10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [85]
I remembered how, five years earlier, my father had pulverized the editor of the Hoopwestern Gazette, but I couldn’t reproduce exactly that quiet degree of menace. I didn’t have the commanding strength of his vibrant physical presence. I left Rufus Crossmead, however, in no doubt as to my intentions.
I laid down in front of him copies of the strong letters from Spencer Stallworthy, Jim, my Exeter tutor and the headmaster of Malvern College, and I gave him finally a copy of the letter Vivian Durridge had sent.
“The only good defense in a libel suit,” I said, “is to prove that the allegations are true. You can’t use that defense, because you’ve printed lies. It will be easy for me to establish that Sir Vivian Durridge is now hopelessly confused after a stroke and doesn’t know what he’s saying. Usher Rudd must have been aware of it. He was trying to revenge himself for my father having got him sacked from the Hoopwestern Gazette. No reputable paper has employed him since. He suits your style, but he’s dropped even you in the shit.”
Rufus Crossmead gloomily read the various papers.
“We’ll settle out of court,” he said.
It sounded to me as if he’d said it often before, and it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. I wasn’t sure it was even what I wanted.
I said slowly, “I’ll tell you what I’ll settle for ...”
“It’s up to the proprietors,” Crossmead interrupted. “They’ll make you an offer.”
“They always do?” I asked.
He didn’t exactly nod, but it was in the air.
“Then you tell the proprietors,” I said, “that I’ll settle for a retraction and a statement of sincere regret from you that your magazine’s accusations were based on incorrect information. Tell your proprietors that I’ll settle for a statement appearing very visibly in next Tuesday’s issue of SHOUT! In addition, you will send immediately—by registered mail—a personally signed copy of that retraction and statement of regret to each of six hundred fifty or so members of Parliament.”
Twelve
It wasn’t enough, I thought, to defend.
I should have written in that pact, “I will attack my father’s attackers.”
I should have written that I’d go to war for him if I saw the need.
At almost eighteen, I’d written from easy sentiment. At twenty-three, I saw that, if the pact meant anything at all, it pledged an allegiance that could lead to death. And if that were so, I thought, it would be feeble just to sit around waiting for the ax.
It had been Tuesday when SHOUT! had hit the newstands, and late afternoon on Wednesday when I’d crashed into Rufus Crossmead’s editorial office. On Friday I drove from Wellingborough to Hoopwestern, and spent the journey looking back to the end of that confrontation and the answers I’d been given.
I’d asked SHOUT!’s editor why he had sent Usher Rudd to see Vivian-Durridge, and he’d said he hadn’t, it had been Usher Rudd’s own idea.
“Usher—well, his name is Bobby—said he’d been asked to dig into everything you’d ever done, and come up with some dirt. He was getting ultra-frustrated because he couldn’t find any sludge. He went blasting on a bit that no one could be as careful to stay out of trouble as you had been, and then there was this announcement of Sir Vivian Durridge’s retirement, which said you had ridden for his stable, so Bobby went off on the off chance, and he came back laughing. Crowing. He said he’d got you at last. So he wrote the story and I printed it.”
“And you didn’t check.”
“If I had to check every word I print,” the editor had said with world-weariness, “our sales would plummet.”
On Wednesday, early evening, I’d phoned Samson Frazer, the editor of the Hoopwestern Gazette.
“If you’re thinking of reprinting a story about me from SHOUT!,” I’d said, “don’t do it. Usher Rudd wrote it. It’s not true and it’ll get you into court for libel.”
Gloomy silence.
Then, “I’ll reset the front page,” he’d said.
On Thursday, with prudent speed, SHOUT!’s