The Casual Vacancy

Duplicity

7.25 A resolution should not deal with more than one subject … Disregard of this rule usually leads to confused discussion and may lead to confused action …

Charles Arnold-Baker

Local Council Administration,

Seventh Edition





I


‘… ran out of here, screaming blue murder, calling her a Paki bitch – and now the paper’s called for a comment, because she’s …’

Parminder heard the receptionist’s voice, barely louder than a whisper, as she passed the door of the staff meeting room, which was ajar. One swift light step, and Parminder had pulled it open to reveal one of the receptionists and the practice nurse in close proximity. Both jumped and spun round.

‘Doct’ Jawan—’

‘You understand the confidentiality agreement you signed when you took this job, don’t you, Karen?’

The receptionist looked aghast.

‘Yeah, I – I wasn’t – Laura already – I was coming to give you this note. The Yarvil and District Gazette’s rang. Mrs Weedon’s died and one of her granddaughters is saying—’

‘And are those for me?’ asked Parminder coldly, pointing at the patient records in Karen’s hand.

‘Oh – yeah,’ said Karen, flustered. ‘He wanted to see Dr Crawford, but—’

‘You’d better get back to the front desk.’

Parminder took the patient records and strode back out to reception, fuming. Once there, and facing the patients, she realized that she did not know whom to call, and glanced down at the folder in her hand.

‘Mr – Mr Mollison.’

Howard heaved himself up, smiling, and walked towards her with his familiar rocking gait. Dislike rose like bile in Parminder’s throat. She turned and walked back to her surgery, Howard following her.

‘All well with Parminder?’ he asked, as he closed her door and settled himself, without invitation, on the patient’s chair.

It was his habitual greeting, but today it felt like a taunt.

‘What’s the problem?’ she asked brusquely.

‘Bit of an irritation,’ he said. ‘Just here. Need a cream, or something.’

He tugged his shirt out of his trousers and lifted it a few inches. Parminder saw an angry red patch of skin at the edge of the fold where his stomach spilt out over his upper legs.

‘You’ll need to take your shirt off,’ she said.

‘It’s only here that’s itching.’

‘I need to see the whole area.’

He sighed and got to his feet. As he unbuttoned his shirt he said, ‘Did you get the agenda I sent through this morning?’

‘No, I haven’t checked emails today.’

This was a lie. Parminder had read his agenda and was furious about it, but this was not the moment to tell him so. She resented his trying to bring council business into her surgery, his way of reminding her that there was a place where she was his subordinate, even if here, in this room, she could order him to strip.

‘Could you, please – I need to look under …’

He hoisted the great apron of flesh upwards; the upper legs of his trousers were revealed, and finally the waistband. With his arms full of his own fat he smiled down at her. She drew her chair nearer, her head level with his belt.

An ugly scaly rash had spread in the hidden crease of Howard’s belly: a bright scalded red, it stretched from one side to the other of his torso like a huge, smeared smile. A whiff of rotting meat reached her nostrils.

‘Intertrigo,’ she said, ‘and lichen simplex there, where you’ve scratched. All right, you can put your shirt back on.’

He dropped his belly and reached for his shirt, unfazed.

‘You’ll see I’ve put the Bellchapel building on the agenda. It’s generating a bit of press interest at the moment.’

She was tapping something into the computer, and did not reply.

‘Yarvil and District Gazette,’ Howard said. ‘I’m doing them an article. Both sides,’ he said, buttoning up his shirt, ‘of the question.’

She was trying not to listen to him, but the sound of the newspaper’s name caused the knot in her stomach to tighten.

‘When did you last have your blood pressure done, Howard? I’m not seeing a test in the last six months.’

‘It’ll be fine. I’m on medication for it.’

‘We should check, though. As you’re here.’

He sighed again, and laboriously rolled up his sleeve.

‘They’ll be printing Barry’s article before mine,’ he said. ‘You know he sent them an article? About the Fields?’

‘Yes,’ she said, against her own better judgement.

‘Haven’t got a copy, have you? So I don’t duplicate anything he’s said?’

Her fingers trembled a little on the cuff. It would not meet around Howard’s arm. She unfastened it and got up to fetch a bigger one.

‘No,’ she said, her back to him. ‘I never saw it.’

He watched her work the pump, and observed the pressure dial with the indulgent smile of a man observing some pagan ritual.

‘Too high,’ she told him, as the needle registered one hundred and seventy over a hundred.

‘I’m on pills for it,’ he said, scratching where the cuff had been, and letting down his sleeve. ‘Dr Crawford seems happy.’

She scanned the list of his medications onscreen.

‘You’re on amlodipine and bendroflumethiazide for your blood pressure, yes? And simvastatin for your heart … no beta-blocker …’

‘Because of my asthma,’ said Howard, tweaking his sleeve straight.

‘… right … and aspirin.’ She turned to face him. ‘Howard, your weight is the single biggest factor in all of your health problems. Have you ever been referred to the nutritionist?’

‘I’ve run a deli for thirty-five years,’ he said, still smiling. ‘I don’t need teaching about food.’

‘A few lifestyle changes could make a big difference. If you were able to lose …’

With the ghost of a wink, he said comfortably, ‘Keep it simple. All I need is cream for the itch.’

Venting her temper on the keyboard, Parminder banged out prescriptions for anti-fungal and steroid creams, and when they were printed, handed them to Howard without another word.

‘Thank you kindly,’ he said, as he heaved himself out of the chair, ‘and a very good day to you.’





II


‘Wha’ d’you wan’?’

Terri Weedon’s shrunken body was dwarfed by her own doorway. She put claw-like hands on either jamb, trying to make herself more imposing, barring the entrance. It was eight in the morning; Krystal had just left with Robbie.

‘Wanna talk ter yeh,’ said her sister. Broad and mannish in her white vest and tracksuit bottoms, Cheryl sucked on a cigarette and squinted at Terri through the smoke. ‘Nana Cath’s died,’ she said.

‘Wha’?’

‘Nana Cath’s died,’ repeated Cheryl loudly. ‘Like you f*ckin’ care.’

But Terri had heard the first time. The news had hit her so hard in the guts that she had asked to hear it again out of confusion.

‘Are you blasted?’ demanded Cheryl, glaring into the taut and empty face.

‘F*ck off. No, I ain’t.’

It was the truth. Terri had not used that morning; she had not used for three weeks. She took no pride in it; there was no star chart pinned up in the kitchen; she had managed longer than this before, months, even. Obbo had been away for the past fortnight, so it had been easier. But her works were still in the old biscuit tin, and the craving burned like an eternal flame inside her frail body.

‘She died yesterday. Danielle on’y f*ckin’ bothered to lemme know this mornin’,’ said Cheryl. ‘An’ I were gonna go up the ’ospital an’ see ’er again today. Danielle’s after the ’ouse. Nana Cath’s ’ouse. Greedy bitch.’

Terri had not been inside the little terraced house on Hope Street for a long time, but when Cheryl spoke she saw, very vividly, the knick-knacks on the sideboard and the net curtains. She imagined Danielle there, pocketing things, ferreting in cupboards.

‘Funeral’s Tuesday at nine, up the crematorium.’

‘Right,’ said Terri.

‘It’s our ’ouse as much as Danielle’s,’ said Cheryl. ‘I’ll tell ’er we wan’ our share. Shall I?’

‘Yeah,’ said Terri.

She watched until Cheryl’s canary hair and tattoos had vanished around the corner, then retreated inside.

Nana Cath dead. They had not spoken for a long time. I’m washin’ my ’ands of yeh. I’ve ’ad enough, Terri, I’ve ’ad it. She had never stopped seeing Krystal, though. Krystal had become her blue-eyed girl. She had been to watch Krystal row in her stupid boat races. She had said Krystal’s name on her deathbed, not Terri’s.

Fine, then, you old bitch. Like I care. Too late now.

Tight-chested and trembling, Terri moved through her stinking kitchen in search of cigarettes, but really craving the spoon, the flame and the needle.

Too late, now, to say to the old lady what she ought to have said. Too late, now, to become again her Terri-Baby. Big girls don’t cry … big girls don’t cry … It had been years before she had realized that the song Nana Cath had sung her, in her rasping smoker’s voice, was really ‘Sherry Baby’.

Terri’s hands scuttled like vermin through the debris on the work tops, searching for fag packets, ripping them apart, finding them all empty. Krystal had probably had the last of them; she was a greedy little cow, just like Danielle, riffling through Nana Cath’s possessions, trying to keep her death quiet from the rest of them.

There was a long stub lying on a greasy plate; Terri wiped it off on her T-shirt and lit it on the gas cooker. Inside her head, she heard her own eleven-year-old voice.

I wish you was my mummy.

She did not want to remember. She leaned up against the sink, smoking, trying to look forward, to imagine the clash that was coming between her two older sisters. Nobody messed with Cheryl and Shane: they were both handy with their fists, and Shane had put burning rags through some poor bastard’s letter box not so long ago; it was why he’d done his last stretch, and he would still be inside if the house had not been empty at the time. But Danielle had weapons Cheryl did not: money and her own home, and a landline. She knew official people and how to talk to them. She was the kind that had spare keys, and mysterious bits of paperwork.

Yet Terri doubted that Danielle would get the house, even with her secret weapons. There were more than just the three of them; Nana Cath had had loads of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After Terri had been taken into care, her father had had more kids. Nine in total, Cheryl reckoned, to five different mothers. Terri had never met her half-siblings, but Krystal had told her that Nana Cath saw them.

‘Yeah?’ she had retorted. ‘I hope they rob her blind, the stupid old bitch.’

So she saw the rest of the family, but they weren’t exactly angels, from all that Terri had heard. It was only she, who had once been Terri-Baby, whom Nana Cath had cut adrift for ever.

When you were straight, evil thoughts and memories came pouring up out of the darkness inside you; buzzing black flies clinging to the insides of your skull.

I wish you was my mummy.

In the vest top that Terri was wearing today, her scarred arm, neck and upper back were fully exposed, swirled into unnatural folds and creases like melted ice cream. She had spent six weeks in the burns unit of South West General when she was eleven.

(‘How did it happen, love?’ asked the mother of the child in the next bed.

Her father had thrown a pan of burning chip fat at her. Her Human League T-shirt had caught fire.

‘’Naccident,’ Terri muttered. It was what she had told everyone, including the social worker and the nurses. She would no sooner have shopped her father than chosen to burn alive.

Her mother had walked out shortly after Terri’s eleventh birthday, leaving all three daughters behind. Danielle and Cheryl had moved in with their boyfriends’ families within days. Terri had been the only one left, trying to make chips for her father, clinging to the hope that her mother would come back. Even through the agony and the terror of those first days and nights in the hospital, she had been glad it had happened, because she was sure that her mum would hear about it and come and get her. Every time there was movement at the end of the ward, Terri’s heart would leap.

But in six long weeks of pain and loneliness, the only visitor had been Nana Cath. Through quiet afternoons and evenings, Nana Cath had come to sit beside her granddaughter, reminding her to say thank you to the nurses, grim-faced and strict, yet leaking unexpected tenderness.

She brought Terri a cheap plastic doll in a shiny black mac, but when Terri undressed her, she had nothing on underneath.

‘She’s got no knickers, Nana.’

And Nana Cath had giggled. Nana Cath never giggled.

I wish you was my mummy.

She had wanted Nana Cath to take her home. She had asked her to, and Nana Cath had agreed. Sometimes Terri thought that those weeks in hospital had been the happiest of her life, even with the pain. It had been so safe, and people had been kind to her and looked after her. She had thought that she was going home with Nana Cath, to the house with the pretty net curtains, and not back to her father; not back to the bedroom door flying open in the night, banging off the David Essex poster Cheryl had left behind, and her father with his hand on his fly, approaching the bed where she begged him not to … )

The adult Terri threw the smoking filter of the cigarette stub down onto the kitchen floor and strode to her front door. She needed more than nicotine. Down the path and along the street she marched, walking in the same direction as Cheryl. Out of the corner of her eye she saw them, two of her neighbours chatting on the pavement, watching her go by. Like a f*cking picture? It’ll last longer. Terri knew that she was a perennial subject of gossip; she knew what they said about her; they shouted it after her sometimes. The stuck-up bitch next door was forever whining to the council about the state of Terri’s garden. F*ck them, f*ck them, f*ck them …

She was jogging along, trying to outrun the memories.

You don’t even know who the father is, do yeh, yer whore? I’m washin’ my ’ands of yeh, Terri, I’ve ’ad enough.

That had been the last time they had ever spoken, and Nana Cath had called her what everyone else called her, and Terri had responded in kind.

F*ck you, then, you miserable old cow, f*ck you.

She had never said, ‘You let me down, Nana Cath.’ She had never said, ‘Why didn’t you keep me?’ She had never said, ‘I loved you more than anyone, Nana Cath.’

She hoped to God Obbo was back. He was supposed to be back today; today or tomorrow. She had to have some. She had to.

‘All righ’, Terri?’

‘Seen Obbo?’ she asked the boy who was smoking and drinking on the wall outside the off licence. The scars on her back felt as though they were burning again.

He shook his head, chewing, leering at her. She hurried on. Nagging thoughts of the social worker, of Krystal, of Robbie: more buzzing flies, but they were like the staring neighbours, judges all; they did not understand the terrible urgency of her need.

(Nana Cath had collected her from the hospital and taken her home to the spare room. It had been the cleanest, prettiest room Terri had ever slept in. On each of the three evenings she had spent there, she had sat up in bed after Nana Cath had kissed her goodnight, and rearranged the ornaments beside her on the windowsill. There had been a tinkling bunch of glass flowers in a glass vase, a plastic pink paperweight with a shell in it and Terri’s favourite, a rearing pottery horse with a silly smile on its face.

‘I like horses,’ she had told Nana Cath.

There had been a school trip to the agricultural show, in the days before Terri’s mother had left. The class had met a gigantic black Shire covered in horse brasses. She was the only one brave enough to stroke it. The smell had intoxicated her. She had hugged its column of a leg, ending in the massive feathered white hoof, and felt the living flesh beneath the hair, while her teacher said, ‘Careful, Terri, careful!’ and the old man with the horse had smiled at her and told her it was quite safe, Samson wouldn’t hurt a nice little girl like her.

The pottery horse was a different colour: yellow with a black mane and tail.

‘You can ’ave it,’ Nana Cath told her, and Terri had known true ecstasy.

But on the fourth morning her father had arrived.

‘You’re comin’ home,’ he had said, and the look on his face had terrified her. ‘You’re not stayin’ with that f*ckin’ grassin’ old cow. No, you ain’t. No, you ain’t, you little bitch.’

Nana Cath was as frightened as Terri.

‘Mikey, no,’ she kept bleating. Some of the neighbours were peering through the windows. Nana Cath had Terri by one arm, and her father had the other.

‘You’re coming home with me!’

He blacked Nana Cath’s eye. He dragged Terri into his car. When he got her back to the house, he beat and kicked every bit of her he could reach.)

‘Seen Obbo?’ Terri shouted at Obbo’s neighbour, from fifty yards away. ‘Is ’e back?’

‘I dunno,’ said the woman, turning away.

(When Michael was not beating Terri, he was doing the other things to her, the things she could not talk about. Nana Cath did not come any more. Terri ran away at thirteen, but not to Nana Cath’s; she did not want her father to find her. They caught her anyway, and put her into care.)

Terri thumped on Obbo’s door and waited. She tried again, but nobody came. She sank onto the doorstep, shaking and began to cry.

Two truanting Winterdown girls glanced at her as they passed.

‘Tha’s Krystal Weedon’s mum,’ one of them said loudly.

‘The prozzie?’ the other replied at the top of her voice.

Terri could not muster the strength to swear at them, because she was crying so hard. Snorting and giggling, the girls strode out of sight.

‘Whore!’ one of them called back from the end of the street.





III


Gavin could have invited Mary into his office to discuss the most recent exchange of letters with the insurance company, but decided to visit her at home instead. He had kept the late afternoon free of appointments, on the off-chance that she might ask him to stay for something to eat; she was a fantastic cook.

His instinctive shying away from her naked grief had been dissipated by regular contact. He had always liked Mary, but Barry had eclipsed her in company. Not that she ever appeared to dislike her supporting role; on the contrary, she had seemed delighted to beautify the background, happy laughing at Barry’s jokes, happy simply to be with him.

Gavin doubted that Kay had ever been happy to play second fiddle in her life. Crashing the gears as he drove up Church Row, he thought that Kay would have been outraged by any suggestion that she modify her behaviour or suppress her opinions for the sake of her partner’s enjoyment, his happiness or his self-esteem.

He did not think that he had ever been unhappier in a relationship than he was now. Even in the death throes of the affair with Lisa, there had been temporary truces, laughs, sudden poignant reminders of better times. The situation with Kay was like war. Sometimes he forgot that there was supposed to be any affection between them; did she even like him?

They had had their worst ever argument by telephone on the morning after Miles and Samantha’s dinner party. Eventually, Kay had slammed down the receiver, cutting Gavin off. For a full twenty-four hours he had believed that their relationship was at an end, and although this was what he wanted he had experienced more fear than relief. In his fantasies, Kay simply disappeared back to London, but the reality was that she had tethered herself to Pagford with a job and a daughter at Winterdown. He faced the prospect of bumping into her wherever he went in the tiny town. Perhaps she was already poisoning the well of gossip against him; he imagined her repeating some of the things she had said to him on the telephone to Samantha, or to that nosy old woman in the delicatessen who gave him goose-flesh.

I uprooted my daughter and left my job and moved house for you, and you treat me like a hooker you don’t have to pay.

People would say that he had behaved badly. Perhaps he had behaved badly. There must have been a crucial point when he ought to have pulled back, but he had not seen it.

Gavin spent the whole weekend brooding on how it would feel to be seen as the bad guy. He had never been in that position before. After Lisa had left him, everybody had been kind and sympathetic, especially the Fairbrothers. Guilt and dread dogged him until, on Sunday evening, he cracked and called Kay to apologize. Now he was back where he did not want to be, and he hated Kay for it.

Parking his car in the Fairbrothers’ drive, as he had done so often when Barry was alive, he headed for the front door, noticing that somebody had mowed the lawn since he had last called. Mary answered his ring on the doorbell almost instantaneously.

‘Hi, how – Mary, what’s wrong?’

Her whole face was wet, her eyes brimming with diamond-bright tears. She gulped once or twice, shook her head, and then, without quite knowing how it had happened, Gavin found himself holding her in his arms on the doorstep.

‘Mary? Has something happened?’

He felt her nod. Acutely aware of their exposed position, of the open road behind him, Gavin manoeuvred her inside. She was small and fragile in his arms; her fingers clutched at him, her face pressed into his coat. He relinquished his briefcase as gently as he could, but the sound of it hitting the floor made her withdraw from him, her breath short as she covered her mouth with her hands.

‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry … oh God, Gav …’

‘What’s happened?’

His voice sounded different from usual: forceful, take command, more like the way Miles sometimes talked in a crisis at work.

‘Someone’s put … I don’t … someone’s put Barry’s …’

She beckoned him into the home office, cluttered, shabby and cosy, with Barry’s old rowing trophies on the shelves, and a big framed photograph on the wall of eight teenage girls punching the air, with medals around their necks. Mary pointed a trembling finger at the computer screen. Still in his coat, Gavin dropped into the chair and stared at the message board of Pagford Parish Council’s website.

‘I w-was in the delicatessen this morning, and Maureen Lowe told me that lots of people had put messages of condolence on the site … so I was going to p-post a message to s-say thank you. And – look …’

He spotted it as she spoke. Simon Price Unfit to Stand for Council, posted by The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Gavin in disgust.

Mary dissolved into tears again. Gavin wanted to put his arms back around her, but was afraid to, especially here, in this snug little room so full of Barry. He compromised by taking hold of her thin wrist and leading her through the hall into the kitchen.

‘You need a drink,’ he told her, in that unfamiliarly strong and commanding voice. ‘Sod coffee. Where’s the proper stuff?’

But he remembered before she answered; he had seen Barry take the bottles out of the cupboard often enough, so he mixed her a small gin and tonic, which was the only thing he had ever known her drink before dinner.

‘Gav, it’s four in the afternoon.’

‘Who gives a damn?’ said Gavin, in his new voice. ‘Get that down you.’

An unbalanced laugh broke her sobs; she accepted the glass and sipped. He fetched her kitchen roll to mop her face and eyes.

‘You’re so kind, Gav. Don’t you want anything? Coffee or … or beer?’ she asked, on another weak laugh.

He fetched himself a bottle from the fridge, took off his coat and sat down opposite her at the island in the middle of the room. After a while, when she had drunk most of her gin, she became calm and quiet again, the way he always thought of her.

‘Who d’you think did it?’ she asked him.

‘Some total bastard,’ said Gavin.

‘They’re all fighting over his council seat, now. Squabbling away over the Fields as usual. And he’s still in there, putting his two cents in. The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother. Maybe it really is him, posting on the message board?’

Gavin did not know whether this was meant as a joke, and settled for a slight smile that might be quickly removed.

‘You know, I’d love to think that he’s worrying about us, wherever he is; about me and the kids. But I doubt it. I’ll bet he’s still most worried about Krystal Weedon. Do you know what he’d probably say to me if he was here?’

She drained her glass. Gavin had not thought that he had mixed the gin very strong, but there were patches of high colour on her cheeks.

‘No,’ he said cautiously.

‘He’d tell me that I’ve got support,’ said Mary, and to Gavin’s astonishment, he heard anger in the voice he always thought of as gentle. ‘Yeah, he’d probably say, “You’ve got all the family and our friends and the kids to comfort you, but Krystal,”’ Mary’s voice was becoming louder, ‘“Krystal’s got nobody to look out for her.” D’you know what he spent our wedding anniversary doing?’

‘No,’ said Gavin again.

‘Writing an article for the local paper about Krystal. Krystal and the Fields. The bloody Fields. If I never hear them mentioned again, it’ll be too soon. I want another gin. I don’t drink enough.’

Gavin picked up her glass automatically and returned to the drinks cupboard, stunned. He had always regarded her and Barry’s marriage as literally perfect. Never had it occurred to him that Mary might be other than one hundred per cent approving of every venture and crusade with which the ever-busy Barry concerned himself.

‘Rowing practice in the evenings, driving them to races at the weekends,’ she said, over the tinkling of ice he was adding to her glass, ‘and most nights he was on the computer, trying to get people to support him about the Fields, and getting stuff on the agenda for council meetings. And everyone always said, “Isn’t Barry marvellous, the way he does it all, the way he volunteers, he’s so involved with the community.”’ She took a big gulp of her fresh gin and tonic. ‘Yes, marvellous. Absolutely marvellous. Until it killed him. All day long, on our wedding anniversary, struggling to meet that stupid deadline. They haven’t even printed it yet.’

Gavin could not take his eyes off her. Anger and alcohol had restored colour to her face. She was sitting upright, instead of cowed and hunched over, as she had been recently.

‘That’s what killed him,’ she said clearly, and her voice echoed a little in the kitchen. ‘He gave everything to everybody. Except to me.’

Ever since Barry’s funeral, Gavin had dwelled, with a sense of deep inadequacy, on the comparatively small gap that he was sure he would leave behind in his community, should he die. Looking at Mary, he wondered whether it would not be better to leave a huge hole in one person’s heart. Had Barry not realized how Mary felt? Had he not realized how lucky he was?

The front door opened with a loud clatter, and he heard the sound of the four children coming in; voices and footsteps and the thumping of shoes and bags.

‘Hi, Gav,’ said eighteen-year-old Fergus, kissing his mother on top of her head. ‘Are you drinking, Mum?’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Gavin. ‘Blame me.’

They were such nice kids, the Fairbrother kids. Gavin liked the way they talked to their mother, hugged her, chatted to each other and to him. They were open, polite and funny. He thought of Gaia, her vicious asides, silences like jagged glass, the snarling way she addressed him.

‘Gav, we haven’t even talked about the insurance,’ said Mary, as the children surged around the kitchen, finding themselves drinks and snacks.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Gavin, without thinking, before correcting himself hastily; ‘shall we go through to the sitting room or …?’

‘Yes, let’s.’

She wobbled a little getting down from the high kitchen stool, and he caught her arm again.

‘Are you staying for dinner, Gav?’ called Fergus.

‘Do, if you want to,’ said Mary.

A surge of warmth flooded him.

‘I’d love to,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’