I assembled the “soapbox” in three places in the town’s scattered focal points, and at each place a crowd gathered, curious, or anti, or uncommitted, and at each place, as I unbolted, or assembled or packed away the stepped platform, people would crowd around me with (mostly) friendly inquiries.
“Are you his chauffeur?”
“Yes.”
“Is he as knowledgeable as he seems?”
“More so.”
“What does he think about education?”
I smiled. “He’s in favor of it.”
“Yes, but...”
“I can’t answer for him. Please ask him yourself.”
They turned away and asked him, and got politically correct and truthful answers that would never be implemented without a huge increase in taxes: I was learning the economic facts as rapidly as I’d ever assimilated quadratic equations.
My father’s appearances in Quindle had been well publicized in advance by posters all over the town. Volunteers had distributed them and volunteers met and escorted us everywhere, their faces shining with commitment. My own commitment, I had already found, was to my father himself, not to his party or his beliefs. My private views, if I had any, were that good ideas were scattered around, not solely the property of any shade of rosette: and of course what were to me good ideas were hateful errors to others. I didn’t embrace any single whole agenda package, and it was always those who didn’t care passionately, those who changed their minds and swung with the wind, those who felt vaguely dissatisfied, they it was who swayed one side in or another side out. The “floating voters,” who washed back and fore with the tide, those were my father’s target.
Quindle, like Hoopwestern, had grown in response to industries planted in the surrounding fields; not lightbulbs this time, but furniture and paint. There had then been a long policy of “infilling,” the building of large numbers of small houses on every patch of vacant grass. The resulting town strained against its green belt and suffered from interior traffic snarl-ups on a standstill scale. It worked well for soapbox orators: in the summer heat cars crept past with their windows down, getting the message.
Among the blizzard of VOTE JULIARD posters there were some for TITMUSS and WHISTLE and, of course, many for BETHUNE IS BETTER. GIVE HIM YOUR X. Bethune’s notices on the whole looked tattered, and I found it wasn’t merely because it was three days since he’d stomped inner Quindle on his own soapbox tour, but because the local weekly paper, the Quindle Diary, had hit the newsstands with “Bethune for Sleaze” as its headline.
One of the volunteers having tucked the Quindle Diary under my elbow, I read the front page, as who wouldn’t.
“As our representative in Westminster, do we want an adulterer who says he upholds the family values to which this newspaper in this young town is dedicated? Do we believe the promises of one who can’t keep a solemn vow?”
I read to the end and thought the whole tone insufferably pompous, but I didn’t suppose it would do the Bethune camp much good.
At each of his three ascents of the soapbox my father was bombarded with demands that he should at least deplore the Bethune hypocrisy, and at each place, carefully sidestepping the loaded come-ons, he attacked Bethune and his party only for their political aims and methods.
His restraint didn’t altogether please his own army of volunteers.
“George could demolish Bethune if he would only take a hatchet to his character,” one of them complained. “Why won’t he do it?”
“He doesn’t believe in it,” I said.
“You have to play the aces you’re given.”
“Not five aces,” I said.
“What?”
“He would think it cheating.”
The volunteer raised his eyes to heaven but changed his approach. “You see that thin man standing near your father, writing in a notebook?”
“Do you mean the one in a pink jogging suit and a baseball hat on backwards?”
“I do indeed. He’s called Usher Rudd. He writes for the Hoopwestern Gazette and his column is also syndicated to the Quindle Diary. It’s he who wrote the personal attacks on Paul Bethune. He’s been following Bethune around ever since his party chose him as their candidate. Rudd’s a highly professional slinger of mud. Never, never trust him.”
I said in apprehension, “Does my father know who he is?”
“I told George that Usher Rudd would be bound to turn up again, but he doesn’t always look the same. The pink overalls and baseball cap are new.”
“Usher Rudd’s an unusual name.”
The volunteer laughed. “He’s really young Bobby Rudd, always a menace. His mother was Gracie Usher before she married a Rudd. The Rudd family have a string of body shops, for anything from bicycles to combine harvesters, but fixing cars isn’t to young Bobby’s taste. He calls himself an investigative journalist. More like a muckraker, I’d say.”
I said tentatively, “Was he at the dinner last night?”
“That big do at The Sleeping Dragon? He would have been for a certainty. He’ll be furious that the gunshot and all that happened was too late for today’s Gazette. The Gazette is only twenty-four pages long, mostly advertisements, sports results, local news and rehashed world events. Everyone buys it for the dirt Rudd digs up. He was a rotten Peeping Tom as a little boy, always had his snotty nose glued to people’s windows, and he hasn’t got better with time. If you want to have sex with the vicar, don’t do it in Quindle.”
I said dryly, “Thanks for the advice.”
He laughed. “Beware of Bobby Rudd, that’s all.” With the present crowd listening to my galvanic father with devouring eyes as much as persuadable ears, I slowly strolled around to guard his back; I was some poor sort of guardian to my parent, I thought with self-condemnation, if I left him wide open to repeat bullets or other jokers.
I did my best to look purposeless, but clearly failed with that message as Usher Rudd, also as if guileless, came to stand casually beside me. His baseball cap advertised vigorous sports goods, as did his footwear, and he wore between, from neck to ankle, a soft rose-pink loose exercise suit of nylonlike fabric which, instead of hiding the thinness of his body inside, gave an impression that the arms and legs functioned on a system of articulated rods. I, in my jeans and T-shirt, looked almost invisibly ordinary.
“Hello,” he said. “Where is the Juliard battle-wagon?”
Puzzled, I answered, “We came in a different car.”
“I’m Usher Rudd.”
His accent was unreconstructed Dorset, his manner confident to arrogant. He had unexcited blue eyes, sandy lashes and dry freckled skin: the small-boy menace who had peeped through windows still lived close to the surface and made me for once feel older than my years.
“What’s your name?” he demanded, as I made no response.
“Benedict,” I said.
“Ben,” he asserted, nodding his recognition, “Ben Juliard.”
“That’s right.”
“How old are you?” He was abrupt, as if he had a right to the information.
“Seventeen,” I said without offense. “How old are you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
I gazed at him with a perplexity that was at least half-genuine. Why should he think he could ask questions that he himself would not answer? I had a lot to learn, as my father had said, but I instinctively didn’t like him.
Close behind my back my father was answering the sort of questions it was proper he should be asked: Where did he stand on education, foreign policy, taxes, the disunited kingdom and the inability of bishops to uphold the Ten Commandments? “Shouldn’t sins be modernized?” someone shouted. Moses was out of date.