10 lb Penalty (7 page)

“Yes ... but it’s been standing out in the car park all night. Last night it’s possible someone tried to shoot you. Suppose someone’s hammered a nail or two into the Range Rover’s tires? Or anything.” I finished self-deprecatingly, as if I thought sabotage a childish fantasy, but after a brief, thoughtful silence my father said to Mervyn, “I’ll go in Crystal’s car. Ben can practice on the Range Rover tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mervyn, get the Range Rover overhauled, would you?”

Mervyn gave me a sour look, but it was he, after all, who had most wanted to avoid the accident-prone label: or so he’d said.

In Crystal’s small workaday box on wheels I therefore drove the candidate safely to his far-flung appointments, and again I saw and heard him shake awake the apathetic voting public, progressively attracting more and more people as his voice raised laughter and applause. His audience approved with their eyes and shouted questions, some friendly, some hostile, all of them getting thoughtful answers, lightly phrased.

I didn’t know how much of the day’s flashing enthusiasm would actually carry the feet to the polling booths, but it was enough, my father assured me, if they didn’t walk into the opposition camp and write their X for Bethune.

We had squeezed into Crystal’s car an invention of my father’s that was basically two wooden boxes, each a foot high, one larger than the other, that would bolt together, one on top of the other, to form an impromptu stepped platform to raise a speaker above his listeners: just enough for him to be comfortably heard, not high enough to be psychologically threatening. “My soapbox” my father called it, though it was many years since such crowd-pulling structures had contained soap.

I assembled the “soapbox” in three places in the town’s scattered focal points, and at each place a crowd gathered, curious, or anti, or uncommitted, and at each place, as I unbolted, or assembled or packed away the stepped platform, people would crowd around me with (mostly) friendly inquiries.

“Are you his chauffeur?”

“Yes.”

“Is he as knowledgeable as he seems?”

“More so.”

“What does he think about education?”

I smiled. “He’s in favor of it.”

“Yes, but...”

“I can’t answer for him. Please ask him yourself.”

They turned away and asked him, and got politically correct and truthful answers that would never be implemented without a huge increase in taxes: I was learning the economic facts as rapidly as I’d ever assimilated quadratic equations.

My father’s appearances in Quindle had been well publicized in advance by posters all over the town. Volunteers had distributed them and volunteers met and escorted us everywhere, their faces shining with commitment. My own commitment, I had already found, was to my father himself, not to his party or his beliefs. My private views, if I had any, were that good ideas were scattered around, not solely the property of any shade of rosette: and of course what were to me good ideas were hateful errors to others. I didn’t embrace any single whole agenda package, and it was always those who didn’t care passionately, those who changed their minds and swung with the wind, those who felt vaguely dissatisfied, they it was who swayed one side in or another side out. The “floating voters,” who washed back and fore with the tide, those were my father’s target.

Quindle, like Hoopwestern, had grown in response to industries planted in the surrounding fields; not lightbulbs this time, but furniture and paint. There had then been a long policy of “infilling,” the building of large numbers of small houses on every patch of vacant grass. The resulting town strained against its green belt and suffered from interior traffic snarl-ups on a standstill scale. It worked well for soapbox orators: in the summer heat cars crept past with their windows down, getting the message.

Among the blizzard of VOTE JULIARD posters there were some for TITMUSS and WHISTLE and, of course, many for BETHUNE IS BETTER. GIVE HIM YOUR X. Bethune’s notices on the whole looked tattered, and I found it wasn’t merely because it was three days since he’d stomped inner Quindle on his own soapbox tour, but because the local weekly paper, the
Quindle
Diary, had hit the newsstands with “Bethune for Sleaze” as its headline.

One of the volunteers having tucked the
Quindle
Diary under my elbow, I read the front page, as who wouldn’t.

I read to the end and thought the whole tone insufferably pompous, but I didn’t suppose it would do the Bethune camp much good.

At each of his three ascents of the soapbox my father was bombarded with demands that he should at least deplore the Bethune hypocrisy, and at each place, carefully sidestepping the loaded come-ons, he attacked Bethune and his party only for their political aims and methods.

His restraint didn’t altogether please his own army of volunteers.

“George could
demolish
Bethune if he would only take a hatchet to his character,” one of them complained. “Why won’t he do it?”

“He doesn’t believe in it,” I said.

“You have to play the aces you’re given.”

“Not five aces,” I said.

“What?”

“He would think it cheating.”

The volunteer raised his eyes to heaven but changed his approach. “You see that thin man standing near your father, writing in a notebook?”

“Do you mean the one in a pink jogging suit and a baseball hat on backwards?”

“I do indeed. He’s called Usher Rudd. He writes for the
Hoopwestern
Gazette and his column is also syndicated to the
Quindle
Diary. It’s he who wrote the personal attacks on Paul Bethune. He’s been following Bethune around ever since his party chose him as their candidate. Rudd’s a highly professional slinger of mud. Never, never trust him.”

I said in apprehension, “Does my father know who he is?”

“I told George that Usher Rudd would be bound to turn up again, but he doesn’t always look the same. The pink overalls and baseball cap are new.”

“Usher Rudd’s an unusual name.”

The volunteer laughed. “He’s really young Bobby Rudd, always a menace. His mother was Gracie Usher before she married a Rudd. The Rudd family have a string of body shops, for anything from bicycles to combine harvesters, but fixing cars isn’t to young Bobby’s taste. He calls himself an investigative journalist. More like a muckraker, I’d say.”

I said tentatively, “Was he at the dinner last night?”

“That big do at The Sleeping Dragon? He would have been for a certainty. He’ll be furious that the gunshot and all that happened was too late for today’s
Gazette.
The
Gazette
is only twenty-four pages long, mostly advertisements, sports results, local news and rehashed world events. Everyone buys it for the dirt Rudd digs up. He was a rotten Peeping Tom as a little boy, always had his snotty nose glued to people’s windows, and he hasn’t got better with time. If you want to have sex with the vicar, don’t do it in Quindle.”

I said dryly, “Thanks for the advice.”

He laughed. “Beware of Bobby Rudd, that’s all.” With the present crowd listening to my galvanic father with devouring eyes as much as persuadable ears, I slowly strolled around to guard his back; I was some poor sort of guardian to my parent, I thought with self-condemnation, if I left him wide open to repeat bullets or other jokers.

I did my best to look purposeless, but clearly failed with that message as Usher Rudd, also as if guileless, came to stand casually beside me. His baseball cap advertised vigorous sports goods, as did his footwear, and he wore between, from neck to ankle, a soft rose-pink loose exercise suit of nylonlike fabric which, instead of hiding the thinness of his body inside, gave an impression that the arms and legs functioned on a system of articulated rods. I, in my jeans and T-shirt, looked almost invisibly ordinary.

“Hello,” he said. “Where is the Juliard battle-wagon?”

Puzzled, I answered, “We came in a different car.”

“I’m Usher Rudd.”

His accent was unreconstructed Dorset, his manner confident to arrogant. He had unexcited blue eyes, sandy lashes and dry freckled skin: the small-boy menace who had peeped through windows still lived close to the surface and made me for once feel older than my years.

“What’s your name?” he demanded, as I made no response.

“Benedict,” I said.

“Ben,” he asserted, nodding his recognition, “Ben Juliard.”

“That’s right.”

“How old are you?” He was abrupt, as if he had a right to the information.

“Seventeen,” I said without offense. “How old are
you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

I gazed at him with a perplexity that was at least half-genuine. Why should he think he could ask questions that he himself would not answer? I had a lot to learn, as my father had said, but I instinctively didn’t like him.

Close behind my back my father was answering the sort of questions it was proper he should be asked: Where did he stand on education, foreign policy, taxes, the disunited kingdom and the inability of bishops to uphold the Ten Commandments? “Shouldn’t sins be modernized?” someone shouted. Moses was out of date.

My father, who certainly lived by “thou shalt not” rather than by “what can I get away with?” replied with humor, “By all means pension off Moses if you would like your neighbor to covet your ox and your ass and carry off your wife and your lawn mower....”

The end of his sentence drowned in laughter and cheers, and for fifteen more minutes he had them spell-bound, feeding them political nuggets in nourishing soup, producing a performance without microphone or footlights that they would never forget. All my life people would say to me “I heard your father speak in Quindle,” as if it had been a revelation in their existence: and it wasn’t altogether
what
he said that mattered, I reckoned, but his whole, honest, joyous, vigorous presentation.

Against the final applause, Usher Rudd said to me, “Birthday?”

“What?”

“Your birthday?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I do have a birthday.”

He thought me dim. “What’s your mother’s name?” he said.

“Sarah.”

“Her last name?”

“Yes. She’s dead.”

His expression changed. His gaze grew thoughtful and flicked downward to the
Quindle
Diary, which I held rolled in my hand. I saw him understand the obtuseness of my answers.

“Bethune deserves it,” he said sharply.

“I don’t know anything about him,” I said.

“Then read my column.”

“Even then ...”

“Everyone has secrets,” he declared with relish. “I just find them out. I enjoy doing it. They deserve it.”

“The public has a right to know?” I asked.

“Of course they do. If someone is setting themselves up to make our laws and rule our lives they shouldn’t sleaze it off with dirty sex on the side, should they?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“If old George is hiding dirty secrets, I’ll find them out. What’s your mother’s name?”

“Sarah. She’s dead.”

He gave me a bitter, antagonistic glare.

“I’m sure you do a good detective job,” I said mildly. “My mother’s name was Sarah Juliard. Married. Dead. Sorry about that.”

“I’ll find out,” he threatened.

“Be my guest.”

My father disengaged himself from eager, clutching voters and turned to say he was ready for his lunch engagement: a volunteers’ gathering in a pub.

“This,” I said, indicating the inhabitant of the pink tracksuit and the energetic shoes and baseball hat, “is Usher Rudd.”

“Nice to know you,” my father said, automatically ready to shake hands. “Do you work for the party, er ... Usher?”

“He writes for newspapers,” I said. I unrolled the
Quindle Diary
so that he could see the front page. “He wrote this. He wants me to tell him my mother’s name.”

I was getting to know my father. Twenty-four hours earlier I wouldn’t have been aware that a tiny tensing of muscles and a beat of silence meant a fizzingly fast assessment of unwelcome facts. Not only powerful but dauntingly rapid: not only analytical but an instant calculator of down-the-line consequences. Some brain.

He smiled politely at Usher Rudd. “My wife’s name was Sarah. Unfortunately she died.”

“What of?” Usher Rudd, disconcerted by my father’s pleasant frankness, sounded aggressively rude.

“It was a long time ago.” My father remained civil. “Come on, Ben, or we’ll be late.”

We turned away and walked three paces; and Bobby Usher Rudd, darting round and wheeling in the running shoes, came to a halt facing us, standing in our way.

His voice was thin, malicious and triumphant. “I’ll get you de-selected. Orinda Nagle will have her rights.”

“Ah.” My father packed all the understanding in the world into one syllable. “So you rubbished Paul Bethune to give her a clear run, is that it?”

Usher Rudd was furious. “She’s worth ten of you.”

“She’s a lucky woman to have so many fans.”

“You’ll lose.” Usher Rudd almost danced with rage. “She would have won.”

“Well ...” My father detoured past him with me at his heels, and Usher Rudd behind us yelled the question I would never have asked but wanted like crazy to know the answer to. “If your wife died long ago, what do you do for sex?”

My father certainly heard but there wasn’t a falter in his step. I risked a flick of a glance at his face but learned nothing: he showed no embarrassment or anxiety, only, if anything,
amusement.

The lunch in the pub was upbeat, the volunteers all intoxicated with the speech stops of the morning. In the afternoon we toured a furniture factory and then a paint factory, where the candidate (leaning on his walking stick) listened intently to local problems and promised remedies if he were elected. He shook countless hands and signed countless autographs, and left behind an atmosphere of hope.