Vacant Possession Read Online Free PDF

stopping with a friend, he’s got lodgings here.”
    “See you Thursday then.” She watched Lizzie, waddling towards the side door of the fly-blown corner grocery. I wonder what she means about working at night? Can she possibly be a prostitute? Surely not; she was too grotesque for anyone’s taste. Lizzie stopped, ferreting in her bag for her door key. There was something unreal about her, as if she were a puppet, or an illustration loosed from the pages of a book. Suddenly, and with awful clarity, Sylvia understood her mingled repulsion and fascination, the prickling of kinship which had made her take the creature on. It was herself she was seeing, Sylvia Sidney of ten years back, the masklike maquillage, the jelly-flesh wobbling like a sow’s; the great big beautiful baby doll. She felt suddenly sick. She groped for the gear lever.
    Lizzie Blank, known otherwise as Muriel Axon, turned her key in the lock; and entered the dismal passageway of Mukerjee’s All-Asia Emporium.

CHAPTER 2
    The Mukerjees’ stock in trade blocked most of the narrow passage: tinned cream of tomato soup in cartons of three dozen, boxes of pre-cooked rice and deodorant sprays, toothpicks, lavender furniture polish, and fancy bun cases. Muriel walked sideways between the boxes, holding her shopping bag across her chest, and went upstairs in the dark. She found she had forgotten the password again, so she booted the door until the sentiment “Christ is risen” came feebly from within.
    The room was full of shadows and swirling dust, the sun kept out by a yellowing paper blind. Muriel walked to the window and released it; it shot up and out of her hand with a soft flurry like the exit of a family of rats. She looked out over the roofs of the outdoor privies and the coal sheds.
    “Stir your stumps,” she advised the man on the bed.
    It was Emmanuel Crisp, her friend, her mentor, her old mucker from the long-stay hospital; it was Emmanuel Crisp, who liked to pretend he was a vicar, and who got put away for it. He’d been a troublesome sort of lunatic, always needing big injections; whereas she, whose antecedents were much worse, had given no bother at all; always neat, clean, and biddable, at least after the first few years.
    Crisp flapped a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “Hello there, Muriel. I thought it was you, kicking.”
    “I’m not Muriel. I’m Lizzie Blank.”
    “But you are Muriel really, aren’t you?”
    “Sometimes. But today I’m Lizzie Blank, because I’ve got my wig on, haven’t I, and my make-up?”
    Crisp studied her. “It’s wonderful how you get transmogrified.”
    “I’ve got my job to do,” she said grimly.
    Emmanuel lay back on the bed. He was an exhausted man, with his greenish pallor and his high-pitched giggle. It was the day trip to York that had tired him. It had been their best get-together with old friends since they’d all been turfed out of Fulmers Moor Hospital, and left to fend for themselves.
    “Sholto enjoyed it,” Muriel said. “He didn’t have a fit. It was only the excitement that made him sick.”
    Crisp’s jaws worked around a yawn. He slid his long frame into a sitting position. “Do you have my press cuttings?”
    Muriel took the newspapers out of her bag and tossed them onto the table. “It’s hot in here.” She pulled off her wig and dropped it by the Daily Telegraph ; then, on second thoughts, arranged it on its stand, on the blank-faced head of white polystyrene that she kept on top of Crisp’s chest of drawers. She didn’t live here; she had a room of her own. But everything was arranged for her convenience.
    “Well?” she asked Crisp.
    Emmanuel looked up, gratified. “ AN ACT OF GOD ,” he read. Muriel said, “Do you want me to go for some fish and chips?”
    “I couldn’t eat. I’m too excited.”
    “Suit yourself. I’ve had my lunch with my employers. They’re not too pleased about the practice I had in their kitchen.”
    “They’ll get it