Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

Orinda flirted again with his lens (or with him — much the same thing) and told everyone prettily through a non-squeaking microphone that George Juliard, undoubtedly on the brink of becoming a nationally acclaimed politician, was the — best possible substitute for her beloved husband, Dennis, who had dedicated his life to the good citizens of this glorious part of Dorset.

Applause, applause. She appeared in the sitting rooms of Hoopwestern on the lunchtime television news against the only-slightly orchestrated cheers.

By the time my father returned on the train from London he’d heard of Orinda’s media conference with mixed feelings — she might be stealing his limelight or she might just be saving his life — but at another church hall meeting of the faithful that evening he embraced her in a warm hug (reciprocated) that would have been unthinkable a day earlier.

Not everyone was pleased.

Orinda’s shadow, Anonymous Lover Wyvern, followed her around like thunder. She, dressed in blackberry-colored satin and glowing with a sense of generosity and virtue, kept giving him inquiring looks as if unsure of the source of his dudgeon. In her inner release she didn’t seem to realize, as I did, albeit only slowly through the evening, that in dumping her anger at not being selected she had in some way lessened his status. He had been Dennis Nagle’s best friend, but Orinda was leaving her Dennis behind.

Dearest Polly, to my surprise, positively scowled, even though she had herself delivered Orinda to her change of heart.

“I didn’t count on such a radical about-face,” Polly complained. “She’s cast herself in the ongoing role of constituency wife! There’s no doubt she was good at it, but she isn’t George’s wife and she can’t surely imagine she can go on opening fetes and things, and I bet that’s what she’s got in mind. Whatever did you say to her at the races?”

I said, “I thought you wanted her on my father’s side.”

“Well, yes, I do. But I don’t want her going around saying all the time that she was the one we should have picked.”

“Get him into Parliament, Polly,” I said. “Put him on the escalator, then he’ll deal with Orinda and everything else.”

“How old did you say you are?”

“Eighteen at the end of next week. And it was you, dearest Polly, who said I look into people’s minds.”

She asked in some alarm, “Do you see into mine?”

“Sort of.”

She laughed uneasily, but I saw nothing but good.

One could say the opposite about Leonard Kitchens. I had come to notice that the tilt of his prominent mustache acted like a weather vane, signaling the direction of his feelings. The upward thrust that evening was combative and self-important, a combination looking for a fight. Bulky Mrs. Kitchens (in large pink flowers printed on dark blue) followed her Leonard’s progress around the meeting with anxiety for a while and then made a straight line to my side.

“Do something,” she hissed into my ear. “Tell Orinda to leave my Leonard alone.”

It seemed to me that it was the other way around, as Leonard’s mustache vibrated by Orinda’s neck, but on Mrs. Kitchens’s urgent and continuous prompting I went over to hear Leonard’s agitated and whining drift.

“I would do anything for you, Orinda, you know I would, but you’re joining the enemy and I can’t bear to see him slobbering all over you, it’s disgusting...”

“Wake up, Leonard,” Orinda said lightly, not seeing the seething lava below the faintly ridiculous exterior, “it’s a new world.”

The undercurrents might tug and eddy, but Orinda had definitely unified the party behind JULIARD; yet in our room that night my father would literally not hear a word said about her. In fact he put a finger decisively against his lips and drew me out into the passage, closing our door behind us.

“What’s up?” I asked, mystified.

“Tonight the editor of the Gazette asked me if I thought people who voted for me were silly.”

“But that’s nonsense. That’s...” I stopped.

“Yes. Think back. When we joked about silly voters we were alone in this bedroom here. Did you repeat what we said?”

“Of course not.”

“Then how did the Gazette know?”

I stared at him, and said slowly, “Usher Rudd.”

He nodded. “Didn’t you tell me that that mechanic — Terry, isn’t that what his name is? — got sacked because Usher Rudd had listened to his pillow talk using one of those gadgets that pick up voice waves from the faint vibrations in the windows?”

“Usher Rudd,” I said furiously, “is trying to prove I’m not your son.”

“Never mind, he’s on a loser.”

“He’s following Orinda, too, not to mention the Bethunes.”

“He thinks if he flings enough mud, some will stick. Don’t give him any target.”

As the days went by one could see that Orinda’s flip-flop had most impact in Hoopwestern itself, less in Quindle, and not very much in the villages dotting the maps with a church spire, a couple of pubs and a telephone box. Cheers and clapping greeted her near home but news of her arrival to canvass in, say, Middle Lampfield (pop. 637) was more likely to be greeted with a polite “Oo? Aah” and a swift return to “Zoomerzet” cider.

More local draft cider flowed down the constituency throats than babies’ formula, and my father’s head for the frothy fruit of the apple earned him approval. We rolled every day at lunchtime from pub to pub to pub (I drove) and I got used to hearing the verdict. “A good chap, your father, he understands what we need in the countryside. Reckon I’ll vote for him. That Bethune, that they say is a certainty, he’s a town councillor, and you know what we think of them lot, thumbs down.”

My father made them laugh. He knew the price of hay. They would have followed him to the South Pole.

Orinda thought the villages a waste of time, and so did Mervyn.

“The bulk of the votes is in the towns,” they lectured. Dennis Nagle had been the star of the business-man circle.

“You vote for a man you play darts with,” my father said, missing double top. “I buy my own drinks, they buy theirs. Neither of us is beholden.”

Orinda didn’t like cider, and she didn’t like pubs. Lavender, surprisingly, liked both: my father, Lavender and I therefore spent several days soapboxing the outskirts in the silver-and-gold Range Rover, seeing to it (as my father said) that not a voter was left unturned.

The following week it was Orinda who nearly died.

On the Tuesday of the last full week of canvassing, my box of possessions, and my bicycle, finally arrived by carrier from Mrs. Wells.

Up in our room, my father picked with interest and curiosity through the meager debris of my life: two trophies for winning amateur ’chases the previous Easter, several photographs of me on horses and skis, and other photos from school with me sitting in one of those frozen team lineups (this one for target shooting) with the captain hugging a cup. There were also books on mathematics and racing biographies. Also clothes, but not many as, to my dismay, I was still growing.

My father extracted my passport, my birth certificate and the framed photograph of his wedding to my mother. He took the picture out of its frame and after looking at it for several long minutes he ran his finger over her face and sighed deeply, and it was the only time I’d known him to show any emotion at all about his loss.

I said incautiously, “Do you remember her? If she walked into the room now, would you know her?”

He gave me a look of such bleakness that I realized I’d asked a question of unforgivable intrusion, but after a pause all he said was, “You never forget your first.”