2. MARMADUKE CANVASSING

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

More about horrible Lauderdale

Marmaduke Lauderdale had won his first seat in the House of Commons the only way he knew how, and that was by lying through his teeth. He’d followed the example of the Prime Minister, who always said what he thought his audience wanted to hear even if he had no idea what a truthful answer might be to any particular question and made one up.

The thing about habitual liars is some are disbelieved and yet are forgiven because there is some endearing quirk to their character that makes forgiveness the natural thing for an audience to do, whilst others are disbelieved because the look on their faces suggests they’re taking the piss out of their questioners and ought to be behind bars rather than in the street campaigning for things that never did exist, and are rarely forgiven.

Marmaduke Lauderdale was a dreadful liar. He knew his only way through the political maelstrom was to keep the people happy, which occasionally involved untruths. That was all well and good if they were happy at what he told them. Let us follow him round a run-down council estate where those least able to cope with a difficult situation lived their troubled lives.

He wasn’t looking forwards to trying to convince the inhabitants of this estate to vote for him. They might have done last time, but things have got more difficult for them since then. First, there was the fallout of Brexit and all the easily predicted problems that leaving the EU brought home to the ordinary guy on the street. So he knocked on the first door and a whiskery man opened it and recognised him.

“Do you know why I’m whiskery, Mr politician?” asked the whiskery man.

“Because it suits you, sir?” suggested Marmaduke, and he continued to condemn himself by saying, “I was thinking of growing a coat of designer stubble myself, but my wife won’t let me: she says it’s like sandpaper when we kiss!”

“You’re not married,” growls the whiskery constituent, “and I doubt you ever kiss anyone, because eit would take an extraordinarily stupid woman to want to kiss you!”

He’s got me there, thought Marmaduke, but he smiled broadly and said “you’ve got me there, sir! I was only trying to catch you out!”

“Well, let me tell you why I’m hideously whiskery,” said his constituent, taking a threatening step towards him, “I’m whiskery because I can’t afford to plug my electric shaver in on account of the price of electricity, and the cost of a new pack of blades for a wet shave is beyond me! So what are you going to do about it? I work a fifteen hour day on what you lot say is less than the minimum wage, but it just ain’t enough. Guess what, squire, I’m likely to be homeless next time the rent man calls, and my wife and kids with me…”

“But things are looking up, sir!” smiled Marmaduke, “maybe you can’t see it, but we’re heading for a glorious age of untold riches! Before long you’ll feel yourself levelled up to the same richness as the Queen herself!”

“You said that last time and it wasn’t true then and it won’t be true now!” groaned the whiskery constituent, and he slammed the door into Marmaduke’s face.

O dear me, thought Marmaduke, that didn’t go so well. Did I promise him all those things last time? The fool shouldn’t have remembered. It’s not fair when thickies on the street remember what I say to them!

By which time he had reached the house next door. It had ancient net curtains blocking out the grubby windows, and when he knocked the woman who opened it had clearly not attended to the knotted state of her hair for some days, making a youngish woman look positively old.

“Oh, it’s you again!” she said in a slightly cracked voice, “I’ve got a complaint to make for you to look into. I ask you this, how am I supposed to pay for a second hand let alone a new school uniform for my Josie who’d been sent home ‘cause she hasn’t got one, when I can’t afford the food I’m supposed to put on the table, and we all go hungry?”

He thought for a moment and smiled at her, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth event though one of them was cracked, and decided to resort to his fictitious wife for an explanation..

“It’s a matter of skill,” he said, “now just you listen to this: my wife goes to the shops like all wives do and buys a few things for the week’s dinners and lunches and even breakfasts. She has the skill to know what is good for us and what is least expensive. Then, when she gets home she divides her purchases into meals and prepares the first one for that day. There are the two of us, and for not much more than fifty pence she has produced my dinner as well as her own, and it’s delicious and nutritious. Tonight we’re having some beef, with Yorkshire puddings, carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a delicious desert she hasn’t yet prepared! And all for, what, thirty pence each!”

The hair-bedraggled women spat in his face. “If you expect me to believe that then you must think I’m as stupid as you are!” she snapped, and slammed the door into his freshly moistened face.

Well well, I remember her from last time, he thought bitterly, I thought she was rather desirable back then. I almost offered to share her bed for the odd hour, just to demonstrate how good life can be…

While he was reliving an event which might have happened, but hadn’t, he made his way to next door, and knocked it after he’d struggled past a FOR SALE sign.

The elderly gentleman who opened it looked at him and nodded slowly to himself.

“I know who you are,” he said quietly, “you’re the b*****d who told me last time you came this way and had the cheek to knock my door that I’d be happy for the rest of my days, that my taps would run with wine if I wanted them to, that my wonderful wife would be all smiles when we tripped up the stairs to bed together and that our twilight years would prove that voting for you was the best thing I could have done.”

Oh no, not another, thought Marmaduke, but he smiled anyway. “I’m sure the other problems in the world have put the brakes on what we might have achieved,” he said blithely, “the international price of fuel, for instance, it’s something beyond our control and I’m sorry about that…”

He looks like a smart enough guy, he thought, smiling as broadly as he could despite a slight ache in his cracked tooth, he’ll swallow that all right...

But the smart elderly man had a shock for him. “Your boss said it was alright to ignore caution and throw our pandemic masks away, now that the Covid thing has passed. He was on the telly doing that, saying it all, making out that he’d been in hospital himself ill with it, and coming out all smiles… So we did as he said and guess what? She’s passed on, and I loved her more than you’ll ever know, the gas was cut off last week so I can’t even boil a kettle, and before you knocked my door I swallowed quite a handful of pills that are bound to solve all my problems once I’m gone to join her...”

Then, like a Shakespearean actor he slowly and painfully fell to the floor, banging his head on the door frame and even to a clown he was most obviously dying.

“Crikey!” thought Marmaduke Lauderdale, MP, and he scurried away, hoping that nobody had seen him knocking that particular door, and decided to go canvassing in a better area.

It was quite a distance to that better area, but he had his car and made the journey swiftly.

Once there, he nervously knocked the first door. There was nobody in.

“I don’t know who you are, but they’re both out,” contributed a neighbour, “he’s at work and she’s touting for business on the town hall steps…”

“Then I’ll talk to you,” he said brightly, though having watch an elderly man drop dead he didn’t feel all that bright, “it’s about the forthcoming election…”

“Then go away,” frowned the neighbour, “round here we don’t believe a word any politician says, they’re all bleeding liars, and they’re not getting our vote, none of them, the lying toads.”

“Fair enough,” he muttered, and scurried off, very much like a toad who had been busy lying. But he knew one thing: if nobody voted for anyone, then he’d keep his seat because there’d be nobody else to sit in it.

Which seemed a pretty good solution to him.

...

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© 2022 Peter Rogerson

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Reviews

keith

an enjoyable read that carries the truth of today as well yesterdays
i like the cast of characters all well portrayed with enough detail to imagine them as intended
there is truth within this piece

i cannot put my finger on it, but there is something missing that keeps this from being a great write
perhaps it only needs time on the shelf, then a thoughtful reread and minor adjustment
it has good pace, very believable cast and certainly good storyline
but then what do i know? ... i know it has great potential!