The Town Hall was full. The seats given by Polly to me and Isobel Bethune now held the mayor and his missus. And, glad to be less exposed, I stood by the door and watched the waves of animation and agreement and fury roll in turn across the faces of the audience, and thought that at least they were listening, and obviously cared.
There could be no winner that night. They both won. Everyone applauded and went away talking.
Orinda had several times clapped for Bethune. Leonard Kitchens kept his hands forever in his pockets. Dearest Polly’s long face glowed with goodness and pleasure, and freckly Basil Rudd looked even more like his obnoxious cousin when he smiled.
No one produced a gun.
My father and Paul Bethune shook hands.
Like star actors they left the stage last, each surrounded at once by chattering satellites, all with something to say, questions to ask, points to make. My father genuinely enjoyed it, and again his spirits were helium-ballooning as we headed back to our base.
“It’s quicker if we walk straight across the square,” my parent objected as I tried to persuade him to take to the cloister. “Why do you want to walk two sides of a triangle, not one, and you a mathematician?”
“Bullets,” I said.
“My God.” He stopped dead. “But no one would try again!”
“You’d have said no one would try the first time, but they did.”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“And the sump plug?”
He shook his head as if in general disbelief, but he made no further objection to the cloister route, and seemed not to notice that I walked between him and the well-lit open square.
He wanted to talk about the debate. He also wanted to know why I’d missed half of it and where I’d been. I told him all of Isobel’s troubles but I could feel he was barely attending: his mind and his tongue were still busy with points made and lost against the lady’s unfaithful man.
“He’s dedicated, you know. I can’t stand his politics.”
I said, “I hate what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
“Bull’s-eye. Don’t tell me all those school fees weren’t wasted.”
“Come down,” I begged. “You’re too high in the sky.”
Again he stopped walking. We had by then left the cloister and were passing dimly lit shop fronts on the way to the bay windows of first the charity gift shop and, next door, the party headquarters.
“You have no idea what it’s like to hold an audience in your hand.”
“No.” Winners at long odds got little praise, and I’d never won on a favorite.
We walked on to the doorway.
Dearest Polly waited there, puzzled. “Where have you been? You left ahead of me.”
“The boy,” my father said, pointing at me though there were precious few other boys in sight. “Benedict, my son, has this fixed idea that someone is violently seeking to put paid to my campaign, if not to my life. Dearest Polly, tell him I’ll take my chances and I don’t want him ever again to risk his own neck to preserve mine.”
“Dearest Polly,” I said — and she smiled vividly with sweetness — “this is the only father I’m ever likely to have. Persuade him to give me a real job in this election. Persuade him he needs a full-time bodyguard. Persuade him to let me try to keep him safe.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” he insisted. “I need you to be a social asset. Isobel Bethune is useless to Paul, but you have this extraordinary gift — which I admit I didn’t expect — of getting people to talk to you. Look at Isobel Bethune! Look at Crystal Harley! I haven’t got a word out of her and she chatters away to you. Look at Mrs. Kitchens, pouring information into your ears.”
Polly nodded, smiling. “You’re so young, you’re no threat to anyone. They all need to talk, and you’re safe.”
I said pensively, “How about Orinda? She turned her back on me at the dinner and wouldn’t say a word.”
Polly clapped her hands together with laughter. “I’ll give you Orinda. I’ll manage it again.”
“But alone,” I said. “I could talk to her if she was alone, but the Anonymous Lover never leaves her side.”
“Who?”
“A. L. Wyvern.”
“Anonymous Lover!” Polly exclaimed. “Enchanting. His name’s really Alderney, I think. He plays golf. He used to play golf with Dennis.”
She moved around smoothly, at home in the office, sorting out mugs and making coffee. I couldn’t guess her age nearer than ten years: somewhere between forty or fifty, I thought, but knew I could be wrong. She was again wearing the inappropriate crimson lipstick, this time with a green jacket over a long skirt of brownish tweed: heavy for August. Somehow, with the opaque stockings and “sensible” shoes, one would have expected her to be clumsy, but she was paradoxically graceful, as if she had once been a dancer. She had no rings on her long capable fingers and for jewelry relied on a single strand of maidenly pearls.
One could have felt sorry for Polly at first sight, I thought, but that would have been a great mistake. She had an inner certainty to go with the goodness. She carried the fuddy-duddy clothes without self consciousness. She was — I fished for the word — serene.
She said, pouring hot water onto instant-coffee granules, “I don’t see any harm in Benedict appointing himself officially to look after you. After all, he hasn’t done a bad job so far. Mervyn grumbled all over the Town Hall tonight about having to find a lockup garage because Benedict wanted one. He says he doesn’t like Benedict giving him orders.”
“It was a suggestion, not an order,” my father said.
“It felt like an order to Mervyn, therefore to him it was an order. Mervyn resents Benedict’s influence over you. Mervyn likes to be in charge.”
“Ben’s only been here two days,” my father protested.
Polly smiled. “Ten minutes was probably enough. You’re a brilliant politician on a grand scale, George, but it’s your son who sees into individual minds.”
My father looked at me thoughtfully.
“He’s good at it now,” Polly said, “and he’s not yet eighteen. Just wait ten years or so. You brought him here to give yourself social credibility, proving you had a son, you weren’t a bachelor, confirmed or otherwise, and you’ve found an asset you didn’t expect, so use him, George.”
She stirred the mugs of coffee and distributed it black. My father absentmindedly fished a small container out of a pocket and tapped a sweetener into his drink.
“George?” Polly prompted.
He opened his mouth to answer but before he could speak the telephone rang, and as I was nearest I picked up the receiver.
“Juliard?” a voice said.
“Benedict. Do you want my father? He’s here.”
“No. You’ll do. Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Foster Fordham,” I said.
“Right. And have you worked out what was plugging your sump?”
“Something that would melt when the oil got really hot.”
He laughed. “I refrigerated the oil and filtered it. There were enough wax globules to make a good thick plug. There are also cotton fibers which may have been from the wick of a candle. Now let me talk to your father.”
I handed over the receiver and listened to half of a long discussion that was apparently about whether or not to report the sabotage to the police. There had been no further action that my father knew of over the rifle shot but, he thought, and his opinion persuaded, that his friend Foster should write an account of what he’d done and what he’d found, and that my father should give a copy of it to the boys in blue as a precaution.