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  It was indeed midnight by the time most of the crowd left to go home. Mr and Mrs Bigwig had long gone, with chauffeur and bodyguard in attendance. Polly yawned with well-earned fatigue. Orinda and Mr A. L. Wyvern were nowhere to be seen and Mrs Leonard Kitchens had hauled her Leonard away with the rough edge of her energetic tongue.

  I waited for my father to the end, not only because I had no key to get into my bedroom above the campaign headquarters but also because he would need someone to unwind on after the cheers had died away. Even at not quite eighteen I knew that triumph needed human company afterwards. I’d gone back to an empty room in Mrs Wells’s house after three (infrequent) wins in steeplechases and had had no one to bounce round the place with, no one to hug and yell with, no one to share the uncontainable joy. That night my father needed me. A wife would have been better; but he certainly would need someone. So I stayed.

  He put his arm round my shoulders.

  ‘God,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll be Prime Minister,’ I told him. ‘Mr Bigwig fears it.’

  He looked at me vaguely, his eyes shining. ‘Why should he or anyone fear it?’

  ‘They always kill Caesar. You said so.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were brilliant.’

  ‘I can do without your sarcasm, Ben.’

  ‘No, seriously, Father…’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Dad…’ I was tongue-tied. I couldn’t talk to him as Dad. Dads were people who drove you to school and threw snowballs and ticked you off for coming home late. Dads didn’t send you a ticket to ski school in a Christmas card. Dads didn’t send an impersonal fax to a hotel saying ‘well done’ when one won a teenage downhill ski race. Dads were there to watch. Fathers weren’t.

  Remnants of the meeting came up with shining faces to add congratulations. He took his arm off my shoulder and shook their hands, friendly and positive to all; and I had a vision of them going around for the next four weeks saying, ‘Juliard, a very good man, just what we need… Vote Juliard, couldn’t do better.’ The ripple from that night would reach the Hoopwestern boundaries and eddy along its roads.

  My father slowly came down a little from his high and decided he’d done enough for one day. We left the hall, returned to the hotel and eventually through a harmony of ‘Good Nights’ made our way out into the warm August night to walk across to the dimly lit bow-front opposite.

  There were street lights round the square and the hotel lights at our back, but underfoot the decorative cobbles were dark and lumpy. In icy winters, I learned later, elderly people tended to skid on them and fall and crunch their bones; and on that euphoric night my father tripped on the uneven surface and went down forward on one knee, trying not to topple entirely and not managing it.

  At exactly the same moment there was a loud bang and a sharp zzing and a scrunch of glass breaking.

  I bent down over my father and saw in the light that his eyes were stretched wide with anxiety and his mouth grim and urgent with pain.

  ‘Run,’ he said. ‘Run for cover. God dammit, run.’

  I stayed where I was, however.

  ‘Ben,’ he said, ‘for God’s sake. That was a gunshot.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  We were halfway across the square, easy immobile targets. He struggled to get to his feet and told me again to run: and for once in my life I made a judgment and disobeyed him.

  He couldn’t put his weight on his left ankle. He half rose and fell down again and beseeched me to run.

  ‘Stay down,’ I told him.

  ‘You don’t understand…’ His voice was anguished.

  ‘Are you bleeding?’

  ‘What? I don’t think so. I twisted my ankle.’

  People ran out of the hotel, drawn by the bang that had re-echoed round the buildings fringing the square. People came over to my father and me and stood around us, curious and unsettled, noncomprehension wrinkling their foreheads.

  There was confusion and people saying, ‘What happened, what happened?’ and hands stretching down to my father to help him up, cushioning him with a lot of well-meaning concern and kindness.

  When he was well surrounded he did finally take my arm and lean on other people and pull himself to his feet: or rather, to his right foot, because putting his left foot down caused him to exclaim with strong discomfort. He began to be embarrassed rather than frightened and told the crowding well-wishers that he felt stupid, losing his footing so carelessly. He apologised. He said he was fine. He smiled to prove it. He cursed mildly, to crowd approval.

  ‘But that noise,’ a woman said.

  Heads nodded. ‘It sounded like…’

  ‘Not here in Hoopwestern…’

  ‘Was it… a gun?’

  An important-looking man said impatiently, ‘A rifle shot. I’d know it anywhere. Some madman…’

  ‘But where? There’s no one here with a gun.’

  Everyone looked round, but it was far too late to see the rifle, let alone the person taking pot-shots.

  My father put his arm round my shoulders again, but this time for a different, more practical sort of support, and cheerfully indicated to everyone that we should set off again to finish the crossing of the square.

  The important-looking man literally shoved me out of the way, taking my place as crutch and saying in his loud authoritative way, ‘Let me do this. I’m stronger than the lad. I’ll have you over to your office in a jiffy, Mr Juliard. You just lean on me.’

  My father looked over his shoulder to where I now stood behind him and would have protested on my behalf, I could see, but the change suited me fine and I simply waved for him to go on. The important-looking man efficiently half-carried my hopping father over the remaining stretch of square, the bunch of onlookers crowding round with murmurs of sympathy and helpful suggestions.

  I walked behind my father. It came naturally, to do that. There was a high voice calling then, and I turned to find Polly running towards us, stumbling on the cobbles in strappy sandals and sounding very distressed.

  ‘Ben… Ben… has George been shot?’

  ‘No, Polly.’ I tried to reassure her. ‘No.’

  ‘Someone said George had been shot.’ She was out of breath and full of disbelief.

  ‘Look, there he is.’ I took her arm and pointed. ‘There. Hopping. And hopping mad with himself for twisting his ankle and needing someone to help him along.’

  Polly’s arm was vibrating with the inner shakes, which only slowly abated when she could see that indeed George was alive and healthily swearing.

  ‘But… the shot…’

  I said, ‘It seems someone did fire a gun at the same moment that he tripped on the cobbles, but I promise you he wasn’t hit. No blood.’

  ‘But you’re so young, Ben.’ Her doubts still showed.

  ‘Even a tiny kid could tell you there’s no blood.’ I said it teasingly, but I guess it was my own relief that finally convinced her. She walked beside me and followed the pied-piper-like procession to the headquarters’ door, where my father produced a key and let everyone in.

  He hopped across to his swivel chair behind his accustomed desk and, consulting a list, telephoned the local police.

  ‘They’ve had several complaints already,’ he told everyone, putting down the receiver. ‘They’re on their way here. Letting off a firearm… disturbing the peace… that sort of thing.’

  Someone said, ‘What you need is a doctor…’ and someone else arranged for one to come.

  ‘So kind. You’re all so bloody kind,’ my father said.

  I left the hubbub and went to the open door, looking across the square to the Sleeping Dragon, who perversely had every eye wide open, with people leaning out of upstairs windows and people standing in brightly lit doorways below.

  I remembered the ‘zzing’ of the passing bullet and thought of ricochets. My father and I had been steering a straight line from hotel to headquarters; and if the bullet had been aimed at him, and if he�
�d stumbled at the exact second that the trigger was squeezed, and if the bullet’s trajectory had been from upstairs somewhere in the Sleeping Dragon (and not from downstairs because there were still too many people about), and if the bullet had smashed some glass so that I heard the tinkle, then why was every pane of the window in the bow-fronted headquarters intact?

  Because, I told myself, the whole thing had been a coincidence. The bullet had not been intended to stop George Juliard’s political career before it started. Of course not. Dramatics were childish.

  I turned to go back inside, and saw for an instant a flash of light on broken glass down on the ground.

  It was a window of the charity shop next door that had been hit.

  Zzing. Ricochet. Smash. The straight trajectory could have been deflected by the curve of a cobble. A rifle bullet travelling straight and true would very likely have gone right through glass without breaking it, but a wobbling bullet… that might set up glass-smashing vibrations.

  The police arrived at the car-park side of the headquarters, and the doctor also. Everyone talked at once.

  The doctor, bandaging, said he thought the injury a strain, not a break. Ice and elevation, he prescribed. The police listened to the self-important man’s view on gunshots.

  I stood to one side and at one point found my father looking at me through the throng, his expression both surprised and questioning. I smiled at him a bit, and the window of line of sight closed again as people moved.

  I did tell a junior-looking uniformed policeman that the glass of the charity shop’s bow-front was broken, and he did come outside to look. But when I tentatively mentioned ricochets he looked quizzical and asked how old I was. I had done a bit of rifle shooting at school, I said. He nodded, unimpressed, and made a note. I followed when he returned to join his colleagues.

  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 in 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.’

  THIRD

  Before nine the next morning I went downstairs and unbolted the door to the car park 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 air time.’

  ‘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 licence 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 grey 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 round 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 itemised 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 scrutinising 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 fundraising.’

  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 enquirer. 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.

  Crystal, trying to continue working but having to cling physically to her desk to avoid being swept round the place like flotsam, remarked to me tartly that there would hardly have been more fuss if George Juliard had been killed.