The Casual Vacancy

Lunacy

5.11 At common law, idiots are subject to a permanent legal incapacity to vote, but persons of unsound mind may vote during lucid intervals.

Charles Arnold-Baker

Local Council Administration,

Seventh Edition





I


Samantha Mollison had now bought herself all three of the DVDs released by Libby’s favourite boy band. She kept them hidden in her socks and tights drawer, beside her diaphragm. She had her story ready, if Miles spotted them: they were a gift for Libby. Sometimes at work, where business was slower than ever, she searched the internet for pictures of Jake. It was during one of these trawling sessions – Jake in a suit but with no shirt, Jake in jeans and a white vest – that she discovered that the band was playing at Wembley in a fortnight’s time.

She had a friend from university who lived in West Ealing. She could stay over, sell it to Libby as a treat, a chance to spend time together. With more genuine excitement than she had felt in a long time, Samantha managed to buy two very expensive tickets for the concert. When she let herself into the house that evening, she glowed with a delicious secret, almost as though she were coming home from a date.

Miles was already in the kitchen, still in his work suit, with the phone in his hand. He stared at her as she entered, and his expression was strange, difficult to read.

‘What?’ said Samantha, a little defensively.

‘I can’t get hold of Dad,’ said Miles. ‘His bloody phone’s engaged. There’s been another post.’

And when Samantha looked nonplussed, he said with a trace of impatience, ‘Barry Fairbrother’s Ghost! Another message! On the council website!’

‘Oh,’ said Samantha, unwinding her scarf. ‘Right.’

‘Yeah, I met Betty Rossiter just now, coming up the street; she was full of it. I’ve checked the message board, but I can’t see it. Mum must’ve taken it down already – well, I bloody hope she has, she’ll be in the firing line if Bends-Your-Ear goes to a lawyer.’

‘About Parminder Jawanda, was it?’ asked Samantha, her tone deliberately casual. She did not ask what the accusation had been, first, because she was determined not to be a nosy, gossiping old bag like Shirley and Maureen, and secondly, because she thought she already knew: that Parminder had caused the death of old Cath Weedon. After a moment or two, she asked, sounding vaguely amused, ‘Did you say your mother might be in the firing line?’

‘Well, she’s the site administrator, so she’s liable if she doesn’t get rid of defamatory or potentially defamatory statements. I’m not sure she and Dad understand how serious this could be.’

‘You could defend your mother, she’d like that.’

But Miles had not heard; he was pressing redial and scowling, because his father’s mobile was still engaged.

‘This is getting serious,’ he said.

‘You were all quite happy when it was Simon Price who was getting attacked. Why’s this any different?’

‘If it’s a campaign against anyone on the council, or standing for council …’

Samantha turned away to hide her grin. His concern was not about Shirley after all.

‘But why would anyone write stuff about you?’ she asked innocently. ‘You haven’t got any guilty secrets.’

You might be more bloody interesting if you had.

‘What about that letter?’

‘What letter?’

‘For God’s – Mum and Dad said there was a letter, an anonymous letter about me! Saying I wasn’t fit to fill Barry Fairbrother’s shoes!’

Samantha opened the freezer and stared at the unappetizing contents, aware that Miles could no longer see her expression with the door open.

‘You don’t think anyone’s got anything on you, do you?’ she asked.

‘No – but I’m a lawyer, aren’t I? There might be people with a grudge. I don’t think this kind of anonymous stuff … I mean, so far it’s all about the other side, but there could be reprisals … I don’t like the way this thing’s going.’

‘Well, that’s politics, Miles,’ said Samantha, openly amused. ‘Dirty business.’

Miles stalked out of the room, but she did not care; her thoughts had already returned to chiselled cheekbones, winged eyebrows and taut, tight abdominal muscles. She could sing along with most of the songs now. She would buy a band T-shirt to wear – and one for Libby too. Jake would be undulating mere yards away from her. It would be more fun than she had had in years.

Howard, meanwhile, was pacing up and down the closed delicatessen with his mobile phone clamped to his ear. The blinds were down, the lights were on, and through the archway in the wall Shirley and Maureen were busy in the soon-to-be-opened café, unpacking china and glasses, talking in excited undertones and half listening to Howard’s almost monosyllabic contributions to his conversation.

‘Yes … mm, hmm … yes …’

‘Screaming at me,’ said Shirley. ‘Screaming and swearing. “Take it bloody down,” she said. I said, “I’m taking it down, Dr Jawanda, and I’ll thank you not to swear at me.”’

‘I’d’ve left it up there for another couple of hours if she’d sworn at me,’ said Maureen.

Shirley smiled. As it happened, she had chosen to go and make herself a cup of tea, leaving the anonymous post about Parminder up on the site for an extra forty-five minutes before removing it. She and Maureen had already picked over the topic of the post until it was ragged and bare; there was plenty of scope for further dissection, but the immediate urge was sated. Instead, Shirley looked ahead, greedily, to Parminder’s reaction to having her secret spilt in public.

‘It can’t have been her who did that post about Simon Price, after all,’ said Maureen.

‘No, obviously not,’ said Shirley, as she wiped over the pretty blue and white china that she had chosen, overruling Maureen’s preference for pink. Sometimes, though not directly involved in the business, Shirley liked to remind Maureen that she still had huge influence, as Howard’s wife.

‘Yes,’ said Howard, on the telephone. ‘But wouldn’t it be better to …? Mm, hmm …’

‘So who do you think it is?’ asked Maureen.

‘I really don’t know,’ said Shirley, in a genteel voice, as though such knowledge or suspicions were beneath her.

‘Someone who knows the Prices and the Jawandas,’ said Maureen.

‘Obviously,’ said Shirley again.

Howard hung up at last.

‘Aubrey agrees,’ he told the two women, waddling through into the café. He was clutching today’s edition of the Yarvil and District Gazette. ‘Very weak piece. Very weak indeed.’

It took the two women several seconds to recollect that they were supposed to be interested in the posthumous article by Barry Fairbrother in the local newspaper. His ghost was so much more interesting.

‘Oh, yes; well, I thought it was very poor when I read it,’ said Shirley, hurriedly catching up.

‘The interview with Krystal Weedon was funny,’ guffawed Maureen. ‘Making out she enjoyed art. I suppose that’s what she calls graffiti-ing the desks.’

Howard laughed. As an excuse to turn her back, Shirley picked up Andrew Price’s spare EpiPen from the counter, which Ruth had dropped into the delicatessen that morning. Shirley had looked up EpiPens on her favourite medical website, and felt fully competent to explain how adrenalin worked. Nobody asked, though, so she put the small white tube away in the cupboard and closed the door as noisily as she could to try and disrupt Maureen’s further witticisms.

The phone in Howard’s huge hand rang.

‘Yes, hello? Oh, Miles, yes … yes, we know all about it … Mum saw it this morning …’ He laughed. ‘Yes, she’s taken it down … I don’t know … I think it was posted yesterday … Oh, I wouldn’t say that … we’ve all known about Bends-Your-Ear for years …’

But Howard’s jocularity faded as Miles talked. After a while he said, ‘Ah … yes, I see. Yes. No, I hadn’t considered it from … perhaps we should get someone to have a look at security …’

The sound of a car in the darkening square outside went virtually unremarked by the three in the delicatessen, but its driver noticed the enormous shadow of Howard Mollison moving behind the cream blinds. Gavin put his foot down, eager to get to Mary. She had sounded desperate on the telephone.

‘Who’s doing this? Who’s doing it? Who hates me this much?’

‘Nobody hates you,’ he had said. ‘Who could hate you? Stay there … I’m coming over.’

He parked outside the house, slammed the door and hurried up the footpath. She opened the front door before he had even knocked. Her eyes were puffy with tears again, and she was wearing a floor-length woollen dressing gown that dwarfed her. It was not at all seductive; the very antithesis of Kay’s scarlet kimono, but its homeliness, its very shabbiness, represented a new level of intimacy.

Mary’s four children were all in the sitting room. Mary gestured him through into the kitchen.

‘Do they know?’ he asked her.

‘Fergus does. Somebody at school told him. I’ve asked him not to tell the others. Honestly, Gavin … I’m about at the end of my tether. The spite—’

‘It isn’t true,’ he said, and then, his curiosity getting the better of him, ‘is it?’

‘No!’ she said, outraged. ‘I mean … I don’t know … I don’t really know her. But to make him talk like that … putting the words in his mouth … don’t they care what it’s like for me?’

She dissolved into tears again. He felt that he shouldn’t hug her while she was wearing her dressing gown, and was glad that he had not, when eighteen-year-old Fergus entered the kitchen a moment later.

‘Hey, Gav.’

The boy looked tired, older than his years. Gavin watched him put an arm around Mary and saw her lean her head against his shoulder, mopping her eyes on her baggy sleeve like a child.

‘I don’t think it was the same person,’ Fergus told them, without preamble. ‘I’ve been looking at it again. The style of the message is different.’

He had it on his mobile phone, and began to read aloud:

‘“Parish Councillor Dr Parminder Jawanda, who pretends to be so keen on looking after the poor and needy of the area, has always had a secret motive. Until I died—”’

‘Fergus, don’t,’ said Mary, slumping down at the kitchen table. ‘I can’t take it. I honestly can’t. And his article in the paper today too.’

As she covered her face with her hands and sobbed silently, Gavin noticed the Yarvil and District Gazette lying there. He never read it. Without asking or offering, he moved across to the cupboard to make her a drink.

‘Thanks, Gav,’ she said thickly, when he pushed the glass into her hand.

‘It might be Howard Mollison,’ suggested Gavin, sitting down beside her. ‘From what Barry said about him.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mary, dabbing at her eyes. ‘It’s so crude. He never did anything like that when Barry was –’ she hiccuped ‘– alive.’ And then she snapped at her son, ‘Throw that paper away, Fergus.’

The boy looked confused and hurt.

‘It’s got Dad’s—’

‘Throw it away!’ said Mary, with an edge of hysteria in her voice. ‘I can read it off the computer if I want to, the last thing he ever did – on our anniversary!’

Fergus took the newspaper off the table and stood for a moment watching his mother, who had buried her face in her hands again. Then, with a glance at Gavin, he walked out of the room still holding the Gazette.

After a while, when Gavin judged that Fergus was not coming back, he put out a consoling hand and rubbed Mary’s arm. They sat in silence for some time, and Gavin felt much happier with the newspaper gone from the table.





II


Parminder was not supposed to be working the next morning, but she had a meeting in Yarvil. Once the children had left for school she moved methodically around the house, making sure that she had everything she needed, but when the telephone rang, she jumped so much that she dropped her bag.

‘Yes?’ she yelped, sounding almost frightened. Tessa, on the other end of the line, was taken aback.

‘Minda, it’s me – are you all right?’

‘Yes – yes – the phone made me jump,’ said Parminder, looking at the kitchen floor now littered with keys, papers, loose change and tampons. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing really,’ said Tessa. ‘Just calling for a chat. See how you are.’

The subject of the anonymous post hung between them like some jeering monster, dangling from the line. Parminder had barely allowed Tessa to talk about it during yesterday’s call. She had shouted, ‘It’s a lie, a filthy lie, and don’t tell me Howard Mollison didn’t do it!’

Tessa had not dared pursue the subject.

‘I can’t talk,’ said Parminder. ‘I’ve got a meeting in Yarvil. A case review for a little boy on the at-risk register.’

‘Oh, right. Sorry. Maybe later?’

‘Yes,’ said Parminder. ‘Great. Goodbye.’

She scooped up the contents of her bag and hurried from the house, running back from the garden gate to check that she had closed the front door properly.

Every so often, as she drove, she realized that she had no recollection of travelling the last mile, and told herself fiercely to concentrate. But the malicious words of the anonymous post kept coming back to her. She already knew them by heart.

Parish Councillor Dr Parminder Jawanda, who pretends to be so keen on looking after the poor and needy of the area, has always had a secret motive. Until I died, she was in love with me, which she could barely hide whenever she laid eyes on me, and she would vote however I told her to, whenever there was a council meeting. Now that I am gone, she will be useless as a councillor, because she has lost her brain.

She had first seen it the previous morning, when she opened up the council website to check the minutes of the last meeting. The shock had been almost physical; her breathing had become very fast and shallow, as it had been during the most excruciating parts of childbirth, when she had tried to lift herself over the pain, to disengage from the agonizing present.

Everyone would know by now. There was nowhere to hide.

The oddest thoughts kept coming to her. For instance, what her grandmother would have said if she had known that Parminder had been accused of loving another woman’s husband, and a gora to boot, in a public forum. She could almost see bebe covering her face with a fold of her sari, shaking her head, rocking backwards and forwards as she had always done when a harsh blow had hit the family.

‘Some husbands,’ Vikram had said to her late last night, with a strange new twist to his sardonic smile, ‘might want to know whether it was true.’

‘Of course it isn’t true!’ Parminder had said, with her own shaking hand over her mouth. ‘How can you ask me that? Of course it isn’t! You knew him! He was my friend – just a friend!’

She was already passing the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic. How had she travelled so far, without realizing it? She was becoming a dangerous driver. She was not paying attention.

She remembered the evening that she and Vikram had gone to the restaurant, nearly twenty years ago, the night they had agreed to marry. She had told him about all the fuss the family had made when she had walked home with Stephen Hoyle, and he had agreed how silly it was. He had understood then. But he did not understand when it was Howard Mollison who accused her instead of her own hidebound relatives. Apparently he did not realise that goras could be narrow, and untruthful, and full of malice …

She had missed the turning. She must concentrate. She must pay attention.

‘Am I late?’ she called, as she hurried at last across the car park towards Kay Bawden. She had met the social worker once before, when she had come in for a renewal of her prescription for the pill.

‘Not at all,’ said Kay. ‘I thought I’d show you up to the office, because it’s a rabbit warren in here …’

Kay led her down a shabby, deserted institutional corridor into a meeting room. Three more women were already sitting there; they greeted Parminder with smiles.

‘This is Nina, who works with Robbie’s mother at Bellchapel,’ said Kay, sitting down with her back to the venetian-blinded windows. ‘And this is my supervisor Gillian, and this is Louise Harper, who oversees the Anchor Road Nursery. Dr Parminder Jawanda, Robbie’s GP,’ Kay added.

Parminder accepted coffee. The other four women began talking, without involving her.

(Parish Councillor Dr Parminder Jawanda, who pretends to be so keen on looking after the poor and needy of the area …

Who pretends to be so keen. You bastard, Howard Mollison. But he had always seen her as a hypocrite; Barry had said so.

‘He thinks that because I came from the Fields, I want Pagford overrun by Yarvillians. But you’re proper professional class, so he doesn’t think you’ve got any right to be on the side of the Fields. He thinks you’re a hypocrite or making trouble for fun.’)

‘… understand why the family’s registered with a GP in Pagford?’ said one of the three unfamiliar social workers, whose names Parminder had already forgotten.

‘Several families in the Fields are registered with us,’ said Parminder at once. ‘But wasn’t there some trouble with the Weedons and their previous—?’

‘Yeah, the Cantermill practice threw them out,’ said Kay, in front of whom sat a pile of notes thicker than either of her colleagues. ‘Terri assaulted a nurse there. So they’ve been registered with you, how long?’

‘Nearly five years,’ said Parminder, who had looked up all the details at the surgery.

(She had seen Howard in church, at Barry’s funeral, pretending to pray, with his big fat hands clasped in front of him, and the Fawleys kneeling beside him. Parminder knew what Christians were supposed to believe in. Love thy neighbour as thyself … if Howard had been more honest, he would have turned sideways and prayed to Aubrey …

Until I died, she was in love with me, which she could barely hide whenever she laid eyes on me …

Had she really not been able to hide it?)

‘… last seen him, Parminder?’ asked Kay.

‘When his sister brought him in for antibiotics for an ear infection,’ said Parminder. ‘About eight weeks ago.’

‘And how was his physical condition then?’ asked one of the other women.

‘Well, he’s not failing to thrive,’ said Parminder, withdrawing a slim sheaf of photocopied notes from her handbag. ‘I checked him quite thoroughly, because – well, I know the family history. He’s a good weight, although I doubt his diet’s anything to write home about. No lice or nits or anything of that description. His bottom was a bit sore, and I remember his sister said that he still wets himself sometimes.’

‘They keep putting him back in nappies,’ said Kay.

‘But you wouldn’t,’ asked the woman who had first questioned Parminder, ‘have any major concerns health-wise?’

‘There was no sign of abuse,’ said Parminder. ‘I remember, I took off his vest to check, and there were no bruises or other injuries.’

‘There’s no man in the house,’ interjected Kay.

‘And this ear infection?’ her supervisor prompted Parminder.

‘You said it was the sister who brought him in, not the mother? Are you Terri’s doctor, too?’

‘I don’t think we’ve seen Terri for five years,’ said Parminder, and the supervisor turned to Nina instead.

‘How’s she doing on methadone?’

(Until I died, she was in love with me …

Parminder thought, Perhaps it’s Shirley, or Maureen, who’s the ghost, not Howard – they would be much more likely to watch her when she was with Barry, hoping to see something with their dirty old-womanish minds … )

‘… longest she’s lasted on the programme so far,’ said Nina. ‘She’s mentioned the case review quite a lot. I get the feeling she knows that this is it, that she’s running out of chances. She doesn’t want to lose Robbie. She’s said that a few times. I’d have to say you’ve got through to her, Kay. I really do see her taking some responsibility for the situation, for the first time since I’ve known her.’

‘Thank you, but I’m not going to get over-excited. The situation’s still pretty precarious.’ Kay’s dampening words were at odds with her tiny irrepressible smile of satisfaction. ‘How are things going at nursery, Louise?’

‘Well, he’s back again,’ said the fourth social worker. ‘He’s been in full attendance for the past three weeks, which is a dramatic change. The teenage sister brings him. His clothes are too small and usually dirty, but he talks about bath and meal times at home.’

‘And behaviourally?’

‘He’s developmentally delayed. His language skills are very poor. He doesn’t like men coming into the nursery. When fathers turn up, he won’t go near them; he hangs around the nursery workers and becomes very anxious. And once or twice,’ she said, turning a page in her notes, ‘he’s mimicked what are clearly sexual acts on or near little girls.’

‘I don’t think, whatever we decide, there can be any question of taking him off the at-risk register,’ said Kay, to a murmur of agreement.

‘It sounds like everything hinges on Terri staying on your programme,’ said the supervisor to Nina, ‘and staying off the game.’

‘That’s key, certainly,’ Kay agreed, ‘but I’m concerned that even when she’s heroin-free, she doesn’t provide much mothering to Robbie. Krystal seems to be raising him, and she’s sixteen and got plenty of her own issues …’

(Parminder remembered what she had said to Sukhvinder a couple of nights previously.

Krystal Weedon! That stupid girl! Is that what being in a team with Krystal Weedon taught you – to sink to her level?

Barry had liked Krystal. He had seen things in her that were invisible to other people’s eyes.

Once, long ago, Parminder had told Barry the story of Bhai Kanhaiya, the Sikh hero who had administered to the needs of those wounded in combat, whether friend or foe. When asked why he gave aid indiscriminately, Bhai Kanhaiya had replied that the light of God shone from every soul, and that he had been unable to distinguish between them.

The light of God shone from every soul.

She had called Krystal Weedon stupid and implied that she was low.

Barry would never have said it.

She was ashamed.)

‘… when there was a great-grandmother who seemed to provide some back-up in care, but—’

‘She died,’ said Parminder, rushing to say it before anyone else could. ‘Emphysema and stroke.’

‘Yeah,’ said Kay, still looking at her notes. ‘So we go back to Terri. She came out of care herself. Has she ever attended parenting classes?’

‘We offer them, but she’s never been in a fit state to attend,’ said the woman from the nursery.

‘If she agreed to take them and actually turned up, it would be a massive step forward,’ said Kay.

‘If they close us down,’ sighed Nina from Bellchapel, addressing Parminder, ‘I suppose she’ll have to come to you for her methadone.’

‘I’m concerned that she wouldn’t,’ said Kay, before Parminder could answer.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Parminder angrily.

The other women stared at her.

‘Just that catching buses and remembering appointments isn’t Terri’s forte,’ said Kay. ‘She only has to walk up the road to Bellchapel.’

‘Oh,’ said Parminder, mortified. ‘Yes. Sorry. Yes, you’re probably right.’

(She had thought that Kay was making a reference to the complaint about Catherine Weedon’s death; that she did not think Terri Weedon would trust her.

Concentrate on what they’re saying. What’s wrong with you?)

‘So, big picture,’ said the supervisor, looking down at her notes. ‘We’ve got neglectful parenting interspersed with some adequate care.’ She sighed, but there was more exasperation than sadness in the sound. ‘The immediate crisis is over – she’s stopped using – Robbie’s back in nursery, where we can keep a proper eye on him – and there’s no immediate concern for his safety. As Kay says, he stays on the at-risk register … I certainly think we’ll need another meeting in four weeks …’

It was another forty minutes before the meeting broke up. Kay walked Parminder back down to the car park.

‘It was very good of you to come in person; most GPs send through a report.’

‘It was my morning off,’ said Parminder. She meant it as an explanation for her attendance, because she hated sitting at home alone with nothing to do, but Kay seemed to think that she was asking for more praise and gave it.

At Parminder’s car, Kay said, ‘You’re the parish councillor, aren’t you? Did Colin pass you the figures on Bellchapel I gave him?’

‘Yes, he did,’ said Parminder. ‘It would be good to have a talk about that some time. It’s on the agenda for the next meeting.’

But when Kay had given her her number, and left, with renewed thanks, Parminder’s thoughts reverted to Barry, the Ghost and the Mollisons. She was driving through the Fields when the simple thought that she had tried to bury, to drown out, slipped past her lowered defences at last.

Perhaps I did love him.