Vacant Possession

‘Lightning, they think. They quote a priest here who says it was divine intervention.’

‘Why should it be that?’

‘Because of the Bishop of Durham. He was consecrated at the Minster last Friday. You know, all about his controversial views on the Resurrection. I thought that now you’re so friendly with our vicar you’d be well up in all this.’

‘Francis doesn’t talk about the Church much, he talks about community projects.’ Sylvia rummaged in the cutlery drawer. ‘If God didn’t like the Bishop of Durham, why didn’t He strike him personally? And do it promptly, on Saturday morning?’

‘Well, I tend to agree with you,’ Colin said. ‘It can’t be that, can it?’ He turned to the back page for more news of the disaster.’ “The Lord was on our side as we battled the flames,”’ he read. ‘By the way, how’s the vicar’s son? Has he come out of Youth Custody yet?’

‘He’s not in Youth Custody. He’s having Intermediate Treatment. He’s doing community service.’ Sylvia reached out for a piece of toast and picked up her knife. ‘Do you know what Francis says?

‘Watch it, that’s butter you’re eating,’ Colin said.

‘Oh, so it is!’ Looking thoughtful, she put the bread down on her plate. ‘He says that this business of Austin doing take-and-drive-away, it’s a deep compulsion he has, a compulsion to find out his real identity by sampling and testing out various machines.’

‘You mean it’s the vicar’s fault for naming him after a car?’

‘At some level, you see, Francis thinks he does believe that. By dumping the cars, he’s trying to jettison the mechanistic fantasies that have taken him over, and affirm his survival as a human being. It’s a form of acting out. Francis’s real worry is that because he usually leaves the cars in such a wrecked-up condition, it may indicate suicidal tendencies.’

‘Lordy, lordy,’ Colin said. ‘I didn’t know you could kill yourself by sniffing glue.’

‘It can damage your brain.’

‘How would they know?’

‘Francis is very worried. He can’t talk to Hermione. She thinks it’s because they didn’t send him to boarding school.’

‘I don’t doubt he’ll be boarded out soon enough, and at the taxpayers’ expense. How he got off this time beats me.’

‘He didn’t get off.’ Sylvia looked offended. ‘Community service is a very valid option.’

‘I’d rather he were in custody. Keep him away from our kids. How does a vicar’s son turn out such a thug?’

There was no time to go into this, because the children rushed in: Karen and Claire in their school uniforms, and the boy in a kind of romper suit of sagging jersey fabric, with holes cut out of it here and there, exposing bits of flesh. The girls flung themselves into their chairs.

‘Brownies tonight,’ Claire said: a chubby child, putting out her paws for everything edible within reach. ‘And I haven’t got my new uniform yet, Mum.’

‘Okay, I’ll see about it.’ She knew that the Brownies were a conformist outfit, pseudo-masculine if not paramilitary, but she suspected that they were more harmless than some of the things her children got up to.

‘You ought to see her,’ Karen said. ‘She shouldn’t grow so much, it’s uncouth. Her skirt’s up round her bum. It’s child pornography.’

‘That will do,’ Colin said.

Claire stuffed a piece of toast into her mouth. ‘It’s Brownie Tea-Making Fortnight soon. I have to make at least fifty cups of tea for family and friends. And every cup I make, they give it marks.’

‘If you make me any mouldy tea,’ Alistair said, ‘I’ll pour it down the sink.’

‘I have these mark sheets,’ she went on. ‘You have to say what my tea is, Excellent, Very Good, or Good.’

‘What if it’s witches’ piss?’ Alistair enquired.

‘I wish you’d leave the table, Alistair, if you’re going to talk like that.’

‘I’m not at the table, am I? I’m just stood here, watching you lot eating like pigs.’

‘Oh, let him starve,’ Karen said. ‘He’s stunted, that’s what he is. He’s probably got rickets or sumfin.’

‘He certainly has not got rickets,’ Sylvia said.

‘Well, he’s so titchy. That’s why he’s such a rotten little bully. We done it in psychology.’

‘Perhaps he’s a pygmy,’ Claire said. ‘He can’t help it.’

Alistair tore off a piece of kitchen roll, and blew his nose into it with great violence. He wadded it up in his palms and tossed it at Karen. It fell short, and lay on the cork tiles.

‘Just watch it,’ Sylvia said. ‘Lizzie’s not spending her time and my money cleaning up after you lot.’

‘I don’t want her cleaning up after me,’ Alistair said. ‘You make sure you don’t let her in my room.’

‘She can’t get in, can she? You’ve always got the door locked.’

‘What do you do in there?’ Colin asked.

‘Black magic,’ Karen said. ‘Him and Austin. Austin nicks vestments and stuff from his dad, and they have Black Masses.’

‘I’d do a spell to give you spots,’ Alistair said. ‘Only you haven’t got room for any more.’

‘So is that what you’re going to do today? Lock yourself in and have a Black Mass?’

‘Yeah,’ Alistair said. ‘And miss all the lovely sunshine.’ He slouched out of the room. Sylvia’s eyes followed him.

‘I do worry,’ she said.

Colin flapped over a page of the newspaper. ‘It’s better than him joining the Young Conservatives,’ he said.

‘You never take things seriously.’

‘Oh, I do.’ He glanced up from the news of the inferno. ‘I know a lot of kids. So I don’t get alarmed.’

‘Yes, but Alistair’s your own.’

‘Now that does alarm me. At times.’ But he knew a hundred children as bad as Alistair, a hundred worse; antisocial truants from broken homes. Theirs was not broken; only creaking a bit under the strain. The kids passed through his office every day, en route from brief rebellion to a lifetime’s acceptance of their lot. They had silly hairstyles; beneath them, dull conformist little brains.

‘I wish you’d keep them in school till the end of term,’ Sylvia said. ‘I wish he weren’t leaving.’

‘What would he do if he stayed on? Take Oxbridge by storm with his two CSEs?’

‘Off again,’ said Sylvia, stirring her muesli. She was training herself to eat slowly, putting down her spoon between mouthfuls, and the action gave her words a quite spurious consequence. ‘Off again with your little schoolmaster’s sarcasms.’