by Lisa Nicol
‘Excuse me, Bessie. How exactly does the iBike work?’ asked Blue.
‘The iBike? Oh, that’s easy. It’s magic,’ replied Bessie, all matter-of-fact. ‘Magic is the only logical answer.’
As they rode along, Blue could feel the voices swirling inside her ribcage. Before long, her eyes drifted shut. And as soon as her top eyelashes kissed her bottom eyelashes, the weirdest things began to happen.
First, the bumps on the road disappeared. It became as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Next, she felt the iBike pick up speed and tilt upwards. Her plaits flying out behind her, Blue was sure the iBike had lifted up off the ground and climbed into the sky. She quickly opened her eyes, half-expecting to see clouds. But they were still bumping along the road, dodging potholes and cars.
How strange! thought Blue, although it made perfect sense to be exactly where they were, whereas half-expecting to see clouds did not! Perhaps I’m just getting carried away by the music?
Before long, Blue’s eyes drifted shut again. The bumps disappeared once more. The iBike picked up speed and tilted sharply. Scared she might fall off the back, Blue squeezed Bessie tight. She opened her eyes. No. They were still on the road, in among the morning peak-hour snarl of buses and cars.
Blue remembered what Bessie had said.
She shut her eyes. Tight. And this time she kept them shut. Immediately, the bumps disappeared. The iBike tilted up and began to climb. The noise of traffic faded below them.
Blue was certain. With eyes closed, they were flying; eyes open, they weren’t. She didn’t stop to think how that was possible. She just kept her eyes firmly shut and her arms wrapped around Bessie’s waist. It was just like a magic carpet ride. As they flew along, time seemed locked in a dance with the music. Tumbling and soaring, moving fast and slow, hopping from note to note. At one point, as Bessie pedalled through the air, it felt as if time no longer existed. As if it had shattered into a billion pieces and they were floating through space and the only thing that did exist was music.
CLUNK!
A jolt rippled up through Blue’s body from her feet to her head. The smell of burning rubber made her nostrils tingle. The bumps returned. Blue felt it was safe to open her eyes.
Sure enough, they were pedalling along a country road lined on one side with bright yellow canola and the other with six-feet-high green corn.
‘Ah, corn!’ said Bessie. ‘Makes wonderful neighbours. It might have big ears, but it never complains about the noise!’ she laughed.
Blue could tell it was an old joke. One she had told a zillion times before but still clearly enjoyed.
Up ahead a big sign came into view:
WELCOME TO THE BOOGALOO FAMILY CLINIC OF MUSICAL CURES
Blue’s heart flipped like a fish. She suddenly felt nervous. She took a deep breath. ‘Here we go!’
CHAPTER 8
Treatment Begins
Bessie turned down the long dirt driveway lined with purple jacarandas. Running towards them came two huge dogs, tails blurred in a frenzied wind-screen-wiping wag.
‘Fats and Dizzie, meet Blue.’
The giant mutts galloped alongside the iBike. Their saggy, baggy jowls flopped and sloshed as they ran.
At the very end of the driveway stood Dr Boogaloo. Smiling in his trademark shiny silver suit, he glinted in the sun like mercury in an old-school thermometer.
‘Morning, morning, welcome to the Boogaloo Family Clinic of Musical Cures. I trust you enjoyed your flight, I mean, ride?’
‘Oh yes, thank you, Dr Boogaloo. It’s the most amazing bike I’ve ever seen!’ said Blue.
‘Or heard, I imagine! I remember the man I bought it from. Quite a fellow. He was very pleased the iBike would be carrying on his own good work.’
‘Was he a musical doctor too?’ asked Blue.
‘No, no. Busker. Same line of trade. Prevention rather than cure, of course. Such dedicated fellows, buskers. Out there in the field, working on the front line. We’d be swamped around the clock in here if they weren’t out there trying to keep everyone in tune. It would be an absolute disaster!’
Bessie parked the iBike on a purple carpet of fallen flowers.
‘I’ll go and get the instruments, shall I, Toots?’ asked Bessie. Bessie always called the Doctor ‘Toots’.
‘How right you are, Bess. Let’s not waste time standing around chatting. Do you think you could find my Bulgarian bugle for me? And my recorder? The wooden one. Oh, and my sitar, please, Bess.’
‘Coming right up, Toots. Meet you in the music lounge. Come along, Blue, you can give me a hand.’
Bessie strode off in a variation of her tuneful jingle-jangle-swish-swoosh: Ting-clickety-ting-clickety, clickety-swoosh-ting!
Together, Dr Boogaloo and Bessie had run the Boogaloo Family Clinic of Musical Cures for more than forty years. The Boogaloo family had been musical doctors for as long as anyone could remember. Dr Boogaloo had taken over the clinic from his mother, who’d taken it over from her father and so on and so on.
Apart from being the magic in Dr Boogaloo’s wand, Bessie’s job was to look after the Doctor’s vast instrument collection. Bessie knew the name of every single instrument. And how to tune it and where to find it! All TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE THOUSAND of them! (And counting.)
‘Here we are,’ said Bessie, as she shoved open the door of what looked like an old barn. She stuck an arm round inside the darkness and felt along the wall.
‘Aha!’ Bessie began flicking a long line of switches.
Banks of lights in rows across the ceiling zapped and blinked on, illuminating the space.
Blue gasped.
‘Now, woodwinds, strings and percussion. Aisle nine, forty-three and seventy-eight. Follow me, Blue, you don’t want to get lost in here. Might take a week to find you.’
This was no barn. It was more like an A380 aircraft hangar! That’s about as big as a football field, if you don’t know anything about planes. Or the International Space Station, if you don’t know anything about football. And the place was crammed, floor to ceiling, with barely enough room for a moth to flutter.
‘OMG! This must be the biggest instrument collection in the whole world!’ said Blue.
‘Well, Toots does have one of every instrument ever made.’ Bessie grabbed a large trolley and headed off down a narrow aisle. Racks on either side towered high above them like a skyscraper city of instruments.
‘Mostly, he has a lot more than one,’ Bessie continued. ‘You see, no two instruments are ever really the same. See that double bass up there?’ She pointed to the top of a double-bass skyscraper. ‘That one’s made from the wood of a walnut tree. It sounds impossibly different to this one down here made from Bosnian maple. But, of course, nothing makes more difference to the sound of an instrument than its maker does, does it?’
‘Does it?’ asked Blue, trying to keep up with Bessie – mentally and physically – as she hurtled through the string section.
‘Well, instruments are similar to children that way. Eventually, they all turn out a lot like their parents! Take this banjo, for example. A man called Johnny from Mississippi made this one. Johnny was famous for making banjos that sounded like sweet watermelons and sunny picnics. But then the Mississippi River flooded and left the whole city underwater. Johnny lost all three of his children in that terrible flood. And he never really recovered. Ever since then, Johnny’s banjos are the saddest sounding banjos you’ve ever heard. No one can listen to them without weeping, no matter what tune they play. Ah! Finally. Aisle nine. Wind instruments.’
Bessie began selecting instruments off the racks and piling them into her trolley. ‘Bugle … Bugle. Was that a Bulgarian bugle Toots wanted or was it the B flat?’
‘Bulgarian, I think. What’s in there?’ Blue pointed to a wooden box with a white swan painted on the front.
‘Ahhhh! That’s Dr Boogaloo’s favourite instrument,’ said Bessie.
Ever so carefully, Bessie pulled down the box. She undid the
snap locks and slid off the lid.
Blue looked inside. ‘A stick?’ she said.
‘Not a stick. A bone. Look, five finger holes. It’s a flute!’ explained Bessie. ‘Carved from the hollow wing bone of a swan. It’s only a fraction heavier than a feather, and it sounds as light as perfume left hanging in the air. It’s very powerful, though. A single tune can cure a lifetime of painful shyness. The Doctor thinks it’s the oldest instrument in the world. He’s convinced it’s at least forty thousand years old. He has a nose for instruments, my Toots. He’s forever finding new ones. Just last month he found a plasmaphone thrown out on the street!’
‘What’s a plasmaphone?’ asked Blue.
‘A plasmaphone makes music with plasma. You know, the stuff stars are made of? Plasmaphones are so very rare, as you can imagine. Toots couldn’t believe his luck! I mean, who would throw out a plasmaphone? And Toots always has a hunch what disorders an instrument might cure. He thought the plasmaphone would work wonders for children who dreamt in black and white. He was right, of course. A lullaby or two before bed on the plasmaphone, and young Arthur, the butcher’s boy, got his technicoloured dreams back. Makes perfect sense when you think about it. You’re hardly going to dream in black and white if you’ve just been serenaded off to sleep by the stars themselves, are you, luv?’ said Bessie with a laugh. ‘Now, let’s not get sidetracked, we’ve got a big day today.’ She closed the box with the swan-bone flute and carefully put it back on the shelf. ‘Where were we? Oh yes, sitar and recorder. This way!’
While Bessie and Blue were gathering the instruments together, Dr Boogaloo set about finding some musicians to play them. Because of the seriousness of Blue’s condition, there was no time to lose. Dr Boogaloo had cleared his schedule for an entire two weeks. The longer you leave something as serious as no laughter, the harder it was to fix. And although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, Dr Boogaloo wasn’t exactly sure where to start. His book of musical cures had suggested strings, wind instruments and percussion. But that was almost half his collection! It would be quicker to count every grain of sand on a seven-mile beach.
Ever since he’d met Blue, Dr Boogaloo couldn’t stop thinking about her. To live without laughter. Was that living at all? he wondered. Why now? What had happened to Blue? Like any doctor, he was familiar with the everyday disorders that filled the waiting room. But a child suffering from No Laughing Syndrome! You’d be more likely to find a talking horse or a turtle with a sharp sense of rhythm.
Last night the Doctor had lain awake for hours, racking his brains – the very worst way to find a cure, let alone a good night’s sleep. You see, Dr Boogaloo was a firm believer in magical thinking. The type of thinking you do when you’re not doing any thinking at all. Whenever he could stop thinking about a problem, a musical cure just seemed to walk right in the door. But not thinking is not as easy as it sounds. Indeed, not thinking was often the hardest part of finding any cure.
When the Doctor finally did fall asleep, he dreamt about his great-grandfather. They were walking down a tunnel together. Inside the tunnel it was raining. Dreams can be funny like that. Dr Boogaloo was jumping to avoid stepping in puddles and getting his shiny shoes wet while Grandfather Boogaloo was splashing about, skipping through the puddles and laughing like a child. Dr Boogaloo felt sure the dream was telling him something. But at this point in time, he had no idea what.
Bessie and Blue arrived in the music lounge. The huge trolley was stacked high with instruments. There was a didgeridoo, a trumpet, an accordion, some flutes, a saxophone, a French horn and both a B flat and Bulgarian bugle. There were cymbals and tambourines, big gongs and little gongs, cowbells and box drums. And, as requested, a wooden recorder and sitar. Blue was familiar with some of the instruments, but there were many more she’d never clapped eyes on before.
In the meantime, the Doctor had assembled a small band. He’d roused Boris, the guitarist from Uzbekistan, who was still snoozing in the comfy chair in the kitchen. Boris had insisted that, before he could play a note, he needed a bowl of porridge with brown sugar and some Lithuanian folk music to cure his jet lag.
‘Blue, this is Boris, Lenny and Neil. Three of the best,’ said Dr Boogaloo, by way of introduction.
Lenny was a trumpet player from Harlem, New York. He was only twelve years old. Lenny was a child prodigy and Dr Boogaloo’s first-ever apprentice. The Doctor felt sure Lenny had a future in musical medicine. His improvisations always pointed a cure in the right direction, sometimes before the Doctor even knew where he was going.
The last member of the band was Neil, a Canadian all-rounder who’d worked at the Boogaloo Family Clinic of Musical Cures ever since he was a small boy – almost sixty years. Neil was famous for the perfect bum note or loose string, which every cure required. When it came to musical cures, imperfection was an essential ingredient and Neil always knew exactly when to drop one in.
Boris, the guitarist from Uzbekistan, thrust his hand towards Blue. ‘Hello Blue, Doc tells me you lost your laughter. Vell, never you mind, ve’ll help you find it.’
Her palms sweaty with first-day nerves, Blue meekly shook Boris’s hand. Although her brain told her not to care if people knew she couldn’t laugh, the rest of her body did what it always did and burned with shame. Her eyes darkened a fraction of a shade. She flicked her ropy plaits and stared at the floor.
‘My word, we certainly will,’ said the Doctor. ‘We’ll have you laughing again before the leaves on Bessie’s big tupelo tree turn red. And I saw the first yellow one this morning, so we better get cracking, boys! Lenny, grab your trumpet; Neil, you’re on fife; and Boris, I actually need you on drums to begin with – talking drums or bongos, I don’t mind. And, Bessie, could you give us some of your magic on the piano? And sing, if you’re so taken? Now, this is a warm-up, Blue, so you just relax. Oh, and before we start, I have one little simple instruction. The most important thing to remember is I don’t need you to listen to the music, Blue. I need you to feel it.’
Blue looked puzzled. ‘How can I feel the music if I don’t listen to it?’
‘That’s a good question. You can’t feel the music without listening to it. But you can listen without feeling it. That’s a very important distinction. It’s why most people end up here,’ answered Dr Boogaloo.
‘How will I know if I’m doing it right?’ asked Blue.
‘Well, you don’t have to do anything, it’s more a case of what you don’t do. Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it. Right you are, boys, let’s get this show on the road!’
Blue sat down and waited for them to begin. The musicians grabbed their instruments. They looked towards Dr Boogaloo and waited for their cue to begin. The Doctor nodded and counted them in. The musicians began to play.
Blue had never seen a live band, let alone heard one. To start, the music was sparse with lots of space between the notes. Each instrument orbited loosely around Bessie, who tapped her finger on a single piano key. Slowly, the instruments came in closer, the music building and building till it bustled like a busy street. Bessie started to sing; her voice weaved between the beats and brass the way a pedestrian darts through traffic. A strange musical brew flowing along to the rhythm of life.
Dr Boogaloo didn’t have an instrument. He was surrounded by a sea of knobs and dials, which he twiddled and turned or tapped with his feet. Every now and then, he instructed the musicians to change instruments or swap tempos or tunings. His head wobbled and bobbed like one of those toy doggies you see on car dashboards. After a time, Dr Boogaloo stopped giving instructions. Stooped forward, hands clasped behind his back, he moved away from the knobs and dials. His feet took on a life of their own. As if in a trance, the Doctor began to hop and slide across the room.
Blue was fascinated. Best as she could tell, the musicians now took their cues from the Doctor’s crazy dancing feet. He was both snake charmer and snake. The Doctor danced, possessed, as the music built.
Blue could feel something fill the
room. Like when you know a big wild animal is approaching, but you just can’t see it yet. Her heart quickened. The hairs on her arms stood up. She felt the music brush against her skin. It was alive and stalking them all about the room. It was the smallest bit frightening, although she didn’t know why. But fear wasn’t all she felt. Blue could feel something else, but she had no idea what.
Is this what Dr Boogaloo meant? wondered Blue.
CHAPTER 9
A Horse
Treatment at the Boogaloos’ was a wonderland of music.
On Tuesday, an entire orchestra from Austria (all in leather lederhosen), four Dohori musicians from the mountains of Nepal and a rock band from Ukraine arrived.
On Wednesday came drummers from Brazil, a full choir from Samoa and a throat singer from Tuva. (Blue had never heard of throat singing before. Dressed in a pink and gold gown, the softly spoken gentleman had the most beautiful smiling eyes.)
On Thursday, eleven DJs from the dancefloors of Europe turned up with pop singers from the closed Kingdom of Bhutan.
Friday was pretty quiet. Just a masenqo minstrel from Ethiopia and a banjo player from Nashville, Tennessee.
Sessions would begin with the Doctor’s planned and precise musical combinations. ‘Okay, now a polka on mangtong and harp guitar. This time with an African back beat, so some djembes, please. Let’s mix up some New Orleans jazz with a bit of Jamaican dancehall, can we? And add some Italian bel canto. Make sure we have some tuba in there, Neil, and a bit of tungso.’
As the sun sank in the sky, the Doctor became less scientific, and the snake charmer and snake would emerge. Abandoning his musical prescriptions, the musicians followed the Doctor’s feet and sweated to keep up.
Blue had no idea there were so many different types of music in the world! Dr Boogaloo said there was no known civilisation in the whole history of mankind that didn’t play music. No matter how rich or poor, hot or cold, wet or dry, as long as they had two hands to clap and a voice to sing, there was music and always would be. ‘Otherwise, the human race would have died out long ago!’ the Doctor explained.