Vacant Possession [Paperback]

"I wonder who will be the new Poet Laureate?" said Colin Sidney, coming down to breakfast. There was no reply from the other residents at number 2, Buckingham Avenue. He paused on the half-landing, looking out of the little window. He saw the roof of his garage, and his neighbour's garden. "Well, who?" he muttered. There was nothing in view but a scudding 8:00 A.M. sky, a promise of weak sunshine, a vista of close, green, dripping trees. Midsummer. Colin went down, twitching his tie.

Behind him, the three younger children were preparing for their day. He heard shrieks and curses, the kicking and slamming of doors. The radio was on, and they were playing records too; Acid Raine and the Oncogenes were shaking the walls with their current hit single. "Ted Hughes?" Colin asked. "Larkin?"

There would be perhaps ten minutes' grace before the children erupted down the stairs to fall on their breakfasts and begin their daily round of feuding amongst themselves and insulting their parents. Colin examined himself in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. He wished that Sylvia would move it, so that he did not have to begin every day with a confrontation. Perhaps he could ask her. He did not think of moving it himself. He had his spheres of action; this was not one of them.

He saw a man of forty-three, with bright blue eyes, thinning hair, and what he described to himself as faded good looks. But no, he thought; courtesans are faded, schoolmasters are merely worn. He saw a kind of helplessness, in the face of family and wider society; a lack of fibre, both moral and dietary. Listening to the racket above, he solaced himself with a quotation: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do."

Sylvia was in the kitchen already. He thought he could hear her special muesli mix cascading like a rockfall into a dish. But instead he found her in the middle of the room, head tipped back, gazing upwards.

"What a mess," she said. The entire ceiling and the upper third of the walls were coated with the black smeary deposit from yesterday's fire. Lizzie, the daily, had opened the door from the hall, and there it was, stinking smoke billowing everywhere. Lucky she had presence of mind, or it would have been far more serious.

"I can't see why it's so greasy," Sylvia said. "It isn't as if we ever fry anything." She gave a little hitch to the pants of her tracksuit. "The whole room'll need repainting. Probably the hall as well."

"Yes, all right," Colin said, going to the table. He was sick of hearing about the fire. "Can I have an egg?"

"Well, be it on your own head," Sylvia said. "You've had two this week. You know what the doctor said."

"I think I'll be reckless for once." Colin opened the fridge. "Was young Alistair at home when this fire started?"

"If he was, he won't admit it."

"He's the source of most of the calamities round here, isn't he? And I can tell you now--" He broke off. "Where's a pan for this egg?"

"Where it always is, Colin."

"I can tell you now I'm not doing the repainting." He ran the tap. "Either Alistair does it--for a fee, if necessary--or we get somebody in."

Sylvia picked up an orange from a straw basket on the worktop. "I don't see why you can't do it." She tossed the orange into her left hand, and it slapped against her palm. "It's the end of term soon."

"True. I have one day's summer holiday and then I start on next year's timetable."

Sylvia's eyes followed him as he moved about the kitchen. "Are you having bread?" she asked, her tone incredulous.

Striding about in her bright blue tracksuit, Sylvia would never have been taken for a mother of four. Suzanne, the eldest, was eighteen now; her mother was waiting hopefully for the day when someone would mistake them for sisters. It was mysterious, this matter of Sylvia's age. At twenty, she had looked forty; all the girls on her street wanted to look like their mothers. The Youth Cult passed her by; at thirty she looked forty still, square and deep-bosomed, with her hair bleached and lacquered in the way she had worn it on the day she was married.

Then at some stage--Colin couldn't pinpoint it--she had stopped getting older. She took herself in hand. She bought a leotard, and went timidly to a class at the church hall; she stood watching, her hands splayed self-consciously to hide her pannier thighs. The next week she bought a tape of disco music, and started dancing. She clumped over the fitted carpets, making the glass shelves tinkle in the china cabinet that had been her mother's. She threw out the china cabinet, and got some pine shelves instead.

These days she wore her brown hair in a short curly perm, which her hairdresser, Shane, believed would soften her firm, rather harsh features. Her body was lean now, dieted and disciplined, capriciously nourished and not too much: as far as her brain was concerned, she was taking a course at the Open University. Now that she had lost so much weight, she was always in pursuit of new clothes, little tee shirts and cotton skirts which were bright, cheap, and casual; she picked up her ideas on the same plan. It seemed to Colin that she had chosen, among current fads and notions, all those designed to diminish his self-respect and make him most uncomfortable.

How nice it would be if she had a job, Colin thought. He was a Deputy Head; they scraped along. There were even luxuries, like Lizzie Blank the daily woman (Tuesdays and Thursdays). But the children ate so much, and left the lights on and the taps running; they needed outfits and treats, and dinner money and bus money and more money, they insisted, for day-glo paint and handcuffs and all the other stuff you wore to an Acid Raine concert. They wanted special diets and school trips, and a tent so they could sleep in the garden in summer; they wanted video nasties, and Claire--it was reassuring, he supposed--wanted a new Brownie uniform. Every whim cost cash down. For all he knew, they might be maintaining a heroin habit. It couldn't have cost more. When he opened his bank statements he felt as if he were being eaten away, month by month, from the inside out.

But unfortunately, there were no jobs; not for anybody really, and certainly not for Sylvia. She was not qualified for anything. She was educated now, but not trained. The old Sylvia showed through too often. She became emotional when their opinions differed. Under pressure, she was always regressing to the received wisdom of the cooked meats factory where she had worked before they were married.

Colin found a plate for his bread and took it to the table. "So..." he said. "What are you up to today?"

"Citizens Advice Bureau, ten till twelve." Sylvia peeled her orange. "Then later on there's this committee meeting. We're thinking about setting up a women's refuge."

There was something bubbling and thwarted in Sylvia that only meddling in other people's business would satisfy. Before the birth of their youngest child Claire, when they had lived on a large housing estate, there had been plenty of time for gossip; some of it idle, some of it manipulative. Buckingham Avenue had repressed her, with its absence of tittle-tattle, its well-kept fences, its elderly residents leading sedate and private lives. Good fences make good neighbours, he used to say, when they moved in, nine years ago. Sylvia didn't agree. In her fortieth year, Sylvia discovered social concern. She discovered community action, and protest, and steering committees. If Alistair's blossoming delinquencies didn't spoil her chances, she'd probably end up a JP. This was a big change; but it was not unaccountable. The children no longer needed her, and the marriage was not worthy of sustained attention. It just ran on, taking care of itself. After twenty years you can't expect passion. It's enough if you're barely civil.

Colin stood over the cooker and looked down at his egg, bobbing dizzily in a froth of leaking white. As if alive, it flew about and tapped itself against the side of the pan. He picked up a teaspoon and dabbed at it, scalding his fingers in the steam. He could feel Sylvia watching him. By her standards, he had no common sense: he had never laid claim to it. But he was a clever man, and capable in his own line. His face wore a habitual expression of strained tolerance, of goodwill and anxiety, uneasily mixed.

"We're still marking exams," he said. He dipped for his egg with a tea strainer, which he had found by chance in a drawer. "I've got three hundred reports to sign. And the union blokes are coming in to see me this morning. You'd think they'd let it rest till after the holidays. But no."

"Strike?"

"Well, they're talking about it."

"I've every sympathy."

"So have I, I want a pay rise too, but it makes it bloody difficult to run a school." He sighed, and went about with his egg.

"What are you doing?" Sylvia asked. "Why don't you put it in an egg cup and sit down with it? Or are you going to race off with it down Lauderdale Road?"

Colin sat down with his ovoid ruin and picked up the newspaper. The day had brightened and the pleasant morning sun shone through his double glazing. "I always think of Gulliver's Travels when I eat an egg," he told his wife. "You see--" He broke off, gaped, put down his egg spoon, and seized up the newspaper. "Good God, Sylvia. York Minster's burned down. Look at this." He thrust the newspaper at her. The front page bore the headline NIGHT SKY LIT UP BY GOTHIC GLORY ABLAZE and a four-column picture of the Minster's south transept wreathed in smoke and flame.

"It never rains but it pours," Sylvia remarked, glancing at the kitchen ceiling. She tilted her yoghurt carton and scraped it out delicately with her teaspoon. "Funny, Lizzie was off to York yesterday on a day trip. I wonder if she saw it."

"It happened at half two in the morning."

"What a pity. She doesn't like to miss anything."

"Good God, it's not a tourist attraction," Colin said. "It's a national tragedy. Four million...