10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [50]
“You understand?” he asked.
The editor plainly did.
“Good,” my father said. “If you catch me in sleaze, that will be fair enough. If you try to manufacture it, I’ll hang you out by the toes.”
Samson Frazer found nothing to say.
“Good day to you, sir,” my father said.
He was in high good humor all the way back to the hotel and went upstairs humming.
“What would you say,” he suggested, “to a pact between us?”
“What sort of pact?”
He put the briefcase down on the table and drew out two sheets of plain paper.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “of making you a promise, and I want you to make the same promise in return. We both know how vulnerable one is to people like Usher Rudd.”
“And it’s not impossible,” I interrupted, “that he’s listening to us at this moment, particularly if he knows where we’ve just been.”
My father looked briefly startled, but then grinned.
“The red-haired dung beetle can listen all he likes. The promise I’ll make to you is not to give him, or anyone like him, any grounds ever for messy publicity. I’ll be dead boring. There will be no kiss-and-tell bimbos and no illicit payment for favors and no cheating on tax and no nasty pastimes like drugs or kinky sex. ...”
I smiled easily, amused.
“Yes,” he said, “but I want you to make the same promise to me. I want you to promise me that if I get elected you’ll do nothing throughout my political career that can get me discredited or sacked or disgraced in any way.”
“But I wouldn’t,” I protested.
“It’s easy for you to say that now while you’re young, but you’ll find life’s full of terrible temptations.”
“I promise,” I said.
He shook his head. “That’s not enough. I want us both to write it down. I want you to be able to see and remember what you promised. Of course, it’s in no way a legal document or anything pretentious like that, it’s just an affirmation of intent.” He paused, clicking a ballpoint pen while he thought, then he wrote very quickly and simply on one sheet of paper, and signed his name, and pushed the paper over for me to read.
It said: “I will cause no scandal, nor will I perform any shameful or illegal act.”
Wow, I thought. I said, not wanting this to get too serious, “It’s a bit comprehensive, isn’t it?”
“It’s not worth doing otherwise. But you can write your own version. Write what you’re comfortable with.”
I had no sense of binding myself irrevocably to sainthood.
I wrote: “I’ll do nothing that could embarrass my father’s political career or drag his name in the dust. I’ll do my best to keep him safe from any sort of attack.”
I signed my name lightheartedly and gave him the page. “Will that do?”
He read it, smiling. “It’ll do.”
He folded both pages together, then picked up the wedding photograph and positioned it facedown on the glass in its frame. He then put both of the signed pacts on the photo and replaced the back part of the frame, fastening it with its clips.
“There you are,” he said, turning the frame faceup. “Every time you look at your mother and me, you’ll remember the promises behind the photo, inside the frame. Couldn’t be simpler.”
He stood the picture on the table and without fuss gave me back my birth certificate and passport.
“Keep them safe.”
“Yes.”
“Right. Then let’s get on with this election.”
Stopping only briefly to leave my identity in an envelope in the manager’s safe, we went to the new basic headquarters to collect Mervyn, pamphlets, Faith and Lavender, and start a door-to-door morning around three Hoopwestern