10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [17]
“Sorry.”
“A good politician remembers names,” Lavender told me severely. “You won’t be much use to your father if you forget who people are.” The thin lady with the sweet-smelling name was the one who had disapproved of Orinda Nagle. Difficult to please her, I thought.
Mervyn Teck and my father discussed streets and leaflet distributions. Crystal Harley entered endless details into a computer. Motherly Faith went around with a duster and Marge set the photocopier humming.
I sat on my stool and simply listened, and learned many surprising (to me) facts of electoral life, chief among which was the tiny amount of money allowed to be spent. No one could buy themselves into Parliament: every candidate had to rely on an army of unpaid helpers for door-to-door persuasions and the nailing of “vote for me” posters to suitable trees.
There were Representation of the People Acts, Crystal told me crisply, her fingers busy on the keyboard, her eyes unwaveringly turned to the screen. The acts severely limited what one could spend.
“There are about seventy thousand voters in this constituency,” she said. “You couldn’t buy seventy thousand half-pints of beer with what we’re allowed to spend. It’s impossible to bribe the British voters. You have to persuade them. That’s your father’s job.”
“Don’t buy a stamp, dear, for a local letter,” Faith said, smiling. “Get on a bicycle and deliver it by hand.”
“Do you mean you can’t buy stamps?”
“You have to write down every cent you spend,” Crystal nodded. “You have to make an itemized return after the election to show where the money went, and you can bet your sweet life Paul Bethune’s people will be hoping like hell they’ll find we’ve gone over the limit, just like we’ll be scrutinizing his return with a magnifying glass, looking for any twopenny wickedness.”
“Then last night’s dinner ... ,” I began.
“Last night’s dinner was paid for by the people who ate it, and cost the Local Constituency Association nothing,” Crystal said. She paused, then went on with my education. “Mervyn and I are employed by the Local Constituency Association of this party, not directly by Westminster. The local association pays for these offices here, and the whole caboodle relies on gifts and fund-raising.”
She approved of the way things were set up, and I wondered vaguely why, with everything carefully regulated to ensure the election of the fittest, there were still so many nutcases in the House.
The relative peace of just seven bodies in the offices lasted only until an influx of the previous night’s social mix trooped in through both doors and asked endless questions to which there seemed no answers.
Mervyn Teck loved it. The police, the media people, the party enthusiasts and the merely curious, he expansively welcomed them all. His candidate was not only alive but being perfectly charming to every inquirer. The TV cameraman shone his bright spotlight on my father’s face and taped the sincerity of his smile. Local newspapermen had been augmented by several from the major dailies. Cameras flashed. Microphones were offered to catch anything worth saying, and I, doing my bit, simply smiled and smiled and was terribly nice to everyone and referred every question to my parent.
Crystal, trying to continue working but having to cling physically to her desk to avoid being swept around the place like flotsam, remarked to me tartly that there would hardly have been more fuss if George Juliard had been killed.
“Lucky he wasn’t,” I said, wedging my stool next to her to keep us both anchored.
“Did the noise of the gunshot make him trip?” she asked.
“No. He tripped first.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because the bang of a high-velocity bullet reaches you after the bullet itself.”
She looked disbelieving.
“I learned it in physics lessons,” I said.
She glanced at my beardless face. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Seventeen.”
“You can’t even vote!”
“I don’t actually want to.”
She looked across to where my father was winning media allies with modesty and grace.