“Ladies and gentlemen. This lady’s name is Mrs. Peggy Wentworth. She is a widow whom I have known and tried to help for many years, who has been desperately wronged in life, and who blames me for her misfortune. I hope that after this meeting you will all hear whatever Peggy has to tell you, give her every indulgence at your command, show her every patience. And in your wisdom judge for yourselves where the truth may lie. I hope you will show charity to Peggy, and to me, and remember how hard it is for all of us to accept misfortune without pointing the finger of blame.”
He placed his hands behind his back. His feet were close together.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my old friend Peggy Wentworth is quite right.” Not even Pym, who thought he knew all the instruments in Rick’s orchestra, had heard him so straight and simple in his delivery, so bereft of rhetoric. “Many years ago, ladies and gentlemen, when I was a very young man, striving to get on in life — as we all were once, overeager, ready to cut a few corners — I found myself in the position of the office boy who had borrowed a few stamps from the till and been caught before he had a chance to put them back. I was a first offender, it is true. My mother, like Peggy Wentworth here, was a widow. I had a great father to live up to and only sisters in the family. The responsibilities that weighed upon me, I will admit, blew me across the borders of what Justice, in her blind wisdom, deemed right. Justice exacted her penalty. I paid it in full measure. As I shall pay for it all my life.”
Then the jaw went up and the thick hands untied themselves, and one arm struck out towards the Old Nellies in the front while his eyes and voice reached into the darkness at the back.
“My friends — Peggy, my dear, I still count you as one too — my loyal friends of Gulworth North, I see among you here tonight men and women still young enough to be impulsive. I see others with the experience of life upon them, whose children and grandchildren have gone out into the world to follow their impulses, to strive and make mistakes and overcome them. I want to ask you older people this. If one of these young people — children, grandchildren, or if this son of mine who sits behind me here, poised to collect some of the highest prizes the law of this country can offer — if one of them should ever make a mistake, and pay the price that society exacts, and come home and say, ‘Mum, it’s me. Dad, it’s me’—which one of you sitting here among us tonight is going to slam the door in his face?”
They were standing. They were calling his name. “Rickie — good old Rickie — you get our vote, Rickie boy.” On the dais behind him we were standing too, and Pym saw through his own tears that Syd and Morrie were embracing each other. For once Rick did not acknowledge the applause. He was casting round theatrically for Pym and calling “Magnus, where are you, son?” though he knew perfectly well where he was. Affecting to find him he seized his arm, raised it and drew him forward, almost lifting him off the ground even as he offered him as champion to the jubilant crowd, shouting “Here’s one, here’s one!” I suppose he meant a penitent who has paid the price and come home, though I’ll never be certain because of the roar, and perhaps he said, “Here’s my son.” As to Pym, he could no longer contain himself. He had never adored Rick more. He was choking and clapping, he was shaking Rick’s hand for them with both of his, bear-hugging him and patting his great shoulder for them and telling him he was crackerjack. As he did so, he thought he saw Judy’s pale face and big pale eyes behind their serious spectacles, watching him from the centre of the crowd. My father needed me, he wanted to explain to her. I forgot where the bus stop was. I lost your phone number. I did it for my country. The Bentley was waiting at the front steps, Cudlove at the door. Riding away at Rick’s side, Pym imagined he heard Judy calling out his name: “Pym. You bastard. Where are you?”
* * *
It was dawn. Unshaven, Pym sat at his desk, not wanting the daylight. Chin in hand he stared at the last page he had written. Change nothing. Don’t look back, don’t look forward. You do it once, then die. A miserable vision assailed him of the women in his life vainly waiting at every bus stop along his chaotic path. Rising quickly he mixed himself a Nescafé and drank it while it was still too hot for him. Then took up his stapler and marker pen and set himself busily to work — I am a clerk, that is all I am — stapling his cuttings and cross-indexing the helpful references.
Extracts from Gulworth Mercury and Evening Star reporting Liberal Candidate’s fighting stand on Eve of Poll night in the Town Hall. For libel reasons writers omit direct reference to Peggy Wentworth’s accusations, referring only to Candidate’s spirited self-defence against personal attack. Enter at 21a. Bloody stapler doesn’t work. This sea air rusts everything.
Cutting from London Times giving results of Gulworth North by-election:
McKechnie (Labour) 17,970
Lakin (Cons.) 15,711
Pym (Lib.) 6,404.
Semi-literate leader ascribes victory to “miscalculated intervention” of Liberals. Enter at 22a.
Extract from Oxford University Gazette notifying waiting world that Magnus Richard Pym has been awarded a B.A. Hons. degree in Modern Languages, Class I. No reference to night hours spent studying previous examination papers, or informal exploration of tutor’s desk drawers with the aid of the Michaels’ ever-handy steel dividers. Entered at 23a.
But actually not entered at all, for in the act of marking this cutting, Pym set it down before him and stared at it, head in hands, with an expression of revulsion.
Rick knew. The bastard knew. His head still between his hands, Pym returns himself to Gulworth later the same night. Father and son are riding in the Bentley, their favourite place. The Town Hall lies behind them, Mrs. Searle’s Temperance Rest is approaching. The tumult of the crowd still rings in their ears. It will be another twenty-four hours before the world will learn the name of the winning candidate, but Rick knows it already. He has been judged and applauded for all his life till now.
“Let me tell you something, old son,” he says in his mellowest and kindest voice. The passing streetlights are switching his wise features on and off, making his triumph appear intermittent. “Never lie, son. I told them the truth. God heard me. He always does.”
“It was fantastic,” says Pym. “Could you possibly let go of my arm, please?”
“No Pym was ever a liar, son.”
“I know,” says Pym, taking back his arm anyway.
“Why couldn’t you have come to me, son? ‘Father,’ you could have said—‘Rickie’ if you like; you’re old enough—‘I’m not reading law any more. I’m building up my languages because I want the gift of tongues. I want to go out into the world like my best pal, and be heard wherever men gather regardless of colour, race or creed.’ Because do you know what I’d have answered if you’d come to me and said that to your old man?”
Pym is too mad, too dead to care.
“You’d have been super,” he says.
“I’d have said: ‘Son, you’re grown up now. You take your own decisions. All your old man can do is play wicket-keeper while Magnus here bats and God does the bowling.’” He grasps Pym’s hand, nearly breaking the fingers. “Don’t shrink away from me like that, old son. I’m not angry with you. We’re pals, remember? We don’t have to tiptoe round each other looking in one another’s pockets, poking in drawers, talking to misguided women in hotel cellars. We come out with it straight. On the table. Now dry those old peepers of yours and give your old pal a hug.”