‘Okay,’ said Blue, a tad on the shy side and still trying to recover from the nose toes and skirt-dwelling possums.
‘Now, where did I leave my bike?’ Bessie ushered Blue outside. ‘Ah, I remember – it’s over there, near the jacarandas.’
Bessie strode off towards the purple trees. Blue followed. She felt like such a plain Jane next to Bessie. She wished her mother would let her wear colours instead of boring white all the time.
Blue looked around, but she couldn’t see any bike. All she could see was a large jumble of stuff piled up against a tree. But as she got closer, she could see the pile of stuff wasn’t stuff at all. Sure enough, poking out the bottom were two wheels, so Blue guessed that classified as a bicycle. But then, instead of your usual configuration of seat and handlebars, it looked as if an entire orchestra of instruments had collapsed on top. It was the strangest contraption Blue had ever seen.
‘That?’ said Blue, trying very hard not to sound rude.
‘That,’ said Bessie. ‘Isn’t she magnificent? Dr Boogaloo bought it for me from a busker in Scotland. It plays over a million tunes. I call it my iBike.’
The front wheel was like some sort of circular piano with black and white keys, and under a clutter of horns and bells Blue could just make out the handlebars. On one side was a tuba. On the other, half a dozen drums. And where you might have expected to find a seat was a humpy structure with cymbals, flutes, tambourines, a ukulele, a violin and a bassoon, as well as some stringed things Blue had never seen before. At the very back was an upright double bass, and up front were two maracas on long bendy stalks. A swirl of tubes and a web of strings connected instruments, bows and bike. Strangely enough – as if an entire orchestra collapsed on top of a bike wasn’t strange enough – on the front was a small propeller.
Bessie hoisted two cymbals up high like little umbrellas, revealing two seats. ‘Jump on,’ she said, lifting her long skirt and flinging a stripy leg up and over. ‘It’s more comfy than it looks.’
Blue climbed aboard.
‘What music do you like, luv? This bike can play anything.’ Bessie pulled a small lever on what appeared to be the gears. Instead of numbers, the names of every type of music you could imagine spun.
‘Rap, classical, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, pop, blues … what’ll it be?’
‘Oh gosh, I’m not sure,’ said Blue. ‘I don’t know anything about music.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find something nice to go with this autumn sun. Now, let’s get moving.’
Bessie pushed off and pedalled. All at once music began to play.
Blue had never heard anything like it. Instantly, her feet started to tap furiously. The clickety-clack of the driving double bass made her whole body wiggle and shake. She was slightly embarrassed, but at the same time there was no way she could stop. The music made her feel as though she was hanging out the door of a runaway train as it raced across a dusty desert. And it was thrilling!
‘WHAA HOOO!’ yelled Bessie. ‘There’s nothing like rockabilly music in the morning. Makes you want to grab a partner and dance, doesn’t it? I can’t keep my feet still! Perfect for pedalling!’
Bessie and Blue rode into town. Music streamed out behind them like confetti. Children came running into the streets. Adults grabbed each other and danced. And mysteriously, when they turned a corner or rode out of sight, the iBike’s music kept on playing, right until the song ended. A vapour trail of music was left lingering in the air.
Exiting the town on the south side, Bessie and Blue rode on through farming land with rolling hills of corn and wheat and olive trees. The rockabilly music faded away and in its place huge orchestral music began to swell.
‘Landscape-controlled,’ said Bessie over her shoulder.
‘What?’
‘The iBike. Changes tune to suit the landscape.’
Now the music was gentle and soothing with cellos and violins. As they noodled along through fields of strawberries and snow-white lupin, the music changed again. This time, the iBike played an old-school country song. The sort of tune your mother might listen to on a Saturday night when your daddy wasn’t home and she was cooking dinner.
Not Blue’s mother, of course. She never listened to music, especially not in her ‘white phase’. Bernice, her mother’s acoustics counsellor, had convinced her of the therapeutic benefits of ‘white noise’. You know, the sound a radio makes between stations when you’re trying to tune it in. These days, Blue’s mother played it on a constant loop. ‘Bernice said it’ll help me reconnect my consciousness to the time when I was in the womb,’ she’d explained, which explained nothing at all. In fact, Blue had not the slightest idea what the heck it meant (and she had a sneaking suspicion neither did her mother). To Blue, all that white noise made it seem as though they lived inside a jet plane.
Blue and Bessie rounded a bend.
‘Warms days full of sunshine, in the afternoon came rain,’ sang the country singer, who sounded as though she was missing a couple of front teeth.
A loud neon sign appeared, flashing like a Las Vegas casino among the quiet country crops:
Beneath it was a large gate shaped like an open mouth with a tongue poking out.
‘Ah, here we are …’ said Bessie. ‘And right on time!’
CHAPTER 5
The Snorkel Porkel Crumpety Worpel Laughter Clinic
The buzzer next to the gate looked like a pig’s snout. Above it a neat, polite sign:
PLEASE SQUEEZE TO ENTER
Bessie gave it a squeeze. The snout snorted and the gates slid open.
Bessie and Blue rode through and parked the iBike in a stone courtyard. Blue followed Bessie down some steps and through
