Finally the returning officer (whose function was to announce the result) fussed his way onto the center stage, tapped the microphone to make sure it was working (it was), grinned at the television cameras and rather unnecessarily asked for silence.
He strung out his moment of importance by looking around as if to make sure everyone was there on the platform who should be and finally, slowly, in a silence broken only by a throng of heartbeats, read the result.
Alphabetically.
Bethune... thousands.
Juliard... thousands.
Titmuss... hundreds.
Whistle... sixty-nine.
It took a moment to sink in. Staring down a preliminary cheer from the floor, the returning officer completed his task.
George Juliard is therefore elected...
The rest was drowned in cheers.
Polly worked it out. “He won by just under two thousand. Bloody well done.”
Polly kissed me.
Up on the stage Orinda was loudly kissing the new MP.
It was too much for Dearest Polly, who left my side to go to his.
I found poor, sad Isobel Bethune at my elbow instead.
“Look at that harridan with your father, pretending it was she who won the votes.”
“She did help, to be fair.”
“She would never have won on her own. It was your father who won the election. And my Paul lost. He positively lost. Your father never mentioned that bimbo of his, not once, though he could have done, but the public never forget those things. Sleaze sticks, you know.”
“Mrs. Bethune...”
“This is the third time Paul’s contested the seat,” she told me hopelessly. “We knew he would lose to Dennis Nagle the last two times, but this time the party said he was bound to win, with the way the recent by-elections have been swinging in our favor, and with the other party ignoring Orinda and bringing in a stranger and they’ll never let Paul stand again. He’s lost worse than ever this time with everything on his side, and it’s that horrid Usher Rudd’s fault and I could kill him...” She smothered her face in a handkerchief as if to shut out the world and, stroking my arm, mumbled, “I’ll never forget your kindness.”
Up on the stage her stupid husband still looked self-satisfied.
A month ago, I thought, I hadn’t known the Bethunes existed.
Dearest Polly had bloomed unseen.
I hadn’t heard of Orinda, or of Alderney Wyvern.
I hadn’t met Mrs. Kitchens or her fanatical, unlovable Leonard, and I hadn’t known plump, efficient Mervyn or worried Crystal. I never did know the last names of Faith or Marge or Lavender, but I was certain even then that I would never forget the mean-spirited red-haired terror whose delight in life was to find out people’s hidden pleasures in order to destroy them. Bobby Usher bleeding Rudd.
Nine
So my father went to Westminster and I to Exeter, and the intense month we had spent in getting to know each other receded from a vivid present experience into a calmer, picture-filled memory.
I might not see him for weeks at a time but we talked now often on the telephone. Parliament was still in its summer recess. He would go back as a new boy, as I would, when my first term began.
Meantime I rode Sarah’s Future every morning under Stallworthy’s critical eye and can’t have done as badly as for Vivian Durridge because when I asked if he would enter the chestnut in a race for me — any race would do — he chose a novice ’chase at Wincanton on an inconspicuous Thursday and told me he hoped I’d be worth it as it was costing my father extras in the way of horse transport and shoeing with racing plates, not to mention the entry fee.
Laden thus half with glee and half with guilt, I went with Jim in his car to Wincanton, where Jim declared and saddled the horse and then watched him win with as much disbelief as I felt when I sailed past the post first.
“He flew!” I said, thrilled and astonished, as I unbuckled the saddle in the winner’s enclosure. “He was brilliant.”
“So I saw.”
Jim’s lack of much enthusiasm, I discovered, was rooted in his not having had the faith for a bet. Neither was Stallworthy overjoyed. All he said the next morning was, “You wasted the horse’s best win. You haven’t any sense. If I’d thought for a moment you would go to the front when the favorite fell, I’d have told you to keep the chestnut on a tight rein so we could have put the stable money on him next time out. What your father will say, I can’t imagine.”
What my father said was, “Very well done.”
“But nobody backed it...”
“Don’t you listen to Stallworthy. You listen to me. That horse is for you to do your best on. To win whenever you can. And don’t think I didn’t back it. I have an arrangement with a bookmaker that wherever — whenever — you ride in a race, I am betting on you at starting price. I won on you at twenties yesterday... I’m even learning racing jargon! Always try to win. Understand?”
I said “Yes” weakly.
“And I don’t care if you lose because some other horse is faster. Just keep to the rules and don’t break your neck.”
“OK.”
“Is there anything else you want?”
“Er...”
“You’ll get nowhere if you’re afraid to tell me.”
“I’m not exactly afraid,” I said.
“Well, then?”
“Well... will you telephone Stallworthy? Will you ask him to run your horse in the novice ’chase at Newton Abbot a week tomorrow? He’s entered him but now he won’t want to run him. He’ll say it’s too soon. He’ll say the horse will have to carry a 5-lb. penalty because I won on him yesterday.”
“And will he?”
“Yes, but there aren’t many more races — suitable races, that is — that I can ride him in before term starts. Stallworthy wants to win but I just want to race.”
“Yes, I know.” He paused. “I’ll fix it for Newton Abbot. Anything else?”
“Only... thanks.”
His laugh came down the wire. “Give my regards to Sarah’s Future.”
Feeling a bit foolish, I passed on the message to the chestnut, though in fact I had fallen into a habit of talking to him, sometimes aloud if we were alone, and sometimes in my mind. Although I had ridden a good many horses, he was the first I had known consistently from day to day. He fitted my body size and my level of skill. He undoubtedly recognized me and seemed almost to breathe a sigh of relief when I appeared every morning for exercise. We had won the race at Wincanton because we knew and trusted each other, and when I’d asked him for maximum speed at the end he’d understood from past experience what was needed, and had seemed positively to exult in having at last finished first.
Jim forgave the success and grew interested. Jim was by nature in tune with horses and, as I gradually realized, did most of the actual training. Stallworthy, although he watched the gallops most mornings, won his races with pen and entry forms, totting up times and weights and statistical probabilities.
Up the center of the long exercise field there were two rows of schooling fences, one of three flights of hurdles, and one of birch fences. Jim patiently spent some mornings teaching both me and the chestnut to go up over the birch with increasing precision, measuring our stride for takeoff from farther and farther back before the actual jump.
The riding I’d learned to that date had been from watching other people. Jim taught me, as it were, from inside, so that in that first month with Sarah’s Future I began to develop from an uncoordinated windmill with a head full of unrealistic dreams into a reasonably competent amateur rider.