10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [22]
I was getting to know my father. Twenty-four hours earlier I wouldn’t have been aware that a tiny tensing of muscles and a beat of silence meant a fizzingly fast assessment of unwelcome facts. Not only powerful but dauntingly rapid: not only analytical but an instant calculator of down-the-line consequences. Some brain.
He smiled politely at Usher Rudd. “My wife’s name was Sarah. Unfortunately she died.”
“What of?” Usher Rudd, disconcerted by my father’s pleasant frankness, sounded aggressively rude.
“It was a long time ago.” My father remained civil. “Come on, Ben, or we’ll be late.”
We turned away and walked three paces; and Bobby Usher Rudd, darting round and wheeling in the running shoes, came to a halt facing us, standing in our way.
His voice was thin, malicious and triumphant. “I’ll get you de-selected. Orinda Nagle will have her rights.”
“Ah.” My father packed all the understanding in the world into one syllable. “So you rubbished Paul Bethune to give her a clear run, is that it?”
Usher Rudd was furious. “She’s worth ten of you.”
“She’s a lucky woman to have so many fans.”
“You’ll lose.” Usher Rudd almost danced with rage. “She would have won.”
“Well ...” My father detoured past him with me at his heels, and Usher Rudd behind us yelled the question I would never have asked but wanted like crazy to know the answer to. “If your wife died long ago, what do you do for sex?”
My father certainly heard but there wasn’t a falter in his step. I risked a flick of a glance at his face but learned nothing: he showed no embarrassment or anxiety, only, if anything, amusement.
The lunch in the pub was upbeat, the volunteers all intoxicated with the speech stops of the morning. In the afternoon we toured a furniture factory and then a paint factory, where the candidate (leaning on his walking stick) listened intently to local problems and promised remedies if he were elected. He shook countless hands and signed countless autographs, and left behind an atmosphere of hope.
When Mervyn Teck had made the engagement he had expected it to be Orinda who charmed the wood-workers and the color mixers, and there had been resistance in parts of the factories to the one seen as a usurper. My father defused criticism by praising Orinda steadfastly without apologizing for having been chosen to take her place.
“A natural-born politician,” one of the lady volunteers said in my ear. “The way the country’s leaning, we’d lose this marginal seat with Orinda, though she doesn’t believe that, of course. With your father we’ve a better chance, but voters are unpredictable and can often be downright vindictive, and they mostly vote for party, not for individuals, and the sleaze accusations won’t hurt Paul Bethune much, especially with male voters who privately don’t think a spot of adultery too much of a big deal, and will think ‘good luck to him.’ And you’d fancy women wouldn’t vote for adulterers, but they do.”
“Doesn’t Usher Rudd shift the Xs from one slot to another?”
“Not as much as he believes, the little weasel. It’s not the locals that pay attention to him as much as the big noises in Westminster. They’re all shit-scared of him digging into their pasts, and the higher they climb, the more they hate him. Haven’t you noticed that when an MP screws up his or her reputation, it’s their own party that dumps them quickest?”
The correct answer was no, I hadn’t noticed, because I hadn’t been looking.
On our way back to Hoopwestern I asked my father what he thought of Usher Rudd but he yawned, said he was flaked out and his ankle hurt, and promptly went to sleep. I drove carefully, still not instinctive in traffic, and woke the candidate by a jerking halt at a red light at a crossroads.
“Usher Rudd,” he said without preamble, as if twenty minutes hadn’t passed between question and answer, “will burn his fingers on privacy laws.”
I said, “I didn’t know there were any privacy laws.”
“There will be.”
“Oh.”
“Usher Rudd has red hair under that baseball cap.”
“How do you know?”
“He came to the meeting after last night’s dinner. Polly