'Good.'

I said, 'Er...?'

'Free publicity. We can't afford to buy air time.'

'Oh.'

'It will get rid of Titmuss and Whistle.'

'Who are they?' I asked.

'Fringe candidates. We don't need to worry about them.'

My father hobbled downstairs saying, 'Morning, Mervyn. I see you've met my son.'

Mervyn gave me an unenthusiastic glance.

'Lucky he's here,' my father said. 'He can drive me around.'

I'd told him on the way from Brighton that I'd done errands to earn money for driving lessons and had held a full licence by then for nearly five weeks.

'Good,' he'd said.

'But I haven't driven since the test.'

'All in good time.' His bland expression now forbade me to reveal my inexperience. There was tolerance between the candidate and the agent, I saw, but no warmth.

A sharp-boned young woman arrived with disciplined hair and a power-dressing grey suit with a bright 'Juliard' rosette pinned to one shoulder. She was introduced as Crystal Harley, Mervyn Teck's secretary, and, as I learned during the morning, she was the only person, besides Mervyn himself, who received pay for running the by-election. Everyone else was a volunteer.

The three volunteer witches from the day before arrived one by one and smothered my father with cooing solicitude and endless coffee.

I had forgotten their names: Faith, Marge and Lavender, Faith chided me gently.

'Sorry.'

'A good politician remembers names,' Lavender told me severely. 'You won't be much use to your father if you forget who people are.' The thin lady with the sweet-smelling name was the one who had disapproved of Orinda Nagle. Difficult to please her, I thought.

Mervyn Teck and my father discussed streets and leaflet distributions. Crystal Harley entered endless details into a computer. Motherly Faith went round with a duster and Marge set the photocopier humming.

I sat on my stool and simply listened, and learned many surprising (to me) facts of electoral life, chief among which was the tiny amount of money allowed to be spent. No one could buy themselves into Parliament: every candidate had to rely on an army of unpaid helpers for door-to-door persuasions and the nailing of 'Vote for Me' posters to suitable trees.

There were Representation of the People Acts, Crystal told me crisply, her fingers busy on the keyboard, her eyes unwaveringly turned to the screen. The Acts severely limited what one could spend.

'There are about seventy thousand voters in this constituency,' she said. 'You couldn't buy seventy thousand half-pints of beer with what we're allowed to spend. It's impossible to bribe bribe the British voters. You have to the British voters. You have to persuade persuade them. That's your father's job.' them. That's your father's job.'

'Don't buy a stamp, dear, for a local letter,' Faith said, smiling. 'Get on a bicycle and deliver it by hand.'

'Do you mean you can't buy stamps stamps?'

'You have to write down every cent you spend,' Crystal nodded. 'You have to make an itemised return after the election to show where the money went, and you can bet your sweet life Paul Bethune's people will be hoping like hell they'll find we've gone over the limit, just like we'll be scrutinising his return with a magnifying glass looking for any twopenny wickedness.'

'Then last night's dinner...' I began.

'Last night's dinner was paid for by the people who ate it, and cost the local Constituency Association nothing,' Crystal said. She paused, then went on with my education. 'Mervyn and I are employed by the local Constituency Association of this party, not directly by Westminster. The local association pays for these offices here, and the whole caboodle relies on gifts and fundraising.'

She approved of the way things were set up, and I wondered vaguely why, with everything carefully regulated to ensure the election of the fittest, there were still so many nutcases in the House.

The relative peace of just seven bodies in the offices lasted only until an influx of the previous night's social mix trooped in through both doors and asked endless questions to which there seemed no answers.

Mervyn Teck loved it. The police, the media people, the party enthusiasts and the merely curious, he expansively welcomed them all. His candidate was not only alive but being perfectly charming to every enquirer. The TV cameraman shone his bright spotlight on my father's face and taped the sincerity of his smile. Local newspapermen had been augmented by several from the major dailies. Cameras flashed. Microphones were offered to catch anything worth saying, and I, doing my bit, simply smiled and smiled and was terribly nice to everyone and referred every question to my parent.

Crystal, trying to continue working but having to cling physically to her desk to avoid being swept round the place like flotsam, remarked to me tartly that there would hardly have been more fuss if George Juliard had been killed.

'Lucky he wasn't,' I said, wedging my stool next to her to keep us both anchored.

'Did the noise of the gunshot make him trip?' she asked.

'No. He tripped first.'

'Why are you so sure?'

'Because the bang of a high-velocity bullet reaches you after the bullet itself.'

She looked disbelieving.

'I learned it in physics lessons,' I said.

She glanced at my beardless face. 'How old are you?' she asked.

'Seventeen.'

'You can't even vote!'

'I don't actually want to.'

She looked across to where my father was winning media allies with modesty and grace.

'I've met a fair number of politicians,' she said. 'Your father's different.'

'In what way?'

'Can't you feel his power? Perhaps you can't, as you're his son. You're too close to him.'

'I do sometimes feel it.' It stunned me, I should have said.

'Look at last night,' Crystal went on without pausing. 'I was there in the hall, sitting at the back. He set that place alight. He's a natural speaker. I mean, I work work here, and he had my pulse racing. Poor old Dennis Nagle, he was a nice worthy man, pretty capable in a quiet way, but he could never have got a crowd cheering and stamping their feet like last night.' here, and he had my pulse racing. Poor old Dennis Nagle, he was a nice worthy man, pretty capable in a quiet way, but he could never have got a crowd cheering and stamping their feet like last night.'

'Could Orinda?' I asked.

Crystal was startled. 'No, she can't make people laugh. But don't judge her by last night. She's done devoted work in the constituency. She was always at Dennis's side. She's feeling very hurt that she wasn't selected to follow Dennis, because until your father galvanised the selection panel she was unopposed.'

'In fact,' I said, 'if anyone anyone had a motive for bumping off my father, it would be her.' had a motive for bumping off my father, it would be her.'

'Oh, but she wouldn't!' Crystal was honestly dismayed. 'She can sometimes be a darling, you know. Mervyn loves loves her. He's quite put out that he's not working to get her. He's quite put out that he's not working to get her her elected. He was looking forward to it.' elected. He was looking forward to it.'

My first impression of Crystal's sharp spikiness had been right only as regarded her outward appearance. She was kinder and more patient than she looked. I wondered if at one time she had been anorexic: I had known anorexic girls at school. The teeth of one of them had fallen out.

Crystal's teeth were straight and white, though seldom visible, owing to an overall serious view of life. I thought she was probably twenty-five or -six and hadn't had enough in life to smile about.

Mervyn Teck zig-zagged to my elbow through the busy crowd and said it was time to think about driving my father to his day's engagements in the outlying town of Quindle. The constituency was large in area with separate pockets of concentrated inhabitation: Mervyn gave me a map with roads and destinations marked, but looked at me doubtfully.

'Are you sure you're competent enough?'

I said, 'Yes,' with more confidence than I felt.

'One incident like last night's is a godsend,' he said. 'A car crash on top would be too much. We don't want any whiff of accident-prone.'

'No,' I said.

Across the room my father was dangling the Range Rover's keys in my direction. I went over to him and took them and he, with the help of a walking stick, detached himself from the chattering well-wishers (the police and media had long gone) and limped through the office and out to the car park.

Crowds beget crowds. There was a bunch of people outside the rear door who clapped and smiled at my father and gave him thumbs-up signs. I looked across the car park to where we had left the Range Rover on our arrival from Brighton the previous afternoon and my father asked me to fetch it over so that he wouldn't need to hobble that far.

I walked across to the conspicuous vehicle and stopped beside it, the keys in my hand. The sun shone again that day, gleaming on the gold-and-silver-painted garlands; and after a moment I turned away and went back to my father.

'What's the matter?' he said, half annoyed. 'Can't you drive it?'

'Is it insured for someone my age?'

'Yes, of course. I wouldn't suggest it otherwise. Go and fetch it, Ben.'

I frowned and went back into the offices, ignoring his displeasure.

'It's time you went,' Mervyn said, equally impatient. 'You said you could drive George's car.'

I nodded. 'But I'd be better in a smaller car. Like you said, we don't want an accident. Do you have a smaller one? Could I borrow yours?'

Mervyn said with obvious aggravation, 'My car isn't insured for drivers under twenty-one.'

'Mine is, though,' Crystal said. 'My nineteen-year-old brother drives it. But it's not very glamorous. Not like the Range Rover.'

She dug the keys out of her handbag and said that Mervyn (to his impatience) would give her a lift home if we were not back by five-thirty, and would pick her up again in the morning. I thanked her with an awkward kiss on the cheek, and 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 practise 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 tyres? 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 practise 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 work-a-day 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 round me with (mostly) friendly enquiries.

'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 favour 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 appearance in Quindle had been well publicised 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 nor 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 surrounding fields; not light bulbs this time, but furniture and paint. There had then been a long policy of 'infilling' the building of large numbers of small houses on every patch of vacant grass. The resulting town strained against its green belt and suffered from interior traffic snarl-ups on a standstill scale. It worked well for soapbox orators: in the summer heat cars crept past with their windows down, getting the message.

Among the blizzard of VOTE JULIARD VOTE JULIARD posters there were some for posters there were some for TITMUSS TITMUSS and and WHISTLE WHISTLE and, of course, many for and, of course, many for BETHUNE IS BETTER BETHUNE IS BETTER. GIVE HIM YOUR X GIVE HIM YOUR X. Bethune's notices on the whole looked tattered, and I found it wasn't merely because it was three days since he'd stomped inner Quindle on his own soapbox tour, but because the local weekly paper, the Quindle Diary Quindle Diary, had hit the newsagents with 'Bethune for Sleaze' as its headline.

One of the volunteers having tucked the Quindle Diary Quindle Diary under my elbow, I read the front page, as who wouldn't. under my elbow, I read the front page, as who wouldn't.

'As our representative in Westminster, do we want an adulterer who says he upholds the family values to which this newspaper in this young town is dedicated? Do we believe the promises of one who can't keep a solemn vow?'

I read to the end and thought the whole tone insufferably pompous, but I didn't suppose it would do the Bethune camp much good.

At each of his three ascents of the soapbox, my father was bombarded with demands that he should at least deplore the Bethune hypocrisy, and at each place, carefully sidestepping the loaded come-ons, he attacked Bethune and his party only for their political aims and methods.

His restraint didn't altogether please his own army of volunteers.

'George could demolish demolish Bethune if he would only take a hatchet to his character,' one of them complained. 'Why won't he do it?' Bethune if he would only take a hatchet to his character,' one of them complained. 'Why won't he do it?'

'He doesn't believe in it,' I said.