The Casual Vacancy (27 page)

Miles’ grin remained foolishly in place, like a limp balloon forgotten after a party. A stiff little chill seemed to blow through the temporarily silent room. Though Miles struck her as an almighty bore, Kay was on his side: he was the only one at the table who seemed remotely inclined to ease her passage into Pagford social life.

“I must say, the Fields are pretty rough,” she said, reverting to the subject with which Miles seemed most comfortable, and still ignorant that it was in any way inauspicious within Mary’s vicinity. “I’ve worked in the inner cities; I didn’t expect to see that kind of deprivation in a rural area, but it’s not all that different from London. Less of an ethnic mix, of course.”

“Oh, yes, we’ve got our share of addicts and wasters,” said Miles. “I think that’s about all I can manage, Sam,” he added, pushing his plate away from him with a sizeable amount of food still on it.

Samantha started to clear the table; Mary got up to help.

“No, no, it’s fine, Mary, you relax,” Samantha said. To Kay’s annoyance, Gavin jumped up too, chivalrously insisting on Mary’s sitting back down, but Mary insisted too.

“That was lovely, Sam,” said Mary, in the kitchen, as they scraped most of the food into the bin.

“No, it wasn’t, it was horrible,” said Samantha, who was only appreciating how drunk she was now that she was on her feet. “What do you think of Kay?”

“I don’t know. She’s not what I expected,” said Mary.

“She’s exactly what I expected,” said Samantha, taking out plates for pudding. “She’s another Lisa, if you ask me.”

“Oh, no, don’t say that,” said Mary. “He deserves someone nice this time.”

This was a most novel point of view to Samantha, who was of the opinion that Gavin’s wetness merited constant punishment.

They returned to the dining room to find an animated conversation in progress between Kay and Miles, while Gavin sat in silence.

“…offload responsibility for them, which seems to me to be a pretty self-centered and self-satisfied —”

“Well, I think it’s interesting that you use the word ‘responsibility,’” said Miles, “because I think that goes to the very heart of the problem, doesn’t it? The question is, where exactly do we draw the line?”

“Beyond the Fields, apparently.” Kay laughed, with condescension. “You want to draw a line neatly between the home-owning middle classes and the lower —”

“Pagford’s full of working-class people, Kay; the difference is, most of them
work.
D’you know what proportion of the Fields lives off benefits? Responsibility, you say: what happened to personal responsibility? We’ve had them through the local school for years: kids who haven’t got a single worker in the family; the concept of earning a living is completely foreign to them; generations of non-workers, and we’re expected to subsidize them —”

“So your solution is to shunt off the problem onto Yarvil,” said Kay, “not to engage with any of the underlying —”

“Mississippi mud pie?” called Samantha.

Gavin and Mary took slices with thanks; Kay, to Samantha’s fury, simply held out her plate as though Samantha were a waitress, her attention all on Miles.

“…the addiction clinic, which is absolutely crucial, and which certain people are apparently lobbying to close —”

“Oh, well, if you’re talking about Bellchapel,” said Miles, shaking his head and smirking, “I hope you’ve mugged up on what the success rates are, Kay. Pathetic, frankly, absolutely pathetic. I’ve seen the figures, I was going through them this morning, and I won’t lie to you, the sooner they close —”

“And the figures you’re talking about are…?”

“Success rates, Kay, exactly what I said: the number of people who have actually stopped using drugs, gone clean —”

“I’m sorry, but that’s a very naive point of view; if you’re going to judge success purely —”

“But how on earth else are we supposed to judge an addiction clinic’s success?” demanded Miles, incredulous. “As far as I can tell, all they do at Bellchapel is dole out methadone, which half of their clients use alongside heroin anyway.”

“The whole problem of addiction is immensely complicated,” said Kay, “and it’s naive and simplistic to put the problem purely in terms of users and non…”

But Miles was shaking his head, smiling; Kay, who had been enjoying her verbal duel with this self-satisfied lawyer, was suddenly angry.

“Well, I can give you a very concrete example of what Bellchapel’s doing: one family I’m working with — mother, teenage daughter and small son — if the mother wasn’t on methadone, she’d be on the streets trying to pay for her habit; the kids are immeasurably better off —”

“They’d be better off away from their mother, by the sound of it,” said Miles.

“And where exactly would you propose they go?”

“A decent foster home would be a good start,” said Miles.

“Do you know how many foster homes there are, against how many kids needing them?” asked Kay.

“The best solution would have been to have them adopted at birth —”

“Fabulous. I’ll hop in my time machine,” retorted Kay.

“Well, we know a couple who were desperate to adopt,” said Samantha, unexpectedly throwing her weight behind Miles. She would not forgive Kay for the rude outstretched plate; the woman was bolshy and patronizing, exactly like Lisa, who had monopolized every get-together with her political views and her job in family law, despising Samantha for owning a bra shop. “Adam and Janice,” she reminded Miles in parenthesis, who nodded; “and they couldn’t get a baby for love nor money, could they?”

“Yes,
a baby,
” said Kay, rolling her eyes, “everybody wants a
baby
. Robbie’s nearly four. He’s not potty-trained, he’s developmentally behind for his age and he’s almost certainly had inappropriate exposure to sexual behavior. Would your friends like to adopt
him?
”

“But the point is, if he’d been taken from his mother at birth —”

“She was off the drugs when he was born, and making good progress,” said Kay. “She loved him and wanted to keep him, and she was meeting his needs at the time. She’d already raised Krystal, with some family support —”

“Krystal!” shrieked Samantha. “Oh my God, are we talking about the
Weedons?
”

Kay was horrified that she had used names; it had never mattered in London, but everyone truly did know everyone in Pagford, it seemed.

“I shouldn’t have —”

But Miles and Samantha were laughing, and Mary looked tense. Kay, who had not touched her pie, and had managed very little of the first course, realized that she had drunk too much; she had been sipping wine steadily out of nerves, and now she had committed a prime indiscretion. Still, it was too late to undo that; anger overrode every other consideration.

“Krystal Weedon is no advert for that woman’s mothering skills,” said Miles.

“Krystal’s trying her damnedest to hold her family together,” said Kay. “She loves her little brother very much; she’s terrified he’ll be taken away —”

“I wouldn’t trust Krystal Weedon to look after a boiling egg,” said Miles, and Samantha laughed again. “Oh, look, it’s to her credit she loves her brother, but he isn’t a cuddly toy —”

“Yes, I know that,” snapped Kay, remembering Robbie’s shitty, crusted bottom, “but he’s still loved.”

“Krystal bullied our daughter Lexie,” said Samantha, “so we’ve seen a different side of her to the one I’m sure she shows you.”

“Look, we all know Krystal’s had a rough deal,” said Miles, “nobody’s denying that. It’s the drug-addled mother I’ve got an issue with.”

“As a matter of fact, she’s doing very well on the Bellchapel program at the moment.”

“But with her
history,
” said Miles, “it isn’t
rocket science,
is it, to guess that she’ll relapse?”

“If you apply that rule across the board, you ought not to have a driving license, because with your
history
you’re bound to drink and drive again.”

Miles was temporarily baffled, but Samantha said coldly, “I think that’s a rather different thing.”

“Do you?” said Kay. “It’s the same principle.”

“Yes, well, principles are sometimes the problem, if you ask me,” said Miles. “Often what’s needed is a bit of common sense.”

“Which is the name people usually give to their prejudices,” rejoined Kay.

“According to Nietzsche,” said a sharp new voice, making them all jump, “philosophy is the biography of the philosopher.”

A miniature Samantha stood at the door into the hall, a busty girl of around sixteen in tight jeans and a T-shirt; she was eating a handful of grapes and looking rather pleased with herself.

“Everyone meet Lexie,” said Miles proudly. “Thank you for that, genius.”

“You’re welcome,” said Lexie pertly, and she swept off upstairs.

A heavy silence sank over the table. Without really knowing why, Samantha, Miles and Kay all glanced towards Mary, who looked as though she might be on the verge of tears.

“Coffee,” said Samantha, lurching to her feet. Mary disappeared into the bathroom.

“Let’s go and sit through,” said Miles, conscious that the atmosphere was somewhat charged, but confident that he could, with a few jokes and his habitual bonhomie, steer everyone back into charity with each other. “Bring your glasses.”

His inner certainties had been no more rearranged by Kay’s arguments than a breeze can move a boulder; yet his feeling towards her was not unkind, but rather pitying. He was the least intoxicated by the constant refilling of glasses, but on reaching the sitting room he realized how very full his bladder was.

“Whack on some music, Gav, and I’ll go and get those choccies.”

But Gavin made no move towards the vertical stacks of CDs in their sleek Perspex stands. He seemed to be waiting for Kay to start on him. Sure enough, as soon as Miles had vanished from sight, Kay said, “Well, thank you very much, Gav. Thanks for all the support.”

Gavin had drunk even more greedily than Kay throughout dinner, enjoying his own private celebration that he had not, after all, been offered up as a sacrifice to Samantha’s gladiatorial bullying. He faced Kay squarely, full of a courage born not only of wine but because he had been treated for an hour as somebody important, knowledgeable and supportive, by Mary.

“You seemed to be doing OK on your own,” he said.

Indeed, the little he had permitted himself to hear of Kay and Miles’ argument had given him a pronounced sense of déjà vu; if he had not had Mary to distract him, he might have fancied himself back on that famous evening, in the identical dining room, when Lisa had told Miles that he epitomized all that was wrong with society, and Miles had laughed in her face, and Lisa had lost her temper and refused to stay for coffee. It was not very long after, that Lisa had admitted that she was sleeping with an associate partner at her firm and advised Gavin to get tested for chlamydia.

“I don’t know any of these people,” said Kay, “and you haven’t done one damn thing to make it any easier for me, have you?”

“What did you want me to do?” asked Gavin. He was wonderfully calm, insulated by the imminent returns of the Mollisons and Mary, and by the copious amounts of Chianti he had consumed. “I didn’t want an argument about the Fields. I don’t give a monkey’s about the Fields. Plus,” he added, “it’s a touchy subject around Mary; Barry was fighting on the council to keep the Fields part of Pagford.”

“Well, then, why couldn’t you have told me — given me a hint?”

He laughed, exactly as Miles had laughed at her. Before she could retort, the others returned like the Magi bearing gifts: Samantha carrying a tray of cups, followed by Mary holding the cafetière, and Miles, with Kay’s chocolates. Kay saw the flamboyant gold ribbon on the box and remembered how optimistic she had been about tonight when she had bought them. She turned her face away, trying to hide her anger, frantic with the desire to shout at Gavin, and also with a sudden, shocking urge to cry.

“It’s been so nice,” she heard Mary say, in a thick voice that suggested she, too, might have been crying, “but I won’t stay for coffee, I don’t want to be late back; Declan’s a bit…a bit unsettled at the moment. Thanks so much, Sam, Miles, it’s been good to, you know…well, get out for a bit.”

“I’ll walk you up the —” Miles began, but Gavin was talking firmly over him.

“You stay here, Miles; I’ll see Mary back. I’ll walk you up the road, Mary. It’ll only take five minutes. It’s dark up the top there.”

Kay was barely breathing; all her being was concentrated in loathing of complacent Miles, tarty Samantha and fragile, drooping Mary, but most of all of Gavin himself.

“Oh, yes,” she heard herself saying, as everybody seemed to look towards her for permission, “yep, you see Mary home, Gav.”

She heard the front door close and Gavin had gone. Miles was pouring Kay’s coffee. She watched the stream of hot black liquid fall, and felt suddenly, painfully alive to what she had risked in overthrowing her life for the man walking away into the night with another woman.

VIII

Colin Wall saw Gavin and Mary pass under his study window. He recognized Mary’s silhouette at once, but had to squint to identify the stringy man at her side, before they moved out of the aureole cast by the streetlight. Crouching, half-raised out of his computer chair, Colin gaped after the figures as they disappeared into the darkness.

He was shocked to his core, having taken it for granted that Mary was in a kind of purdah; that she was receiving only women in the sanctuary of her own home, among them Tessa, who was still visiting every other day. Never had it occurred to him that Mary might be socializing after dark, least of all with a single man. He felt personally betrayed; as though Mary, on some spiritual level, was cuckolding him.

Had Mary permitted Gavin to see Barry’s body? Was Gavin spending evenings sitting in Barry’s favorite seat by the fire? Were Gavin and Mary…could they possibly be…? Such things happened, after all, every day. Perhaps…perhaps even before Barry’s death…?

Colin was perennially appalled by the threadbare state of other people’s morals. He tried to insulate himself against shocks by pushing himself to imagine the worst: by conjuring awful visions of depravity and betrayal, rather than waiting for the truth to rip like a shell through his innocent delusions. Life, for Colin, was one long brace against pain and disappointment, and everybody apart from his wife was an enemy until they had proven otherwise.