with Mervyn Teck repeating his disapproval, went out to rejoin my father.
“I’m disappointed in you, Ben,” he said when Mervyn Teck explained. “You’d better practice in the Range Rover tomorrow.”
“OK. But today, now, before we go, would you arrange for some mechanics to come here and make sure there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with it. I drove it to Brighton and back yesterday and it was running perfectly.”
“Yes ... but it’s been standing out in the car park all night. Last night it’s possible someone tried to shoot you. Suppose someone’s hammered a nail or two into the Range Rover’s tires? Or anything.” I finished self-deprecatingly, as if I thought sabotage a childish fantasy, but after a brief, thoughtful silence my father said to Mervyn, “I’ll go in Crystal’s car. Ben can practice on the Range Rover tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mervyn, get the Range Rover overhauled, would you?”
Mervyn gave me a sour look, but it was he, after all, who had most wanted to avoid the accident-prone label: or so he’d said.
In Crystal’s small workaday box on wheels I therefore drove the candidate safely to his far-flung appointments, and again I saw and heard him shake awake the apathetic voting public, progressively attracting more and more people as his voice raised laughter and applause. His audience approved with their eyes and shouted questions, some friendly, some hostile, all of them getting thoughtful answers, lightly phrased.
I didn’t know how much of the day’s flashing enthusiasm would actually carry the feet to the polling booths, but it was enough, my father assured me, if they didn’t walk into the opposition camp and write their X for Bethune.
We had squeezed into Crystal’s car an invention of my father’s that was basically two wooden boxes, each a foot high, one larger than the other, that would bolt together, one on top of the other, to form an impromptu stepped platform to raise a speaker above his listeners: just enough for him to be comfortably heard, not high enough to be psychologically threatening. “My soapbox” my father called it, though it was many years since such crowd-pulling structures had contained soap.
I assembled the “soapbox” in three places in the town’s scattered focal points, and at each place a crowd gathered, curious, or anti, or uncommitted, and at each place, as I unbolted, or assembled or packed away the stepped platform, people would crowd around me with (mostly) friendly inquiries.
“Are you his chauffeur?”
“Yes.”
“Is he as knowledgeable as he seems?”
“More so.”
“What does he think about education?”
I smiled. “He’s in favor of it.”
“Yes, but...”
“I can’t answer for him. Please ask him yourself.”
They turned away and asked him, and got politically correct and truthful answers that would never be implemented without a huge increase in taxes: I was learning the economic facts as rapidly as I’d ever assimilated quadratic equations.
My father’s appearances in Quindle had been well publicized in advance by posters all over the town. Volunteers had distributed them and volunteers met and escorted us everywhere, their faces shining with commitment. My own commitment, I had already found, was to my father himself, not to his party or his beliefs. My private views, if I had any, were that good ideas were scattered around, not solely the property of any shade of rosette: and of course what were to me good ideas were hateful errors to others. I didn’t embrace any single whole agenda package, and it was always those who didn’t care passionately, those who changed their minds and swung with the wind, those who felt vaguely dissatisfied, they it was who swayed one side in or another side out. The “floating voters,” who washed back and fore with the tide, those were my father’s target.
Quindle, like Hoopwestern, had grown in response to industries planted in the
“I’m disappointed in you, Ben,” he said when Mervyn Teck explained. “You’d better practice in the Range Rover tomorrow.”
“OK. But today, now, before we go, would you arrange for some mechanics to come here and make sure there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“Of course there’s nothing wrong with it. I drove it to Brighton and back yesterday and it was running perfectly.”
“Yes ... but it’s been standing out in the car park all night. Last night it’s possible someone tried to shoot you. Suppose someone’s hammered a nail or two into the Range Rover’s tires? Or anything.” I finished self-deprecatingly, as if I thought sabotage a childish fantasy, but after a brief, thoughtful silence my father said to Mervyn, “I’ll go in Crystal’s car. Ben can practice on the Range Rover tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mervyn, get the Range Rover overhauled, would you?”
Mervyn gave me a sour look, but it was he, after all, who had most wanted to avoid the accident-prone label: or so he’d said.
In Crystal’s small workaday box on wheels I therefore drove the candidate safely to his far-flung appointments, and again I saw and heard him shake awake the apathetic voting public, progressively attracting more and more people as his voice raised laughter and applause. His audience approved with their eyes and shouted questions, some friendly, some hostile, all of them getting thoughtful answers, lightly phrased.
I didn’t know how much of the day’s flashing enthusiasm would actually carry the feet to the polling booths, but it was enough, my father assured me, if they didn’t walk into the opposition camp and write their X for Bethune.
We had squeezed into Crystal’s car an invention of my father’s that was basically two wooden boxes, each a foot high, one larger than the other, that would bolt together, one on top of the other, to form an impromptu stepped platform to raise a speaker above his listeners: just enough for him to be comfortably heard, not high enough to be psychologically threatening. “My soapbox” my father called it, though it was many years since such crowd-pulling structures had contained soap.
I assembled the “soapbox” in three places in the town’s scattered focal points, and at each place a crowd gathered, curious, or anti, or uncommitted, and at each place, as I unbolted, or assembled or packed away the stepped platform, people would crowd around me with (mostly) friendly inquiries.
“Are you his chauffeur?”
“Yes.”
“Is he as knowledgeable as he seems?”
“More so.”
“What does he think about education?”
I smiled. “He’s in favor of it.”
“Yes, but...”
“I can’t answer for him. Please ask him yourself.”
They turned away and asked him, and got politically correct and truthful answers that would never be implemented without a huge increase in taxes: I was learning the economic facts as rapidly as I’d ever assimilated quadratic equations.
My father’s appearances in Quindle had been well publicized in advance by posters all over the town. Volunteers had distributed them and volunteers met and escorted us everywhere, their faces shining with commitment. My own commitment, I had already found, was to my father himself, not to his party or his beliefs. My private views, if I had any, were that good ideas were scattered around, not solely the property of any shade of rosette: and of course what were to me good ideas were hateful errors to others. I didn’t embrace any single whole agenda package, and it was always those who didn’t care passionately, those who changed their minds and swung with the wind, those who felt vaguely dissatisfied, they it was who swayed one side in or another side out. The “floating voters,” who washed back and fore with the tide, those were my father’s target.
Quindle, like Hoopwestern, had grown in response to industries planted in the
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