10 lb Penalty (23 page)

Never mind that there were about twenty other Cabinet ministers with the same dream, let alone all the “shadow” ministers in the opposition: one never got to hang on that wall without ambition.

The reception was chattering away in the large formal area upstairs known as the pillared drawing room. (It had pillars. Two.)

We were greeted sweetly by Mrs. Prime Minister—her husband was
bound
to arrive shortly—and were wafted onwards to trays of filled glasses and tiny Christmassy mince pies surrounded with holly.

I no longer asked annoyingly for Diet Coke. I drank the prime ministerial champagne and liked it.

I knew almost no one, of course, even by sight. Polly kept me in tow for a while, though her husband had drifted away as if on wheels, greeting and laughing and making no enemies. Polly could identify all the Cabinet after eighteen months with my father, but knew none of them—as Orinda would have done—as “daaahling.”

The prime minister did arrive (he was
bound
to, after all) and my father saw to it that the great man shook Polly’s hand with warm recognition and mine with at least a show of interest.

“You win races, don’t you?” he asked, brow furrowed.

“Er ... sometimes,” I said weakly.

He nodded. “Your father’s proud of you.”

I did, I suppose, look astounded. The prime minister, a gently rounded man with a steel handshake, gave me an ironic smile as he passed to the next group, and my father didn’t know whether or not to call him a liar.

Dearest Polly squeezed my arm. “George doesn’t say he’s proud of you. He just certainly sounds it.”

“That makes us equal.”

“You really are a dear boy, Benedict.”

“And I love you, too,” I said.

My father’s attention had purposefully wandered. “You see that man over there?”

There were about twenty men “over there.”

Polly said, “Do you mean that one with flat white hair and circular eyes? The Home Secretary?”

“Yes, dearest. But I meant the one he’s talking to. The one who’s looking presidential and suitable for high office. He’s Hudson Hurst.”

Polly shook her head. “Surely not. Hudson Hurst has an oiled black ponytail and one of those silly little black mustache-and-beard combinations that frame a man’s mouth and distract you from what he’s saying.”

“Not anymore.” My father smiled, but not with joy. “Someone must have persuaded Hudson Hurst that the topiary work was a political no-no. He’s cut off the hair and shaved off the beard. What you see now are the unadorned petulant lips of the defense secretary, God help us all.”

Five minutes later my father was putting a seemingly affectionate hand on the defense secretary’s shoulder and saying, “My dear Hud, have you met my wife and my son?”

Love thine enemies ...

I hated politics.

“Hud” had a damp, cold handclasp that I supposed he couldn’t help, and if he had lately had an oiled black ponytail and a black mustache-beard mouth-circling combination, they had very likely been dyed. His present hair color was the dark-lightly-flecked-with-gray that a passing girlfriend had told me couldn’t be faked, and he’d had a cut in a swept-back and duck-tailed style straight from the films of James Bond. Distinguished. Impressive, one had to admit. It inspired trust.

My father’s own mat of natural dark, close curls was cut to display to advantage the handsome outline of his skull. Expert stuff. Ah well.

Hudson Hurst was overpoweringly pleasant to Polly. Smile and smile, I thought, remembering Hoopwestern: smile and smile and shake the hands and win the votes. He flicked me a glance, but I wasn’t important.

Sweet Mrs. Prime Minister appeared at my elbow and asked if I was having a good time.

“Oh, yes. Splendid, thank you.”

“You look a bit lost. Come with me.” She led me across to the far side of the big room and stopped beside a sharply dressed woman who reminded me strongly of Orinda. “Jill, dear, this is George Juliard’s son. Do look after him.”

Jill gave me a comprehensive head-to-toe and stared at Mrs. Prime Minister’s retreating back without enthusiasm.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, “I don’t know your name.”

“Vinicheck. Education.”

“Minister of?”

Her grim lips twitched. “Certainly.”

She was joined by another woman in the simplest and best of current fashion: another Orinda-clone. Secretary of state for social security.

She said bluntly, “Where does your mother get her clothes?”

I followed her gaze across the room and saw Polly talking unselfconsciously to the man with flat white hair and circular eyes: the home secretary. Polly’s clothes, as always, had nothing to do with popular opinion but very clearly revealed her individual character.

Jill Vinicheck (education) kindly said, “Your father may have a bright career in front of him, but your mother will have to change the way she dresses or she’ll be clawed to bits by those bitches who write about fashion in the newspapers.”

The minister of social security agreed. “Every woman in politics gets the hate treatment. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Oh, not really, no.”

“Your mother’s skirt is the wrong length. You don’t mind me telling you? I’m only being helpful. Frankly, it would be the wrong length whatever length it was, according to the fashion bitches. But you can pass on some tips to her from us, if you like.”

“Er . . .”

“Tell her,” Jill Vinicheck said, enjoying herself, “never to buy clothes in shops.”

Social Security nodded. “She must have them made.”

Jill Vinicheck: “Always wool or silk or cotton. Never polyester, or tight.”

“There’s a marvelous man who could make your mother really elegant, with her long, thin figure. He totally changed the way the papers write about us now. They discuss our policies, not our clothes. And he can’t do it only for women. Look at the change in Hudson Hurst! Hud frankly looked a bit of a gangster, but now he’s a statesman.”

“No time like the present,” Jill Vinicheck said with the briskness that had no doubt propelled her up the ladder. “Our wand-waving friend is here somewhere.

Why don’t we introduce him to your mother straightaway?”

“Er ... ,” I said, “I don’t think she ...”

“Oh,
there
he is,” said Social Security, stepping sideways and pouncing. “Let me introduce you ...”

She had her hand on his arm and he turned towards her, and I came face-to-face with A. L. Wyvern.

Alderney “Anonymous Lover” Wyvern.

No wonder Education and Social Security had reminded me of Orinda. All those years ago his ideas had dressed her, too.

I knew him instantly, but it took him several seconds to add four years to my earlier appearance. Then his face hardened to ill will and he looked disconcerted, even though with my father in the Cabinet he might have considered that both he and I might be asked to the families’ Christmas reception. Maybe he hadn’t given it a thought. In any case, my presence there was to him an unwelcome surprise.

So was his, to me.

Education and Social Security were looking puzzled.

“Do you two know each other?” one of them asked.

“We’ve met,” Wyvern said shortly.

His own appearance, too, had changed. At Hoopwestern he had made a point of looking inconspicuous, of being easily forgettable. Four years later he wasn’t finding it so simple to fade into the wallpaper.

I had thought him then to be less than forty, but I now saw that to have been probably an underestimate.

His skin had begun to show a few wrinkles and his hair to recede, and he was now wearing glasses with narrow dark frames. There was still about him, though, the strong secretive aura of introverted clout.

At the Downing Street Christmas party there was no overt sign of the sleeping anger that had blazed across Orinda’s face and nearly killed her. He was not this time saying to me aloud in fury, “One day I’ll get you,” but I could see the intent rise again in his narrowed eyes as if no interval for second thoughts had existed.

The extraordinary response I felt was not fear but excitement. The adrenaline rush in my blood was to fight, not flight. And whether or not he saw my reaction to him as vividly as I felt it, he pulled down the shutters on the malice visible behind the dark framed lenses and excused himself with the briefest of courtesies to Education and Social Security: when he moved slowly away it was as if every step were consciously controlled.

“Well!” exclaimed Jill Vinicheck. “I know he’s never talkative, but I’m afraid he was ... impolite.”

Not impolite, I thought.

Murderous.

 

After the reception Polly, my father and I all ate in one of the few good restaurants in London that had taken the din out of dinner. One could mostly hear oneself speak.

My father had enjoyed a buddy-buddy session with the prime minister and Polly said she thought the circular eyes of the home secretary were not after all an indication of mania.

Didn’t the home secretary, I asked, keep prisoners in and chuck illegal immigrants
out?

More or less, my father agreed.

I said, “Did you know there was a list on a sort of easel there detailing all the jobs in government?”

My father, ministerially busy with broccoli that he didn’t actually like, nodded, but Polly said she hadn’t seen it.

“There are weird jobs,” I said, “like minister for former countries and undersecretary for buses.” Polly looked mystified but my father nodded. “Every prime minister invents titles to describe what he wants done.”

“So,” I said, “theoretically you could have a minister in charge of banning yellow plastic ducks.”

“You do talk nonsense, Benedict dear,” Polly said.

“What he means,” my father said, “is that the quickest way to make people want something is to ban it. People always fight to get what they are told they cannot have.”

“All the same,” I said mildly, “I think the prime minister should introduce a law banning Alderney Wyvem from drinking champagne at No. 10 Downing Street.”

Polly and my father sat with their mouths open.

“He was there,” I said. “Didn’t you see him?”

They shook their heads.

“He kept over to the far side of the room, out of your way. He looks a bit different. He’s older, balder. He wears spectacles. But he is revered by the minister of education, the secretary of state for social security and the secretary of state for defense, to name those I am sure of. Orinda and Dennis Nagle were kindergarten stuff. Alderney Wyvern now has his hands on levers he can pull to affect whole sections of the nation.”

“I don’t believe it,” my father said.

“The dear ladies of education and social security told me they had a friend who would do wonders for my ... er ... mother’s wardrobe. He had already, they said, turned Hudson Hurst from a quasi-mobster into a polished gent. What do you think they give Alderney in return?”

“No,” my father said. “Not classified information. They couldn’t!”

He was scandalized. I shook my head.

“What, then?” Polly asked. “What do they give him?”

“I’d guess,” I said, “that they give him attention. I’d guess they listen to him and act on his advice. Orinda said years ago that he had a terrific understanding of what would happen in politics. He would predict things and tell Dennis Nagle what to do about them and Orinda said he was nearly always right. Dennis Nagle had his feet on the upward path, and if he hadn’t died I’d think he’d be in the Cabinet by now with Wyvern at his shoulder.”

My father pushed his broccoli aside. A good thing his broccoli farmers weren’t watching. They were agitating for a broccoli awareness week to make the British eat their greens. A law to ban excess broccoli would have had healthier results.

“If he’s so clever,” Polly asked, “why isn’t he in the Cabinet himself?”

“Orinda told me the sort of power Alderney really wants is to be able to pull the levers behind the scenes. I thought it a crazy idea. I’ve grown up since then.”

“Power without responsibility,” my father murmured.

“Allied,” I said ruefully, “to a frighteningly violent temper which explodes when he’s crossed.”

My father hadn’t actually seen Wyvern hit Orinda. He hadn’t seen the speed and the force and the heartlessness; but he had seen the blood and tears and they alone had driven him to try to retaliate. Wyvern had wanted to damage my father’s reputation by provoking my father to hit him. I dimly understood, but still hadn’t properly worked it out, that attacking Wyvern would, in the end, destroy the attacker.

My boss Evan agreeing, I’d tied in the No. 10 Thursday evening reception with a Friday-morning trip to meet a claims inspector to see if a hay barn had burned by accident or design (accident) and was due to stay again on Friday night in London with Polly and my father before going to ride at Stratford-upon-Avon on Saturday, but en route I got a message to return to meet my father in Downing Street by two that Friday afternoon.

“I thought you might like to see more of the house,” he said cheerfully. “You can’t see a thing at those receptions.”

He had arranged for one of the household staff—called a messenger—to accompany us and show us around officially, so we went up the yellow staircase again, spending longer over the pictures, and wandered around the three large drawing rooms leading off the anteroom at the top of the stairs; the white drawing room, the green drawing room and the pillared drawing room where they’d held the reception.

The messenger was proud of the house, which he said looked better and was better looked after than at any time in its rickety history. It had once been two houses back to back (rather like the burned shops of Hoopwestern): the small Downing Street house facing one way, and a mansion to the rear of it facing the other. The interior layout over two and a half centuries had been constantly redesigned, and a modem refurbishment had bestowed overall an eighteenth-century ambience that hadn’t been there before.