Vacant Possession. Hilary Mantel

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СКАЧАТЬ happens to them all?’ Muriel asked.

      ‘Oh, they scrunch ‘em all up and make ‘em into new ones,’ Kieran said.

      There were two tables, and Edna’s got preferential treatment. When the Navy Issue came back in their tins, with the mould growing under the lids, it was never Edna’s table that got them. They were Permanent Rippers. On the other table, the girls could be moved, as the work required, to the Making Room, to the Blender or the Hogshead. Before the week was out, Muriel had learned to rip very nicely. She was never moved; nor was the elderly lady who worked opposite her.

      This was a humble little woman, with a worn bony face, and eyes and nose and mouth so insignificant that to call them features was an inflation of the truth. A scant amount of iron-grey hair was pinned fiercely to her little skull. The skin of her neck was yellow, her shoulders were bowed, and her hands shook a little as she reached for her cigarette boxes. She hardly seemed to have the strength for ripping. Every morning, before Kieran brought his first trolleyload, she would take out her teeth and wrap them in tissue paper, and slide them into her handbag. She would snap the clasp and hold the bag to her for a moment, looking around her with an anxious little smile; then she would put on her overall, over her pinny, over her old polyester dress. She seldom spoke. Her eyes watered continuously. She walked with her knees bent, her head down; a soft silent creature of depressive aspect. From time to time-once a week perhaps – some word from one of the other girls would catch her fancy, some gossip or quip, and she would tip her head back, open her toothless mouth, and roar with silent laughter, wiping her eyes the while and trembling at her own temerity.

      She’d had a hard life, Edna said. Her name was Sarah; but everybody called her Poor Mrs Wilmot.

      Muriel’s second trip to Buckingham Avenue was more enlightening than the first. She had only been hanging around for five minutes when who should she see, coming up the road with her Saturday shopping, but Miss Florence Sidney?

      Miss Sidney had put on weight, and her frizz of hair was now grey. She wore stout shoes, a check skirt, and a woollen scarf with bobbles on it, and she advanced along the street looking neither left nor right. As she passed number 2, going around the corner to her own gate, the front door flew open and a gang of screaming teenage children swarmed down the path and fanned out across the road. Miss Sidney was almost knocked into the hedge. Steadying herself against the gatepost, her face flushed, she called out after the children, ‘Alistair! For heaven’s sake!’

      ‘Eff off, you old cow,’ the boy called Alistair shouted back; wailing and yodelling, the gang careered around the corner into Lauderdale Road.

      Miss Sidney put down her basket to recover herself. She steadied her breathing, allowed her flush to subside, and picked a few bits of privet from her cardigan. Looking up, she saw Muriel watching her from the other side of the road. Muriel smiled; there was no one she would rather see pushed into a hedge. Miss Sidney’s eyes passed over her, as if she thought it was rude to stare; it was plain that she had no idea who Muriel was. She gave a half-smile, picked up her shopping, and trotted round the corner.

      She doesn’t expect me, Muriel thought. But she ought to expect me.

      Muriel fished in her coat pocket, and brought out a piece of newspaper. She unwrapped it as she crossed the road, took out Mrs Wilmot’s teeth, and tossed them over the hedge into the Sidneys’ front garden.

      Just as she was rounding the corner, the front door of number 2 opened again. Colin Sidney came out and loped down the path towards his car; a big fair man, balding, lean and fit. She watched him jump into his car and shoot away from the kerb. He did not even notice her. She raised a hand after him; like someone giving a signal to a hangman.

      Mrs Wilmot was being retired. She had been at the factory for thirty years; today was her last day.

      ‘Course,’ she said, in her usual dead little whisper, ‘I’ll not get my pension, I’m not sixty. Course, I’ll get my benefit. Course, I’ll have to put in for it. Course, I don’t really know.’ She picked up a corner of her overall and wiped her left eye.

      ‘It’s a bloody shame,’ Edna said. ‘Ripping’s all she’s got. Here, love, we’ll give you a send-off.’

      ‘Course, they gave me a Teasmaid,’ Poor Mrs Wilmot said. She wiped her other eye and sniffed.

      ‘Bugger the Teasmaid, we’ve got a lovely presentation to give you. We’ll give it you down the pub, it’s Friday night, isn’t it?’

      ‘Course, the pot was broken,’ Mrs Wilmot whimpered. ‘Course, I didn’t complain.’

      ‘I wish you’d told me,’ Edna said, ‘I’d have complained all right. I don’t know, this place is going down the drain, you can’t leave anything about, people’s teeth being nicked out of their own handbags, they want bloody hanging. You could do with a new set, you should have asked for one, you should get compensation.’

      ‘No point really,’ Mrs Wilmot said dejectedly, ‘I have to get my cards. I have to go to the office. I don’t like.’

      ‘What do you mean, you don’t like?’

      ‘Going to the office. I don’t like.’

      ‘I’ll get your stuff for you,’ Muriel offered.

      ‘Oh, would you?’ A tiny hope shone out of Poor Mrs Wilmot. ‘Muriel, ask them for my wages as well, lovey.’ The next moment her situation overwhelmed her again; she looked away and sniffed, and soon the tears were coursing down her cheeks.

      ‘Off again,’ Edna said. ‘Come on, duck, pull yourself together.’

      ‘Course, you can understand it,’ Poor Mrs Wilmot said. ‘Course they don’t like me coughing on the tobacco. I appreciate that. Course I do.’

      They arrived at the Swan of Avon just after opening time. Edna organised the moving of tables, commandeered extra chairs, and herded them into the Snug. ‘Let’s have a kitty, girls,’ she called. The girls fumbled in their bags and tossed five-pound notes into the centre of the table. ‘No, not you, love,’ Edna said to Poor Mrs Wilmot. ‘This is your day, duck. Come on now, wipe your eyes. That’s it, give us a smile. Have a go on the Space Invaders.’ She bustled her way to the bar, shouting through an open doorway to some male cronies from the Hogshead who were ordering up their first weekend pints in the public bar.

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