QUILPS AND A VISION

The world of politics seems to be unfair and loaded.

Indigo Quilps sought refuge in his family home, which was big enough to have sufficient corners for him to get lost in, even if the place was hit by a tribe of eagle-eyed burglars. He may have been an orphan brought up during his childhood by the Brumpton Orphans Sunshine Home, but somehow several years ago a huge inheritance had found its way to him and by the time he married Maria he had what many would call a mansion to offer her, the family home, he said with a wry smile when the subject cropped up.

Now he needed to escape the eager questions from men holding microphones and other men and the occasional keen-eyes woman who lurked in from of cameras. He’d been questioned on the hoof once or twice, and his replies had always been brief, almost précis of his still famous maiden speech.

He had entered the arena as a potential leader of the conservative party. There were several of them, but they would swiftly be whittled down to two, and then the entire party membership would choose their favourite in a ballot. That favourite would then assume the role of Prime Minister. The more that were eliminated before him the closer he perceived himself to be to glory.

The whole system struck him as being c**k-eyed because in is mind the Prime Minister governed the entire country and yet would only be selected by the members of his own party. It struck him as having an imbalance, but so what? Didn’t everything? Ay school two boys had been caught fighting in the playground, and only one of them had been punished. That was just as unfair. And now he might even get through, though he was well aware that as a stalking horse he would soon be among those who fell by the wayside in an early part of the selection process.

Only he hadn’t been. Not yet, anyway.

He decided to watch the television, a rolling news service which was all he normally watched largely because he was ill-equipped in terms of knowledge when it came to what was going on, even when the goings on involved himself. In a way he was aware that he had coasted almost accidentally through life, and look where rippling tide had brought him so far. And in a way he wanted it, the power, the glory, the obsequious bowing and slavering in front of him by persons he knew instinctively were his social superiors.

After all, he was an orphanage kid!

Jeffery Coastall was one of the remaining candidates, and he was the one who it was assumed would pickup votes for Quilps once he’d been taken out of the equation. After all, not many people anywhere knew much about Indigo Quilps, and even his fellow MPs, if they thought of him at all thought of the ridiculous and rather pompous buffoon in a top hat and walking with the aid of an ornate cane that he didn’t need. But at the back of many minds was an echo of his maiden speech. The one in which he’d advocated the draconian treatment of paupers as a justfiable punishment for being poor. And most of his side of the house looked upon paupers as beggars who, if they actually had some kind of employment, ought to work harder. There was a resonance there.

Indigo lounged on his bed, fully dressed, of course, and waited for the latest bulletin that ought to mention Jeffey Coastall to be mentioned on the National Treasure Network, because he’d apparently made a speech that had been witnessed by journalists and television reporters, a speech created just to be reported on because his physical audience was almost non-existent.

And he didn’t have long to wait. The serious-faced political correspondent of the National Treasure Network greeted his audience and he began by mentioning Quilps himself.

“Unlike Indigo Quilps, who is seen as a stalking horse paving the way for a Coastall victory, Mr Coastall stressed that he believed our nation will never be at peace with itself unless it rids itself of remnants of Victoriana.”

Then the Coastall face appeared, smiling yet haggard, and he continued to push home that very message.

“There is plenty of wealth in our country,” he said, “and yet most of it is spread rather thinly on the population as a whole whilst the rest is in a handful of hands…”

Some one off-screen muttered “pure socialism” in a shocked voice, but it was picked up by a microphone.

And that brief extract from a speech is what probably lost him his place in the line of potential party leaders because te television people had decided to run a brief out-take of one of his own answers to a question on poverty.

“The nation won’t get any better until the dead wood is cut out and incarcerated behind good steel bars,” his top-hatted image said, with a twinkle in his eye because the questioner was female, blonde, thirty-something and well-breasted.

When the news reached him, via a telephone call in which he was invited to present his philosophy in a television debate that very evening, he had two conflicting motions battling for supremacy somewhere inside his head.

The first was he was no more than a kid from the orphanage where he had been brought up and kids from orphanages never become important in the world/

The second was he just might be on the cusp of real power, and then he’d show them, the Jeffery Coastalls of this world, that there’s nothing to be gained by being a namby pamby weakling.

So he climbed off his bed, thought of having a shower but rejected the idea, selected his favourite and tallest top hat, and made his way to his car.

Melissa Townbridge was sitting on his car’s, hopefully cool, bonnet.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes moist, “I shouldn’t have told the coppers about you touching my leg.”

“Then what do you want?” he snapped, “I’m in a hurry and much as I think you’re one of the loveliest creatures on God’s Earth I’ve got to get to London straight away. They want me on the television.”

“Best of luck,” she smiled, “I reckon you’ll make it, a sweet man like you.”

Then she was gone. He blinked wildly. He hadn’t seen her climb or jump off. But she was gone, and there was no sign of her.

“Damned woman,” he muttered, and slipped the car into drive.

© Peter Rogerson 09.08.22

...