Free Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel

Hunniford. If you don’t like it they take you back. Giuseppe didn’t like it.”
    They went to see Giuseppe after he was dried out. “I went down London,” he said. His podgy face was lemon-yellow; his fingers played tunes on the bedcovers. “I went in a hotel. There was women in that hotel,” he crossed himself, “they was tarts. I never paid those women. A man come threatened me get out of that hotel. I went down the coach station. I went down the café. I went down the Sally Army.”
    “Five more minutes,” the nurse said. “He’s been poorly.”
    They smiled at her. The nurses liked it when you were poorly. They were kind to you. If you were sick in bed, they knew what you were up to and what they ought to be doing.
    “I went up Camden Town,” Giuseppe said. “I went down Bayswater. I went up Tottenham Court Road to see my grandmother, but she was dead. I went in the bed and breakfast. I went in the night shelter. I ask for an extra blanket but they say, no no, fat man.” Giuseppe rubbed his side. “My chest hurts. I’m a tramp. I go to Clacton. It’s winter. I get a lodging and I walk by the sea.” He closed his eyes and screwed up his face. “Mother of God, it’s so lonely in Clacton.”
     
    “Just remember your medication,” they said to Sholto. “A community nurse will call and see you.”
    “Not if I see her first,” Sholto said.
     
    Sholto got out on a Thursday. He was all set for his sister Myra’s house. He made his way along the street, carrying his navy-blue holdall, the yellow nylon straps wound around his wrist. When Myra saw him coming she locked the door.
    Sholto walked on to the corner. When he turned off Adelaide Street, a terrible sight met his eyes. The whole district had been razed. Osborne Street was down, Spring Gardens had been flattened. The Primitive Methodist Chapel was boarded up and all the gravestones had been taken away. He tramped through the meadow of blight where the bones of Primitive Methodists had once rested; the ground was strewn with glass and broken pots. He squatted down, turning over the shards. The weather was damp; his holdall was smeared with yellow clay. From where he knelt he looked up and read a sign: MOTORWAY LINK BEGINS MAY 1983.
    Where the Travellers’ Call had been there was a field of rosebay willowherb and scrap metal. There were a few aimless piles of red brick, two feet high, and in places the earth was turned up, as if someone had begun to dig foundations here and then thought better of it. Only the Rifle Volunteer was still standing, at the corner of where Sicily Street used to be. It was eleven-thirty, and while he watched, the landlord put on the lights and came out to open the doors. He stooped ponderously to draw out the bolt, and stood gazing for a minute at the sky; then he looked across the wasteland, shading his eyes as if he were scanning the prairie. Sholto was the only human figure within his view. There was a rusting refrigerator lying on its back, a swastika spray-gunned on a wall; human faeces. Sholto felt the straps of his holdall cutting into his wrists. Picking his feet out of the mud, scraping his shoe on a handy brick, he began to make his way towards the Rifle Volunteer. I thought the war was over, Sholto said.
     
    Miss Tidmarsh was nearly fifty now, and still going strong. Her shiny new car waited outside on the gravel. Muriel followed her; withered flanks inside a scarlet bib-and-brace. “Guess what!” Miss Tidmarsh said. “We think we’ve found you a job. Who’s a lucky girl?”
    She reached a hand across Muriel, pulled her seat belt, and snapped it fastened. They crunched off over the gravel. Even Miss Tidmarsh’s style of driving seemed less mature than it had been. Muriel said, “Whatever happened to Miss Field?”
    Miss Tidmarsh glanced at her sideways. “Fancy you remembering Miss Field! Was she your social worker?”
    “Such a lovely person,” Muriel said dotingly. It was an expression the nurses