10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [79]
Tucked away near the end came the riveting information that according to the form book, “Benedict Juliard had for two years ridden the Durridge horses as an amateur.”
Benedict Juliard, as everyone in racing knows, is the son of George Juliard, charismatic minister of agriculture, fisheries and food. Ben Juliard won three races on horses trained by Sir Vivian, and then left.
End of Vivian Durridge. A happy retirement, Sir Vivian.
It seemed the freezing temperatures had put a brake even on adultery. Usher Rudd, still active with his telephoto lens and his mean spirit, had hit a dry patch in his relentless pursuit of the unfortunate opposition front-bencher, whose progress from bimbo to spanked bimbo (with the odd choirboy for variety) either had temporarily ceased or he had gone into hiding.
Usher Rudd, sacked by the Hoopwestern Gazette as a sleaze generator and definitely now non grata under many flags, had all the same as a freelancer found a market in weekly sex magazines on the edge of perversion.
The motto he everlastingly lived by: Sleaze Sells.
And where it doesn’t exist, invent it.
The opposition front-bencher killed himself.
Shock reverberated through Parliament and shivered in many a conscience.
He had been the “shadow” chancellor, the one who would have written the country’s budget if his party had been in power. Rudd, for all his digging, had found no cent out of place.
Leader writers, hands raised in semi-mock horror, pointed out that though adultery (like suicide) might be a sin, it was not, under British law, a crime. Hounding a man to despair—was that a sin? Was that a crime?
Usher Rudd, smirking and unrepentant, repeated his credo again and again: if people in the public eye chose to behave disgustingly in private, the public had a right to know.
Did they? What was disgusting? Who should judge? Chat shows discussed it endlessly.
Usher Rudd was either “the watchdog of the people” or a dangerous voyeur.
My father, walking with me in the woods around Polly’s house, believed Usher Rudd would now be looking for another target.
“Until he’s safely locked on to some other poor bastard,” he said. “Just you remember how he listened to us in The Sleeping Dragon, so be very careful. He had a go at us then, and we got him sacked.”
“Yes, but,” I said, “I’m certain you’ve stuck to what you wrote that day in those pacts, that you would do nothing shameful or unlawful and would cause no scandal. Usher Rudd can’t therefore touch you.”
He smiled. “Those pacts! Yes, I’ve kept my bargain. But a small thing like innocence wouldn’t stop that red-haired shit. Have you found your side of the promise difficult to keep?”
I shook my head. “I’ve kept it.”
It was undoubtedly true, though, that the pact I’d written myself had shaped and inhibited what one might call my sex life. More accurately, my lack of sex life. I’d had two brief but pretty satisfactory interludes, one at university, one in racing, but both times I’d drawn back from any deep involvement. As for promiscuity, Usher Rudd had proved a bigger threat than AIDS.
When the sun at last shone warmingly on the house in outer Wellingborough where I lived in a “granny flat” built for a dear-departed granny, the ceilings first drizzled rain from burst pipes in the attic and then fell down completely. As major replastering was obviously required, I packed my stuff again in nomadic boxes and drove them to the office, storing them in the leg room under my desk.
Evan was stripping the office of the clutter of his five-year tenure. Pinups, long lusted over, disappeared. He arranged a thousand files in easy order and gave me an index. He bequeathed me three straggly green plants suffering from sunlight deficiency.
“I can’t manage without you,” I said.
“You can always phone me.” His birdlike head inspected his non-personalized end of the room. “You won‘t, though. You’ll make your own decisions.