'Part Four Chapter VI\r'

'VI\r\nThe coterminous Parish Council meeting, the first of all since Barry had died, would be crucial in the ongoing battle oer the field. Howard had refused to bitp genius the votes on the proximo of Bellchapel Addiction Clinic, or the towns wish to transfer jurisdiction of the estate to Yarvil.\r\nParminder therefore suggested that she, Colin and Kay ought to meet up the chargetide before the meeting to discuss strategy.\r\n‘Pagford cant unilaterally make up to alter the parish boundary, can it? asked Kay.\r\n‘No, utter Parminder patiently (Kay could non help macrocosm a virgincomer), ‘ further the order Council has asked for Pagfords opinion, and Howards determined to make sure its his opinion that gets passed on.\r\nThey were retention their meeting in the Walls sitting room, because Tessa had gear up elusive pressure on Colin to invite the other dickens where she could listen in. Tessa handed around glasses of wine, put a large public treas ury of crisps on the c souree tree table, then sat pricker in silence, plot of ground the other trine talked.\r\nShe was exhausted and angry. The anonymous post ab protrude Colin had brought on one of his most debilitate attacks of acute anxiety, so severe that he had been otiose to go to school. Parminder knew how ill he was †she had signed him off work †yet she invited him to participate in this pre-meeting, non caring, it markmed, what fresh effusions of paranoia and distress Tessa would have to deal with this evening.\r\n‘Theres by all odds resentment issue there nearly the expression the Mollisons ar handling things, Colin was axiom, in the lofty, get laidledgeable trace he sometimes adopted when pretending to be a stranger to worry and paranoia. ‘I guess its starting to get up stacks noses, the way they imply that they can speak for the town. Ive got that impression, you know, while Ive been canvassing.\r\nIt would have been nice, su pposition Tessa bitterly, if Colin could have summoned these powers of dissimulation for her benefit occasionally. Once, long ago, she had want being Colins sole confidante, the only repository of his terrors and the fount of all reassurance, only she no longer undercoat it flattering. He had kept her awake from two oclock until half-past three that morning, rocking backwards and forwards on the edge of the bed, moaning and crying, saying that he wished he were dead, that he could non abbreviate it, that he wished he had never stood for the cornerstone, that he was finished …\r\nTessa heard Fats on the stairs, and tensed, unspoiled her son passed the forthright door on his way to the kitchen with nothing worsened than a scathing glance at Colin, who was perched in front of the fire on a leather pouffe, his knees level with his chest.\r\n‘Maybe Miles standing for the empty seat go out sincerely antagonize people †even so the Mollisons natural supporters ? said Kay hopefully.\r\n‘I think it might, said Colin, nodding.\r\nKay turned to Parminder.\r\n‘Dyou think the council will really vote to force Bellchapel out of their building? I know people get uptight about toss away indispensablenessles, and addicts precipitateing around the neighbourhood, but the clinics miles away … wherefore does Pagford care?\r\n‘Howard and Aubrey are scratching each others backs, explained Parminder, whose formula was taut, with dark brown patches under her eyes. (It was she who would have to dish up the council meeting the next day, and fight Howard Mollison and his cronies without Barry by her side.) ‘They need to make cuts in spending at order level. If Howard turfs the clinic out of its cheap building, itll be much more than expensive to bar and Fawley can say the be have increased, and justify cutting council funding. Then Fawley will do his best to make sure that the Fields get reassigned to Yarvil.\r\nTire d of explaining, Parminder pretended to examine the new stack of papers about Bellchapel that Kay had brought with her, easing herself out of the conversation.\r\nWhy am I doing this? she asked herself.\r\nShe could have been sitting at home with Vikram, who had been watching comedy on television with Jaswant and Rajpal as she left. The sound of their laughter had jarred on her; when had she last laughed? Why was she here, drinking nasty flying wine, fighting for a clinic that she would never need and a housing development inhabited by people she would probably dislike if she met them? She was not Bhai Kanhaiya, who could not see a difference between the souls of allies and enemies; she cut no light of God shining from Howard Mollison. She derived more pleasure from the archetype of Howard losing, than from the thought of Fields children inveterate to attend St Thomass, or from Fields people being able to break their addictions at Bellchapel, although, in a distant and dispassio nate way, she thought that these were good things …\r\n( exactly she knew wherefore she was doing it, really. She treasured to win for Barry. He had told her all about coming to St Thomass. His classmates had invited him home to play; he, who had been living in a caravan with his mother and two brothers, had relished the polished and comfortable houses of Hope Street, and been awed by the monumental Victorian houses on Church Row. He had even attended a birthday party in that very cow-faced house that he had subsequently bought, and where he had raised his four children.\r\nHe had fallen in love with Pagford, with the river and the fields and the solid-walled houses. He had fantasized about having a garden to play in, a tree from which to hang a swing, space and greenness everywhere. He had undisturbed conkers and interpreted them back to the Fields. After shining at St Thomass, top of his class, Barry had gone on to be the first in his family to go to university.\r\nLove and hate, Parminder thought, a puny frightened by her own honesty. Love and hate, thats why Im here … )\r\nShe turned over a summon of Kays documents, feigning concentration.\r\nKay was pleased that the doctor was scrutinizing her papers so carefully, because she had put a lot of time and thought into them. She could not believe that anybody bear witnessing her material would not be convinced that the Bellchapel clinic ought to remain in situ.\r\nBut through all the statistics, the anonymous case studies and first-person testimonies, Kay really thought of the clinic in terms of only one patient: Terri Weedon. There had been a change in Terri, Kay could feel it, and it made her both proud and frightened. Terri was covering faint glimmerings of an awakened sense of control over her life. Twice lately, Terri had said to Kay, ‘They ain takin Robbie, I won lerrem, and these had not been impotent railings against fate, but statements of intent.\r\n‘I took ‘im ter nursery yestday, she told Kay, who had made the misinterpretation of looking astonished. ‘Whys tha so fuckin shockin? Aren I good plenty ter go ter the fuckin nursry?\r\nIf Bellchapels door was slammed shut against Terri, Kay was sure it would reversal to pieces that delicate structure they were trying to build out of the wreckage of a life. Terri seemed to have a visceral fear of Pagford that Kay did not understand.\r\n‘I ‘ate that fuckin place, she had said, when Kay had mentioned it in passing.\r\nbeyond the fact that her dead grandmother had lived there, Kay knew nothing of Terris write up with the town, but she was afraid that if Terri was asked to travel there every week for her methadone her self-control would crumble, and with it the familys fragile new safety.\r\nColin had taken over from Parminder, explaining the history of the Fields; Kay nodded, bored, and said ‘mm, but her thoughts were a long way away.\r\nColin was deeply flattered by the way this spellbinding young woman was respite on his every word. He felt calmer tonight than at any point since he had picture that awful post, which was gone from the website. None of the cataclysms that Colin had imagined in the blue hours had come to pass. He was not sacked. There was no angry mob outside his front door. goose egg on the Pagford Council website, or indeed anywhere else on the internet (he had performed several Google searches), was demanding his arrest or incarceration.\r\nFats walked back past the open door, spooning yoghurt into his mouth as he went. He glanced into the room, and for a fleeting instant met Colins gaze. Colin immediately lost the thread of what he had been saying.\r\n‘… and … yes, well, thats it in a nutshell, he finished lamely. He glanced towards Tessa for reassurance, but his wife was staring stonily into space. Colin was a unretentive hurt; he would have thought that Tessa would be glad to see him feeling so much better, so much more in control, subsequently their wretched, sleepless night. Dreadful swooping sensations of dread were agitating his stomach, but he drew much comfort from the propinquity of his fellow underdog and scapegoat Parminder, and from the sympathetic attention of the attractive social worker.\r\nUnlike Kay, Tessa had listened to every word that Colin had just said about the Fields right to remain fall in to Pagford. There was, in her opinion, no time prat his words. He wanted to believe what Barry had believed, and he wanted to defeat the Mollisons, because that was what Barry had wanted. Colin did not like Krystal Weedon, but Barry had desire her, so he assumed that there was more worth in her than he could see. Tessa knew her husband to be a strange mixture of arrogance and humility, of unshakeable conviction and insecurity.\r\nTheyre completely deluded, Tessa thought, looking at the other three, who were poring over some graph that Parminder had extracted from Kays notes. They think theyll reverse lx years of anger and resentment with a some sheets of statistics. None of them was Barry. He had been a living interpreter of what they proposed in theory: the advancement, through education from impoverishment to affluence, from powerlessness and dependency to valuable contributor to society. Did they not see what hopeless advocates they were, compared to the man who had died?\r\n‘People are definitely getting irritable with the Mollisons trying to run everything, Colin was saying.\r\n‘I do think, said Kay, ‘that theyll be hard-pushed, if they read this stuff, to pretend that the clinic isnt doing crucial work.\r\n‘Not everybodys forgotten Barry, on the council, said Parminder, in a slightly feeble voice.\r\nTessa realized that her greasy fingers were groping vainly in space. While the others had talked, she had single-handedly finished the entire bowl of crisps.\r\n'