The Casual Vacancy полностью

Like Shirley, Parminder had brought a stack of papers with her to the meeting, and these were piled up underneath the agenda she was pretending to read so that she did not have to speak to anybody. In reality, she was thinking about the woman sitting almost directly behind her. The Yarvil and District Gazette had written about Catherine Weedon’s collapse, and the family’s complaints against their GP. Parminder had not been named, but doubtless the journalist knew who she was. Perhaps Alison had got wind of the anonymous post about Parminder on the Parish Council website too.

Calm down. You’re getting like Colin.

Howard was already taking apologies and asking for revisions to the last set of minutes, but Parminder could barely hear over the sound of her own blood thudding in her ears.

‘Now, unless anybody’s got any objections,’ said Howard, ‘we’re going to deal with items eight and nine first, because District Councillor Fawley’s got news on both, and he can’t stay long—’

‘Got until eight thirty,’ said Aubrey, checking his watch.

‘—yes, so unless there are objections — no? — floor’s yours, Aubrey.’

Aubrey stated the position simply and without emotion. There was a new boundary review coming and, for the first time, there was an appetite beyond Pagford to reassign the Fields to Yarvil. Absorbing Pagford’s relatively small costs seemed worthwhile to those who hoped to add anti-government votes to Yarvil’s tally, where they might make a difference, as opposed to being wasted in Pagford, which had been a safe Conservative seat since the 1950s. The whole thing could be done under the guise of simplifying and streamlining: Yarvil provided almost all services for the place as it was.

Aubrey concluded by saying that it would be helpful, should Pagford wish to cut the estate away, for the town to express its wishes for the benefit of the District Council.

‘…a good, clear message from you,’ he said, ‘and I really think that this time—’

‘It’s never worked before,’ said a farmer, to muttered agreement.

‘Well, now, John, we’ve never been invited to state our position before,’ said Howard.

‘Shouldn’t we decide what our position is, before we declare it publicly?’ asked Parminder, in an icy voice.

‘All right,’ said Howard blandly. ‘Would you like to kick off, Dr Jawanda?’

‘I don’t know how many people saw Barry’s article in the Gazette,’ said Parminder. Every face was turned towards her, and she tried not to think about the anonymous post or the journalist sitting behind her. ‘I thought it made the arguments for keeping the Fields part of Pagford very well.’

Parminder saw Shirley, who was writing busily, give her pen a tiny smile.

‘By telling us the likes of Krystal Weedon benefit?’ said an elderly woman called Betty, from the end of the table. Parminder had always detested her.

‘By reminding us that people living in the Fields are part of our community too,’ she answered.

‘They think of themselves as from Yarvil,’ said the farmer. ‘Always have.’

‘I remember,’ said Betty, ‘when Krystal Weedon pushed another child into the river on a nature walk.’

‘No, she didn’t,’ said Parminder angrily, ‘my daughter was there — that was two boys who were fighting — anyway—’

‘I heard it was Krystal Weedon,’ said Betty.

‘You heard wrong,’ said Parminder, except that she did not say it, she shouted it.

They were shocked. She had shocked herself. The echo hummed off the old walls. Parminder could barely swallow; she kept her head down, staring at the agenda, and heard John’s voice from a long way off.

‘Barry would’ve done better to talk about himself, not that girl. He got a lot out of St Thomas’s.’

‘Trouble is, for every Barry,’ said another woman, ‘you get a load of yobs.’

‘They’re Yarvil people, bottom line,’ said a man, ‘they belong to Yarvil.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Parminder, keeping her voice deliberately low, but they all fell silent to listen to her, waiting for her to shout again. ‘It’s simply not true. Look at the Weedons. That was the whole point of Barry’s article. They were a Pagford family going back years, but—’

‘They moved to Yarvil!’ said Betty.

‘There was no housing here,’ said Parminder, fighting her own temper, ‘none of you wanted a new development on the outskirts of town.’

‘You weren’t here, I’m sorry,’ said Betty, pink in the face, looking ostentatiously away from Parminder. ‘You don’t know the history.’

Talk had become general: the meeting had broken into several little knots of conversation, and Parminder could not make out any of it. Her throat was tight and she did not dare meet anyone’s eyes.

‘Shall we have a show of hands?’ Howard shouted down the table, and silence fell again. ‘Those in favour of telling the District Council that Pagford will be happy for the parish boundary to be redrawn, to take the Fields out of our jurisdiction?’