Nov 9, 2015

Extract from Chapter 27 of mystery-comedy novel, 'The Investigations of the Para-Usual': 

Off they trundled in silence, O’Singh absorbing everything – the aircraft taxiing outside, the aspirational wall posters, the grooves between the metal slats of the escalator. One moving walkway after another they continued like this until at last, O’Singh spoke again.

‘Think,’ he said, turning to the doctor, ‘how did we board aeroplanes before we had these giant sausage tunnel things we have now with a kink in them?’

‘We climbed steps?’ offered Dr Pratt, pumping his legs with a high knee action, rather as one might in a human dressage.

‘Exactly so, Dr Pratt. Do you recall the vehicles that transported the steps?’

‘Yes, you mean the vans with a staircase on the back?’

‘Ab-abso-absa-absolutely. Think now, para-usually about those stair vans.’

‘I can’t begin to think. What’s your inkling?’

‘Here is a thing. There is an employee of the airport whose job it is to drive his stair van up to aeroplanes ready for boarding. Now, imagine him driving back home of an evening after work, parking it up in front of his council tenement block.’

‘Assuming that he lives in a council flat.’

‘Let us say for sake of argument. He is in his flat, several stories high, his airline jacket flung across an armchair. He has slackened his tie. His missus, the wife, the trouble and strife, is cooking his tea.’

O’Singh guided Dr Pratt off of the escalator they were on, away from the stream of travellers and over to a bank of bucket seats set against the wall of the causeway. There, O’Singh closed his eyes, took a deep breath and transformed himself into the stair van man’s wife, employing a pumping motion of his right arm as if frying a sausage or perhaps some bacon, depending on the hard-of-understanding interpretation; his other hand simultaneously chugging at an imaginary cigarette.

“’Ere, ‘ow many bangers d’you want, love?” (It was clear now that O’Singh was improvising the wife frying sausages and not bacon.)

O’Singh plonked himself down on a seat and took on the role of the stair van man sat at a table reading his newspaper.

‘“Couple. No make it three”,’ replied O’Singh’s ravenous stair van man.

“Oh right, I’ll ‘ave to get you another one out the fridge”,’ said O’Singh, jumping up out of his seat to pose as his wife.

The professor flounced across to a glass pane looking out over a docking bay, where he mimed sweeping aside what Dr Pratt deduced were curtains of the kitchen window. O’Singh made a pantomime of shielding his eyes and peering down to something far below.

‘“What’s that din?”’ said O’Singh’s housewife, craning her neck. ‘“Ooh! The little bugbears”.’

‘“What?”’ replied the stair van man, as soon as O’Singh could fling himself back again into the bucket seat.

‘“Them kids…”’ puffed the professor, hauling himself up to the window once more. ‘“Them kids are up your stairs thinkin’ their Sammy Davis Junior again.”’

‘Sammy Davis Junior, the cabaret singer? The old-time American stage entertainer?’ asked Dr Pratt.