The Casual Vacancy

johnny. It’d be better without.’
    He pushed the joint back into Andrew’s hand. Andrew pulled on it, thinking. Harder to get in than you thought; over in ten seconds. It didn’t sound much; yet what wouldn’t he give? He imagined Gaia Bawden flat on her back for him and, without meaning to, let outa small groan, which Fats did not seem to hear. Lost in a fug of erotic images, pulling on the joint, Andrew lay with his erection on the patch of earth his body was warming and listened to the soft rush of the water a few feet from his head.
    ‘What matters, Arf?’ asked Fats, after a long, dreamy pause.
    His head swimming pleasantly, Andrew answered, ‘Sex.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Fats, delighted. ‘Fucking. That’s what matters. Propogun … propogating the species. Throw away the johnnies. Multiply.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Andrew, laughing.
    ‘And death,’ said Fats. He had been taken aback by the reality of that coffin, and how little material lay between all the watching vultures and an actual corpse. He was not sorry that he had left before it disappeared into the ground. ‘Gotta be, hasn’t it? Death.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Andrew, thinking of war and car crashes, and dying in blazes of speed and glory.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Fats. ‘Fucking and dying. That’s it, innit? Fucking and dying. That’s life.’
    ‘Trying to get a fuck and trying not to die.’
    ‘Or trying to die,’ said Fats. ‘Some people. Risking it.’
    ‘Yeah. Risking it.’
    There was more silence, and their hiding place was cool and hazy.
    ‘And music,’ said Andrew quietly, watching the blue smoke hanging beneath the dark rock.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Fats, in the distance. ‘And music.’
    The river rushed on past the Cubby Hole.

Fair Comment
    7.33 Fair comment on a matter of public interest is not actionable.
    Charles Arnold-Baker
Local Council Administration
,
Seventh Edition

I
    It rained on Barry Fairbrother’s grave. The ink blurred on the cards. Siobhan’s chunky sunflower head defied the pelting drops, but Mary’s lilies and freesias crumpled, then fell apart. The chrysanthemum oar darkened as it decayed. Rain swelled the river, made streams in the gutters and turned the steep roads into Pagford glossy and treacherous. The windows of the school bus were opaque with condensation; the hanging baskets in the Square became bedraggled, and Samantha Mollison, windscreen wipers on full tilt, suffered a minor collision in the car on the way home from work in the city.
    A copy of the
Yarvil and District Gazette
stuck out of Mrs Catherine Weedon’s door in Hope Street for three days, until it became sodden and illegible. Finally, social worker Kay Bawden tugged it out of the letterbox, peered in through the rusty flap and spotted the old lady spread-eagled at the foot of the stairs. A policeman helped break down the front door, and Mrs Weedon was taken away in an ambulance to South West General.
    Still the rain fell, forcing the sign-painter who had been hired to rename the old shoe shop to postpone the job. It poured for days and into the nights, and the Square was full of hunchbacks in waterproofs, and umbrellas collided on the narrow pavements.
    Howard Mollison found the gentle patter against the dark window soothing. He sat in the study that had once been his daughter Patricia’s bedroom, and contemplated the email that he had received from the local newspaper. They had decided to run Councillor Fairbrother’s article arguing that the Fields ought to remain withPagford, but in the interests of balance, they hoped that another councillor might make the case for reassignment in the following issue.
    Backfired on you, hasn’t it, Fairbrother?
thought Howard happily.
There you were, thinking you’d have it all your own way …
    He closed the email and turned instead to the small pile of papers beside him. These were the letters that had come trickling in, requesting an election to fill Barry’s vacant seat. The constitution stated that it required nine applications to enforce a public vote, and he had received ten. He read them over, while his wife’s and his business partner’s voices rose and fell in the kitchen, stripping bare between them the meaty scandal of old Mrs Weedon’s collapse and belated discovery.
    ‘… don’t walk out on your doctor for nothing, do you? Screaming at the top of her voice, Karen said—’
    ‘—saying she’d been given the wrong drugs, yes, I know,’ said Shirley, who considered that she