Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

SHOUT! emanated, it transpired, from a small and grubby-looking building south of the Thames. The editor wouldn’t in the least want to see me but, late in the afternoon, I marched straight into his office shedding secretaries like bow waves. He was sitting in a sweatshirt behind a cluttered desk, typing on a keyboard of a computer.

He didn’t recognize me, of course. When I told him who I was, he invited me to leave.

“I am going to sue you for libel,” I said, opening the copy of SHOUT! at the center pages. “I see from the small print at the beginning of this magazine that the name of the editor is Rufus Crossmead. If that’s who you are, I’ll be suing Rufus Crossmead personally.”

He was a small, pugnacious man, sticking his chest out and tucking his chin in like a pugilist. I supposed briefly that dealing with wronged and furious victims of his destructive ethos was a regular part of his life.

I remembered how, five years earlier, my father had pulverized the editor of the Hoopwestern Gazette, but I couldn’t reproduce exactly that quiet degree of menace. I didn’t have the commanding strength of his vibrant physical presence. I left Rufus Crossmead, however, in no doubt as to my intentions.

I laid down in front of him copies of the strong letters from Spencer Stallworthy, Jim, my Exeter tutor and the headmaster of Malvern College, and I gave him finally a copy of the letter Vivian Durridge had sent.

“The only good defense in a libel suit,” I said, “is to prove that the allegations are true. You can’t use that defense, because you’ve printed lies. It will be easy for me to establish that Sir Vivian Durridge is now hopelessly confused after a stroke and doesn’t know what he’s saying. Usher Rudd must have been aware of it. He was trying to revenge himself for my father having got him sacked from the Hoopwestern Gazette. No reputable paper has employed him since. He suits your style, but he’s dropped even you in the shit.”

Rufus Crossmead gloomily read the various papers.

“We’ll settle out of court,” he said.

It sounded to me as if he’d said it often before, and it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. I wasn’t sure it was even what I wanted.

I said slowly, “I’ll tell you what I’ll settle for...”

“It’s up to the proprietors,” Crossmead interrupted. “They’ll make you an offer.”

“They always do?” I asked.

He didn’t exactly nod, but it was in the air.

“Then you tell the proprietors,” I said, “that I’ll settle for a retraction and a statement of sincere regret from you that your magazine’s accusations were based on incorrect information. Tell your proprietors that I’ll settle for a statement appearing very visibly in next Tuesday’s issue of SHOUT! In addition, you will send immediately — by registered mail — a personally signed copy of that retraction and statement of regret to each of six hundred fifty or so members of Parliament.”

It wasn’t enough, I thought, to defend.

I should have written in that pact, “I will attack my father’s attackers.”

I should have written that I’d go to war for him if I saw the need.

At almost eighteen, I’d written from easy sentiment. At twenty-three, I saw that, if the pact meant anything at all, it pledged an allegiance that could lead to death. And if that were so, I thought, it would be feeble just to sit around waiting for the ax.

It had been Tuesday when SHOUT! had hit the newstands, and late afternoon on Wednesday when I’d crashed into Rufus Crossmead’s editorial office. On Friday I drove from Wellingborough to Hoopwestern, and spent the journey looking back to the end of that confrontation and the answers I’d been given.

I’d asked SHOUT!’s editor why he had sent Usher Rudd to see Vivian-Durridge, and he’d said he hadn’t, it had been Usher Rudd’s own idea.

“Usher — well, his name is Bobby — said he’d been asked to dig into everything you’d ever done, and come up with some dirt. He was getting ultra-frustrated because he couldn’t find any sludge. He went blasting on a bit that no one could be as careful to stay out of trouble as you had been, and then there was this announcement of Sir Vivian Durridge’s retirement, which said you had ridden for his stable, so Bobby went off on the off chance, and he came back laughing. Crowing. He said he’d got you at last. So he wrote the story and I printed it.”

“And you didn’t check.”

“If I had to check every word I print,” the editor had said with world-weariness, “our sales would plummet.”

On Wednesday, early evening, I’d phoned Samson Frazer, the editor of the Hoopwestern Gazette.

“If you’re thinking of reprinting a story about me from SHOUT!” I’d said, “don’t do it. Usher Rudd wrote it. It’s not true and it’ll get you into court for libel.”

Gloomy silence.

Then, “I’ll reset the front page,” he’d said.

On Thursday, with prudent speed, SHOUT!’s proprietors had acted to avoid the heavy expenses of a libel action and had written and mailed the retractions I’d asked for to the members of Parliament.

My father, attending a meeting at the House on Friday morning, found that several certified letters had already reached their targets. In addition, he gave everyone — from the prime minister downwards — a copy of Vivian Durridge’s letter to me, along with a brief confirmation from himself that he’d asked Durridge to think of a way of persuading me to leave. Apparently the general reaction had been relief and relaxation, though Hudson Hurst had insisted there had to be some truth in the dope story somewhere.

“Why do you think so?” my father related that he’d asked, and the only reply had been stutter and dismay.

My father said, “I asked Hudson Hurst if he himself had sent Usher Rudd to Vivian Durridge. He denied it. He looked bewildered. I don’t think he did it.”

“No, I agree.”

I now negotiated a roundabout. Fourteen more miles to Hoopwestern.

I thought about Hudson Hurst, the ugly duckling converted to swan by scissors and razor. On television he was smooth, convincing and read his speeches from a teleprompter. No inner fire. A puppet.

Alderney Wyvern pulled his strings.

How to prove it? How to stop him?

Attacking Alderney Wyvern could destroy the attacker. I sensed it strongly. History was littered with the laments of failed invasions.

I arrived in Hoopwestern at noon and parked in the car park behind the old party headquarters. Polly had told me that the charity, which had owned the whole of the burned double bow-fronted building, had chosen to rebuild it much as before, with new bow windows fronting onto the cobbled square and new shops matching the row at the rear. When I walked in from the parking lot, all that seemed different were heavy fire doors and a rash of big scarlet extinguishers.

Mervyn Teck was there, and greeted me with ambivalent open arms and wary eyes.

“Benedict!” He was plumper than ever. Rotund, nowadays.

“Hi, Mervyn.”

He shook hands awkwardly, and glanced past me to where, on his desk, lay two newspapers, both SHOUT! and the Hoopwestern Gazette.

“I didn’t expect you,” Mervyn said.

“No, well, I’m sorry. I expect my father telephoned to say he couldn’t get down this weekend for the ‘surgery’?” Most Saturday mornings the public came to headquarters with their complaints. “I expect you’ll do fine without him.”

My father, in fact, was busy in London with secretive little lunches and private dinners, with hurried hidden meetings and promises and bargains, all the undercover maneuvering of shifts of power. I hoped and trusted that A. L. Wyvern was fully occupied in doing the same.