10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [28]
My father, returning, told Mervyn cheerfully that there was now nothing wrong with the Range Rover and it could safely be driven all around the town.
We finally set off. I drove, feeling my way cautiously through the gears, learning the positive message of the four-wheel drive. My father sat beside me, accompanied by his walking stick. Mervyn Teck, carrying a megaphone, sat in the rear seat, squeezing his lumpy knees together to allow more space for two volunteer helpers, thin bittersweet Lavender and motherly Faith.
The rear-seaters knew their drill from much past practice, and I with eye-opening wonderment became acquainted with the hardest graft in politics, the door-to-door begging for a “yes” vote.
The first chosen residential street consisted of identical semi-detached houses with clipped garden-defining hedges and short concrete drives up to firmly closed garage doors. Some of the front windows were adorned with stickers simply announcing BETHUNE: he had worked this land before us.
“This road is awash with floaters,” Mervyn said with rare amusement. “Let’s see what we can do about turning the tide our way.”
Directing me to stop the vehicle, he untucked himself from his seat belt and, standing in the open air, began to exhort the invisible residents through the reverberating megaphone, to vote JULIARD, JULIARD, JULIARD.
I found it odd to have my name bouncing off the house fronts, but the candidate himself nodded with smiling approval.
Lavender and Faith followed Mervyn out of the car, each of them carrying a bundle of stickers printed JULIARD in slightly larger letters than BETHUNE. Taking one side of the road each, they began ringing front-door bells and knocking knockers and, where they got no response, tucking a sticker through the letter box.
If a door was opened to them they smiled and pointed to the Range Rover from where my father would limp bravely up the garden path to put on his act, at which he was clearly terrific. I crawled up the road in low gear, my father limped uncomplainingly, Mervyn activated his megaphone and Lavender and Faith wasted not a leaflet. In our slow wake we left friendly waves and a few JULIARDs in windows. By the end of the street I was bored to death, but it seemed Lavender and Faith both reveled in persuasion tactics and were counting the road a victory for their side.
After two more long sweeps through suburbia (in which at least one baby got kissed) we respited for a late sandwich lunch in a pub.
“If ever you get invited into someone’s home,” my father said (as he had been invited five or six times that morning), “you go into the sitting room and you say ‘Oh, what an attractive room!’ even if you think it’s hideous.”
Lavender, Faith and Mervyn all nodded, and I said, “That’s cynical.”
“You’ve a lot to learn.”
We were sitting by a window. I looked through it to the Range Rover parked outside in plain view and reckoned that one way or another I actually had learned a lot that morning, and that what I’d learned had probably saved a good many votes.
My father, as if following my thoughts, said lightly, “We’ll talk about it later,” but it wasn’t until we were changing before going to the Town Hall debate that he would discuss Foster Fordham.
By then I’d persuaded Mervyn to arrange a securely locked overnight garage for the Range Rover, backed by my casual parent who said mildly, “The boy’s got a point, Mervyn. It might be more satisfactory for us all. No harm, anyway, in keeping it safe from thieves,” and as the car belonged to my father himself and not to the party, he had his way.
“Foster Fordham wasn’t sure how much you understood,” he said, combing through his tightly curled dark hair and leaving it much as it had been before. “He was surprised you didn’t ask him questions.”
“Terry—the mechanic—did ask. Fordham wouldn’t answer.”
“So what do you conclude it was all about?”
“Well ... if you or I or anyone else had driven the Range