The Casual Vacancy (23 page)

“Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

He turned on a lamp and she glanced up at him. He was as well groomed as he had been when he left, except for the raindrops on the shoulders of his jacket.

“How was dinner?”

“Fine,” he said. “You were missed. Aubrey and Julia were sorry you couldn’t make it.”

“Oh, I’m sure. And I’ll bet your mother cried with disappointment.”

He sat down in an armchair at right angles to her, staring at her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes.

“What’s this all about, Sam?”

“If you don’t know, Miles —”

But she was not sure herself; or at least, she did not know how to condense this sprawling sense of ill-usage into a coherent accusation.

“I can’t see how me standing for the Parish Council —”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Miles!” she shouted, and was then slightly taken aback by how loud her voice was.

“Explain to me, please,” he said, “what possible difference it can make to you?”

She glared at him, struggling to articulate it for his pedantic legal mind, which was like a fiddling pair of tweezers in the way that it seized on poor choices of word, yet so often failed to grasp the bigger picture. What could she say that he would understand? That she found Howard and Shirley’s endless talk about the council boring as hell? That he was quite tedious enough already, with his endlessly retold anecdotes about the good old days back at the rugby club and his self-congratulatory stories about work, without adding pontifications about the Fields?

“Well, I was under the impression,” said Samantha, in their dimly lit sitting room, “That we had other plans.”

“Like what?” said Miles. “What are you talking about?”

“We said,” Samantha articulated carefully over the rim of her trembling glass, “that once the girls were out of school, we’d go traveling. We promised each other that, remember?”

The formless rage and misery that had consumed her since Miles announced his intention to stand for the council had not once led her to mourn the year’s traveling she had missed, but at this moment it seemed to her that that was the real problem; or at least, that it came closest to expressing both the antagonism and the yearning inside her.

Miles seemed completely bewildered.

“What
are
you talking about?”

“When I got pregnant with Lexie,” Samantha said loudly, “and we couldn’t go traveling, and your bloody mother made us get married in double-quick time, and your father got you a job with Edward Collins, you said,
we agreed,
that we’d do it when the girls were grown up; we said we’d go away and do all the things we missed out on.”

He shook his head slowly.

“This is news to me,” he said. “Where the hell has this come from?”

“Miles, we were in the Black Canon. I told you I was pregnant, and you said — for Christ’s sake, Miles — I told you I was pregnant, and you promised me, you
promised —
”

“You want a holiday?” said Miles. “Is that it? You want a holiday?”

“No, Miles, I don’t want a bloody holiday, I want — don’t you remember? We said we’d take a year out and do it later, when the kids were grown up!”

“Fine, then.” He seemed unnerved, determined to brush her aside. “Fine. When Libby’s eighteen; in four years’ time, we’ll talk about it again. I don’t see how me becoming a councillor affects any of this.”

“Well, apart from the bloody
boredom
of listening to you and your parents whining about the Fields for the rest of our natural lives —”

“Our
natural
lives?” he smirked. “As opposed to —?”

“Piss off,” she spat. “Don’t be such a bloody smartarse, Miles, it might impress your mother —”

“Well, frankly, I still don’t see what the problem —”

“The
problem,
” she shouted, “is that this is about our
future
, Miles.
Our
future. And I don’t want to bloody talk about it in four years’ time, I want to talk about it
now!
”

“I think you’d better eat something,” said Miles. He got to his feet. “You’ve had enough to drink.”

“Screw you, Miles!”

“Sorry, if you’re going to be abusive…”

He turned and walked out of the room. She barely stopped herself throwing her wineglass after him.

The council: if he got on it, he would never get off; he would never renounce his seat, the chance to be a proper Pagford big shot, like Howard. He was committing himself anew to Pagford, retaking his vows to the town of his birth, to a future quite different from the one he had promised his distraught new fiancée as she sat sobbing on his bed.

When had they last talked about traveling the world? She was not sure. Years and years ago, perhaps, but tonight Samantha decided that she, at least, had never changed her mind. Yes, she had always expected that some day they would pack up and leave, in search of heat and freedom, half the globe away from Pagford, Shirley, Mollison and Lowe, the rain, the pettiness and the sameness. Perhaps she had not thought of the white sands of Australia and Singapore with longing for many years, but she would rather be there, even with her heavy thighs and her stretch marks, than here, trapped in Pagford, forced to watch as Miles turned slowly into Howard.

She slumped back down on the sofa, groped for the controls, and switched back to Libby’s DVD. The band, now in black and white, was walking slowly along a long empty beach, singing. The broad-shouldered boy’s shirt was flapping open in the breeze. A fine trail of hair led from his navel down into his jeans.

V

Alison Jenkins, the journalist from the
Yarvil and District Gazette
, had at last established which of the many Weedon households in Yarvil housed Krystal. It had been difficult: nobody was registered to vote at the address and no landline number was listed for the property. Alison visited Foley Road in person on Sunday, but Krystal was out, and Terri, suspicious and antagonistic, refused to say when she would be back or confirm that she lived there.

Krystal arrived home a mere twenty minutes after the journalist had departed in her car, and she and her mother had another row.

“Why din’t ya tell her to wait? She was gonna interview me abou’ the Fields an’ stuff!”

“Interview
you?
Fuck off. Wha’ the fuck for?”

The argument escalated and Krystal walked out again, off to Nikki’s, with Terri’s mobile in her tracksuit bottoms. She frequently made off with this phone; many rows were triggered by her mother demanding it back and Krystal pretending that she didn’t know where it was. Dimly, Krystal hoped that the journalist might know the number somehow and call her directly.

She was in a crowded, jangling café in the shopping center, telling Nikki and Leanne all about the journalist, when the mobile rang.

“’Oo? Are you the journalist, like?”

“…o’s ’at…’erri?”

“It’s Krystal. ’Oo’s this?”

“…’m your…’nt…other…’ister.”

“’Oo?” shouted Krystal. One finger in the ear not pressed against the phone, she wove her way between the densely packed tables to reach a quieter place.

“Danielle,” said the woman, loud and clear on the other end of the telephone. “I’m yer mum’s sister.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Krystal, disappointed.

Fuckin’ snobby bitch,
Terri always said when Danielle’s name came up. Krystal was not sure that she had ever met Danielle.

“It’s abou’ your great gran.”

“’O’o?”

“
Nana Cath,
” said Danielle impatiently. Krystal reached the balcony overlooking the shopping center forecourt; reception was strong here; she stopped.

“Wha’s wrong with ’er?” said Krystal. It felt as though her stomach was flipping over, the way it had done as a little girl, turning somersaults on a railing like the one in front of her. Thirty feet below, the crowds surged, carrying plastic bags, pushing buggies and dragging toddlers.

“She’s in South West General. She’s been there a week. She’s had a stroke.”

“She’s bin there a week?” said Krystal, her stomach still swooping. “Nobody told us.”

“Yeah, well, she can’t speak prop’ly, but she’s said your name twice.”

“Mine?” asked Krystal, clutching the mobile tightly.

“Yeah. I think she’d like to see yeh. It’s serious. They’re sayin’ she migh’ not recover.”

“Wha’ ward is it?” asked Krystal, her mind buzzing.

“Twelve. High-dependency. Visiting hours are twelve till four, six till eight. All righ’?”

“Is it —?”

“I gotta go. I only wanted to let you know, in case you want to see her. “Bye.”

The line went dead. Krystal lowered the mobile from her ear, staring at the screen. She pressed a button repeatedly with her thumb, until she saw the word “blocked.” Her aunt had withheld her number.

Krystal walked back to Nikki and Leanne. They knew at once that something was wrong.

“Go an’ see ’er,” said Nikki, checking the time on her own mobile. “Yeh’ll ge’ there fer two. Ge’ the bus.”

“Yeah,” said Krystal blankly.

She thought of fetching her mother, of taking her and Robbie to go and see Nana Cath too, but there had been a huge row a year before, and her mother and Nana Cath had had no contact since. Krystal was sure that Terri would take an immense amount of persuading to go to the hospital, and was not sure that Nana Cath would be happy to see her.

It’s serious. They’re saying she might not recover.

“’Ave yeh gor enough cash?” said Leanne, rummaging in her pockets as the three of them walked up the road toward the bus stop.

“Yeah,” said Krystal, checking. “It’s on’y a quid up the hospital, innit?”

They had time to share a cigarette before the number twenty-seven arrived. Nikki and Leanne waved her off as though she were going somewhere nice. At the very last moment, Krystal felt scared and wanted to shout “Come with me!” But then the bus pulled away from the curb, and Nikki and Leanne were already turning away, gossiping.

The seat was prickly, covered in some old smelly fabric. The bus trundled onto the road that ran by the precinct and turned right into one of the main thoroughfares that led through all the big-name shops.

Fear fluttered inside Krystal’s belly like a fetus. She had known that Nana Cath was getting older and frailer, but somehow, vaguely, she had expected her to regenerate, to return to the heyday that had seemed to last so long; for her hair to turn black again, her spine to straighten and her memory to sharpen like her caustic tongue. She had never thought about Nana Cath dying, always associating her with toughness and invulnerability. If she had considered them at all, Krystal would have thought of the deformity to Nana Cath’s chest, and the innumerable wrinkles crisscrossing her face, as honorable scars sustained during her successful battle to survive. Nobody close to Krystal had ever died of old age.

(Death came to the young in her mother’s circle, sometimes even before their faces and bodies had become emaciated and ravaged. The body that Krystal had found in the bathroom when she was six had been of a handsome young man, as white and lovely as a statue, or that was how she remembered him. But sometimes she found that memory confusing and doubted it. It was hard to know what to believe. She had often heard things as a child that adults later contradicted and denied. She could have sworn that Terri had said, “It was yer dad.” But then, much later, she had said, “Don’ be so silly. Yer dad’s not dead, ’e’s in Bristol, innee?” So Krystal had had to try and reattach herself to the idea of Banger, which was what everybody called the man they said was her father.

But always, in the background, there had been Nana Cath. She had escaped foster care because of Nana Cath, ready and waiting in Pagford, a strong if uncomfortable safety net. Swearing and furious, she had swooped, equally aggressive to Terri and to the social workers, and taken her equally angry great-granddaughter home.

Krystal did not know whether she had loved or hated that little house in Hope Street. It was dingy and it smelled of bleach; it gave you a hemmed-in feeling. At the same time, it was safe, entirely safe. Nana Cath would only let approved individuals in through the door. There were old-fashioned bath cubes in a glass jar on the end of the bath.)

What if there were other people at Nana Cath’s bedside, when she got there? She would not recognize half her own family, and the idea that she might come across strangers tied to her by blood scared her. Terri had several half sisters, products of her father’s multiple liaisons, whom even Terri had never met; but Nana Cath tried to keep up with them all, doggedly maintaining contact with the large disconnected family her sons had produced. Occasionally, over the years, relatives Krystal did not recognize had turned up at Nana Cath’s while she was there. Krystal thought that they eyed her askance and said things about her under their voices to Nana Cath; she pretended not to notice and waited for them to leave, so that she could have Nana Cath to herself again. She especially disliked the idea that there were any other children in Nana Cath’s life.

(“’Oo are
they?
” Krystal had asked Nana Cath when she was nine, pointing jealously at a framed photograph of two boys in Paxton High uniforms on Nana Cath’s sideboard.

“Them’s two o’ my great-grandsons,” said Nana Cath. “Tha’s Dan and tha’s Ricky. They’re your cousins.”

Krystal did not want them as cousins, and she did not want them on Nana Cath’s sideboard.

“An’ who’s
tha’
?” she demanded, pointing at a little girl with curly golden hair.

“Tha’s my Michael’s little girl, Rhiannon, when she were five. Beau’iful, weren’t she? Bu’ she wen’ an’ married some wog,” said Nana Cath.

There had never been a photograph of Robbie on Nana Cath’s sideboard.

Yeh don’t even know who the father is, do yeh, yer whore? I’m washin’ my ’ands of yeh. I’ve ’ad enough, Terri, I’ve ’ad it: you can look after it yourself.
)

The bus trundled on through town, past all the Sunday afternoon shoppers. When Krystal had been small, Terri had taken her into the center of Yarvil nearly every weekend, forcing her into a pushchair long past the age when Krystal needed it, because it was so much easier to hide nicked stuff with a pushchair, push it down under the kid’s legs, hide it under the bags in the basket under the seat. Sometimes Terri would go on tandem shoplifting trips with the sister she spoke to, Cheryl, who was married to Shane Tully. Cheryl and Terri lived four streets away from each other in the Fields, and petrified the air with their language when they argued, which was frequently. Krystal never knew whether she and her Tully cousins were supposed to be on speaking terms or not, and no longer bothered keeping track, but she spoke to Dane whenever she ran across him. They had shagged, once, after splitting a bottle of cider out on the rec when they were fourteen. Neither of them had ever mentioned it afterwards. Krystal was hazy on whether or not it was legal, doing your cousin. Something Nikki had said had made her think that maybe it wasn’t.