10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [13]
Orinda, to her impotent fury, was silenced and defeated by this vote of thanks. Leonard Kitchens bounced to his feet to defend her, but was shouted down. Leonard’s mustache quivered with frustration, his thick glasses flashing in the light as he swung from side to side like a wounded bull. His cozy wife looked as if she would deliver the coup de grace when she got him home.
My father courteously admired Leonard for his faithfulness and told him and everyone that if elected he would aim always for Dennis Nagle’s high and honest standard. Nothing less was worthy of the people of Hoopwestern.
He had them cheering. He exhorted them again to talk to him personally and the crowd stood and surged forward around the seats to take him at his word.
Dearest Polly chatted happily with the Bigwigs and beckoned me up onto the platform, and Mr. Bigwig, regarding the clamorous excited throng, told me that my father already had all the skills that would propel him into high office. “All he needs is luck—and to keep out of trouble,” he said.
“Trouble like Paul Bethune,” Polly said, nodding.
“What trouble?” asked Bigwig.
“Oh, dear!” Polly looked flustered. “George forbids us to attack Paul Bethune’s character. George says negative campaigning can rebound on you. Paul Bethune has a mistress with an illegitimate daughter by him, which he’s tried hard to hush up, and George won’t attack him for it.”
Mrs. Bigwig looked at me assessingly. “I suppose there’s no shadow over your birth, is there, young Ben?”
Polly assured her vehemently. “No, of course not,” and I wondered if my father, all those years ago, could possibly have reckoned that my legitimacy would one day be important to him. After what I’d learned of him that day I saw that anything was possible, but in fact I stayed as convinced as I’d always been that his marriage to my mother had been an act of natural characteristic honor. I still believed, as I always had, that he would never shirk responsibility for his actions. I knew my birth had been a mistake and, as I’d often said, I had no quarrel at all with the quality of life he’d given me since.
It was indeed midnight by the time most of the crowd left to go home. Mr. and Mrs. Bigwig had long gone, with chauffeur and bodyguard in attendance. Polly yawned with well-earned fatigue. Orinda and Mr. A. L. Wyvern were nowhere to be seen and Mrs. Leonard Kitchens had hauled her Leonard away with the rough edge of her energetic tongue.
I waited for my father to the end, not only because I had no key to get into my bedroom above the campaign headquarters but also because he would need someone to unwind with after the cheers had died away. Even at not quite eighteen I knew that triumph needed human company afterwards. I’d gone back to an empty room in Mrs. Wells’s house after three (infrequent) wins in steeplechases and had had no one to bounce around the place with, no one to hug and yell with, no one to share the uncontainable joy. That night my father needed me. A wife would have been better, but he certainly would need someone. So I stayed.
He put his arm around my shoulders.
“God,” he said.
“You’ll be prime minister,” I told him. “Mr. Bigwig fears it.”
He looked at me vaguely, his eyes shining. “Why should he or anyone fear it?”
“They always kill Caesar. You said so.”
“What?”
“You were brilliant.”
“I can do without your sarcasm, Ben.”
“No, seriously, Father ...”
“Dad.”
“Dad ...” I was tongue-tied. I couldn’t talk to him as Dad. Dads were people who drove you to school and threw snowballs and ticked you off for coming home late. Dads didn’t send you a ticket to ski school in a Christmas card. Dads didn’t send an impersonal fax to a hotel saying “well done” when one won a teenage downhill ski race. Dads were there to watch. Fathers weren’t.
Remnants of the meeting came up with shining faces to add congratulations.