The Casual Vacancy

painted, with freshly varnished black boards underfoot.

He sidled around the corner of the counter and edged past Maureen, who was operating the meat slicer, affording her the opportunity for a gruff and ribald laugh, then ducked through the door that led into the dingy little back room. Here was a Formica table, on which Maureen’s Daily Mail lay folded; Howard and Maureen’s coats hanging on hooks, and a door leading to the lavatory, which exuded a scent of artificial lavender. Miles hung up his overcoat and drew up an old chair to the table.

Howard appeared a minute or two later, bearing two heaped plates of delicatessen fare.

‘Definitely decided on the “Copper Kettle” then?’ asked Miles.

‘Well, Mo likes it,’ said Howard, setting down a plate in front of his son.

He lumbered out, returned with two bottles of ale, and closed the door with his foot so that the room was enveloped in a windowless gloom relieved only by the dim pendant light. Howard sat down with a deep grunt. He had been conspiratorial on the telephone mid-morning, and kept Miles waiting a few moments longer while he flipped off the lid of one bottle.

‘Wall’s sent his forms in,’ he said at last, handing over the beer.

‘Ah,’ said Miles.

‘I’m going to set a deadline. Two weeks from today for everyone to declare.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Miles.

‘Mum reckons this Price bloke is still interested. Have you asked Sam if she knows who he is yet?’

‘No,’ said Miles.

Howard scratched an underfold of the belly that rested close to his knees as he sat on the creaking chair.

‘Everything all right with you and Sam?’

Miles admired, as always, his father’s almost psychic intuition.

‘Not great.’

He would not have confessed it to his mother, because he tried not to fuel the constant cold war between Shirley and Samantha, in which he was both hostage and prize.

‘She doesn’t like the idea of me standing,’ Miles elaborated. Howard raised his fair eyebrows, his jowls wobbling as he chewed. ‘I don’t bloody know what’s got into her. She’s on one of her anti-Pagford kicks.’

Howard took his time swallowing. He dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin and burped.

‘She’ll come round quickly enough once you’re in,’ he said. ‘The social side of it. Plenty for the wives. Functions at Sweetlove House. She’ll be in her element.’ He took another swig of ale and scratched his belly again.

‘I can’t picture this Price,’ said Miles, returning to the essential point, ‘but I’ve got a feeling he had a kid in Lexie’s class at St Thomas’s.’

‘Fields-born, though, that’s the thing,’ said Howard. ‘Fields-born, which could work to our advantage. Split the pro-Fields vote between him and Wall.’

‘Yeah,’ said Miles. ‘Makes sense.’

‘I haven’t heard of anyone else. It’s possible, once details hit the website, someone else’ll come forward. But I’m confident about our chances. I’m confident. Aubrey called,’ Howard added. There was always a touch of additional portentousness in Howard’s tone when he used Aubrey Fawley’s Christian name. ‘Right behind you, goes without saying. He’s back this evening. He’s been in town.’

Usually, when a Pagfordian said ‘in town’, they meant ‘in Yarvil’. Howard and Shirley used the phrase, in imitation of Aubrey Fawley, to mean ‘in London’.

‘He mentioned something about us all getting together for a chat. Maybe tomorrow. Might even invite us over to the house. Sam’d like that.’

Miles had just taken a large bite of soda bread and liver pate, but he conveyed his agreement with an emphatic nod. He liked the idea that Aubrey Fawley was ‘right behind’ him. Samantha might jeer at his parents’ thraldom to the Fawleys, but Miles noticed that on those rare occasions when Samantha came face to face with either Aubrey or Julia, her accent changed subtly and her demeanour became markedly more demure.

‘Something else,’ said Howard, scratching his belly again. ‘Got an email from the Yarvil and District Gazette this morning. Asking for my views on the Fields. As chair of the Parish Council.’

‘You’re kidding? I thought Fairbrother had stitched that one up—’

‘Backfired, didn’t it?’ said Howard, with immense satisfaction. ‘They’re going to run his article, and they want someone to argue against the following week. Give them the other side of the story. I’d appreciate a hand. Lawyer’s turn of phrase, and all that.’

‘No problem,’ said Miles. ‘We could talk about that bloody addiction clinic. That’d make the point.’

‘Yes — very good idea — excellent.’

In his enthusiasm, he had swallowed too much at once and Miles had to bang him on the back until his coughing had subsided. At last, dabbing his watering eyes with a napkin, Howard said breathlessly, ‘Aubrey’s recommending the District cuts funding from their end, and I’m going to put it to our lot that it’s time to terminate the lease on the building. It wouldn’t hurt to make the case in the press. How much time and money’s gone into that bloody place with nothing to show for it. I’ve got the figures.’ Howard burped sonorously. ‘Bloody disgraceful. Pardon me.’

III

Gavin cooked for Kay at his house that evening, opening tins and crushing garlic with a sense of ill- usage.

After a row, you had to say certain things to secure a truce: those were the rules, everyone knew that. Gavin had telephoned Kay from his car on the way back from Barry’s burial and told her that he wished she had been there, that the whole day had been horrible and that he hoped he could see her that night. He considered these humble admissions no more or less than the price he had to pay for an evening of undemanding companionship.

But Kay seemed to consider them more in the light of a down payment on a renegotiated contract. You missed me. You needed me when you were upset. You’re sorry we didn’t go as a couple. Well, let’s not make that mistake again. There had been a certain complacency about the way she had treated him since; a briskness, a sense of renewed expectation.

He was making spaghetti Bolognese tonight; he had deliberately omitted to buy a pudding or to lay the table in advance; he was at pains to show her that he had not made much of an effort. Kay seemed oblivious, even determined to take this casual attitude as a compliment. She sat at his small kitchen table, talking to him over the pitter-patter of rain on the skylight, her eyes wandering over the fixtures and fittings. She had not often been here.

‘I suppose Lisa chose this yellow, did she?’

She was doing it again: breaking taboos, as though they had recently passed to a deeper level of intimacy. Gavin preferred not to talk about Lisa if he could avoid it; surely she knew that by now? He shook oregano onto the mince in his frying pan and said, ‘No, this was all the previous owner. I haven’t got round to changing it yet.’

‘Oh,’ she said, sipping wine. ‘Well, it’s quite nice. A bit bland.’

This rankled with Gavin, as, in his opinion, the interior of the Smithy was superior in every way to that of Ten Hope Street. He watched the pasta bubbling, keeping his back to her.

‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘I met Samantha Mollison this afternoon.’

Gavin wheeled around; how did Kay even know what Samantha Mollison looked like?

‘Just outside the deli in the Square; I was on my way in to get this,’ said Kay, clinking the wine bottle beside her with a flick of her nail. ‘She asked me whether I was Gavin’s girlfriend.’

Kay said it archly, but actually she had been heartened by Samantha’s choice of words, relieved to think that this was how Gavin described her to his friends.

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said — I said yes.’