'I can't believe believe it,' Orinda screeched. 'He follows me round.' it,' Orinda screeched. 'He follows me round.'

Usher Rudd, with the advantage of surprise, was already scuttling away down the street to get lost in bunches of shoppers.

'He follows me, too,' I said, putting a hand on Orinda's arm, to deter her trying to catch him. 'You warned me and I told my father... but unless Usher Rudd breaks the law it seems he can't be stopped, and the law is still on the side of copy-cat Rudds.'

'But my private life is my own affair!' She glanced at me as if it were my fault that it wasn't.

I said, 'Drug dealers would be out of business if people didn't want drugs.'

'What?'

'The so-called war on drugs is fought against the wrong people. Lock up the users. Lock up the demand. Lock up human nature.'

She looked bewildered. 'What have drugs to do with Usher Rudd?'

'If people didn't flock to buy his sleaze, he wouldn't push it.'

'And you mean... they always will?'

She needed no answer. She followed me into the shop/office and, after delivering her news, enjoyed a hugging session with Mervyn (no photo) and an ambiguous welcome from the three witches, who had with pink arousal transferred their effective allegiance to the new order.

'Where are you canvassing today, Mervyn?' Orinda asked, and he showed her on the map, with the unexpected result that when I drove the Range Rover round Hoopwestern that morning I had on board Mervyn, Orinda, Faith and Lavender, and all of Orinda's roll of commitment flattened out as placards.

As Mervyn had telephoned the editor of the Gazette Gazette gasps of shock at having to U-turn his anti-all-politicians spin we were greeted in the car park behind the burned shop by a hastily assembled crowd, by the leader-writer of the gasps of shock at having to U-turn his anti-all-politicians spin we were greeted in the car park behind the burned shop by a hastily assembled crowd, by the leader-writer of the Gazette Gazette (the paper was short of news) and by the cameraman who had besottedly followed Orinda with his loving lens round the reception before the dinner a week earlier at the Sleeping Dragon. (the paper was short of news) and by the cameraman who had besottedly followed Orinda with his loving lens round the reception before the dinner a week earlier at the Sleeping Dragon.

Orinda flirted again with his lens (or with him much the same thing) and told everyone prettily through a non-squeaking microphone that George Juliard, undoubtedly on the brink of becoming a nationally acclaimed politician, was the best possible substitute for her beloved husband Dennis, who had dedicated his life to the good citizens of this glorious part of Dorset.

Applause, applause. She appeared in the sitting-rooms of Hoopwestern on the lunchtime television news against the only slightly orchestrated cheers.

By the time my father returned on the train from London he'd heard of Orinda's media conference with mixed feelings she might be stealing his limelight or she might just be saving his life but at another church hall meeting of the faithful that evening he embraced her in a warm hug (reciprocated) that would have been unthinkable a day earlier.

Not everyone was pleased.

Orinda's shadow, Anonymous Lover Wyvern, followed her around like thunder. She, dressed in blackberry-coloured satin and glowing with a sense of generosity and virtue, kept giving him enquiring looks as if unsure of the source of his dudgeon. In her inner release she didn't seem to realise, as I did, albeit only slowly through the evening, that in dumping her anger at not being selected she had in some way lessened his status. He had been Dennis Nagle's best friend, but Orinda was leaving her Dennis behind.

Dearest Polly, to my surprise, positively scowled, even though she had herself delivered Orinda to her change of heart.

'I didn't count on such a radical about-face,' Polly complained. 'She's cast herself in the ongoing role of constituency wife! There's no doubt she was good at it, but she isn't isn't George's wife and she can't surely imagine she can go on opening fetes and things, and I bet that's what she's got in mind. Whatever did you say to her at the races?' George's wife and she can't surely imagine she can go on opening fetes and things, and I bet that's what she's got in mind. Whatever did you say to her at the races?'

I said, 'I thought you wanted her on my father's side.'

'Well, yes, I do. But I don't want her going around saying all the time that she she was the one we should have picked.' was the one we should have picked.'

'Get him into Parliament, Polly,' I said. 'Put him on the escalator, then he'll deal with Orinda and everything else.'

'How old did you say you are?' old did you say you are?'

'Eighteen at the end of next week. And it was you, dearest Polly, who said I look into people's minds.'

She asked in some alarm, 'Do you see into mine?'

'Sort of.'

She laughed uneasily; but I saw nothing but good.

One could say the opposite about Leonard Kitchens. I had come to notice that the tilt of his prominent moustache acted like a weather-vane, signalling the direction of his feelings. The upward thrust that evening was combative and self-important, a combination looking for a fight. Bulky Mrs Kitchens (in large pink flowers printed on dark blue) followed her Leonard's progress round the meeting with anxiety for a while and then made a straight line to my side.

'Do something,' she hissed into my ear. 'Tell Orinda to leave my Leonard alone.'

It seemed to me that it was the other way round, as Leonard's moustache vibrated by Orinda's neck, but at Mrs Kitchens' urgent and continuous prompting I went over to hear Leonard's agitated and whining drift.

'I would do anything anything for you, Orinda, you know I would, but you're joining the for you, Orinda, you know I would, but you're joining the enemy enemy and I can't bear to see him slobbering all over you, it's disgusting...' and I can't bear to see him slobbering all over you, it's disgusting...'

'Wake up, Leonard,' Orinda said lightly, not seeing the seething lava below the faintly ridiculous exterior, 'it's a new world.'

The undercurrents might tug and eddy, but Orinda had definitely unified the party behind JULIARD JULIARD; yet in our room that night my father would literally not hear a word said about her. In fact, he put a finger decisively against his lips and drew me out into the passage, closing our door behind us.

'What's up?' I asked, mystified.

'Tonight the editor of the Gazette Gazette asked me if I thought people who voted for me were silly.' asked me if I thought people who voted for me were silly.'

'But that's nonsense. That's ' I stopped.

'Yes. Think back. When we joked about silly voters we were alone in this bedroom here. Did you repeat what we said?'

'Of course not.'

'Then how did the Gazette Gazette know?' know?'

I stared at him, and said slowly, 'Usher Rudd.'

He nodded. 'Didn't you tell me that that mechanic Terry, isn't that what his name is? got sacked because Usher Rudd had listened to his pillow talk using one of those gadgets that pick up voice waves from the faint vibrations in the windows?'

'Usher Rudd,' I said furiously, 'is trying to prove I'm not your son.'

'Never mind, he's on a loser.'

'He's following Orinda too, not to mention the Bethunes.'

'He thinks if he flings enough mud, some will stick. Don't give him any target.'

As the days went by one could see that Orinda's flip-flop had most impact in Hoopwestern itself, less in Quindle, and not very much in the villages dotting the maps with a church spire, a couple of pubs and a telephone box. Cheers and clapping greeted her near home but news of her arrival to canvass in, say, Middle Lampfield (pop. 637) was more likely to be greeted with a polite 'Oo? Aah' and a swift return to 'Zoomerzet' cider.

More local draught cider flowed down the constituency throats than babies' formula, and my father's head for the frothy fruit of the apple earned him approval. We rolled every day at lunchtime from pub to pub to pub (I drove) and I got used to hearing the verdict. 'A good chap, your father, he understands what we need in the countryside. Reckon I'll vote for him. That Bethune, that they say is a certainty, he's a town town councillor, and you know what we think of them lot, thumbs down.' councillor, and you know what we think of them lot, thumbs down.'

My father made them laugh. He knew the price of hay. They would have followed him to the South Pole.

Orinda thought the villages a waste of time, and so did Mervyn.

'The bulk of the votes is in the towns,' they lectured. Dennis Nagle had been the star of the businessman circle.

'You vote for a man you play darts with,' my father said, missing double top. 'I buy my own drinks, they buy theirs. Neither of us is beholden.'

Orinda didn't like cider, and she didn't like pubs. Lavender, surprisingly, liked both: my father, Lavender and I therefore spent several days soap-boxing the outskirts in the silver and gold Range Rover, seeing to it (as my father said) that not a voter was left unturned.

The following week it was Orinda who nearly died.

SEVENTH.

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 meagre 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 line-ups (this one for target shooting), with the captain hugging a cup. There were 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 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 realised 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 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 shirt-sleeves, 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 Hoopwestern, was no match in power against 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 unclipped 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.'

The editor gave me a swift glance as if he hadn't until that point taken note of my existence.

'You employ a person called Usher Rudd,' my father said. 'I think you should be careful. He seems to be trying to cast doubt on my son's identity and legitimacy. I'm told he has made scurrilous insinuations.'

He asked the editor just how he'd come to hear of 'silly' votes when he, my father, had only used the word and in a joke in the privacy of his own room.

Samson Frazer froze like a dazzled rabbit.

'If I have to,' my father said, 'I will send hair samples for DNA testing. My own hair, my son's hair, and some hair from my wife that she gave me in a locket. I hope you will carefully consider what I've said and what I've shown you.' He began methodically replacing the certificates in the briefcase. 'Because, I assure you,' he went on pleasantly, 'if the Hoopwestern Gazette Hoopwestern Gazette should be so unwise as to cast doubt on my son's origins, I will sue the paper and you personally for defamation and libel, and you might quite likely wish you hadn't done it.' He snapped the locks shut so vigorously that they sounded in themselves like a threat. should be so unwise as to cast doubt on my son's origins, I will sue the paper and you personally for defamation and libel, and you might quite likely wish you hadn't done it.' He snapped the locks shut so vigorously that they sounded in themselves like a threat.

'You understand?' he asked.

The editor plainly did.

'Good,' my father said. 'If you catch me in sleaze, that will be fair enough. If you try to manufacture it, I'll hang you out by the toes.'

Samson Frazer found nothing to say.

'Good day to you, sir,' my father said.

He was in high good humour all the way back to the hotel and went upstairs humming.

'What would you say,' he suggested, 'to a pact between us?'

'What sort of pact?'

He put the briefcase down on the table and drew out two sheets of plain paper.

'I've been thinking,' he said, 'of making you a promise, and I want you to make the same promise in return. We both know how vulnerable one is to people like Usher Rudd.'

'And it's not impossible,' I interrupted, 'that he's listening to us at this moment, particularly if he knows where we've just been.'

My father looked briefly startled, but then grinned. 'The red-haired dung-beetle can listen all he likes. The promise I'll make to you is not to give him, or anyone like him, any grounds ever for messy publicity. I'll be dead boring. There will be no kiss-and-tell bimbos and no illicit payment for favours and no cheating on tax and no nasty pastimes like drugs or kinky sex...'

I smiled easily, amused.

'Yes,' he said, 'but I want you you to make the same promise to to make the same promise to me me. I want you to promise me that if I get elected you'll do nothing throughout my political career that can get me discredited or sacked or disgraced in any way.'

'But I wouldn't,' I protested.

'It's easy for you to say that now while you're young, but you'll find life's full of terrible temptations.'

'I promise,' I said.

He shook his head. 'That's not enough. I want us both to write it down. I want you to be able to see and remember what you promised. Of course, it's in no way a legal document or anything pretentious like that, it's just an affirmation of intent.' He paused, clicking a ball-point pen while he thought, then he wrote very quickly and simply on one sheet of paper, and signed his name, and pushed the paper over for me to read.

It said: 'I will cause no scandal, nor will I perform any shameful or illegal act.'

Wow, I thought. I said, not wanting this to get too serious, 'It's a bit comprehensive, isn't it?'

'It's not worth doing otherwise. But you can write your own version. Write what you're comfortable with.'

I had no sense of binding myself irrevocably to sainthood.