QUILPS DOES SOME KISSING

We-re approaching the end

Indigo Quilps looked around him, and sighed. Why in the name of goodness had he called this meeting? Here he was, meddling in the ancient and corrupt game of politics and not really sure what he was doing. And he, orphaned boy from a children’s home, was a nobody yet here he was taking on what amounted to the establishment and was vital and unchangeable to the people who had always run the country, and always would.

Yes. And to the people who had as good as murdered Melissa’s granny.

She was standing with him in the wings of the borough theatre. Melissa, that is, not her granny, which would have been bizarre.

At least he thought Melissa was, though when it came to Melissa he was never quite sure because he sometimes, no, quite often, thought she was an imp in his own head and didn’t really exist at all.

“It’s really me,” she whispered, re-enforcing his confusion. Then, to add to his mental state and with a smile she added “granny loves you, you know.”

He wished she hadn’t mentioned her late granny.

He peeped round the curtain and gasped. He was used to addressing a dozen at the best, but the hall, and it was a theatre so it was quite big, was crammed to the rafters with people.

Had they all come to listen to him?

There was a camera, no, two cameras there, too.

Then the council chairman walked on to the stage, so a round of applause.

So that’s what it is. They’ve all come to see him. I should have known. Silly me, thinking I’d made a big enough stir to interest a crowd like this.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, your elected Member of Parliament, Mr Indigo Quilps” the chairman announced into a crackling microphone.

And Indigo felt himself being pushed into action by Melissa Townbridge, who it seemed was as real as anything else there as she nudged him forward. Maybe it was he who was a phantom, then?

But something at the back of his mind knew who he was, so he walked on and smiled warmly at the Chairman, and then took his place behind the microphone.

I’m so moved to see how many of you have turned up,” he said, “and I’d like to introduce you to the inspiration behind everything I’ve said or done in recent weeks. Melissa… where are you?”

She walked on. Not a child, but not a thousand years since she’d been one, Melissa who had done what she could to appease the demise of her grandmother, and she was smiling now, not weeping.

“Hello,” she said nervously into the microphone.

Indigo continued. “You will have noticed that I am without my ridiculous hat,” he began, “and that is for a reason. I have discarded it. I do not wish to be associated with the age in which the gentry chose to wear hats like that! Because time has moved on since then, and so have I. Slowly, like the urchin I was.”

“That’s not fair!” called a voice that he knew as well as he knew any voice. It was the matron of the home that had brought him up, Mollie Daybright. “You were always a bright kid, not any sort of urchin!” she called.

He smiled at where he guessed her voice was being generted. “And I loved you too,” he said quietly, and that confession generated the start of a ripple of applause that he began to think would never stop. But it did, of course, and he continued, reinforced by Mollie’s support.

“You were generous enough to give me your support at the bye-election that sent me to London and to Parliament,” he said, “and I feel you deserve an explanation as to why I walked out of the conservative party and stopped being a puppet designed to launch the absurd Mr Jeffery Coastall into number Ten, though had I not resigned I believe I might have had a real chance of stalking into number ten myself!”.

“It was Miss Townbridge here who showed me how wrong everything was. Her granny passed away as you all know if you read any of the papers or watch the television news. And her passing was unforgivably wrong, caused in part by a vicious campaign of lies and falsehoods that issued from the party I was part of and that succeeded in winning the Brexit referendum for them. Because it was they who wanted it, and for their own personal advantage rather than any good it would do to any of you. In fact, you are in the middle of experiencing the most difficult of times as a direct consequence of that referendum. I could go on and on and quote example after example, but I won’t. No, ladies and gentlemen, I have taken the action I outlined for one reason and one reason only: Melissa’s grandmother should have enjoyed a holiday in Paris and not a sad and lonely urine-soaked death in a traffic queue near Dover. Nobody deserves such ignominy.

“And now for the crux of the matter.

“I am still your Member of Parliament, but have designated myself as Independent, and that’s the way I’ll stay as the general election approaches. And then I’ll stand as Independent and give you the choice, but I warn you: if you reject me I may go back to wearing silly hats!”

The roar of applause that followed his speech was totally unexpected. And people stood and clapped and shouted and clapped again. There never had been such a noise in the theatre, at least not since the famous pantomime of 2012 when Buttons had been extraordinarily physically humorous and his trousers had fallen down revealing a total absence of underwear. The roar back then had been deafening, as was the roar for Indigo Quilps this year.

He bowed, and turned to leave, but when he reached the wings he had the briefest of conversations with Melissa, and he returned to the rostrum.

“Oh dear,” he said when silence resumed, “I’d better say it now. Melissa Townbridge’s granny’s grand daughter just suggested that we get married, and I said yes!”

While that was sinking in he skedaddled back to the wings, took her in his arms like he never had with Maria, and in full view of Camera A, gave her the sloppiest of sloppy kisses before withdrawing from the stage..

It is even suggested that the television audience applauded too.

© Peter Rogerson 12.08.22

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