Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

I still disliked politics and I was extremely grateful that the approach of my final exams made it impossible for me to repeat my by-election stint.

There were many politically active students at Exeter, but I kept my head down with them, too, and led a double life only on Stallworthy’s gallops and various racetracks. I won no races that spring, but the sensation of speed was all that mattered: and, in an oddity of brain activity, the oftener I raced, the more clearly I understood second-order differential equations.

The general election swelled and broke under me like a Pacific surf, and my father, along with his party, were returned to power. A small majority, but enough.

No one shot at him, no one plugged his sump drain with wax, no one set fire to Polly’s house, and no one let the martial arts expert earn her fee.

Suspicion of shooting and arson still lay heavily on Leonard Kitchens, but no one could accuse him of anything this time as his formidable and unforgiving wife insisted on his taking her on a double Mediterranean cruise. They were in Athens on polling day.

Poor Isobel Bethune had been right: Paul Bethune’s party dumped him as a candidate in favor of a worthy woman magistrate. Though it was no longer hotly scandalous news, Paul Bethune’s roving eye had settled again outside his home, and Isobel, at last fed up with it, had shed her marriage and her sullen sons and gone to live with her sister in Wales.

Polly kept me informed, her humor dry. My father couldn’t have married anyone better.

I told him to beware of bikini-clad bimbos falling artistically into his lap with Usher Rudd in attendance for accusations of sleaze. Hadn’t I heard, he asked, that Usher Rudd had been sacked by the Gazette for manufacturing sleaze where it didn’t exist? Usher Rudd, my father cheerfully said, was now telephoto-lens-stalking a promiscuous front-bencher of the opposition.

When the party in power reassembled after the whole country had voted, there was a major reshuffle of jobs. To no one’s surprise at Westminster, my father’s career skipped upward like helium and he became a minister of state in the Ministry of Transport, one step down from a seat in the Cabinet.

I had the best photograph of his wedding to Polly framed, and stood it beside the one of him and my mother. I took the pacts we’d signed out of my mother’s frame and read them thoughtfully, and put them back. They seemed to belong to a different life. I had indeed grown up at Exeter, and I’d had “the first” that I would never forget: but the basic promises of those pacts had so far been kept, and although now it might seem a melodramatic statement, I knew that if it ever became necessary, I would indeed defend my father against any form of attack.

I took my final exams and, sensing that I’d probably done enough to gain a bachelor of science degree of a reasonable standard, I wrote to Weatherbys and asked for a job.

They replied, what job?

Any, I wrote. I could add, subtract and work computers, and I had ridden in races.

Ah, that Juliard. Come for an interview, they said.

Weatherbys, a family business started in 1770 and currently servicing racing in increasingly inventive and efficient ways, stood quietly in red brick surrounded by fields, trees and peaceful countryside near the small ancient town of Wellingborough, sixty miles northwest of London in the county of Northamptonshire.

Inside, the atmosphere of the furiously busy secretariat was notably calm and quiet also. Knowing the vast scope and daily pressure of the work being done there, I suppose I’d expected something like the clattering frenzy of an old-fashioned newspaper office, but what I walked into was near to silence, with rows of heads bent over computer monitors and people walking among them with thoughtfulness, not scurrying, carrying papers and boxes of disks.

I was handed from department to department and shown around, and in an undemanding interview at the end was asked for my age and references. I went away in disappointment: they had been polite and kind but had asked none of the piercing questions I would have expected if they’d had a job to offer.

Back at Exeter, living in rooms halfway between the university and Stallworthy’s yard, I began dispiritedly to send job applications to a list of industries. Weatherbys had seemed my natural home: too bad they didn’t see me as their child.

They did, however, follow up on the references I’d given them: my tutor at the university and Stallworthy himself.

The gruff old trainer told me he’d said my character and behavior were satisfactory. Thanks a lot, I thought. Jim laughed. “He doesn’t want you to leave and take Sarah’s Future with you. It’s a wonder he didn’t call you a loudmouthed troublemaker!”

There was a letter from my tutor:

Dear Benedict,

I enclose a photocopy of a reference I have sent to an institution called Weatherbys, that has something to do with horse racing, I believe.

His testimonial in full read:

Benedict Juliard is likely to have gained a creditable degree in Mathematics with Accounting, though not a brilliant one. He took very little part in student activities during his three years at University, as it seems he was exclusively interested in horses. There are no adverse reports of his character and behavior.

Shit, I thought. Oh, well.

Much to my astonishment, I also received a letter from Sir Vivian Durridge:

My dear Benedict,

I am delighted to have seen over the past three years that you have had the opportunity to ride successfully as an amateur on your father’s horse, Sarah’s Future. I am sure that he has told you he enlisted my help in making you face- the fact that you were not cut out for rising to the top three in the steeplechase jockeys’ list. Looking back, I see that I was unnecessarily brutal in accusing you of drug taking, as I knew perfectly well at the time that with your sort of character you did not, but on that particular morning it seemed to me — and I regret it — that it was the only thing that would disturb you so badly that you would do as your father wanted, which was to go to university.

I have now heard from a friend of mine at Weatherbys that you have applied to them for a job. I enclose a photocopy of a letter I have written to them, and I hope that in some way this may straighten things between us.

Yours sincerely,

His enclosure read:

To whom it may concern:

Benedict Juliard rode my horses as a sixteen-and seventeen-year-old amateur jockey. I found him completely trustworthy in every respect and would give him my unqualified endorsement in any position he applied for.

I sat down, the pages shaking in my hands. Vivian Durridge was about the last person I would ever have applied to for a thumbs-up.

I had vaguely been looking for a safe place to keep my birth certificate, so as not to lose it while I moved from lodgings to lodgings. I knew I wouldn’t lose the marriage photographs so I decided to put my birth certificate behind my father and Polly, and as I’d been doing that when Vivian Durridge’s remarkable letter arrived, I folded his pages into the frame, too.

Three days later the mail brought an envelope bearing the Weatherbys logo, a miniature representation of a stallion standing under an oak tree, from a painting by George Stubbs.

I was cravenly afraid of opening it. It would begin We regret...

Well, it had to be faced.

I opened the envelope, and the letter began We are pleased...

Pleased.

That evening my father telephoned. “Is it true you’ve got yourself a job at Weatherbys?”