10 lb Penalty

Five

Back at the Town Hall the debate had passed through lukewarm and was heating towards chopping motions with the hands of the two protagonists.

A local chess champion, brought in as referee, had come to the fray with a pinging time clock and, making his own set of rules, he had decreed that each candidate would in turn answer specific questions, the answers to last a maximum of five minutes before being silenced by the time clock’s arbitration.

The format seemed to be working quite well, chiefly because both candidates knew how to speak. I was no longer surprised by my father’s ability to rouse, amuse and convince, but somehow I’d expected Paul Bethune to be as bombastic and unkind as he’d seemed to his wife. Instead he delivered dryly witty and well-prepared responses to the questions and it was only afterwards that I wondered if he’d learned his best phrases by heart and had used them before.

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.

Polly and I listened to snatches. “They don’t have the manpower for surveillance... they won’t do it... you can’t guard against a determined assassin... yes...” — my father’s gaze slid my way — “... but he’s too young... all right, then... we’re agreed.” He put down the receiver carefully and with deliberation and a sigh said, “Foster Fordham will write a report for the police. Ben will nanny me to the best of his ability and Mervyn will have to put up with it. And now, dearest Polly, I’m going to abandon tomorrow’s canvassing and go where I’m not expected.”

Hanging from a hook on one wall was a large appointments calendar with an extensive square allocated to each day. Crystal had entered the basics of my father’s advance plans in the squares so that one could see at a glance what he would be doing on each day.

The program had started the previous Tuesday with “Candidate arrives. Office familiarization.” Wednesday’s schedule of “Drive around constituency” had been crossed off, and “Fetch son from Brighton” inserted instead and underneath that, “Dinner at Sleeping Dragon?” Nothing about being shot at on the way home.

The Quindle engagements and the infant school evening were listed for Thursday, and door-to-door canvassing and the Town Hall debate for Friday.

More of the same stretched ahead. If I hadn’t had the interest of attempting to foil seriously dangerous attacks on said candidate I would have suffered severe strain of the smiling muscles long before polling day.

How could he face it, I wondered. How could he enjoy it, as he clearly did?

“Tomorrow,” he said, pleased with his inspiration, “tomorrow we’ll go to Dorset County racecourse. Tomorrow will be for Ben. We’ll go to the races.”

My first reaction was joy, which he noted. Fast on joy’s heels came a sort of devastation that I couldn’t hope to be riding there, that I would spend the afternoon as an exile, envying my neighbor his ox and his ass and his saddle in the amateurs’ steeplechase; but I let only the joy show, I think.

“We’ll go in the Range Rover,” my father said decisively, pleased with his plan. “And Polly will come with us, won’t you, Poll?”

Polly said she would love to.

Did Polly ever lie?

We drank the coffee without stress, my father finally as calm as he’d achieved during this whole strange week. Polly went out through the back office to retrieve her car and drive home, which I understood was a house in a wood outside the town, and my father and I, bolting everything securely, climbed the steep little staircase and slept undisturbed until Saturday morning.

Mervyn leaned in heavy annoyance on the bell at breakfast time and of course frowned heavily over the change of destination. How did George ever hope to be successful in a marginal seat if he neglected the door-to-door persuasion routine, which was of paramount importance? The Dorset County racecourse, sin of sins, was outside the Hoopwestern catchment area.

Never mind, my father soothed him, the many Hoopwestern voters who went to the races might approve.

Mervyn, unconvinced, shut his mouth grimly for half an hour, but as the day expanded decided to salvage at least crumbs from what he considered the ruins of canvassing’s best weekend opportunity and got busy on the telephone, with the result that we were invited to lunch with the racecourse stewards and were otherwise showered with useful tickets. Mervyn, from long experience, knew everyone of influence in the county.

He blamed me, of course, for the switch, and perhaps with reason. If he’d had his way he would have been dancing happy attendance on Orinda, walking backwards in her presence. What he would have done with A. L. Wyvern I couldn’t guess, but presumably he was used to the enigmatic shadow, as the Anonymous Lover had been deceased Dennis Nagle’s best friend also. They played golf.

Mervyn’s disappointments, I thought, shrugging off his ill will, were just too bad. In his life’s terms, success lay in getting his candidate elected or, if not elected, a close runner-up. Mervyn was not about to ruin his own reputation as agent out of tetchiness with Juliards, father or son.

The chilly atmosphere in the offices was lightened by an unexpected visit from the woman who ran the charity shop next door. She and Mervyn knew each other well, but she was fascinated to meet the new candidate, she said; she had seen us come and go, she wanted to shake hands with George, she’d heard his son was a doll, she wondered if we would like a homemade apple pie.

She put her offering on my father’s desk.

“Kind of you, Amy,” Mervyn said, and in his manner I read that not only had he known his neighbor a long time but he’d undervalued her for probably the whole period.

Amy was one of those people easy to undervalue; an apologetic, unassuming middle-aged widow (Polly said) who received gifts of unwanted junk, spruced them up a bit to sell, and would never have dipped into the till before passing on the proceeds to the charity that maintained her. Amy was fluffy, honest and halfway to stupid: also kind and talkative. One day of unadulterated Amy, I thought, would last a lifetime.

It was easy not to listen to every word in the flow, but she did grab our attention at one point.

“Someone broke a pane of glass in our window on Wednesday night and I’ve had a terrible job getting it mended.” She told us at far too much length how she’d managed it. “A policeman called, you know, and asked if the window had been broken by a rifle bullet but I said of course not, I clean the floor first thing when I arrive every morning because, of course, I don’t live upstairs like you can here. There’s only a bathroom and one small room I use for storage, though sometimes I do let a homeless person sleep there in an emergency. Anyway, of course I didn’t find a bullet. I told the policeman, Joe it was, whose mother drives a school bus, and he came in for a look ’round and made a note or two. I saw it in the paper about the gun going off and maybe someone was shooting at Mr. Juliard, you never feel safe these days, do you? And then, just now when I was dusting an old whatnot that I can’t seem to sell to anybody, I came to this bump, and I pulled it out, and I wonder if this was what Joe was looking for, so do you think I should tell him?”

She plunged a hand into a pocket in her drab, droopy cardigan and put down on the desk, beside the apple pie, a squashed-looking piece of metal that had certainly flown at high speed from a .22 rifle.

“I do think,” my father said carefully, “that you should tell your friend Joe, whose mother drives a school bus, that you’ve found the little lump of metal stuck in a whatnot.”

“Do you really?”

“Yes, I do.”

Amy picked up the bullet, squinted at it, and polished it a bit on her cardigan. So much for residual fingerprints, I thought.

“All right, then,” Amy said cheerfully, putting the prize back in her pocket. “I was sure you would know what I should do.”

She invited him to look around her shop, but he cravenly sent me instead, and so I found myself staring at an ugly six-foot-high cane-and-wicker whatnot that had stood near the window and had stopped the slug.

“I call it an étagère these days,” Amy said sadly. “But still nobody wants it. I don’t suppose you...?”

“No,” I said. And nor did I want any of the silver spoons or children’s toys or secondhand clothes neatly and cleanly arranged to do good.

I retrieved the Range Rover from its safe haven, picked up my father and (following Mervyn’s ungracious directions) found Polly’s unexpectedly grand house in the woods. She sat on the rear seat for our journey to the races, and with a touch of glee, detailed a few telephone calls she had made; a touch of persuasion here, a dangle of carrot there.

“Mr. Anonymous Lover Wyvern,” she said, “received a lovely last-minute invitation to play golf in the county’s top pro-am event of the year, an offer he’d have to have been ice to refuse. So off he was due to go with his precious clubs, and that was him out of the way.”

“How did you manage it?” my father asked admiringly.

“Inducements,” she said darkly. “And, shortly afterwards, Orinda got invited to the stewards’ box at the races...”

“That’s where we’re going too!” exclaimed my father.

“You don’t say!” Polly teased him. “Benedict,” she admonished me, “I’m giving you Orinda without the lover, so don’t waste the day.”

“But what can he do?” my father protested. “He knows,” Polly said. “How he’ll do it, I can’t tell, but trust your son.” She switched her attention back to me. “Orinda knows bugger all about racing. She’s going today for the snob value of a duke, who’s one of the stewards. You’ll have to contend with that. Think you can do it?”

I said a bit helplessly, “I don’t know.” Polly’s forthright language always disconcerted me, although everyday lurid stable talk passed my ears unnoticed.

“Go for shit,” she said.

Orinda was already into lobster mousse with diced cucumber when we reached the stewards’ luncheon room, and although she looked outraged at our arrival she could do little but choke and recover with sips of wine, patted delicately on the back by the duke at her side.

The duke rose and gave Polly a conspiratorial kiss on the cheek, and I saw how Orinda had been hooked and reeled in.

Orinda wore a white linen suit with a green silk scarf tied and floating from a black lizard handbag that swung from the back of her chair. Sleek, matte-skinned, her presence easily eclipsed every other woman in the room, especially Polly, who had dressed as usual, as if not sure of the event or the season.

My father shook hands all around, his innate, unmistakable power turning every head his way, even in a roomful of powerful men. Orinda hated him.

“My son, Benedict,” he said, introducing me: but it was he who claimed their eyes.

The duke, hesitantly, said to me, “Haven’t I met you before? Haven’t you ridden against my son Edward?”

“Yes, sir. At Towcester last Easter. He won.” The duke had a remembering smile. “You finished third! It was Eddie’s birthday. We had an impromptu party to celebrate. You were there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nothing like racing, is there? Best thing on earth, Eddie says.”

My father looked sharply at my face.

“Best thing,” I said.

“Mind you,” the duke said to my father, “for all these young men, it’s only a hobby. Amateurs can’t make a living at it. The best amateurs used to be able to turn pro but for some reason it’s hardly ever done these days. Eddie needs a job. Amateurs can’t ride forever. I expect your Benedict knows all that. A good fellow, your Benedict, Eddie says. Sit down, Mr. Juliard. It’s an excellent lunch.”

He seated my father on the other side of him from Orinda, whose enjoyment of the day had waned to twilight, even though the sun outside shone brightly. She pushed away her unfinished mousse as if she could no longer taste it and had difficulty, with rigid facial muscles, in smiling at her host.

A stocky man of perhaps sixty, the duke looked less patrician than industrious, a worldly-wise business-man, a managing director more than a figurehead chairman. His son Eddie, a good fellow himself, had once said he envied the time I could give to racing: his own father insisted he work for his living. Well, I thought ruefully, Vivian Durridge and my own father had more than evened us up. Eddie’s father owned horses, which the son could ride in races, and mine didn’t.

Polly and I were seated several places down the lengthy, white-clothed dining table on the other side from the uncomfortable Orinda, and placidly ate our mousse and cucumber, which was, as the duke said, excellent, even though, now I’d been let off near-starvation, I would have preferred a large salami pizza.

There was some sort of curried chicken next. As time ran out towards the first race, the duke, looking at his watch, told my father that as chief steward for the day, he (the duke) would have to leave the party now in order to carry out his duties. As if by accident he saw the near panic on Orinda’s face at being left without a buffer zone between herself and her beastly usurper, and found an irresistible and apparently spur-of-the-moment solution.

With a flick of a glance at Polly, who was looking particularly bland, the duke said to Orinda kindly, “Now, Mrs. Nagle, I am truly concerned that you should enjoy and understand our splendid sport of steeplechasing, and as I’ll be busily occupied I can think of no one better to entrust you to than young Benedict there. He knows all about racing, in spite of his age, and he will take you ‘round and show you everything, and we will all meet up here again after, say, the second race. So, Benedict,” he spoke to me loudly down the table, “be a good fellow and take Mrs. Nagle down to see the horses walk ’round the parade ring. Watch the race with her. Answer her questions, right?”

I said “Yes, sir” faintly, and the duke, nodding benignly, more or less pushed Orinda into my arms. I sensed her begin to stiffen and refuse but the duke made urging motions towards the door as if there were no possibility of a change of his plans, and over my shoulder, as I followed the white linen suit into the passage outside, I caught glimpses of astonishment on my father’s face and a wide grin on Polly’s.

Orinda marched along the passage and down the stairs at the end into the open air, and there she stopped dead and said, “This is ridiculous.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘yes’?”

“I mean, you’re not going to listen to me because you hate my father, which is pretty unreasonable when you look at it, but I’d probably feel the same way, so if you like I’ll just leave you here and go and look at the horses, which is actually what I want to do anyhow.”

She said irritably, inconsequentially, “I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“Easily,” I said. Hardly tactful.

In spite of her fury she almost laughed. “You’re supposed to say I couldn’t be.”

“Sorry.”

“Mervyn says you’re only seventeen.”

“I’ll be eighteen in two weeks.”

“What will I do, if you just dump me here?”

“Well,” I said, “I won’t dump you. But if you want me to vanish, well, ‘round that corner you’ll find the parade ring, where the horses walk ’round before the race so that everyone can see what they’re putting their money on.”

“What if I want to bet?”

“Bookmakers or the Tote?”

“What’s going to win?”

I smiled at her with real goodwill. “If I knew, if anyone knew, I’d be rich.”

“And if you were rich?”

“I’d buy a string of racehorses, and ride them.”

I hadn’t expected the question, and the answer I’d given her came straight from the honesty of childhood. I wasn’t yet used to being adult. My mind, and also my voice and physical coordination, could switch disconcertingly sometimes back to fifteen, even in dreams to thirteen. Some days I could ski downhill with sharp turning certainty: other days I’d crash out on the first bend. Some days I’d move in total harmony with a horse’s gallop: other days I’d have gawky arms and legs. Always, so far always, I could shoot and hit the inner or the bull, a two-inch spot at a hundred yards.

Orinda said formally, “I’d be grateful if you’d accompany me to the parade ring.”

I nodded as if she were conceding nothing, and with minute body signs steered her to where the horses plodded around the ring, the sun shining on their coats, the smell and sound of them piercing my senses, the last four days setting up in me such an acute sense of loss that I wished myself anywhere on earth but on a racecourse.

“What’s the matter?” Orinda said.

“Nothing.”

“That’s not true.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She had given me a perfect opening for what I wanted to say to her, but I miserably shrank from it. I hadn’t expected to feel so grindingly forlorn: an exile looking through a glass barrier at a life denied him.

I found a place.for us to stand against the rails of the parade ring, and I gave her my race card, as she had left her own upstairs. She needed spectacles from her handbag to see small print with, and help in identifying the runners from their number cloths.

“What do all these figures mean?” she asked, scratchily pointing to the card. “It’s double Dutch to me.”

“They tell you the horse’s age and how much weight he’s carrying in the race. Those very small figures tell you his results in the last races he’s run in.” I pointed. “F means fell, and P means he pulled up and didn’t finish.”

“Oh.” She studied the card and read aloud the conditions of entry to the first race, a two-and-a-half-mile hurdle race for novices.

“A race for four-year-olds and upwards, which at the start of the season have not won a hurdle race... but if they have won a hurdle race since the start of the season, they are to carry a 7-lb. penalty.” She looked up, disliking me. “What’s a 7-lb. penalty?”

“Extra weight. Most often flat thin sheets of lead carried in pockets in the weight cloth which lies over the horse’s back under the number cloth and saddle.” I explained that a jockey had to carry the weight allotted to his horse. “You get weighed before and after a race...”

“Yes, yes, I’m not totally ignorant.”

“Sorry.”

She studied the race card. “There’s only one horse in this race carrying a 7-lb. penalty,” she announced. “Will he win?”

“He might if he’s very good.”

She turned the pages of the card, looking forward. “In almost every race a horse carries a penalty if it’s won recently.”

“Mm.”

“What’s the heaviest penalty you can get?”

I said, “I don’t think there’s any set limit, but in practice a 10-lb. penalty is the most a horse will be faced with. If he had to carry more than ten pounds extra in a handicap he almost certainly wouldn’t win, so the trainer wouldn’t run him.”

“But you could win with a 10-lb. penalty?”

“Yes, just about.”

“A lot to ask?”

“It depends how strong the horse is.”

She put her glasses away and wanted me to go with her to the Tote, where she backed the horse that had won on the first day of the season and earned himself an extra seven pounds of lead. “He must be the best,” she said.

Almost as tall as I was, Orinda walked always a pace ahead of me as if it were natural to her to have her escort in attendance to her rear. She was used to being looked at, and I did see that her clothes drew admiration, even if more geared to Ascot than a country meeting in the boondocks of rural far-from-all-crowds Dorset.

We stood on the steps of the grandstand to watch the race. Orinda’s choice finished fourth.

“Now what?” she said.

“Same thing all over again.”

“Don’t you get bored with it?”

“No.”

She tore her Tote ticket across and let the pieces flutter to the ground like a seasoned loser.

“I don’t see much fun in this.” She looked around at a host of people studying race cards. “What do you do if it rains?”

The simple answer was “get wet,” but it would hardly have pleased her.

“People come to see the horses as much as to gamble,” I said. “I mean, horses are marvelous.”

She gave me a pitying stare and said that after the following race she would return to the stewards’ room to thank the duke for his hospitality, and then she would leave. She couldn’t see the fascination that jump racing held for everyone.

I said, “I can’t see what fascination politics has for my father, but for him now it’s his whole life.”

We were walking back towards the parade ring, where the horses were beginning to appear for the second race. She stopped abruptly from one stride to the next and faced me with frank hostility.

“Your father,” she said acidly, biting off each word as if she could crunch them to splinters of glass, “has stolen my purpose in life. It is I who should represent Hoopwestern in Parliament. It was I who was supposed to be fighting this election, and I’d have won it, too, which is more than your precious father will do for all his machismo.”

“He didn’t know you existed,” I said. “He was sent by the central party in Westminster to fight the by-election, if he could get selected. He didn’t set out to replace you personally.”

She demanded, “How do you know?”

“He told me. He’s been giving me a condensed course in politics since last Wednesday, when he brought me here as window dressing. He respects the way you feel. And, actually, if he had you on his side, and if because of that he did get elected, then maybe you could be as good a team with him as you were with Mr. Nagle.”

“You’re a child, ” she said.

“Yes... sorry. But everyone here says how outstanding you are at work in the constituency.”

She made no comment, angry or otherwise, but began as before to study her race card, leaning on the parade ring rails as if at home.

After a bit she said, “What your father wants is power.”

“Yes.” I paused. “Do you?”

“Of course.”

Power stalked past us in the muscular rumps of fully grown steeplechasers, animals capable of covering ground at thirty miles an hour or more for distances of from four and a half miles: the length and speed of the Grand National. No animal on earth could better a racehorse for stamina and speed. That power... that was power for me. To share it, guide it, jump with it... oh, dear God, give me that power.

“Usher Rudd,” Orinda said, “do you know who I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Usher Rudd told my friend Alderney Wyvern — um, do you know who I mean by Alderney Wyvern?”

“Yes again.”

“Usher Rudd says George Juliard is not only lying about your being his legitimate son but maintains you are his catamite.”

“His what?” If I sounded bewildered, it was because I was. “What’s a... a cat of mice?”

“You don’t know what he means?”

“No.”

“A catamite is a boy... a prostitute boy lover.”

I wasn’t so much outraged as astonished. In fact, I laughed.

“Usher Rudd,” Orinda said warningly, “is a tireless researcher. Don’t take him lightly.”

“But I thought Paul Bethune was his sleaze target.”

“Anyone is,” Orinda said. “He makes up lies. He likes to destroy people. He’ll do it for money if he can, but if there’s no money in it he’ll do it for pleasure. He’s a butterfly-wing puller. Are you George Juliard’s legitimate son?”

“I look like him, a bit.”

She nodded.

“And he did marry my mother — in front of a lot of witnesses.” (Disapproving witnesses, but never mind.)

The news seemed not to please her.

“I suppose,” I said, “that you would prefer Usher Rudd to be right? Then you could have got rid of my father?”

“Alderney Wyvern says it will take more than an Usher Rudd fabrication. It’s a matter of finding a strong lever.”

She sounded fiercely bitter. Whatever Polly thought of my ability to understand unhappiness and release it, I felt lost in the maze of Orinda’s implacable grievances against my father.

“Someone took a shot at him,” I said.

Orinda shook her head. “Another lie.”

“I was there,” I protested.

“So was Alderney,” she said. “He saw what happened. George Juliard tripped on the cobbles and someone loosed a single shot out of high spirits and Juliard claimed it had been aimed at him! Utter rubbish. He’ll do anything for publicity.”

I thought: Orinda herself would never get under a car and unscrew a sump plug. However careful one might be, oil would run out before one could thrust a candle into the drain. Even if she knew how and where to unscrew the plug, engine oil and Orinda’s clothes couldn’t be thought of together in a month of canvassing.

Orinda needed glasses to read a race card: I couldn’t envisage her aiming and firing a target rifle.

Orinda might wish my father dead, but couldn’t kill him herself, and didn’t believe that anyone else had tried.

Orinda, I thought, hadn’t asked or paid anyone to get rid of her rival physically. There were limits to her hate.

I took her across the course to watch the second race from near one of the fences, to give her at least some sensation of the speed involved. Her narrow high heels tended to dig into the turf and stick, making walking difficult, which didn’t please her. I was not, I acknowledged to myself in depression, making a great success of the afternoon.

She was, though, impressed by the noise and energy of the half-ton horses soaring or crashing through the tops of the big black birch fence, and she could hear the jockeys shouting to each other and to their mounts; could see the straining legs in white breeches and the brilliant colors of the silks in the August sun. And whether she wanted me to know it or not, she did quite suddenly understand why this sort of racing fascinated the duke and everyone else who had made the effort and the journey to the racecourse.

When the horses had surged past us again and were striving their way to the winning post, while the very air still vibrated with their passage, I said, “I do understand what you feel about having been passed over by the selectors.”

Orinda said unkindly, “You can’t possibly. You’re far too young.”

Almost in desperation I said, “You’ve lost what you most wanted, and it’s near to unbearable. You were looking forward to a sort of life that would be a joy every day, that would fulfill you and give you inner power to achieve your best dreams, and it’s been snatched away. You’ve been told you can’t have it. The pain of it’s brutal. Believe me, I do know.”

She stared, the green eyes wide.

“You don’t have to be old,” I said. “You can feel it if you’re only six and you passionately want a pony and you’ve nowhere to keep it and it’s not sensible to start with. And I...” I swallowed. I wanted to stop again, but this time found the grit for the words. “I wanted this.” I swept an arm to the black fence, to the whole wide racecourse. “I wanted all of this. I’ve wanted to be a jockey for as long as I can remember. I’ve grown up in the belief that this would be my life. I’ve grown up feeling warm and certain of my future, and... well... this week it’s been snatched away from me. This week I’ve been told I can’t live this life, I’m not a good enough rider, I haven’t the spark to be the jockey I want to be. The trainer I was riding for told me to leave. My father says he’ll pay for me to go to university, but not for me to waste my time riding in races when I’m not going to be brilliant. It didn’t really sink in... I didn’t know how absolutely awful it would be until I came here today... but I’d like to scream, actually, and roll on the ground, and if you think you have to be old enough to be my mother to feel as you do, well, you’re wrong.”