10 lb Penalty by Dick Francis

Author:Dick Francis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101007204
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2012-01-07T16:16:03+00:00

Seven

On the Tuesday of the last full week of canvassing, my box of possessions, and my bicycle, finally arrived by carrier from Mrs. Wells.

Up in our room, my father picked with interest and curiosity through the meager debris of my life: two trophies for winning amateur ’chases the previous Easter, several photographs of me on horses and skis, and other photos from school with me sitting in one of those frozen team lineups (this one for target shooting) with the captain hugging a cup. There were also books on mathematics and racing biographies. Also clothes, but not many as, to my dismay, I was still growing.

My father extracted my passport, my birth certificate and the framed photograph of his wedding to my mother. He took the picture out of its frame and after looking at it for several long minutes he ran his finger over her face and sighed deeply, and it was the only time I’d known him to show any emotion at all about his loss.

I said incautiously, “Do you remember her? If she walked into the room now, would you know her?”

He gave me a look of such bleakness that I realized I’d asked a question of unforgivable intrusion, but after a pause all he said was, “You never forget your first.”

I swallowed.

He said, “Have you had your first?”

I felt numb, embarrassed almost beyond speech, but in the end I said truthfully, “No.”

He nodded. It was a moment of almost unbearable intimacy, the first ever between us, but he remained totally calm and matter-of-fact, and let me recover.

He sorted through some papers he had brought in a briefcase from a recent trip to London, put my own identifications in the case, snapped shut the locks and announced that we were going to call on the Hoopwestern Gazette.

We called, in fact, on the editor, who was also the publisher and proprietor of the only local daily. He was a man in shirtsleeves, harassed, middle aged, and from the tone of his front pages, censorious. He stood up from his desk as we approached.

“Mr. Samson Frazer,” my father said, calling him by name. “When we met the other evening, you asked if I thought people who vote for me are silly.”

Samson Frazer, for all his importance in Hoopwestem, was no match in power for my parent. Interesting, I thought.

“Er ... ,” he said.

“We’ll return to that in a minute,” my father told him. “First, I have some things for you to see.”

He unlatched the briefcase and opened it.

“I have brought the following items,” he said, taking out each paper and putting it down in front of the editor. “My marriage certificate. My son’s birth certificate. Both of our passports. This photograph of my wife and myself taken outside the registry office after our wedding. On the back”—he turned the picture over—“you will see the professional photographer’s name and copyright, and the date. Here also is my wife’s death certificate. She died of complications after the birth of our son. This son, Benedict, my only child, who has been at my side during this by-election.

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