The Casual Vacancy

chuckling over the heads of the queue atMiles. ‘If you’ll wait for me in the back, sir, I’ll try not to say anything incriminating to Mrs Howson …’
    Miles smiled at the middle-aged ladies, who beamed back. Tall, with thick, close-cropped greying hair, big round blue eyes, his paunch disguised by his dark overcoat, Miles was a reasonably attractive addition to the hand-baked biscuits and local cheeses. He navigated his way carefully between the little tables piled high with delicacies and paused at the big arch hewn between delicatessen and the old shoe shop, which was denuded of its protective plastic curtain for the first time. Maureen (Miles recognized the handwriting) had put up a sign on a sandwich board in the middle of the arch:
No Entry. Coming Soon … The Copper Kettle.
Miles peered through into the clean, spare space that would soon be Pagford’s newest and best café; it was plastered and painted, with freshly varnished black boards underfoot.
    He sidled around the corner of the counter and edged past Maureen, who was operating the meat slicer, affording her the opportunity for a gruff and ribald laugh, then ducked through the door that led into the dingy little back room. Here was a Formica table, on which Maureen’s
Daily Mail
lay folded; Howard and Maureen’s coats hanging on hooks, and a door leading to the lavatory, which exuded a scent of artificial lavender. Miles hung up his overcoat and drew up an old chair to the table.
    Howard appeared a minute or two later, bearing two heaped plates of delicatessen fare.
    ‘Definitely decided on the “Copper Kettle” then?’ asked Miles.
    ‘Well, Mo likes it,’ said Howard, setting down a plate in front of his son.
    He lumbered out, returned with two bottles of ale, and closed the door with his foot so that the room was enveloped in a windowless gloom relieved only by the dim pendant light. Howard sat down with a deep grunt. He had been conspiratorial on the telephone mid-morning, and kept Miles waiting a few moments longer while he flipped off the lid of one bottle.
    ‘Wall’s sent his forms in,’ he said at last, handing over the beer.
    ‘Ah,’ said Miles.
    ‘I’m going to set a deadline. Two weeks from today for everyone to declare.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Miles.
    ‘Mum reckons this Price bloke is still interested. Have you asked Sam if she knows who he is yet?’
    ‘No,’ said Miles.
    Howard scratched an underfold of the belly that rested close to his knees as he sat on the creaking chair.
    ‘Everything all right with you and Sam?’
    Miles admired, as always, his father’s almost psychic intuition.
    ‘Not great.’
    He would not have confessed it to his mother, because he tried not to fuel the constant cold war between Shirley and Samantha, in which he was both hostage and prize.
    ‘She doesn’t like the idea of me standing,’ Miles elaborated. Howard raised his fair eyebrows, his jowls wobbling as he chewed. ‘I don’t bloody know what’s got into her. She’s on one of her anti-Pagford kicks.’
    Howard took his time swallowing. He dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin and burped.
    ‘She’ll come round quickly enough once you’re in,’ he said. ‘The social side of it. Plenty for the wives. Functions at Sweetlove House. She’ll be in her element.’ He took another swig of ale and scratched his belly again.
    ‘I can’t picture this Price,’ said Miles, returning to the essential point, ‘but I’ve got a feeling he had a kid in Lexie’s class at St Thomas’s.’
    ‘Fields-born, though, that’s the thing,’ said Howard. ‘Fields-born, which could work to our advantage. Split the pro-Fields vote between him and Wall.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Miles. ‘Makes sense.’
    ‘I haven’t heard of anyone else. It’s possible, once details hit the website, someone else’ll come forward. But I’m confident about our chances. I’m confident. Aubrey called,’ Howard added. There was always a touch of additional portentousness in Howard’s tone when he used Aubrey Fawley’s Christian name. ‘Right behind you, goes without saying. He’s back this evening. He’s been in town.’
    Usually, when a Pagfordian said ‘in town’, they meant ‘in Yarvil’. Howard and Shirley used the phrase, in imitation of Aubrey Fawley, to mean ‘in London’.
    ‘He mentioned something about us all getting together for a chat. Maybe tomorrow. Might even invite us over to the house. Sam’d like that.’
    Miles had just