The Casual Vacancy (10 page)

They pulled out of the car park, ahead of the free buses, and set off through Yarvil, past the ugly, broken-down houses of the Fields, toward the bypass that would speed them back to Pagford. Tessa watched Fats in the rearview mirror. He was slumped in the back, gazing out of the window, as though his parents were two people who had picked him up hitchhiking, connected to him merely by chance and proximity.

Colin waited until they reached the bypass; then he asked, “Where were you when you should have been in computing this afternoon?”

Tessa glanced irresistibly into the mirror again. She saw her son yawn. Sometimes, even though she denied it endlessly to Colin, Tessa wondered whether Fats really was waging a dirty, personal war on his father with the whole school as audience. She knew things about her son she would not have known if she had not worked in guidance; students told her things, sometimes innocently, sometimes slyly.

Miss, do you mind Fats smoking? D’you let him do it at home?

She locked away this small repository of illicit booty, obtained unintentionally, and brought it to neither her husband’s nor her son’s attention, even though it dragged at her, weighed on her.

“Went for a walk,” Fats said calmly. “Thought I’d stretch the old legs.”

Colin twisted in his seat to look at Fats, straining against his seat belt as he shouted, his gestures further restricted and hampered by his overcoat and briefcase. When he lost control, Colin’s voice rose higher and higher, so that he was shouting almost in falsetto. Through it all, Fats sat in silence, an insolent half-smile curving his thin mouth, until his father was screaming insults at him, insults that were blunted by Colin’s innate dislike of swearing, his self-consciousness when he did it.

“You cocky, self-centered little…little
shit,
” he screamed, and Tessa, whose eyes were so full of tears that she could barely see the road, was sure that Fats would be duplicating Colin’s timid, falsetto swearing for the benefit of Andrew Price tomorrow morning.

Fats does a great imitation of Cubby’s walk, miss, have you seen it?

“How dare you talk to me like that? How
dare
you skip classes?”

Colin screamed and raged, and Tessa had to blink the tears out of her eyes as she took the turning to Pagford and drove through the Square, past Mollison and Lowe, the war memorial and the Black Canon; she turned left at St. Michael and All Saints into Church Row, and, at last, into the driveway of their house, by which time Colin had shouted himself into squeaky hoarseness and Tessa’s cheeks were glazed and salty. When they all got out, Fats, whose expression had not altered a whit during his father’s long diatribe, let himself in through the front door with his own key, and proceeded upstairs at a leisurely pace without looking back.

Colin threw his briefcase down in the dark hall and rounded on Tessa. The only illumination came from the stained-glass panel over the front door, which cast strange colors over his agitated, domed and balding head, half bloody, half ghostly blue.

“D’you see?” he cried, waving his long arms, “D’you see what I’m dealing with?”

“Yes,” she said, taking a handful of tissues from the box on the hall table and mopping her face, blowing her nose. “Yes, I do.”

“Not a thought in his head for what we’re going through!” said Colin, and he started to sob, big whooping dry sobs, like a child with croup. Tessa hurried forward and put her arms around Colin’s chest, a little above his waist, for, short and stout as she was, that was the highest bit she could reach. He stooped, clinging to her; she could feel his trembling, and the heaving of his rib cage under his coat.

After a few minutes, she gently disengaged herself, led him into the kitchen and made him a pot of tea.

“I’m going to take a casserole up to Mary’s,” said Tessa, after she had sat for a while, stroking his hand. “She’s got half the family there. We’ll get an early night, once I’m back.”

He nodded and sniffed, and she kissed him on the side of his head before heading out to the freezer. When she came back, carrying the heavy, icy dish, he was sitting at the table, cradling his mug in his big hands, his eyes closed.

Tessa set down the casserole, wrapped in a polythene bag, on the tiles beside the front door. She pulled on the lumpy green cardigan she often wore instead of a jacket, but did not put on her shoes. Instead, she tiptoed upstairs to the landing and then, taking less trouble to be quiet, up the second flight to the loft conversion.

A swift burst of ratlike activity greeted her approach to the door. She knocked, giving Fats time to hide whatever it was he had been looking at online, or, perhaps, the cigarettes he did not know she knew about.

“Yeah?”

She pushed open the door. Her son was crouching stagily over his schoolbag.

“Did you have to play truant today, of all days?”

Fats straightened up, long and stringy; he towered over his mother.

“I was there. I came in late. Bennett didn’t notice. He’s useless.”

“Stuart, please.
Please
.”

She wanted to shout at the kids at work, sometimes, too. She wanted to scream,
You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it’s whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God.

“Your father’s very upset, Stu. Because of Barry. Can’t you understand that?”

“Yes,” said Fats.

“I mean, it’s like Arf dying would be to you.”

He did not respond, nor did his expression alter much, yet she sensed his disdain, his amusement.

“I know you think you and Arf are very different orders of being to the likes of your father and Barry —”

“No,” said Fats, but only, she knew, in the hope of ending the conversation.

“I’m going to take some food over to Mary’s house. I am begging you, Stuart, not to do anything else to upset your father while I’m gone. Please, Stu.”

“Fine,” he said, with half a laugh, half a shrug. She felt his attention swooping, swallowlike, back to his own concerns, even before she had closed the door.

VI

The spiteful wind blew away the low-hanging cloud of late afternoon and, at sunset, died out. Three houses along from the Walls’, Samantha Mollison sat facing her lamp-lit reflection in the dressing-table mirror, and found the silence and the stillness depressing.

It had been a disappointing couple of days. She had sold virtually nothing. The sales rep from Champêtre had turned out to be a jowly man with an abrasive manner and a holdall full of ugly bras. Apparently he reserved his charm for the preliminaries, for in person he was all business, patronizing her, criticizing her stock, pushing for an order. She had been imagining somebody younger, taller and sexier; she had wanted to get him and his garish underwear out of her little shop as quickly as possible.

She had bought a “with deepest sympathy” card for Mary Fairbrother that lunchtime, but could not think what to write in it, because, after their nightmare journey to the hospital together, a simple signature did not seem enough. Their relationship had never been close. You bumped up against each other all the time in a place as small as Pagford, but she and Miles had not really
known
Barry and Mary. If anything, it might have been said that they were in opposing camps, what with Howard and Barry’s endless clashes about the Fields…not that she, Samantha, gave a damn one way or another. She held herself above the smallness of local politics.

Tired, out of sorts and bloated after a day of indiscriminate snacking, she wished that she and Miles were not going to dinner at her parents-in-law’s. Watching herself in the mirror, she put her hands flat against the sides of her face and pulled the skin gently back towards her ears. A younger Samantha emerged by millimeters. Turning her face slowly from side to side, she examined this taut mask. Better, much better. She wondered what it would cost; how much it would hurt; whether she would dare. She tried to imagine what her mother-in-law would say if she appeared with a firm new face. Shirley and Howard were, as Shirley frequently reminded them, helping to pay for their granddaughters’ education.

Miles entered the bedroom; Samantha released her skin and picked up her under-eye concealer, tilting her head back, as she always did when applying makeup: it pulled the slightly sagging skin at her jaw taut and minimized the pouches under her eyes. There were short, needle-deep lines at the edges of her lips. These could be filled, she had read, with a synthetic, injectable compound. She wondered how much difference that would make; it would surely be cheaper than a facelift, and perhaps Shirley would not notice. In the mirror over her shoulder, she saw Miles pulling off his tie and shirt, his big belly spilling over his work trousers.

“Weren’t you meeting someone today? Some rep?” he asked. Idly he scratched his hairy navel, staring into the wardrobe.

“Yes, but it wasn’t any good,” said Samantha. “Crappy stuff.”

Miles enjoyed what she did; he had grown up in a home where retail was the only business that mattered, and he had never lost the respect for commerce that Howard had instilled in him. Then there were all the opportunities for jokes, and for other less subtly disguised forms of self-congratulation that her line of trade afforded. Miles never seemed to tire of making the same old quips or the same sly allusions.

“Bad fit?” he inquired knowledgeably.

“Bad design. Horrible colors.”

Samantha brushed and tied back her thick dry brown hair, watching Miles in the mirror as he changed into chinos and a polo shirt. She was on edge, feeling that she might snap or cry at the smallest provocation.

Evertree Crescent was only a few minutes away, but Church Row was steep, so they drove. Darkness was falling properly, and at the top of the road they passed a shadowy man with Barry Fairbrother’s silhouette and gait; it gave Samantha a shock and she glanced back at him, wondering who he could be. Miles’ car turned left at the top of the road, then, barely a minute later, right, into the half-moon of 1930s bungalows.

Howard and Shirley’s house, a low, wide-windowed building of red brick, boasted generous sweeps of green lawn at the front and back, which were mown into stripes during the summer by Miles. During the long years of their occupancy, Howard and Shirley had added carriage lamps, a white wrought-iron gate and terracotta pots full of geraniums on either side of the front door. They had also put up a sign beside the doorbell, a round, polished piece of wood on which was written, in old Gothic black lettering complete with quotation marks, “Ambleside.”

Samantha was sometimes cruelly witty at the expense of her parents-in-law’s house. Miles tolerated her jibes, accepting the implication that he and Samantha, with their stripped-back floors and doors, their rugs on bare boards, their framed art prints and their stylish, uncomfortable sofa, had the better taste; but in his secret soul he preferred the bungalow in which he had grown up. Nearly every surface was covered with something plushy and soft; there were no drafts and the reclining chairs were deliciously comfortable. After he mowed the lawn in the summer, Shirley would bring him a cool beer while he lay back in one of them, watching the cricket on the wide-screen TV. Sometimes one of his daughters would come with him and sit beside him, eating ice cream with chocolate sauce especially made for her granddaughters by Shirley.

“Hello, darling,” said Shirley, when she opened the door. Her short, compact shape suggested a neat little pepper pot, in its sprigged apron. She stood on tiptoe for her tall son to kiss her, then said, “Hello, Sam,” and turned away immediately. “Dinner’s nearly ready. Howard! Miles and Sam are here!”

The house smelled of furniture polish and good food. Howard emerged from the kitchen, a bottle of wine in one hand, a corkscrew in the other. In a practiced move, Shirley backed smoothly into the dining room, enabling Howard, who took up almost the entire width of the hall, to pass, before she trotted into the kitchen.

“Here they are, the good Samaritans,” boomed Howard. “And how’s the brassiere business, Sammy? Breasting the recession all right?”

“Business is surprisingly bouncy, actually, Howard,” said Samantha.

Howard roared with laughter, and Samantha was sure that he would have patted her on the bottom if he had not been holding the corkscrew and bottle. She tolerated all of her father-in-law’s little squeezes and slaps as the harmless exhibitionism of a man grown too fat and old to do anything more; in any case, it annoyed Shirley, which always pleased Samantha. Shirley never showed her displeasure openly; her smile did not flicker, nor did her tone of sweet reasonableness falter, but within a short time of any of Howard’s mild lewdnesses, she always tossed a dart, hidden in a feathery flourish, at her daughter-in-law. Mention of the girls’ escalating school fees, solicitous inquiries about Samantha’s diet, asking Miles whether he did not think Mary Fairbrother had an awfully pretty figure; Samantha endured it all, smiling, and punished Miles for it later.

“Hello, Mo!” said Miles, preceding Samantha into what Howard and Shirley called the lounge. “Didn’t know you were going to be here!”

“Hello, handsome,” said Maureen, in her deep, gravelly voice. “Give me a kiss.”

Howard’s business partner was sitting in a corner of the sofa, clutching a tiny glass of sherry. She was wearing a fuchsia pink dress with dark stockings and high patent-leather heels. Her jet-black hair was heavily lacquered into a bouffant, beneath which her face was pale and monkeyish, with a thick smear of shocking pink lipstick that puckered as Miles bent low to kiss her cheek.

“Been talking business. Plans for the new café. Hello, Sam, sweetheart,” Maureen added, patting the sofa beside her. “Oh, you are lovely and tanned, is that still from Ibiza? Come sit down by me. What a shock for you at the golf club. It must have been ghastly.”

“Yes, it was,” said Samantha.

And for the first time she found herself telling somebody the story of Barry’s death, while Miles hovered, looking for a chance to interrupt. Howard handed out large glasses of Pinot Grigio, paying close attention to Samantha’s account. Gradually, in the glow of Howard’s and Maureen’s interest, with the alcohol kindling a comforting fire inside her, the tension Samantha had carried with her for two days seemed to drain away and a fragile sense of well-being blossomed.