10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [80]
He left in a flurry of farewell beers, and I spent the whole summer at first tiptoeing and then striding into new responsibilities, and in six swift months shed the last remnants of boy and grew in confidence and perhaps in ability until I had settled into the person I would be for the rest of my life.
When I mentioned how I felt to Polly, she said the change was obvious and that I was lucky: some people weren’t sure who they were till the far side of thirty.
My father, who’d known who he was at nineteen, had during the early summer consolidated himself in the Cabinet, and by conscientious work had converted his colleagues’ jealousy into acceptance, if not admiration. George Juliard had arrived as a political fact.
I asked him about Alderney Wyvern.
My father frowned. “I haven’t seen Wyvern anywhere since Christmas, but he’s somewhere about—though the prime minister still won’t hear a word against him. I’d say both Hudson Hurst and Jill Vinicheck are voting to his tune. They’re both apt to say on one day that they haven’t made up their minds on a point of discussion, but a couple of days later their minds and opinions are firm, and they always agree with each other ... and I think those opinions are Wyvern’s, though I’ve no way of proving it.”
“And are they good opinions?”
“Sometimes very good, but that’s not the point.”
Parliament went into summer recess. Polly and the member for Hoopwestern spent the first part of the break in the constituency, living in Polly’s house and working with Mervyn and Orinda. The four of them had settled into an energetic and harmonious team to the great benefit of all the voters, floating or not.
My father then took Polly around the world with stopovers in capital cities to learn about famine and fertilizers and freaks of climate, and came back with a fair understanding of how a billion people fed themselves on the blue planet.
I in my little world at Wellingborough computed numbers and risks and moved back into my granny flat when the new ceilings were dry.
Usher Rudd began stalking a bishop. Everyone except His Reverence sighed with relief.
I rode a winner in August and another in September.
Beneath this surface, although none of us knew it, little upheavals were growing and coalescing like cumulonimbus. My father had once said that they always killed Caesar, and when Parliament reconvened, the knives were ready to drive into the toga.
My father, worried, told Polly and me that Hudson Hurst intended to challenge the prime minister for the leadership of the party. Hudson Hurst was cozying up to each Cabinet member in turn to ask for support. With his now polished manner he was smoothly saying that the party needed a tougher, younger leader who would galvanize the nation to prepare for the big buildup towards the next general election, three years ahead.
“Alderney Wyvern,” I said, “is writing the script.”
Polly said, horrified, “He couldn’t.”
My father said, “It’s been Wyvern’s aim all along, to rule by stealth.”
“Then stop him,” Polly exclaimed.
But Hudson Hurst resigned from the Cabinet and announced to the world that a majority of the party in power was dissatisfied with the decisions being made in its name and that he could do better.
“Stop him,” Polly said again. “Oppose him.”
The three of us, sitting around the kitchen table in Polly’s house, were silenced by the suddenness and size of the task. Sure, my father had aimed if possible one day to be prime minister, but had thought of acceding peacefully after a resignation, not as a contender for the Ides of March.
My father, considering loyalty to be a paramount virtue, went to Downing Street and declared himself the prime minister’s man. The prime minister, however, seeing that the party wanted a change, decided it was time to go just as soon as a new leader was elected. The way was now clear for my father to declare himself as a candidate for the ultimate job. The battle was now joined.
On a harmless-looking Tuesday morning in October I went