Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

A recent opinion poll in the constituency had put Bethune a few points ahead. Titmuss and Whistle were nowhere.

The Gazette had trumpeted merely, “An End to Sleaze,” and waffled on about “the new morality” without defining it. Though by instinct a Bethune man, the editor had let Usher Rudd loose and thereby both increased his sales and scored an own-goal. The editor, I thought in amusement, had dug his own dilemma.

My father thanked his faithful workers.

“Whatever happens tomorrow,” he said, “I want you to know how much I appreciate all you’ve done... all the time you’ve given... your tireless energy... your friendly good nature. I thank our agent, Mervyn, for his excellent planning. We’ve all done our best to get the party’s message across. Now it’s up to the voters to decide.”

He thanked Orinda for rallying to his side. “... all the difference in the world to have her support... immensely generous... reassuring to the faithful...”

Orinda, splendid in gold chains and emerald green, looked modest and loved it.

Polly, beside me, made a noise near to a retch.

I stifled a quivering giggle.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten,” she said to me severely, “that it was you who changed Orinda from foe to angel. I bear it only because the central party wants to use your father’s talents. Get him in, they said. Just like you, they more or less told me to put his feet on the escalator, and he would rise all the way.”

But someone, I thought, had tried to prevent that first step onto the escalator. Had perhaps tried. A bullet, a wax plug, an unexplained fire. If someone had tried to halt him by those means and hadn’t left it to the ballot box... then who? No one had seriously tried to find out.

The speeches done, my father came over to Polly and me, his eyes gleaming with excitement, his whole body alive with purpose. His strong facial bones shouted intelligence. His dark hair curled with healthy animal vigor.

“I’m going to win this by-election,” he said, broadly smiling. “I’m going to win. I can feel it.”

His euphoria fired everyone in the place to believe him, and lasted in himself through breakfast the next morning. The glooms crowded in with his second cup of coffee and he wasted an hour in doubt and tension, worrying that he hadn’t worked hard enough, that there was more he could have done.

“You’ll win,” I said.

“But the opinion polls...”

“The people who compile the opinion polls don’t go ’round the village pubs at lunchtime.”

“The tide is flowing the wrong way...”

“Then go back to the City and make another fortune.”

He stared and then laughed, and we set out on a tour of the polling stations, where the volunteers taking exit polls told him they were pretty even, but not to lose hope.

Here and there we came across Paul Bethune on a similar mission with similar doubts. He and my father were unfailingly polite to each other.

The anxiety went on all day and all evening. After weeks of fine weather it rained hard that afternoon. Both sides thought it might be a disaster. Both sides thought it might be to their advantage. The rain stopped when the lightbulb workers poured out of the day shift and detoured to the polling booths on their way home.

The polls closed at ten o’clock and the counting began.

My father stood in our bedroom window staring out across the cobbled square to the burned-out shell of the bow-fronted shops.

“Stop worrying,” I said. As if he could.

“I was head-hunted, you know,” he said. “The party leaders came to me and said they wanted to harness my economic skills for the good of the country. What if I’ve let them down?”

“You won’t have,” I assured him.

He smiled twistedly. “They offered me a marginal seat to see what I was made of. I was flattered. Serves me right.”

“Father...”

“Dad.”

“Okay, Dad. Good men do lose.”

“Thanks a lot.”

We went in time along the square to the Town Hall where, far from offering peace, the atmosphere was electric with hope and despair. Paul Bethune, surrounded by hugely rosetted supporters, was trying hard to smile. Isobel Bethune, in dark brown, tried to merge into the woodwork.

Mervyn talked to Paul Bethune’s agent absentmindedly and I would have bet neither of them heard what the other was saying.

Usher Rudd took merciless photographs.

There was a smattering of applause at my father’s entrance, and both Polly (in pinkish gray) and Orinda (in dramatic glittering white) sailed across the floor to greet him personally.

“George, daaahling,” Orinda crowed, offering her smooth cheek for a kiss. “Dennis is with us, you know.”

George daaahling looked embarrassed.

“It’s going quite well, George,” Polly said, giving succor. “First reports say the town votes are fairly even.”

The counting was going on under all sorts of rigorous supervision. Even those counting the Xs weren’t sure who had won.

My father and Paul Bethune looked as calm as neither was feeling.

The hall gradually filled with supporters of both sides. After midnight, getting on for one o’clock, the four candidates and their close supporters appeared on the platform, shuffling around with false smiles. Paul Bethune looked around irritably for his wife, but she’d hidden herself successfully in the crowd. Orinda stood on the platform close beside my father as of right and no one questioned it, though Polly, beside me on the floor, fumed that it should be me up there, not that... that...

Words failed her.

My father told me afterwards that the result had been whispered to the candidates before they faced the world, presumably so that neither would burst into tears, but one couldn’t have guessed it from their faces.

Finally the returning officer (whose function was to announce the result) fussed his way onto the center stage, tapped the microphone to make sure it was working (it was), grinned at the television cameras and rather unnecessarily asked for silence.

He strung out his moment of importance by looking around as if to make sure everyone was there on the platform who should be and finally, slowly, in a silence broken only by a throng of heartbeats, read the result.

Alphabetically.

Bethune... thousands.

Juliard... thousands.

Titmuss... hundreds.

Whistle... sixty-nine.

It took a moment to sink in. Staring down a preliminary cheer from the floor, the returning officer completed his task.

George Juliard is therefore elected...

The rest was drowned in cheers.

Polly worked it out. “He won by just under two thousand. Bloody well done.”

Polly kissed me.

Up on the stage Orinda was loudly kissing the new MP.

It was too much for Dearest Polly, who left my side to go to his.

I found poor, sad Isobel Bethune at my elbow instead.

“Look at that harridan with your father, pretending it was she who won the votes.”

“She did help, to be fair.”

“She would never have won on her own. It was your father who won the election. And my Paul lost. He positively lost. Your father never mentioned that bimbo of his, not once, though he could have done, but the public never forget those things. Sleaze sticks, you know.”

“Mrs. Bethune...”

“This is the third time Paul’s contested the seat,” she told me hopelessly. “We knew he would lose to Dennis Nagle the last two times, but this time the party said he was bound to win, with the way the recent by-elections have been swinging in our favor, and with the other party ignoring Orinda and bringing in a stranger and they’ll never let Paul stand again. He’s lost worse than ever this time with everything on his side, and it’s that horrid Usher Rudd’s fault and I could kill him...” She smothered her face in a handkerchief as if to shut out the world and, stroking my arm, mumbled, “I’ll never forget your kindness.”