The Casual Vacancy

face, still hunched up over her work.
    ‘Wallah!’ stage-whispered Kevin Cooper, from two rows in front. ‘Wallah! Peanut!’
    He was trying to draw their attention to what they already knew: that Sukhvinder, judging by the gentle quivering of her shoulders, was crying, and that Miss Harvey was making hopeless, harried attempts to find out what was wrong. The class, detecting a further lapse in their teacher’s vigilance, raged louder than ever.
    ‘Peanut! Wallah!’
    Andrew could never decide whether Kevin Cooper irritated intentionally or accidentally, but he had an infallible knack for grating on people. The nickname ‘Peanut’ was a very old one, which had clung to Andrew in primary school; he had always hated it. Fats had forced the name out of fashion by never using it; Fats had always been the final arbiter in such matters. Cooper was even getting Fats’ name wrong: ‘Wallah’ had enjoyed only a brief popularity, last year.
    ‘Peanut! Wallah!’
    ‘Fuck off, Cooper, you glans-headed moron,’ said Fats under his breath. Cooper was hanging over the back of his seat, staring at Sukhvinder, who had curled over, her face almost touching the desk, while Miss Harvey crouched beside her, her hands fluttering comically, forbidden to touch her, and unable to elicit any explanation for her distress. A few more people had noticed this unusual disturbance and were staring; but at the front of the room, several boys continued to rampage, oblivious to everything but their own amusement. One of them seized the wood-backed board rubber from Miss Harvey’s vacated desk. He threw it.
    The rubber soared right across the room and crashed into the clock on the back wall, which plummeted to the ground and shattered: shards of plastic and metal innards flew everywhere, and several girls, including Miss Harvey, shrieked in shock.
    The door of the classroom flew open and bounced, with a bang, off the wall. The class fell quiet. Cubby was standing there, flushed and furious.
    ‘What is going on in this room? What is all this noise?’
    Miss Harvey shot up like a jack-in-a-box beside Sukhvinder’s desk, looking guilty and frightened.
    ‘Miss Harvey! Your class is making an almighty racket. What’s going on?’
    Miss Harvey seemed struck dumb. Kevin Cooper hung over the back of his chair, grinning, looking from Miss Harvey to Cubby to Fats and back again.
    Fats spoke.
    ‘Well, to be perfectly frank, Father, we’ve been running rings around this poor woman.’
    Laughter exploded. Miss Harvey’s neck was disfigured by a rising maroon rash. Fats balanced himself nonchalantly on the rear legs of his chair, his face perfectly straight, looking at Cubby with challenging detachment.
    ‘That’s enough,’ said Cubby. ‘If I hear any more noise like that from this class, I’ll put the whole lot of you in detention. Do you understand? All of you.’
    He shut the door on their laughter.
    ‘You heard the deputy headmaster!’ cried Miss Harvey, scurrying to the front of the room. ‘Be quiet! I want quiet! You – Andrew – and you, Stuart – you can clear up that mess! Pick up all those bits of clock!’
    They set up a routine cry of injustice at this, supported shrilly by a couple of the girls. The actual perpetrators of the destruction, of whom everybody knew Miss Harvey was afraid, sat smirking at their desks. As there were only five minutes remaining until the end of the school day, Andrew and Fats set about stringing out the clearing up until they would be able to abandon it unfinished. While Fats garnered further laughs by bouncing hither and thither, stiff-armed, doing the Cubby walk, Sukhvinder wiped her eyes surreptitiously with her wool-covered hand and sank back into obscurity.
    When the bell rang, Miss Harvey made no attempt to control or contain the thunderous clamour or rush for the door. Andrew and Fats kicked various bits of clock under the cupboards at the back of the room, and swung their school bags over their shoulders again.
    ‘Wallah! Wallah!’ called Kevin Cooper, hurrying to catch up with Andrew and Fats as they headed down the corridor. ‘Do you call Cubby “Father” at home? Seriously? Do you?’
    He thought he had something on Fats; he thought he had got him.
    ‘You’re a dickhead, Cooper,’ said Fats wearily, and Andrew laughed.

IV
    ‘Dr Jawanda’s running about fifteen minutes late,’ the receptionist told Tessa.
    ‘Oh, that’s fine,’ said Tessa. ‘I’m in no hurry.’
    It