Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel Page A

He never was happy with his own brand of insanity. No sooner would you say you were Picasso than he’d claim to be Salvador Dali. Remember that time Philip said he was a helicopter? Crisp said, ‘I’m Leobloodynardo,’ and started drawing on the walls.”
    “He was never a person of deep originality.”
    “Oh, I see, been at the library books, have we?”
    “I can talk, if I want to.”
    “You’re getting very friendly with Crisp.”
    “He’s all right.”
    “I hear wedding bells,” Sholto said. He clicked his fingers. “Ding-dong.”
    “That’s castanets.”
    “All right, don’t get shirty. Going back up the Punjab, are you? Want a bag for your knobs?”
     
    It was five-thirty when Muriel arrived back at Eugene Terrace; the tail end of the hot afternoon. Inside the Mukerjees’ Emporium, a drowsy girl with a pitted bluish face sat by the till on a high stool. She glanced up without interest as Muriel passed the window; her shoulders moved fractionally, and her eyelids drooped again.
    Crisp had left. There was a note on the table: GONE TO EVENSONG . And I brought doughnuts for our tea, Muriel thought crossly. She dumped the paper bag on a chair and walked around the room for a while, looking in Crisp’s drawers and under his mattress; there was nothing of interest. The room was close and stuffy; outside it smelled like thunder. At least, that was what the people at the doughnut shop said; she could not smell it. Over the Punjab, the sky had turned a leaden colour; pigeons huddled together on the guttering, heads sunk low into their feathers like vultures in cartoons.
    Muriel shed her clothes again. With the weight of the day upon her, it wasn’t difficult to become Poor Mrs. Wilmot. Her shoulders slumped, her knees bent, her toes turned in; she sprayed her hair with dry shampoo, and flattened it to her head gritty and streaked with grey, and secured it with two large hairgrips. As she did this, the years crept up and weighed her down; her joints locked, her mouth grew pinched, her hands began to shake. She put on Mrs. Wilmot’s elastic stockings and leaned over with a rheumaticky quiver for her bedroom slippers. What was the real Wilmot doing, she wondered. Probably having a cup of tea or something. Experimentally, she opened her mouth in a silent laugh.
    Finally she put on Mrs. Wilmot’s coat, which she needed in all weathers, feeling the cold as she did; it was a coat Sholto had found in a dustbin, no shape at all and the colour of the fluff that collects under beds. She went downstairs. A plump little boy of about twelve years old minded the till. The family were so numerous that, despite the shop’s long hours, she had never seen the same Mukerjee twice. His eyes behind his thick spectacles were glued to his Darth Vader comic; Wilmot passed, and he didn’t look up.
     
    When she returned to Mr. K.’s house she was surprised to find him up and about. “I thought you’d be having your sleep,” she said, as she shuffled dispiritedly into the kitchen. “Course, you know what’s best for you.”
    Mr. K. was taping up the kitchen window. “In case of poison gas,” he explained. As he stretched up his garments parted company, exposing the greyish roll of fat above his hips.
    “Pardon me,” his lodger said, “course, you know best, but couldn’t it come through the letter box?”
    “A welcome thought,” Mr. K. said. “I shall tape it instanter. Would you graciously put on tea kettle?”
    Mrs. Wilmot made the tea while Mr. K. went out into the hall to secure his letter box. When it was brewed she poured out for them, and they sat companionably at the kitchen table.
    “Woman watching house again today,” Mr. K. said. “Drove by, stopped, got out, waited ten minutes, passed on. Miss Anaemia said it is Snoopers, from the department.”
    She nodded, and drank her tea.
    “Who is this Snoopers?” He did not expect an answer. There were no answers to the questions which plagued him. He sucked