The Casual Vacancy (48 page)

“We should have beefed up security on the site as soon as that first post appeared,” he said, addressing his wife and business partner from in front of his gas fire.

Silent spring rain sprinkled the window, and the back lawn glistened with tiny red pinpricks of light. Howard was feeling shivery, and was hogging all the heat emanating from the fake coal. For several days, nearly every visitor to the delicatessen and the café had been gossiping about the anonymous posts, about the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother and about Parminder Jawanda’s outburst at the council meeting. Howard hated the things that she had shouted being bandied about in public. For the first time in his life, he felt uncomfortable in his own shop, and concerned about his previously unassailable position in Pagford. The election for the replacement of Barry Fairbrother would take place the following day, and where Howard had felt sanguine and excited, he was worried and twitchy.

“This has done a lot of damage. A
lot
of damage,” he repeated.

His hand strayed to his belly to scratch, but he pulled it away, enduring the itch with a martyr’s expression. He would not soon forget what Dr. Jawanda had screamed to the council and the press. He and Shirley had already checked the details of the General Medical Council, gone to see Dr. Crawford, and made a formal complaint. Parminder had not been seen at work since, so no doubt she was already regretting her outburst. Nevertheless, Howard could not rid himself of the sight of her expression as she screamed at him. It had shaken him to see such hatred on another human’s face.

“It’ll all blow over,” said Shirley reassuringly.

“I’m not so sure,” said Howard. “I’m not so sure. It doesn’t make us look good. The council. Rows in front of the press. We look divided. Aubrey says they’re not happy, at District level. This whole thing’s undermined our statement about the Fields. Squabbling in public, everything getting dirty…it doesn’t look like the council’s speaking for the town.”

“But we are,” said Shirley, with a little laugh. “Nobody in Pagford wants the Fields — hardly anyone.”

“The article makes it look like our side went after pro-Fielders. Tried to intimidate them,” said Howard, succumbing to the temptation to scratch, and doing it fiercely. “All right, Aubrey knows it wasn’t any of our side, but that’s not how that journalist made it look. And I’ll tell you this: if Yarvil makes us look inept or dirty…they’ve been looking for a chance to take us over for years.”

“That won’t happen,” said Shirley at once. “That couldn’t happen.”

“I thought it was over,” said Howard, ignoring his wife, and thinking of the Fields. “I thought we’d done it. I thought we’d got rid of them.”

The article over which he had spent so much time, explaining why the estate and the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic were drains and blots on Pagford, had been completely overshadowed by the scandals of Parminder’s outburst, and the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother. Howard had completely forgotten now how much pleasure the accusations against Simon Price had given him, and that it had not occurred to him to remove them until Price’s wife had asked.

“District Council’s emailed me,” he told Maureen, “with a bunch of questions about the website. They want to hear what steps we’ve taken against defamation. They think the security’s lax.”

Shirley, who detected a personal reproof in all of this, said coldly, “I’ve told you, I’ve taken care of it, Howard.”

The nephew of friends of Howard and Shirley’s had come round the previous day, while Howard was at work. The boy was halfway through a degree in computing. His recommendation to Shirley had been that they take down the immensely hackable website, bring in “Someone who knows what they’re doing” and set up a new one.

Shirley had understood barely one word in ten of the technical jargon that the young man had spewed at her. She knew that “hack” meant to breach illegally, and when the student stopped talking his gibberish, she was left with the confused impression that the Ghost had somehow managed to find out people’s passwords, maybe by questioning them cunningly in casual conversation.

She had therefore emailed everybody to request that they change their password and make sure not to share the new one with anybody. This was what she meant by “I’ve taken care of it.”

As to the suggestion of closing down the site, of which she was guardian and curator, she had taken no steps, nor had she mentioned the idea to Howard. Shirley was afraid that a site containing all the security measures that the superior young man had suggested would be way beyond the scope of her managerial and technical skills. She was already stretched to the limits of her abilities, and she was determined to cling to the post of administrator.

“If Miles is elected —” Shirley began, but Maureen interrupted, in her deep voice. “Let’s hope it hasn’t hurt him, this nasty stuff. Let’s hope there isn’t a backlash against him.”

“People will know Miles had nothing to do with it,” said Shirley coolly.

“Will they, though?” said Maureen, and Shirley simply hated her. How dare she sit in Shirley’s lounge and contradict her? And what was worse, Howard was nodding his agreement with Maureen.

“That’s my worry,” he said, “and we need Miles more than ever now. Get some cohesion back on the council. After Bends-Your-Ear said what she said — after all the uproar — we didn’t even take the vote on Bellchapel. We need Miles.”

Shirley had already walked out of the room in silent protest at Howard’s siding with Maureen. She busied herself with the teacups in the kitchen, silently fuming, wondering why she did not set out only two cups to give Maureen the hint that she so richly deserved.

Shirley continued to feel nothing but defiant admiration for the Ghost. His accusations had exposed the truth about people whom she disliked and despised, people who were destructive and wrongheaded. She was sure that the electorate of Pagford would see things her way and vote for Miles, rather than that disgusting man, Colin Wall.

“When shall we go and vote?” Shirley asked Howard, reentering the room with the tinkling tea tray, and pointedly ignoring Maureen (for it was their son whose name they would tick on the ballot).

But to her intense irritation, Howard suggested that all three of them go after closing time.

Miles Mollison was quite as concerned as his father that the unprecedented ill humor surrounding next day’s vote would affect his electoral chances. That very morning he had entered the newsagent’s behind the Square and caught a snatch of conversation between the woman behind the till and her elderly customer.

“…Mollison’s always thought he was king of Pagford,” the old man was saying, oblivious to the wooden expression on the shopkeeper’s face. “I liked Barry Fairbrother. Tragedy, that was. Tragedy. The Mollison boy did our wills and I thought he was very pleased with himself.”

Miles had lost his nerve at that and slipped back out of the shop, his face glowing like a schoolboy’s. He wondered whether the well-spoken old man was the originator of that anonymous letter. Miles’ comfortable belief in his own likability was shaken, and he kept trying to imagine how it would feel if nobody voted for him the following day.

As he undressed for bed that night, he watched his silent wife’s reflection in the dressing-table mirror. For days, Samantha had been nothing but sarcastic if he mentioned the election. He could have done with some support, some comfort, this evening. He also felt randy. It had been a long time. Thinking back, he supposed that it had been the night before Barry Fairbrother dropped dead. She had been a little bit drunk. It often took a little bit of drink, these days.

“How was work?” he asked, watching her undo her bra in the mirror.

Samantha did not answer immediately. She rubbed the deep red grooves in the flesh beneath her arms left by the tight bra, then said, without looking at Miles, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, actually.”

She hated having to say it. She had been trying to avoid doing so for several weeks.

“Roy thinks I ought to close the shop. It’s not doing well.”

Exactly how badly the shop was doing would be a shock to Miles. It had been a shock to her, when her accountant had laid out the position in the baldest terms. She had both known and not known. It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept.

“Oh,” said Miles. “But you’d keep the website?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We’d keep the website.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Miles encouragingly. He waited for almost a minute, out of respect for the death of her shop. Then he said, “I don’t suppose you saw the
Gazette
today?”

She reached over for the nightdress on her pillow and he had a satisfying glimpse of her breasts. Sex would definitely help relax him.

“It’s a real shame, Sam,” he said, crawling across the bed behind her, and waiting to put his arms around her as she wriggled into the nightdress. “About the shop. It was a great little place. And you’ve had it, what — ten years?”

“Fourteen,” said Samantha.

She knew what he wanted. She considered telling him to go and screw himself, and decamping to the spare room, but the trouble was that there would then be a row and an atmosphere, and what she wanted more than anything in the world was to be able to head off to London with Libby in two days’ time, wearing the T-shirts that she had bought them both, and to be within close proximity of Jake and his bandmates for a whole evening. This excursion constituted the entire sum of Samantha’s current happiness. What was more, sex might assuage Miles’ continuing annoyance that she was missing Howard’s birthday party.

So she let him embrace and then kiss her. She closed her eyes, climbed on top of him, and imagined herself riding Jake on a deserted white beach, nineteen years old to his twenty-one. She came while imagining Miles watching them, furiously, through binoculars, from a distant pedalo.

X

At nine o’clock on the morning of the election for Barry’s seat, Parminder left the Old Vicarage and walked up Church Row to the Walls’ house. She rapped on the door and waited until, at last, Colin appeared.

There were shadows around his bloodshot eyes and beneath his cheekbones; his skin seemed to have thinned and his clothes grown too big. He had not yet returned to work. The news that Parminder had screamed confidential medical information about Howard in public had set back his tentative recovery; the more robust Colin of a few nights ago, who had sat on the leather pouf and pretended to be confident of victory, might never have been.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, closing the door behind her, looking wary.

“Yes, fine,” she said. “I thought you might like to walk down the church hall with me, to vote.”

“I — no,” he said weakly. “I’m sorry.”

“I know how you feel, Colin,” said Parminder, in a small tight voice. “But if you don’t vote, it means they’ve won. I’m not going to let them win. I’m going to go down there and vote for you, and I want you to come with me.”

Parminder was effectively suspended from work. The Mollisons had complained to every professional body for which they could find an address, and Dr. Crawford had advised Parminder to take time off. To her great surprise, she felt strangely liberated.

But Colin was shaking his head. She thought she saw tears in his eyes.

“I can’t, Minda.”

“You can!” she said. “You
can,
Colin! You’ve got to stand up to them! Think of Barry!”

“I can’t — I’m sorry — I…”

He made a choking noise and burst into tears. Colin had cried in her surgery before now; sobbed in desperation at the burden of fear he carried with him every day of his life.

“Come on,” she said, unembarrassed, and she took his arm and steered him through to the kitchen, where she handed him kitchen roll and let him sob himself into hiccups again. “Where’s Tessa?”

“At work,” he gasped, mopping his eyes.

There was an invitation to Howard Mollison’s sixty-fifth birthday party lying on the kitchen table; somebody had torn it neatly in two.

“I got one of those, as well,” said Parminder. “Before I shouted at him. Listen, Colin. Voting —”

“I can’t,” whispered Colin.

“— shows them they haven’t beaten us.”

“But they have,” said Colin.

Parminder burst out laughing. After contemplating her with his mouth open for a moment, Colin started to laugh too: a big, booming guffaw, like the bark of a mastiff.

“All right, they’ve run us out of our jobs,” said Parminder, “and neither of us wants to leave the house but, other than that, I think we’re in very good shape indeed.”

Colin took off his glasses and dabbed his wet eyes, grinning.

“Come
on,
Colin. I want to vote for you. It isn’t over yet. After I blew my top, and told Howard Mollison he was no better than a junkie in front of the whole council and the local press —”

He burst out laughing again and she was delighted; she had not heard him laugh so much since New Year, and then it had been Barry making him do it.

“— they forgot to vote on forcing the addiction clinic out of Bellchapel. So, please. Get your coat. We’ll walk down there together.”

Colin’s snorts and giggles died away. He stared down at the big hands fumbled over each other, as if he were washing them clean.

“Colin, it’s not over. You’ve made a difference. People don’t like the Mollisons. If you get in, we’d be in a much stronger position to fight. Please, Colin.”

“All right,” he said, after a few moments, awed by his own daring.

It was a short walk, in the fresh clean air, each of them clutching their voter registration cards. The church hall was empty of voters apart from themselves. Each put a thick pencil cross beside Colin’s name and left with the sense that they had got away with something.

Miles Mollison did not vote until midday. He paused at his partner’s door on the way out.

“I’m off to vote, Gav,” he said.

Gavin indicated the telephone pressed against his ear; he was on hold with Mary’s insurance company.

“Oh — right — I’m off to vote, Shona,” said Miles, turning to their secretary.