‘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
