Best Kept Secret

at the hall were to take half an hour off between four and four thirty this
afternoon.’
    ‘Any particular reason?’
    ‘To vote, sir.’
    Giles looked embarrassed. ‘How many votes?’ he whispered.
    ‘Six for you, sir, and one undecided.’ Giles raised an eyebrow. ‘The new gardener, sir, has ideas above his station. Thinks he’s a Tory.’
    ‘Then let’s hope I don’t lose by one vote,’ said Giles as he ran out of the front door.
    Jessica was standing in the driveway holding the car door open for him, as she did every morning. ‘Can I come with you, Uncle Giles?’ she asked.
    ‘Not this time. But I promise you’ll be by my side at the next election. I’ll tell everyone you’re my girlfriend, and then I’ll win by a landslide.’
    ‘Isn’t there anything I can do to help?’
    ‘No . . . yes. Do you know the new gardener?’
    ‘Albert? Yes, he’s very nice.’
    ‘He’s thinking of voting Conservative. See if you can convert him by four o’clock this afternoon.’
    ‘I will, I will,’ said Jessica as Giles climbed in behind the wheel.

    Giles parked outside the entrance to the docks just before 7 a.m. He shook hands with every man before they clocked on for the morning shift, and with everyone coming off the
night shift. He was surprised how many of them wanted to talk to him.
    ‘I won’t let you down this time, guv.’
    ‘You can count on me.’
    ‘I’m on my way to the polls right now.’
    When Dave Coleman, the night foreman, clocked off, Giles took him to one side and asked if he knew the reason for the men’s fervour.
    ‘A lot of them think it’s high time you sorted out your marital problems,’ said Coleman, who was known for his bluntness, ‘but they detest Major stuck-up Fisher so much,
they certainly wouldn’t want him representing our grievances in Parliament. At a personal level,’ he added, ‘I would have respected Fisher more if he’d had the courage to
show his face on the docks. There are a handful of Tories in the union, but he hasn’t even bothered to find out who they are.’
    Giles was heartened by the response he received when he visited the W.D. & H.O. Wills cigarette factory, and again when he went on to meet the workers at the Bristol Aeroplane Company. But
he knew that on the day of a general election, every candidate is convinced he is going to win, even the Liberals.
    Giles turned up at the first committee room a few minutes after ten. The local chairman told him that 22 per cent of their known supporters had already voted, which was in line with the 1951
election, when Giles had won by 414 votes.
    ‘What about the Tories?’ Giles asked.
    ‘Sixteen per cent.’
    ‘How does that compare with ’fifty-one?’
    ‘They’re up one per cent,’ admitted the committee room chairman.
    By the time Giles had reached the eighth committee room, it was just after 4 p.m. Miss Parish was standing by the door waiting for him, a plate of cheese and tomato sandwiches in one hand, a
large glass of milk in the other. Miss Parish was one of the few people on the Woodbine estate who owned a fridge.
    ‘How’s it going?’ Giles asked.
    ‘Thank heavens it rained between ten and four, but now the sun’s come out. I’m beginning to believe that God might be a socialist. But we’ve still got a lot of work to do
if we’re going to make up the lost ground in the last five hours.’
    ‘You’ve never called an election wrong, Iris. What are you predicting?’
    ‘The truth?’
    ‘The truth.’
    ‘Too close to call.’
    ‘Then let’s get back to work.’ Giles began to move around the room, thanking every one of the helpers.
    ‘Your family have come up trumps,’ said Miss Parish, ‘remembering they’re Tories.’
    ‘Emma can turn her hand to anything.’
    ‘She’s good,’ said Miss Parish, as Giles watched his sister transferring the figures just in from a polling station to the canvass sheet. ‘But it’s young Sebastian
who’s the superstar. If we had ten of him, we’d never lose.’
    Giles smiled. ‘So where is the young man at the moment?’
    ‘Either on his way to a polling station, or on his way back. He doesn’t believe in standing still.’

    Sebastian was actually standing still, waiting for a teller to hand over the latest list of names so he could get them back to Miss Parish, who continued to fuel him on Tizer
and Fry’s milk chocolate, despite the occasional disapproving look from his mother.
    ‘The trouble is,’ the