10 lb Penalty Read Online Free PDF Page B

head on one side. “You’re too young, of course.”
    To my dismay I could feel myself going red. Mrs. Kitchens laughed her worldly laugh and shoveled her strawberries. Orinda Nagle ignored me throughout, while pouring out nonstop complaints to her companion, who mostly replied with grunts. I thought I would rather be almost anywhere else.
    Dinner finally over, the talkative throng rose to its collective feet and transferred down a passage into the large room lit by chandeliers that made The Sleeping Dragon the area’s popular magnet for dances, weddings and—as now—political free-for-alls.
    Orinda’s companion left his name card on the table, and out of not-very-strong curiosity I picked it up.
    Mr. A. L. Wyvern, it said.
    I let “Mr. A. L. Wyvern” fall back among the debris of napkins and coffee cups and without enthusiasm drifted along with everyone else to the rows of folding chairs set up for the meeting. I’d read somewhere that affairs like this could draw tiny crowds unworthy of the name, but perhaps because my father was new to the district, almost double the number of the diners had turned up, and the whole place buzzed with the expectation of enjoyment.
    It was the first political meeting I’d attended and at that point I would have been happy if it had been my last.
    There were speeches from the small row of people up on a platform. The chairman of the Constituency Association rambled on a bit. Mr. Bigwig was on his feet for twenty minutes. Mrs. Bigwig smiled approvingly throughout.
    My father stood up and lightened the proceedings by making everyone laugh. I could feel my face arranging itself into Mrs. Bigwig-type soppiness and knew that in my case anyway it had a lot to do with relief. I had been anxious that he wouldn’t grab his audience, that he would embarrass me into squirming agony by being boring.
    I suppose I should have known better. He told them what was right with the country, and why. He told them what was wrong with the country, and how to fix it. He gave them a palatable recipe. He told them what they wanted to believe, and he had them stamping their feet and roaring their applause.
    The local TV station cameraman filmed the cheers.
    Predictably, Orinda hated it. She sat rigidly, her neck as stiff as if she had an unbending rod there instead of vertebrae. I could see the sharp line of her jaw and the grim, tight muscles around her mouth. She shouldn’t have come, I thought: but perhaps she truly had believed that the selectors had made a ghastly mistake.
    Dearest Polly, chief de-selector of Dennis’s widow, regarded my father euphorically, as if she had invented him herself; and indeed without her he might not have been there to seize the first rung of his destiny.
    Eyes alight with the triumph of his reception, he asked for questions and, true to his intention, he stripped off his tie. He flung it on the table in front of him, and then he rounded the table so that there was nothing between him on the platform and the crowd below. He opened his arms wide, embracing them. He invited them to join him in a political adventure, to build for a better world and in particular for a better world for the constituents of Hoopwestern.
    He held them in his hands. He had them laughing. His timing could have been learned from stand-up comics. He generated excitement, belief, purpose; and I, in my inconspicuous end-of-row seat, swelled with a mixture of amazement, understanding and finally pride that my parent was publicly delivering the goods.
    “I’m here for you,” he said. “Come to my office across the square. Tell me your concerns, tell me what’s troubling you here in Hoopwestern. Tell me who to see, who to listen to. Tell me your history ... and I’ll tell you your future. If you elect me I’ll work for you, I’ll take your wishes to Westminster, I’ll be your voice where it matters. I’ll light a bulb or two in the House of Commons....”
    Laughter drowned him. The lightbulb