10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [47]
She stopped talking and looked at me in a sort of desperation to see if I could possibly understand, and I understood so well that I leaned forward impulsively and kissed her on the cheek.
A camera flashed.
“I can’t believe it,” Orinda screeched. “He follows me ’round.”
Usher Rudd, with the advantage of surprise, was already scuttling away down the street to get lost in bunches of shoppers.
“He follows me, too,” I said, putting a hand on Orinda’s arm, to deter her from trying to catch him. “You warned me and I told my father ... but unless Usher Rudd breaks the law it seems he can’t be stopped, and the law is still on the side of copycat Rudds.”
“But my private life is my own affair!” She glanced at me as if it were my fault that it wasn’t.
I said, “Drug dealers would be out of business if people didn’t want drugs.”
“What?”
“The so-called war on drugs is fought against the wrong people. Lock up the users. Lock up the demand. Lock up human nature.”
She looked bewildered. “What have drugs to do with Usher Rudd?”
“If people didn’t flock to buy his sleaze, he wouldn’t push it.”
“And you mean ... they always will?”
She needed no answer. She followed me into the office and, after delivering her news, enjoyed a hugging session with Mervyn (no photo) and an ambiguous welcome from the three witches, who had with pink arousal transferred their effective allegiance to the new order.
“Where are you canvassing today, Mervyn?” Orinda asked, and he showed her on the map, with the unexpected result that when I drove the Range Rover ’round Hoopwestern that morning I had on board Mervyn, Orinda, Faith and Lavender, and all of Orinda’s roll of commitment flattened out as placards.
As Mervyn had telephoned the editor of the Gazette —gasps of shock at having to U-turn his anti-all politicians spin—we were greeted in the parking lot behind the burned shop by a hastily assembled crowd, by the leader-writer of the Gazette (the paper was short of news) and by the cameraman who had besottedly followed Orinda with his loving lens around the reception before the dinner a week earlier at The Sleeping Dragon.
Orinda flirted again with his lens (or with him—much the same thing) and told everyone prettily through a non-squeaking microphone that George Juliard, undoubtedly on the brink of becoming a nationally acclaimed politician, was the - best possible substitute for her beloved husband, Dennis, who had dedicated his life to the good citizens of this glorious part of Dorset.
Applause, applause. She appeared in the sitting rooms of Hoopwestern on the lunchtime television news against the only-slightly orchestrated cheers.
By the time my father returned on the train from London he’d heard of Orinda’s media conference with mixed feelings—she might be stealing his limelight or she might just be saving his life—but at another church hall meeting of the faithful that evening he embraced her in a warm hug (reciprocated) that would have been unthinkable a day earlier.
Not everyone was pleased.
Orinda’s shadow, Anonymous Lover Wyvern, followed her around like thunder. She, dressed in blackberry-colored satin and glowing with a sense of generosity and virtue, kept giving him inquiring looks as if unsure of the source of his dudgeon. In her inner release she didn’t seem to realize, as I did, albeit only slowly through the evening, that in dumping her anger at not being selected she had in some way lessened his status. He had been Dennis Nagle’s best friend, but Orinda was leaving her Dennis behind.
Dearest Polly, to my surprise, positively scowled, even though she had herself delivered Orinda to her change of heart.
“I didn’t count on such a radical about-face,” Polly complained. “She’s cast herself in the ongoing role of constituency wife! There’s no doubt she was