The Casual Vacancy (21 page)

“Crooked as fuck, Si-Pie, isn’t he?” said Fats.

They called him Si-Pie because that was Ruth’s nickname for her husband. Fats had heard her use it once, when he had been over for his tea, and had never called Simon anything else since.

“Yeah, he is,” said Andrew, wondering whether he would be able to dissuade his father from standing by telling him he had the wrong man and the wrong council.

“Bit of a coincidence,” said Fats, “because Cubby’s standing as well.”

Fats exhaled through his nostrils, staring at the crevice wall over Andrew’s head.

“So will voters go for the cunt,” he said, “or the twat?”

Andrew laughed. There was little he enjoyed more than hearing his father called a cunt by Fats.

“Now have a shifty at this,” said Fats, jamming his cigarette between his lips and patting his hips, even though he knew that the envelope was in the inside breast pocket. “Here you go,” he said, pulling it out and opening it to show Andrew the contents: brown peppercorn-sized pods in a powdery mix of shriveled stalks and leaves.

“Sensimilla, that is.”

“What is it?”

“Tips and shoots of your basic unfertilized marijuana plant,” said Fats, “specially prepared for your smoking pleasure.”

“What’s the difference between that and the normal stuff?” asked Andrew, with whom Fats had split several lumps of waxy black cannabis resin in the Cubby Hole.

“Just a different smoke, isn’t it?” said Fats, stubbing out his own cigarette. He took a packet of Rizlas from his pocket, drew out three of the fragile papers and gummed them together.

“Did you get it off Kirby?” asked Andrew, poking at and sniffing the contents of the envelope.

Everyone knew Skye Kirby was the go-to man for drugs. He was a year above them, in the lower sixth. His grandfather was an old hippie, who had been up in court several times for growing his own.

“Yeah. Mind, there’s a bloke called Obbo,” said Fats, slitting cigarettes and emptying the tobacco onto the papers, “in the Fields, who’ll get you anything. Fucking smack, if you want it.”

“You don’t want smack, though,” said Andrew, watching Fats’ face.

“Nah,” said Fats, taking the envelope back, and sprinkling the sensimilla onto the tobacco. He rolled the joint together, licking the end of the papers to seal it, poking the roach in more neatly, twisting the end into a point.

“Nice,” he said happily.

He had planned to tell Andrew his news after introducing the sensimilla as a kind of warm-up act. He held out his hand for Andrew’s lighter, inserted the cardboarded end between his own lips and lit up, taking a deep, contemplative drag, blowing out the smoke in a long blue jet, then repeating the process.

“Mmm,” he said, holding the smoke in his lungs, and imitating Cubby, whom Tessa had given a wine course one Christmas. “Herby. A strong aftertaste. Overtones of…fuck…”

He experienced a massive headrush, even though he was sitting, and exhaled, laughing.

“…try that.”

Andrew leaned across and took the joint, giggling in anticipation, and at the beatific smile on Fats’ face, which was quite at odds with his usual constipated scowl.

Andrew inhaled and felt the power of the drug radiate out from his lungs, unwinding and loosening him. Another drag, and he thought that it was like having your mind shaken out like a duvet, so that it resettled without creases, so that everything became smooth and simple and easy and good.

“Nice,” he echoed Fats, smiling at the sound of his own voice. He passed the joint back into Fats' waiting fingers and savored this sense of well-being.

“So, you wanna hear something interesting?” said Fats, grinning uncontrollably.

“Go on.”

“I fucked her last night.”

Andrew nearly said “who?,” before his befuddled brain remembered: Krystal Weedon, of course; Krystal Weedon, who else?

“Where?” he asked, stupidly. It was not what he wanted to know.

Fats stretched out on his back in his funeral suit, his feet toward the river. Wordlessly, Andrew stretched out beside him, in the opposite direction. They had slept like this, “top and tail,” when they had stayed overnight at each other’s houses as children. Andrew gazed up at the rocky ceiling, where the blue smoke hung, slowly furling, and waited to hear everything.

“I told Cubby and Tess I was at yours, so you know,” said Fats. He passed the joint into Andrew’s reaching fingers, then linked his long hands on his chest, and listened to himself telling. “Then I got the bus to the Fields. Met her outside Oddbins.”

“By Tesco’s?” asked Andrew. He did not know why he kept asking dumb questions.

“Yeah,” said Fats. “We went to the rec. There’s trees in the corner behind the public bogs. Nice and private. It was getting dark.”

Fats shifted position and Andrew handed back the joint.

“Getting in’s harder than I thought it would be,” said Fats, and Andrew was mesmerized, half inclined to laugh, afraid of missing every unvarnished detail Fats could give him. “She was wetter when I was fingering her.”

A giggle rose like trapped gas in Andrew’s chest, but was stifled there.

“Lot of pushing to get in properly. It’s tighter than I thought.”

Andrew saw a jet of smoke rise from the place where Fats’ head must be.

“I came in about ten seconds. It feels fucking great once you’re in.”

Andrew fought back laughter, in case there was more.

“I wore a johnny. It’d be better without.”

He pushed the joint back into Andrew’s hand. Andrew pulled on it, thinking. Harder to get in than you thought; over in ten seconds. It didn’t sound much; yet what wouldn’t he give? He imagined Gaia Bawden flat on her back for him and, without meaning to, let out a small groan, which Fats did not seem to hear. Lost in a fug of erotic images, pulling on the joint, Andrew lay with his erection on the patch of earth his body was warming and listened to the soft rush of the water a few feet from his head.

“What matters, Arf?” asked Fats, after a long, dreamy pause.

His head swimming pleasantly, Andrew answered, “Sex.”

“Yeah,” said Fats, delighted. “Fucking. That’s what matters. Propogun…propogating the species. Throw away the johnnies. Multiply.”

“Yeah,” said Andrew, laughing.

“And death,” said Fats. He had been taken aback by the reality of that coffin, and how little material lay between all the watching vultures and an actual corpse. He was not sorry that he had left before it disappeared into the ground. “Gotta be, hasn’t it? Death.”

“Yeah,” said Andrew, thinking of war and car crashes, and dying in blazes of speed and glory.

“Yeah,” said Fats. “Fucking and dying. That’s it, innit? Fucking and dying. That’s life.”

“Trying to get a fuck and trying not to die.”

“Or trying to die,” said Fats. “Some people. Risking it.”

“Yeah. Risking it.”

There was more silence, and their hiding place was cool and hazy.

“And music,” said Andrew quietly, watching the blue smoke hanging beneath the dark rock.

“Yeah,” said Fats, in the distance. “And music.”

The river rushed on past the Cubby Hole.

I

It rained on Barry Fairbrother’s grave. The ink blurred on the cards. Siobhan’s chunky sunflower head defied the pelting drops, but Mary’s lilies and freesias crumpled, then fell apart. The chrysanthemum oar darkened as it decayed. Rain swelled the river, made streams in the gutters and turned the steep roads into Pagford glossy and treacherous. The windows of the school bus were opaque with condensation; the hanging baskets in the Square became bedraggled, and Samantha Mollison, windscreen wipers on full tilt, suffered a minor collision in the car on the way home from work in the city.

A copy of the
Yarvil and District Gazette
stuck out of Mrs. Catherine Weedon’s door in Hope Street for three days, until it became sodden and illegible. Finally, social worker Kay Bawden tugged it out of the letterbox, peered in through the rusty flap and spotted the old lady spread-eagled at the foot of the stairs. A policeman helped break down the front door, and Mrs. Weedon was taken away in an ambulance to South West General.

Still the rain fell, forcing the sign painter who had been hired to rename the old shoe shop to postpone the job. It poured for days and into the nights, and the Square was full of hunchbacks in waterproofs, and umbrellas collided on the narrow pavements.

Howard Mollison found the gentle patter against the dark window soothing. He sat in the study that had once been his daughter Patricia’s bedroom, and contemplated the email that he had received from the local newspaper. They had decided to run Councillor Fairbrother’s article arguing that the Fields ought to remain with Pagford, but in the interests of balance, they hoped that another councillor might make the case for reassignment in the following issue.

Backfired on you, hasn’t it, Fairbrother?
thought Howard happily.
There you were, thinking you’d have it all your own way…

He closed the email and turned instead to the small pile of papers beside him. These were the letters that had come trickling in, requesting an election to fill Barry’s vacant seat. The constitution stated that it required nine applications to enforce a public vote, and he had received ten. He read them over, while his wife’s and his business partner’s voices rose and fell in the kitchen, stripping bare between them the meaty scandal of old Mrs. Weedon’s collapse and belated discovery.

“…don’t walk out on your doctor for nothing, do you? Screaming at the top of her voice, Karen said —”

“— saying she’d been given the wrong drugs, yes, I know,” said Shirley, who considered that she had a monopoly on medical speculation, given that she was a hospital volunteer. “They’ll run tests up at the General, I expect.”

“I’d be feeling very worried if I were Dr. Jawanda.”

“She’s probably hoping the Weedons are too ignorant to sue, but that won’t matter if the General finds out it was the wrong medication.”

“She’ll be struck off,” said Maureen with relish.

“That’s right,” said Shirley, “and I’m afraid a lot of people will feel good riddance.
Good riddance
.”

Methodically Howard sorted letters into piles. Miles’ completed application forms he set aside on their own. The remaining communications were from fellow Parish Councillors. There were no surprises here; as soon as Parminder had emailed him to tell him that she knew of somebody who was interested in standing for Barry’s seat, he had expected these six to rally round her, demanding an election. Together with Bends-Your-Ear herself, they were the ones he dubbed “The Obstreperous Faction,” whose leader had recently fallen. Onto this pile he placed the completed forms of Colin Wall, their chosen candidate.

Into a third pile he placed four more letters, which were, likewise, from expected sources: professional complainers of Pagford, known to Howard as perennially dissatisfied and suspicious, all prolific correspondents to the
Yarvil and District Gazette
. Each had their own obsessive interest in some esoteric local issue, and considered themselves “independent minded”; they would be the ones most likely to scream “nepotism” if Miles had been co-opted; but they were among the most anti-Fields people in town.

Howard took the last two letters in each hand, weighing them up. One of them was from a woman whom he had never met, who claimed (Howard took nothing for granted) to work at the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic (the fact that she styled herself “Ms.” inclined him to believe her). After some hesitation, he placed this on top of Cubby Wall’s application forms.

The last letter, unsigned and typed on a word processor, demanded an election in intemperate terms. It had an air of haste and carelessness and was littered with typos. The letter extolled the virtues of Barry Fairbrother and named Miles specifically as “unfit to fill his sheos.” Howard wondered whether Miles had a disgruntled client out there who might prove to be an embarrassment. It was good to be forewarned of such potential hazards. However, Howard doubted whether the letter, being anonymous, counted as a vote for an election. He therefore fed it into the little desktop shredder that Shirley had given him for Christmas.

II

Edward Collins & Co., the Pagford solicitors, occupied the upper floor of a terraced brick house, with an optician’s on the ground floor. Edward Collins was deceased and his firm comprised two men: Gavin Hughes who was the salaried partner, with one window in his office, and Miles Mollison, who was the equity partner, with two windows. They shared a secretary who was twenty-eight, single, plain but with a good figure. Shona laughed too long at all Miles’ jokes, and treated Gavin with a patronage that was almost offensive.

The Friday after Barry Fairbrother’s funeral, Miles knocked on Gavin’s door at one o’clock and entered without waiting for a summons. He found his partner looking up at the dark gray sky through the rain-speckled window.

“I’m going to nip up the road for lunch,” said Miles. “If Lucy Bevan’s early, will you tell her I’ll be back at two? Shona’s out.”

“Yeah, fine,” said Gavin.

“Everything all right?”

“Mary’s called. There’s a bit of a glitch with Barry’s life insurance. She wants me to help her sort it.”

“Right, well, you can handle that, can’t you? I’ll be back at two, anyway.”

Miles slipped on his overcoat, jogged down the steep stairs and walked briskly up the rain-swept little street that led to the Square. A momentary break in the clouds caused sunlight to flood the glistening war memorial and the hanging baskets. Miles experienced a rush of atavistic pride as he hurried across the Square towards Mollison and Lowe, that Pagford institution, that classiest of emporia; a pride that familiarity had never blighted, but rather deepened and ripened.

The bell tinkled at the door as Miles pushed it open. There was something of a lunchtime rush on: a queue of eight waited at the counter and Howard, in his mercantile regalia, fisherman’s flies glinting in his deerstalker, was in full tongue.

“…and a quarter of black olives, Rosemary, to
you.
Nothing else, now? Nothing else for Rosemary…that’ll be eight pounds, sixty-two pence; we’ll call it eight, my love, in light of our long and fruitful association…”

Giggles and gratitude; the rattle and crash of the till.

“And here’s my lawyer, come to check up on me,” boomed Howard, winking and chuckling over the heads of the queue at Miles. “If you’ll wait for me in the back, sir, I’ll try not to say anything incriminating to Mrs. Howson…”

Miles smiled at the middle-aged ladies, who beamed back. Tall, with thick, close-cropped graying hair, big round blue eyes, his paunch disguised by his dark overcoat, Miles was a reasonably attractive addition to the hand-baked biscuits and local cheeses. He navigated his way carefully between the little tables piled high with delicacies and paused at the big arch hewn between delicatessen and the old shoe shop, which was denuded of its protective plastic curtain for the first time. Maureen (Miles recognized the handwriting) had put up a sign on a sandwich board in the middle of the arch:
No Entry. Coming Soon…The Copper Kettle.
Miles peered through into the clean, spare space that would soon be Pagford’s newest and best café; it was plastered and painted, with freshly varnished black boards underfoot.

He sidled around the corner of the counter and edged past Maureen, who was operating the meat slicer, affording her the opportunity for a gruff and ribald laugh, then ducked through the door that led into the dingy little back room. Here was a Formica table, on which Maureen’s
Daily Mail
lay folded; Howard’s and Maureen’s coats hanging on hooks, and a door leading to the lavatory, which exuded a scent of artificial lavender. Miles hung up his overcoat and drew up an old chair to the table.

Howard appeared a minute or two later, bearing two heaped plates of delicatessen fare.

“Definitely decided on the ‘Copper Kettle’ then?” asked Miles.

“Well, Mo likes it,” said Howard, setting down a plate in front of his son.

He lumbered out, returned with two bottles of ale, and closed the door with his foot so that the room was enveloped in a windowless gloom relieved only by the dim pendant light. Howard sat down with a deep grunt. He had been conspiratorial on the telephone midmorning, and kept Miles waiting a few moments longer while he flipped off the lid of one bottle.

“Wall’s sent his forms in,” he said at last, handing over the beer.

“Ah,” said Miles.

“I’m going to set a deadline. Two weeks from today for everyone to declare.”

“Fair enough,” said Miles.

“Mum reckons this Price bloke is still interested. Have you asked Sam if she knows who he is yet?”

“No,” said Miles.

Howard scratched an underfold of the belly that rested close to his knees as he sat on the creaking chair.

“Everything all right with you and Sam?”

Miles admired, as always, his father’s almost psychic intuition.

“Not great.”

He would not have confessed it to his mother, because he tried not to fuel the constant cold war between Shirley and Samantha, in which he was both hostage and prize.

“She doesn’t like the idea of me standing,” Miles elaborated. Howard raised his fair eyebrows, his jowls wobbling as he chewed. “I don’t bloody know what’s got into her. She’s on one of her anti-Pagford kicks.”

Howard took his time swallowing. He dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin and burped.

“She’ll come round quickly enough once you’re in,” he said. “The social side of it. Plenty for the wives. Functions at Sweetlove House. She’ll be in her element.” He took another swig of ale and scratched his belly again.

“I can’t picture this Price,” said Miles, returning to the essential point, “but I’ve got a feeling he had a kid in Lexie’s class at St. Thomas’s.”

“Fields-born, though, that’s the thing,” said Howard. “Fields-born, which could work to our advantage. Split the pro-Fields vote between him and Wall.”

“Yeah,” said Miles. “Makes sense.”

This had not occurred to him. He marveled at the way his father’s mind worked.

“Mum’s already rung his wife and got her to download the forms for him. I might get Mum to call him back tonight, tell her he’s got two weeks, try and force his hand.”

“Three candidates then?” said Miles. “With Colin Wall.”

“I haven’t heard of anyone else. It’s possible, once details hit the website, someone else’ll come forward. But I’m confident about our chances. I’m confident. Aubrey called,” Howard added. There was always a touch of additional portentousness in Howard’s tone when he used Aubrey Fawley’s Christian name. “Right behind you, goes without saying. He’s back this evening. He’s been in town.”

Usually, when a Pagfordian said “in town,” they meant “in Yarvil.” Howard and Shirley used the phrase, in imitation of Aubrey Fawley, to mean “in London.”

“He mentioned something about us all getting together for a chat. Maybe tomorrow. Might even invite us over to the house. Sam’d like that.”

Miles had just taken a large bite of soda bread and liver pâté, but he conveyed his agreement with an emphatic nod. He liked the idea that Aubrey Fawley was “right behind” him. Samantha might jeer at his parents’ thralldom to the Fawleys, but Miles noticed that on those rare occasions when Samantha came face-to-face with either Aubrey or Julia, her accent changed subtly and her demeanor became markedly more demure.

“Something else,” said Howard, scratching his belly again. “Got an email from the
Yarvil and District Gazette
this morning. Asking for my views on the Fields. As chair of the Parish Council.”

“You’re kidding? I thought Fairbrother had stitched that one up —”

“Backfired, didn’t it?” said Howard, with immense satisfaction. “They’re going to run his article, and they want someone to argue against the following week. Give them the other side of the story. I’d appreciate a hand. Lawyer’s turn of phrase, and all that.”

“No problem,” said Miles. “We could talk about that bloody addiction clinic. That’d make the point.”

“Yes — very good idea — excellent.”

In his enthusiasm, he had swallowed too much at once and Miles had to bang him on the back until his coughing had subsided. At last, dabbing his watering eyes with a napkin, Howard said breathlessly, “Aubrey’s recommending the District cuts funding from their end, and I’m going to put it to our lot that it’s time to terminate the lease on the building. It wouldn’t hurt to make the case in the press. How much time and money’s gone into that bloody place with nothing to show for it. I’ve got the figures.” Howard burped sonorously. “Bloody disgraceful. Pardon me.”

III

Gavin cooked for Kay at his house that evening, opening tins and crushing garlic with a sense of ill usage.

After a row, you had to say certain things to secure a truce: those were the rules, everyone knew that. Gavin had telephoned Kay from his car on the way back from Barry’s burial and told her that he wished she had been there, that the whole day had been horrible and that he hoped he could see her that night. He considered these humble admissions no more or less than the price he had to pay for an evening of undemanding companionship.