Dearest Polly stood at my father’s side and listened to everything worriedly. A man with a camera flashed several pictures. Considering that no one had actually been shot, the fuss went on for a long time and it was nearly two o’clock when I finally closed and bolted the doors, front and back, and switched off a few of the lights.
My father decided to go upstairs backwards, sitting down. He would accept only minimal help and winced himself in and out of the bathroom and into one of the single beds in the bedroom. I was to sleep on the pull-out sofa-bed in the small sitting room, but I ended up lying on the second single bed, next to my father, half-dressed and not at all sleepy.
I had in the past twenty hours hummed along from Mrs. Wells’s house on my bicycle and ridden a canter on grassy sunlit Downs. I’d had my life torn apart and entered a new world, and for long minutes I’d wondered if I would collect a bullet in the back. How could I sleep?
I switched off the bedside light.
In the dark, my father said, “Ben, why didn’t you run?”
After a pause I answered. “Why did you tell me to?”
“I didn’t want you to get shot.”
“Mm. Well, that’s why I didn’t run. I didn’t want you to get shot.”
“So you stood in the way...?”
“More fun than patting babies.”
“Ben!”
After a while, I said, “I’d say it was a .22 rifle, the sort used for target shooting. I’d say it was a high-velocity bullet. I know that noise well. If a .22 bullet hits you in the body, it quite likely won’t kill you. You need to hit the head or the neck to be most probably lethal. All I did was shield your head.”
There was a silence from the other bed. Then he said, “I’d forgotten you could shoot.”
“I was on the school team. We were taught by one of the country’s best marksmen.” I smiled in the dark. “You paid for it, you know.”
Three
Before nine the next morning I went downstairs and unbolted the door to the parking lot at the shrill summons of a man who was standing there with his finger on the bell button. He was short, black haired, softly plump, held a bunch of keys in his hand and was very annoyed.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing in here? Why is the door bolted?”
“Benedict...” I began.
“What?”
“Juliard.”
He stared at me for a moment, then brushed past and began bad-temperedly setting to rights the untidiness left all over both front and back offices by the events of the night.
“You’re the son, I suppose,” he said, picking up scattered envelopes. “George wasted all of yesterday going to collect you. As you’re here, do something useful.” He gestured to the mess. “Where is George, anyway? The radio is red-hot. What did happen last night?”
“Upstairs. He sprained his ankle. And... er... who are you?”
“Mervyn Teck, of course.” He looked impatiently at my blank face. “I’m the agent. Don’t you know anything?”
“Not much.”
“I’m running this election. I’m here to get George Juliard into Parliament. The radio says someone shot at him. Is that true?” He seemed unconcerned and went on straightening papers.
“Possibly,” I said.
“Good.”
I said, “Er...?”
“Free publicity. We can’t afford to buy airtime.”
“Oh.”
“It will get rid of Titmuss and Whistle.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Fringe candidates. We don’t need to worry about them.”
My father hobbled downstairs saying, “Morning, Mervyn. I see you’ve met my son.”
Mervyn gave me an unenthusiastic glance.
“Lucky he’s here,” my father said. “He can drive me around.”
I’d told him on the way from Brighton that I’d done errands to earn money for driving lessons and had held a full license by then for nearly five weeks.
“Good,” he’d said.
“But I haven’t driven since the test.”
“All in good time.” His bland expression now forbade me to reveal my inexperience. There was tolerance between the candidate and the agent, I saw, but no warmth.
A sharp-boned young woman arrived with disciplined hair and a power-dressing gray suit with a bright “Juliard” rosette pinned to one shoulder. She was introduced as Crystal Harley, Mervyn Teck’s secretary, and, as I learned during the morning, she was the only person, besides Mervyn himself, who received pay for running the by-election. Everyone else was a volunteer.
The three volunteer witches from the day before arrived one by one and smothered my father with cooing solicitude and endless coffee.
I had forgotten their names: Faith, Marge and Lavender, Faith chided me gently.
“Sorry.”
“A good politician remembers names,” Lavender told me severely. “You won’t be much use to your father if you forget who people are.” The thin lady with the sweet-smelling name was the one who had disapproved of Orinda Nagle. Difficult to please her, I thought.
Mervyn Teck and my father discussed streets and leaflet distributions. Crystal Harley entered endless details into a computer. Motherly Faith went around with a duster and Marge set the photocopier humming.
I sat on my stool and simply listened, and learned many surprising (to me) facts of electoral life, chief among which was the tiny amount of money allowed to be spent. No one could buy themselves into Parliament: every candidate had to rely on an army of unpaid helpers for door-to-door persuasions and the nailing of “vote for me” posters to suitable trees.
There were Representation of the People Acts, Crystal told me crisply, her fingers busy on the keyboard, her eyes unwaveringly turned to the screen. The acts severely limited what one could spend.
“There are about seventy thousand voters in this constituency,” she said. “You couldn’t buy seventy thousand half-pints of beer with what we’re allowed to spend. It’s impossible to bribe the British voters. You have to persuade them. That’s your father’s job.”
“Don’t buy a stamp, dear, for a local letter,” Faith said, smiling. “Get on a bicycle and deliver it by hand.”
“Do you mean you can’t buy stamps?”
“You have to write down every cent you spend,” Crystal nodded. “You have to make an itemized return after the election to show where the money went, and you can bet your sweet life Paul Bethune’s people will be hoping like hell they’ll find we’ve gone over the limit, just like we’ll be scrutinizing his return with a magnifying glass, looking for any twopenny wickedness.”
“Then last night’s dinner...” I began.
“Last night’s dinner was paid for by the people who ate it, and cost the Local Constituency Association nothing,” Crystal said. She paused, then went on with my education. “Mervyn and I are employed by the Local Constituency Association of this party, not directly by Westminster. The local association pays for these offices here, and the whole caboodle relies on gifts and fund-raising.”
She approved of the way things were set up, and I wondered vaguely why, with everything carefully regulated to ensure the election of the fittest, there were still so many nutcases in the House.
The relative peace of just seven bodies in the offices lasted only until an influx of the previous night’s social mix trooped in through both doors and asked endless questions to which there seemed no answers.
Mervyn Teck loved it. The police, the media people, the party enthusiasts and the merely curious, he expansively welcomed them all. His candidate was not only alive but being perfectly charming to every inquirer. The TV cameraman shone his bright spotlight on my father’s face and taped the sincerity of his smile. Local newspapermen had been augmented by several from the major dailies. Cameras flashed. Microphones were offered to catch anything worth saying, and I, doing my bit, simply smiled and smiled and was terribly nice to everyone and referred every question to my parent.