CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
VACANT POSSESSION
It was ten o’clock in the evening; raining and very dark. A man was walking along the road whistling “Santa Lucia.”
Muriel Axon stood alone at the window of her room; a square plain woman, forty-four years old. She was wrapped in an eider-down, and in the palm of her hand she held the boiled egg she was eating for supper. The glow of the streetlamps showed her wet slate roofs, the long lit curve of the motorway outside the town, and a bristling cat in the shadow of a wall; beyond these, the spines of black hills.
Cradling the warm egg, Muriel dug in her fingernails to crush the shell. She did not go in for table manners; they wasted time. She began to peel the skin, wincing a little as she did so. She put her tongue into the salted gelid hollow and probed gently. The room behind her was dark, and full of the minute crackling her fingers made. She sucked, thought. Most of Muriel’s thoughts were quite unlike other people’s.
Down below, she heard the front door opening. A dim light shone onto the path, and a second later her landlord appeared, Mr. Kowalski, shuffling the few paces to the gate. He looked up and down the road. No one. He stood for a moment, his bullet head shrinking into his shoulders; turned, grunting to himself, and slowly made his way back. She heard the front door slam. It was ten-fifteen. Mr. Kowalski was drawing the bolts, turning the key, putting the chain on the door.
CHAPTER 1
“I wonder who will be the new Poet Laureate?” said Colin Sidney, coming down to breakfast. There was no reply from the other residents at number 2, Buckingham Avenue. He paused on the half-landing, looking out of the little window. He saw the roof of his garage, and his neighbour’s garden. “Well, who?” he muttered. There was nothing in view but a scudding 8:00 A.M. sky, a promise of weak sunshine, a vista of close, green, dripping trees. Midsummer. Colin went down, twitching his tie.
Behind him, the three younger children were preparing for their day. He heard shrieks and curses, the kicking and slamming of doors. The radio was on, and they were playing records too; Acid Raine and the Oncogenes were shaking the walls with their current hit single. “Ted Hughes?” Colin asked. “Larkin?”
There would be perhaps ten minutes’ grace before the children erupted down the stairs to fall on their breakfasts and begin their daily round of feuding amongst themselves and insulting their parents. Colin examined himself in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. He wished that Sylvia would move it, so that he did not have to begin every day with a confrontation. Perhaps he could ask her. He did not think of moving it himself. He had his spheres of action; this was not one of them.
He saw a man of forty-three, with bright blue eyes, thinning hair, and what he described to himself as faded good looks. But no, he thought; courtesans are faded, schoolmasters are merely worn. He saw a kind of helplessness, in the face of family and wider society; a lack of fibre, both moral and dietary. Listening to the racket above, he solaced himself with a quotation: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do.”
Sylvia was in the kitchen already. He thought he could hear her special muesli mix cascading like a rockfall into a dish. But instead he found her in the middle of the room, head tipped back, gazing upwards.
“What a mess,” she said. The entire ceiling and the upper third of the walls were coated with the black smeary deposit from yesterday’s fire. Lizzie, the daily, had opened the door from the hall, and there it was, stinking smoke billowing everywhere. Lucky she had presence of mind, or it would have been far more serious.
“I can’t see why it’s so greasy,” Sylvia said. “It isn’t as if we ever fry anything.” She gave a little hitch to the pants of her tracksuit. “The whole room’ll need repainting. Probably the hall as well.”
“Yes, all right,” Colin said, going to the table. He was sick of hearing about the fire. “Can I have an egg?”
“Well, be it on your own head,” Sylvia said. “You’ve had two this week. You know what the doctor said.”
“I think I’ll be reckless for once.” Colin opened the fridge. “Was young Alistair at home when this fire started?”
“If he was, he won’t admit it.”
“He’s the source of most of the calamities round here, isn’t he? And I can tell you now—” He broke off. “Where’s a pan for this egg?”
“Where it always is, Colin.”
“I can tell you now I’m not doing the repainting.” He ran the tap. “Either Alistair does it—for a fee, if necessary—or we get somebody in.”
