The Casual Vacancy

‘…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 likeability 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 band mates 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 pouffe 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.