10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [21]
“Hello,” he said. “Where is the Juliard battle-wagon?”
Puzzled, I answered, “We came in a different car.”
“I’m Usher Rudd.”
His accent was unreconstructed Dorset, his manner confident to arrogant. He had unexcited blue eyes, sandy lashes and dry freckled skin: the small-boy menace who had peeped through windows still lived close to the surface and made me for once feel older than my years.
“What’s your name?” he demanded, as I made no response.
“Benedict,” I said.
“Ben,” he asserted, nodding his recognition, “Ben Juliard.”
“That’s right.”
“How old are you?” He was abrupt, as if he had a right to the information.
“Seventeen,” I said without offense. “How old are you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
I gazed at him with a perplexity that was at least half-genuine. Why should he think he could ask questions that he himself would not answer? I had a lot to learn, as my father had said, but I instinctively didn’t like him.
Close behind my back my father was answering the sort of questions it was proper he should be asked: Where did he stand on education, foreign policy, taxes, the disunited kingdom and the inability of bishops to uphold the Ten Commandments? “Shouldn’t sins be modernized?” someone shouted. Moses was out of date.
My father, who certainly lived by “thou shalt not” rather than by “what can I get away with?” replied with humor, “By all means pension off Moses if you would like your neighbor to covet your ox and your ass and carry off your wife and your lawn mower....”
The end of his sentence drowned in laughter and cheers, and for fifteen more minutes he had them spell-bound, feeding them political nuggets in nourishing soup, producing a performance without microphone or footlights that they would never forget. All my life people would say to me “I heard your father speak in Quindle,” as if it had been a revelation in their existence: and it wasn’t altogether what he said that mattered, I reckoned, but his whole, honest, joyous, vigorous presentation.
Against the final applause, Usher Rudd said to me, “Birthday?”
“What?”
“Your birthday?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I do have a birthday.”
He thought me dim. “What’s your mother’s name?” he said.
“Sarah.”
“Her last name?”
“Yes. She’s dead.”
His expression changed. His gaze grew thoughtful and flicked downward to the Quindle Diary, which I held rolled in my hand. I saw him understand the obtuseness of my answers.
“Bethune deserves it,” he said sharply.
“I don’t know anything about him,” I said.
“Then read my column.”
“Even then ...”
“Everyone has secrets,” he declared with relish. “I just find them out. I enjoy doing it. They deserve it.”
“The public has a right to know?” I asked.
“Of course they do. If someone is setting themselves up to make our laws and rule our lives they shouldn’t sleaze it off with dirty sex on the side, should they?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“If old George is hiding dirty secrets, I’ll find them out. What’s your mother’s name?”
“Sarah. She’s dead.”
He gave me a bitter, antagonistic glare.
“I’m sure you do a good detective job,” I said mildly. “My mother’s name was Sarah Juliard. Married. Dead. Sorry about that.”
“I’ll find out,” he threatened.
“Be my guest.”
My father disengaged himself from eager, clutching voters and turned to say he was ready for his lunch engagement: a volunteers’ gathering in a pub.
“This,” I said, indicating the inhabitant of the pink tracksuit and the energetic shoes and baseball hat, “is Usher Rudd.”
“Nice to know you,” my father said, automatically ready to shake hands. “Do you work for the party, er ... Usher?”
“He writes for newspapers,” I said. I unrolled the Quindle Diary so that he could see the front page. “He wrote this. He wants me to tell him my mother’s name.