Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

Anyone... anyone... if one had the nerve, could have stood among the floor-length curtains, opened the window, rested the barrel of a .22 on the windowsill and shot through the geraniums and the warm night.

My father, interested, asked the manager for the names of the people sleeping in the bedrooms on Wednesday night, but although the register was freely opened, no one familiar appeared.

“Nice try, Ben,” my father sighed; and the police had the same nice try in due course, with similar results.

By Monday morning Mervyn had rented an empty shop in a side street and borrowed a desk for Crystal and some folding chairs. The campaign hiccuped for two days while he cajoled his friendly neighborhood printer into replacement leaflet and poster production at grand-prix speed and near-to-cost prices, but by late Tuesday afternoon the indefatigable witches, Faith, Marge and Lavender, had turned the empty shop into a fully working office complete with teapot and mobile phone.

On Monday and Tuesday George Juliard filled the newspapers, and enlivened some chat shows, and on Wednesday morning a miracle happened.

Mervyn had sticky-taped a new large-scale map onto the wall and was pointing out to me the roads I should drive along (feet OK by now) for Faith and Lavender to ring as yet untroubled doorbells. In the absence of a megaphone (burned) I would please occasionally toot the horn, just enough to announce our presence but not enough, he lectured me, to anger anyone trying to get a baby to sleep. The mothers of babies (he wagged a finger at me) swayed Xs in the polls like pendulums. Kiss a baby, win a vote. A hundred thousand politicians couldn’t all be historically wrong.

“I’ll kiss every baby in sight,” I promised recklessly.

He frowned at me, never one to take a joke. I was reminded of my father’s most recent lesson: “Never, ever make a joke to the police, they have no sense of humor. Never make a political joke, it will always be considered an insult. Always remember that umbrage can be taken at the lift of an eyebrow. Remember that if offense can possibly be given, it will be.”

I’d gazed at my father. “Are people that silly?”

“Silly,” he said with mock severity, “isn’t a word you should ever apply to people. They may be totally stupid, in fact, but if you call them silly you’ve lost their vote.”

“And you want silly people to vote for you?”

He laughed. “Don’t make jokes.”

He had gone to London on Wednesday morning when the miracle happened. There were just Mervyn, Crystal, Faith, Marge, Lavender and me in the makeshift office, just the bunch of us putting the best face possible on the lack of computer (for the totals spent on tea bags), copier (schedules for volunteers) and fax (reports from distant galaxies like Quindle).

Orinda walked in.

All business stopped.

She wore pale citrus green: pants, jacket and headband. Gold chains. She carried, beside the black lizard handbag, a substantial roll of papers.

She looked around the bare room, smiled faintly at Marge and fixed her gaze on me.

“I want to talk to you,” she said calmly. “Outside.”

I followed where she led. We stood on the sidewalk in the sun, with shoppers passing by.

“Since Saturday,” she announced, “I have been considering things. On Sunday morning, at half past eight or so, a newspaperman appeared at my house in an invasive procedure I believe is called ‘door stepping.’ ”

She paused. I nodded faintly.

“He asked if I was glad or sorry that you hadn’t been burned to death. You and your father, that is.”

“Oh.”

“It was the first I’d heard about the fire.”

“I’m surprised no one had phoned you.”

“I unplug the telephone when I sleep. I find it hard to sleep in any case.”

I said “Oh” again, vaguely.

“The journalist wanted to know my opinion of the information he’d been given that close-to-death attacks had been made on George Juliard so that he would have to retire from the candidacy, clearing the way for my return.”

She paused, studying my face, and continued. “I see that that thought isn’t new to you.”

“No, but I don’t think you did it.”

“Why not?”

“You’re hurt. You’re furious. But you wouldn’t murder.”

“When will you be eighteen?”

“In ten days.”

“Then consider this a coming-of-age present.” She thrust the roll of papers into my hands. “This is for you. It is because of you...” She stopped abruptly, swallowing. “Use it in any way you like.”

With curiosity I unrolled the stiff sheets, having to hold them wide to prevent them rolling up again. The top one, in very large capital letters, read ORINDA NAGLE SAYS VOTE FOR JULIARD.

My mouth, I know, fell open.

“There are ten of them,” she said simply. “They’re all the same. I had them printed this morning. They’ll print dozens, if you like.”

“Orinda...” I was all but speechless.

“You showed me... at the races...” she began, and stopped again. “You’re so very young, but you showed me it’s possible to bear an unbearable disappointment. You made me look into myself. Anyway, I will not have people thinking I would set fire to our old headquarters in order to get rid of your father, so I’ll join him. I’ll support him from now on in every way. I should never have listened to all those people who told me he had robbed me. I don’t know, to be really truthful, and the truth is awful... I don’t know that I wasn’t relieved not to be forced to go to Westminster, but I do like working in the constituency and that’s what hurts most... that the people I’ve worked so hard for passed me over for some stranger from outside.”

She stopped talking and looked at me in a sort of desperation to see if I could possibly understand, and I understood so well that I leaned forward impulsively and kissed her on the cheek.

A camera flashed.

“I can’t believe it,” Orinda screeched. “He follows me ’round.”

Usher Rudd, with the advantage of surprise, was already scuttling away down the street to get lost in bunches of shoppers.

“He follows me, too,” I said, putting a hand on Orinda’s arm, to deter her from trying to catch him. “You warned me and I told my father... but unless Usher Rudd breaks the law it seems he can’t be stopped, and the law is still on the side of copycat Rudds.”

“But my private life is my own affair!” She glanced at me as if it were my fault that it wasn’t.

I said, “Drug dealers would be out of business if people didn’t want drugs.”

“What?”

“The so-called war on drugs is fought against the wrong people. Lock up the users. Lock up the demand. Lock up human nature.”

She looked bewildered. “What have drugs to do with Usher Rudd?”

“If people didn’t flock to buy his sleaze, he wouldn’t push it.”

“And you mean... they always will?”

She needed no answer. She followed me into the office and, after delivering her news, enjoyed a hugging session with Mervyn (no photo) and an ambiguous welcome from the three witches, who had with pink arousal transferred their effective allegiance to the new order.

“Where are you canvassing today, Mervyn?” Orinda asked, and he showed her on the map, with the unexpected result that when I drove the Range Rover ’round Hoopwestern that morning I had on board Mervyn, Orinda, Faith and Lavender, and all of Orinda’s roll of commitment flattened out as placards.

As Mervyn had telephoned the editor of the Gazette — gasps of shock at having to U-turn his anti-all politicians spin — we were greeted in the parking lot behind the burned shop by a hastily assembled crowd, by the leader-writer of the Gazette (the paper was short of news) and by the cameraman who had besottedly followed Orinda with his loving lens around the reception before the dinner a week earlier at The Sleeping Dragon.