J. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy

‘Colin,’ said Tessa.

But he had started to cry again, great sobs shaking his big, ungainly body, and when she put her arms around him and pressed her face to his her own tears wet his skin.

A few miles away, in Hilltop House, Simon Price was sitting at a brand-new family computer in the sitting room. Watching Andrew cycle away to his weekend job with Howard Mollison, and the reflection that he had been forced to pay full market price for this computer, made him feel irritable and additionally hard done by. Simon had not looked at the Parish Council website once since the night that he had thrown out the stolen PC, but it occurred to him, by an association of ideas, to check whether the message that had cost him his job was still on the site and thus viewable by potential employers.

It was not. Simon did not know that he owed this to his wife, because Ruth was scared of admitting that she had telephoned Shirley, even to request the removal of the post. Slightly cheered by its absence, Simon looked for the post about Parminder, but that was gone too.

He was about to close the site, when he saw the newest post, which was entitled Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster.

He read it through twice and then, alone in the sitting room, he began to laugh. It was a savage triumphant laugh. He had never taken to that big, bobbing man with his massive forehead. It was good to know that he, Simon, had got off very lightly indeed by comparison.

Ruth came into the room, smiling timidly; she was glad to hear Simon laughing, because he had been in a dreadful mood since losing his job.

‘What’s funny?’

‘You know Fats’ old man? Wall, the deputy headmaster? He’s only a bloody paedo.’

Ruth’s smile slipped. She hurried forward to read the post.

‘I’m going to shower,’ said Simon, in high good humour.

Ruth waited until he had left the room before trying to call her friend Shirley, and alert her to this new scandal, but the Mollisons’ telephone was engaged.

Shirley had, at last, reached Howard at the delicatessen. She was still in her dressing gown; he was pacing up and down the little back room, behind the counter.

‘…been trying to get you for ages—’

‘Mo was using the phone. What did it say? Slowly.’

Shirley read the message about Colin, enunciating like a newsreader. She had not reached the end, when he cut across her.

‘Did you copy this down or something?’

‘Sorry?’ she said.

‘Are you reading it off the screen? Is it still on there? Have you taken it off?’

‘I’m dealing with it now,’ lied Shirley, unnerved. ‘I thought you’d like to—’

‘Get it off there now! God above, Shirley, this is getting out of hand – we can’t have stuff like that on there!’

‘I just thought you ought to—’

‘Make sure you’ve got rid of it, and we’ll talk about it when I get home!’ Howard shouted.

Shirley was furious: they never raised their voices to each other.

The next Parish Council meeting, the first since Barry had died, would be crucial in the ongoing battle over the Fields. Howard had refused to postpone the votes on the future of Bellchapel Addiction Clinic, or the town’s wish to transfer jurisdiction of the estate to Yarvil.

Parminder therefore suggested that she, Colin and Kay ought to meet up the evening before the meeting to discuss strategy.

‘Pagford can’t unilaterally decide to alter the parish boundary, can it?’ asked Kay.

‘No,’ said Parminder patiently (Kay could not help being a newcomer), ‘but the District Council has asked for Pagford’s opinion, and Howard’s determined to make sure it’s his opinion that gets passed on.’

They were holding their meeting in the Walls’ sitting room, because Tessa had put subtle pressure on Colin to invite the other two where she could listen in. Tessa handed around glasses of wine, put a large bowl of crisps on the coffee table, then sat back in silence, while the other three talked.

She was exhausted and angry. The anonymous post about Colin had brought on one of his most debilitating attacks of acute anxiety, so severe that he had been unable to go to school. Parminder knew how ill he was – she had signed him off work – yet she invited him to participate in this pre-meeting, not caring, it seemed, what fresh effusions of paranoia and distress Tessa would have to deal with tonight.

‘There’s definitely resentment out there about the way the Mollisons are handling things,’ Colin was saying, in the lofty, knowledgeable tone he sometimes adopted when pretending to be a stranger to fear and paranoia. ‘I think it’s starting to get up people’s noses, the way they think that they can speak for the town. I’ve got that impression, you know, while I’ve been canvassing.’

It would have been nice, thought Tessa bitterly, if Colin could have summoned these powers of dissimulation for her benefit occasionally. Once, long ago, she had liked being Colin’s sole confidante, the only repository of his terrors and the font of all reassurance, but she no longer found it flattering. He had kept her awake from two o’clock until half-past three that morning, rocking backwards and forwards on the edge of the bed, moaning and crying, saying that he wished he were dead, that he could not take it, that he wished he had never stood for the seat, that he was ruined…

Tessa heard Fats on the stairs, and tensed, but her son passed the open door on his way to the kitchen with nothing worse than a scathing glance at Colin, who was perched in front of the fire on a leather pouffe, his knees level with his chest.

‘Maybe Miles’ standing for the empty seat will really antagonize people – even the Mollisons’ natural supporters?’ said Kay hopefully.

‘I think it might,’ said Colin, nodding.

Kay turned to Parminder.

‘D’you think the council will really vote to force Bellchapel out of their building? I know people get uptight about discarded needles, and addicts hanging around the neighbourhood, but the clinic’s miles away… why does Pagford care?’

‘Howard and Aubrey are scratching each other’s backs,’ explained Parminder, whose face was taut, with dark brown patches under her eyes. (It was she who would have to attend the council meeting the next day, and fight Howard Mollison and his cronies without Barry by her side.) ‘They need to make cuts in spending at District level. If Howard turfs the clinic out of its cheap building, it’ll be much more expensive to run and Fawley can say the costs have increased, and justify cutting council funding. Then Fawley will do his best to make sure that the Fields get reassigned to Yarvil.’

Tired of explaining, Parminder pretended to examine the new stack of papers about Bellchapel that Kay had brought with her, easing herself out of the conversation.

Why am I doing this? she asked herself.

She could have been sitting at home with Vikram, who had been watching comedy on television with Jaswant and Rajpal as she left. The sound of their laughter had jarred on her; when had she last laughed? Why was she here, drinking nasty warm wine, fighting for a clinic that she would never need and a housing development inhabited by people she would probably dislike if she met them? She was not Bhai Kanhaiya, who could not see a difference between the souls of allies and enemies; she saw no light of God shining from Howard Mollison. She derived more pleasure from the thought of Howard losing, than from the thought of Fields children continuing to attend St Thomas’s, or from Fields people being able to break their addictions at Bellchapel, although, in a distant and dispassionate way, she thought that these were good things…