I quite frequently misunderstand myself, but then we are all maturing. We are all growing, and we are all learning. And one of the things that we’re learning is how to be human. Let me tell you about a granny. A grandmother I never met because I couldn’t.”

“You’re veering away from the subject,” warned Peter Underblue.

“Oh. Am I?” asked Indigo, “so what is the subject? The one I’m veering from, because I thought I was here to explain who I am and who I would be if I was one of the final two candidates in this flawed process of finding the next Prime Minister. And I know that I never went to Eton and went nowhere near a university let alone Oxford, but I’ve absorbed quite a lot of information via what I believe we like to call the University of Life. And what I’ve learned, painfully slowly, but I have learned it, is that our job is to represent the people, and one of the people I represent passed away in a traffic jam on her way to Dover and a holiday she would never have.”

“Why?” Mr Underblue couldn’t help himself when he asked that simple question.

“Why did she die, you mean?” asked Indigo, “I’ll tell you why she died. She passed away because the lower house, the yapping and talking that goes on in there, the deceit and the lies that get camouflaged by pseudo-sincerity, those are the things that killed her.

“Oh, I know she was elderly, but there are ways a woman might want to die and ways that she most certainly ways that she wouldn’t want to die, and the dear lady did not choose to die soaked in her own urine because our government decided she should!”

And that was it. Peter Underblue closed the debate, if debate it was, the camera (there was only one) was switched off, apologies for a break in transmission were funnelled to the news channels that were taking it, and Indigo scowled at his questioner.

“What are you trying to do? Wreck our democracy?” asked a furious Peter Underblue, “we’re here to govern a people who have a long history and need, deserve even, proper government!”

“And they’re getting that?” asked Indigo, “because if they are why did an old lady leave the land of the living, in discomfort amounting to agony, in a miles-long traffic jam cause by the people in your parliament?”

“It’s a lie and anyway, a forbidden topic!” snapped the other, “and you must know that! Didn’t you try to rape the girl who told you about it? Haven’t you been told that the matter comes under the Official Secrets Act?”

“Maybe I have had words about it, but why is it a secret? And if it is, isn’t that a sign that there’s something corrupt in the air? Is that what the official Secrets act is for, eh? Covering up tragic deaths that should never have been because our lot, our government, has made a balls up?”

“I’m saying no more…”

“Good. And by the way, Peter, I’m resigning!”

“From this selection process? I should hope so!”

“No, Peter. I’m resigning from this party and you know what? I’ll see if someone else will have me, and if they won’t I’ll. spend my life winkling out our sort!”

Then what seemed like a reformed Indigo Quilps stormed off, back to his car, avoiding the outside camera and half a dozen members of the noble paparazzi and their cameras.

“Well done,” whispered Melissa from somewhere and nowhere and maybe only in his head, “Granny would be proud…”

© Peter Rogerson, 11.08.2

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