10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [11]
Mrs. Leonard Kitchens, on my right, patted my chair with invitation and told me to occupy it. Mrs. Leonard Kitchens, large, comfortable in a loose floral dress and with the lilt of a Dorset accent on her tongue, told me that my father looked too young to have a son my size.
“Yes, doesn’t he,” I said.
Leonard himself, on her other side, bristled with a bad-tempered mustache and tried unsuccessfully to talk to Orinda across his wife and me. I offered to change places with him. His wife said sharply, “No.”
Mrs. Leonard Kitchens’s gift for small talk took us cozily through dinner (egg salad, chicken, strawberries), and I learned that “my Leonard,” her husband, was a nurseryman by trade with fanatical political beliefs and a loathing for Manchester United.
With the chicken, Mrs. Kitchens, to my surprise, mentioned that Dennis Nagle had been an undersecretary of state in the Department of Trade and Industry, not a simple back-bencher, as I had somehow surmised. If my father won the seat, he would be a long way behind Dennis in career terms.
Mrs. Leonard Kitchens spoke conspiratorily into my right ear. “Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you, dear, but Polly very naughtily changed the name cards over, so as to put Orinda next to you. I saw her. She just laughed. She’s never liked Orinda.” The semi-whispering voice grew even quieter, so as not to reach the ears on my left. “Orinda made a great constituency wife, very good at opening fetes and that sort of thing, but one has to admit she did tend to boss Dennis sometimes. My Leonard was on the selection panel and he voted for her, of course. Men always fall for her, you know.” She drew back and looked at me with her big head on one side. “You’re too young, of course.”
To my dismay I could feel myself going red. Mrs. Kitchens laughed her worldly laugh and shoveled her strawberries. Orinda Nagle ignored me throughout, while pouring out nonstop complaints to her companion, who mostly replied with grunts. I thought I would rather be almost anywhere else.
Dinner finally over, the talkative throng rose to its collective feet and transferred down a passage into the large room lit by chandeliers that made The Sleeping Dragon the area’s popular magnet for dances, weddings and—as now—political free-for-alls.
Orinda’s companion left his name card on the table, and out of not-very-strong curiosity I picked it up.
Mr. A. L. Wyvern, it said.
I let “Mr. A. L. Wyvern” fall back among the debris of napkins and coffee cups and without enthusiasm drifted along with everyone else to the rows of folding chairs set up for the meeting. I’d read somewhere that affairs like this could draw tiny crowds unworthy of the name, but perhaps because my father was new to the district, almost double the number of the diners had turned up, and the whole place buzzed with the expectation of enjoyment.
It was the first political meeting I’d attended and at that point I would have been happy if it had been my last.
There were speeches from the small row of people up on a platform. The chairman of the Constituency Association rambled on a bit. Mr. Bigwig was on his feet for twenty minutes. Mrs. Bigwig smiled approvingly throughout.
My father stood up and lightened the proceedings by making everyone laugh. I could feel my face arranging itself into Mrs. Bigwig-type soppiness and knew that in my case anyway it had a lot to do with relief. I had been anxious that he wouldn’t grab his audience, that he would embarrass me into squirming agony by being boring.
I suppose I should have known better. He told them what was right with the country, and why. He told them what was wrong with the country, and how to fix it. He gave them a palatable recipe. He told them what they wanted to believe, and he had them stamping their feet and roaring their applause.
The local TV station cameraman filmed the cheers.
Predictably, Orinda hated it. She sat rigidly, her neck as stiff as if she had an unbending rod there instead of vertebrae. I could see the sharp line of her jaw