The Casual Vacancy (25 page)

“Oh, yes?” said Maureen, switching her hungry gaze to Gaia. “Have you got experience?”

But Howard boomed over her, telling Gaia all about the delicatessen and how he liked to think it was a bit of a Pagford institution, a bit of a landmark.

“Thirty-five years, it’s been,” said Howard, with a majestic disdain of his own mural. “The young lady’s new to town, Mo,” he added.

“And you two are after jobs as well, are you?” Maureen asked Sukhvinder and Andrew.

Sukhvinder shook her head; Andrew made an equivocal movement with his shoulders; but Gaia said, with her eyes on the girl, “Go on. You said you might.”

Howard considered Sukhvinder, who would most certainly not appear to advantage in a tight black dress and frilly apron; but his fertile and flexible mind was firing in all directions. A compliment to her father — something of a hold over her mother — an unasked favor granted; there were matters beyond the purely aesthetic that ought, perhaps, to be considered here.

“Well, if we get the business we’re expecting, we could probably do with two,” he said, scratching his chins with his eyes on Sukhvinder, who had blushed unattractively.

“I don’t…” she said, but Gaia urged her.

“Go on. Together.”

Sukhvinder was flushed, and her eyes were watering.

“I…”

“Go on,” whispered Gaia.

“I…all right.”

“We’ll give you a trial, then, Miss Jawanda,” said Howard.

Doused in fear, Sukhvinder could hardly breathe. What would her mother say?

“And I suppose you’re wanting to be potboy, are you?” Howard boomed at Andrew.

Potboy?

“It’s heavy lifting we need, my friend,” said Howard, while Andrew blinked at him nonplussed: he had only read the large type at the top of the sign. “Pallets into the stockroom, crates of milk up from the cellar and rubbish bagged up at the back. Proper manual labor. Do you think you can handle that?”

“Yeah,” said Andrew. Would he be there when Gaia was there? That was all that mattered.

“We’ll need you early. Eight o’clock, probably. We’ll say eight till three, and see how it goes. Trial period of two weeks.”

“Yeah, fine,” said Andrew.

“What’s your name?”

When Howard heard it, he raised his eyebrows.

“Is your father Simon? Simon Price?”

“Yeah.”

Andrew was unnerved. Nobody knew who his father was, usually.

Howard told the two girls to come back on Sunday afternoon, when the till was to be delivered, and he would be at liberty to instruct them; then, though he showed an inclination to keep Gaia in conversation, a customer entered, and the teenagers took their chance to slip outside.

Andrew could think of nothing to say once they found themselves on the other side of the tinkling glass door; but before he could marshal his thoughts, Gaia threw him a careless “bye,” and walked away with Sukhvinder. Andrew lit up the second of Fats’ three fags (this was no time for a half-smoked stub), which gave him an excuse to remain stationary while he watched her walk away into the lengthening shadows.

“Why do they call him ‘Peanut,’ that boy?” Gaia asked Sukhvinder, once they were out of earshot of Andrew.

“He’s allergic,” said Sukhvinder. She was horrified at the prospect of telling Parminder what she had done. Her voice sounded like somebody else’s. “He nearly died at St. Thomas’s; somebody gave him one hidden in a marshmallow.”

“Oh,” said Gaia. “I thought it might be because he had a tiny dick.”

She laughed, and so did Sukhvinder, forcing herself, as though jokes about penises were all she heard, day in, day out.

Andrew saw them both glance back at him as they laughed, and knew that they were talking about him. The giggling might be a hopeful sign; he knew that much about girls, anyway. Grinning at nothing but the cooling air, he walked off, schoolbag over his shoulder, cigarette in his hand, across the Square towards Church Row, and thence to forty minutes of steep climbing up out of town to Hilltop House.

The hedgerows were ghostly pale with white blossom in the dusk, blackthorn blooming on either side of him, celandine fringing the lane with tiny, glossy heart-shaped leaves. The smell of the flowers, the deep pleasure of the cigarette and the promise of weekends with Gaia; everything blended together into a glorious symphony of elation and beauty as Andrew puffed up the hill. The next time Simon said “got a job, Pizza Face?” he would be able to say “yes.” He was going to be Gaia Bawden’s weekend workmate.

And, to cap it all, he knew at last exactly how he might plunge an anonymous dagger straight between his father’s shoulder blades.

VII

Once the first impulse of spite had worn off, Samantha bitterly regretted inviting Gavin and Kay to dinner. She spent Friday morning joking with her assistant about the dreadful evening she was bound to have, but her mood plummeted once she had left Carly in charge of Over the Shoulder Boulder Holders (a name that had made Howard laugh so hard the first time he had heard it that it had brought on an asthma attack, and which made Shirley scowl whenever it was spoken in her presence). Driving back to Pagford ahead of the rush hour, so that she could shop for ingredients and start cooking, Samantha tried to cheer herself up by thinking of nasty questions to ask Gavin. Perhaps she might wonder aloud why Kay had not moved in with him: that would be a good one.

Walking home from the Square with bulging Mollison and Lowe carrier bags in each hand, she came across Mary Fairbrother beside the cash-point machine in the wall of Barry’s bank.

“Mary, hi…how are you?”

Mary was thin and pale, with gray patches around her eyes. Their conversation was stilted and strange. They had not spoken since the journey in the ambulance, barring brief, awkward condolences at the funeral.

“I’ve been meaning to drop in,” Mary said, “you were so kind — and I wanted to thank Miles —”

“No need,” Samantha said awkwardly.

“Oh, but I’d like —”

“Oh, but then, please do —”

After Mary had walked away, Samantha had the awful feeling that she might have given the impression that that evening would be a perfect time for Mary to come round.

Once home, she dropped the bags in the hall and telephoned Miles at work to tell him what she had done, but he displayed an infuriating equanimity about the prospect of adding a newly widowed woman to their foursome.

“I can’t see what the problem is, really,” he said. “Nice for Mary to get out.”

“But I didn’t say we were having Gavin and Kay over —”

“Mary likes Gav,” said Miles. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

He was, Samantha thought, being deliberately obtuse, no doubt in retaliation for her refusal to go to Sweetlove House. After she had hung up, she wondered whether to call Mary to tell her not to come that evening, but she was afraid of sounding rude, and settled for hoping that Mary would find herself unequal to calling in after all.

Stalking into the sitting room, she put on Libby’s boy band DVD at full volume so that she would be able to hear it in the kitchen, then carried the bags through and set to work preparing a casserole and her fall-back pudding, Mississippi mud pie. She would have liked to buy one of Mollison and Lowe’s large gateaux, to save herself some work, but it would have got straight back to Shirley, who frequently intimated that Samantha was overreliant on frozen food and ready meals.

Samantha knew the boy band DVD so well by now that she was able to visualize the images matching the music blaring through to the kitchen. Several times that week, while Miles was upstairs in his home study or on the telephone to Howard, she had watched it again. When she heard the opening bars of the track where the muscular boy walked, with his shirt flapping open, along the beach, she went through to watch in her apron, absentmindedly sucking her chocolatey fingers.

She had planned on having a long shower while Miles laid the table, forgetting that he would be late home, because he had to drive into Yarvil to pick up the girls from St. Anne’s. When Samantha realized why he had not returned, and that their daughters would be with him when he did, she had to fly around to organize the dining room herself, then find something to feed Lexie and Libby before the guests arrived. Miles found his wife in her work clothes at half past seven, sweaty, cross and inclined to blame him for what had been her own idea.

Fourteen-year-old Libby marched into the sitting room without greeting Samantha and removed the disc from the DVD player.

“Oh, good, I was wondering what I’d done with that,” she said. “Why’s the TV on? Have you been
playing
it?”

Sometimes, Samantha thought that her younger daughter had a look of Shirley about her.

“I was watching the news, Libby. I haven’t got time to watch DVDs. Come through, your pizza’s ready. We’ve got people coming round.”

“Frozen pizza
again?
”

“Miles! I need to change. Can you mash the potatoes for me? Miles?”

But he had disappeared upstairs, so Samantha pounded the potatoes herself, while her daughters ate at the island in the middle of the kitchen. Libby had propped the DVD cover against her glass of Diet Pepsi, and was ogling it.

“Mikey’s
so lush,
” she said, with a carnal groan that took Samantha aback; but the muscular boy was called Jake. Samantha was glad they did not like the same one.

Loud and confident Lexie was jabbering about school; a machine-gun torrent of information about girls whom Samantha did not know, with whose antics and feuds and regroupings she could not keep up.

“All right, you two, I’ve got to change. Clear away when you’re done, all right?”

She turned down the heat under the casserole and hurried upstairs. Miles was buttoning up his shirt in the bedroom, watching himself in the wardrobe mirror. The whole room smelled of soap and aftershave.

“Everything under control, hon?”

“Yes, thanks. So glad you’ve had time to shower,” spat Samantha, pulling out her favorite long skirt and top, slamming the wardrobe door.

“You could have one now.”

“They’ll be here in ten minutes; I won’t have time to dry my hair and put on makeup.” She kicked off her shoes; one of them hit the radiator with a loud clang. “When you’ve finished preening, could you please go downstairs and sort out drinks?”

After Miles had left the room, she tried to untangle her thick hair and repair her makeup. She looked awful. Only when she had changed did she realize that she was wearing the wrong bra for her clinging top. After a frantic search, she remembered that the right one was drying in the utility room; she hurried out onto the landing but the doorbell rang. Swearing, she scuttled back to the bedroom. The boy band’s music was blaring out of Libby’s room.

Gavin and Kay had arrived on the dot of eight because Gavin was afraid of what Samantha might say if they turned up late; he could imagine her suggesting that they had lost track of time because they were shagging or that they must have had a row. She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people’s love lives. She also thought that her crass, uninhibited way of talking, especially when drunk, constituted trenchant humor.

“Hello-ello-ello,” said Miles, moving back to let Gavin and Kay inside. “Come in, come in. Welcome to Casa Mollison.”

He kissed Kay on both cheeks and relieved her of the chocolates she was holding.

“For us? Thanks very much. Lovely to meet you properly at last. Gav’s been keeping you under wraps for far too long.”

Miles shook the wine out of Gavin’s hand, then clapped him on the back, which Gavin resented.

“Come on through, Sam’ll be down in a mo. What’ll you have to drink?”

Kay would ordinarily have found Miles rather smooth and over-familiar, but she was determined to suspend judgment. Couples had to mix with each other’s circles, and manage to get along in them. This evening represented significant progress in her quest to infiltrate the layers of his life to which Gavin had never admitted her, and she wanted to show him that she was at home in the Mollisons’ big, smug house, that there was no need to exclude her anymore. So she smiled at Miles, asked for a red wine, and admired the spacious room with its stripped pine floorboards, its over-cushioned sofa and its framed prints.

“Been here for, ooh, getting on for fourteen years,” said Miles, busy with the corkscrew. “You’re down in Hope Street, aren’t you? Nice little houses, some great fixer-upper opportunities down there.”

Samantha appeared, smiling without warmth. Kay, who had previously seen her only in an overcoat, noted the tightness of her orange top, beneath which every detail of her lacy bra was clearly visible. Her face was even darker than her leathery chest; her eye makeup was thick and unflattering and her jangling gold earrings and high-heeled golden mules were, in Kay’s opinion, tarty. Samantha struck her as the kind of woman who would have raucous girls’ nights out, and find stripograms hilarious, and flirt drunkenly with everyone else’s partner at parties.

“Hi there,” said Samantha. She kissed Gavin and smiled at Kay. “Great, you’ve got drinks. I’ll have the same as Kay, Miles.”

She turned away to sit down, having already taken stock of the other woman’s appearance: Kay was small-breasted and heavy-hipped, and had certainly chosen her black trousers to minimize the size of her bottom. She would have done better, in Samantha’s opinion, to wear heels, given the shortness of her legs. Her face was attractive enough, with even-toned olive skin, large dark eyes and a generous mouth; but the closely cropped boy’s hair and the resolutely flat shoes were undoubtedly pointers to certain sacrosanct Beliefs. Gavin had done it again: he had gone and picked another humorless, domineering woman who would make his life a misery.

“So!” said Samantha brightly, raising her glass. “Gavin-and-Kay!”

She saw, with satisfaction, Gavin’s hangdog wince of a smile; but before she could make him squirm more or weasel private information out of them both to dangle over Shirley’s and Maureen’s heads, the doorbell rang again.

Mary appeared fragile and angular, especially beside Miles, who ushered her into the room. Her T-shirt hung from protruding collarbones.