He lets the door knocker fall. The snow has stopped and already there are steady drips from the trees and bushes. Someone has driven in and out of the driveway, scoring and muddying the ground, but the early morning sun is shining, and where the snow is still clean, the shadows are sharp-edged and blue.
There are no sounds from inside the house and Julius is turning to go when he hears the door being unbolted. It’s opened by Rawson, dressed in trousers and a white shirt, his feet bare. Julius realizes he’s been expecting the housekeeper from his childhood, a large, kind, and aproned woman, who would surely be dead by now. Like his mother, he thinks. Dead. Rawson is tall, a whole head taller than Julius, and about his mother’s age, with brilliant white hair, black eyebrows, and a white moustache which flows down either side of his mouth. This morning he has also grown a crop of white stubble across his jaw and cheeks. The whole effect is that of a polecat, like the one Jenks, Julius’s drinking friend, once caught in a trap and brought into the pub: supple and lean.
“Julius,” Rawson says, stepping back, surprised, and Julius in turn is surprised that Rawson remembers his name. “Is everything all right?”
“I need to use your phone.” Julius’s own mobile, which he put into his coat pocket out of habit, is a basic model, not a smartphone like everyone seems to have these days, and he didn’t think to bring his charger.
“Of course, come in,” Rawson says in his educated voice, and steps back. The large hall has a carved fireplace, a tiled floor, and panelling. A blocky wooden staircase turns up the wall. Arts and Crafts, Dot used to call it, but Julius hadn’t known what she was on about and wasn’t interested.
“Is your electric working?” Julius wipes his feet on the mat.
“We’ve no problems here. Have you had a power cut? Checked the fuse box?”
Julius rolls his eyes as Rawson turns away. “Now where’s that handset? Caroline’s forever using it and not putting it back in its holder.” He goes through a doorway into a room that overlooks the front garden, a red-brick fireplace and two white sofas facing each other, a baby grand piano behind. It’s like a room that no one uses: no dogs on the furniture, no feet on the chairs, no wet spoons in the sugar. “Shall I look up the number of the electricity company? Who are you with?”
“I need the number for the GP surgery,” Julius says, coming into the room. He has an urge to take off his cap which he forgot to put on anyway. Fuck that, he thinks.
Rawson glances at him and looks away. Too stuck up, Julius supposes, to ask why he needs that number. The man bumbles around, finding the telephone handset on an armchair, pressing one button and then another to make sure there’s a dialling tone. “Who would have expected snow at the end of April?” Rawson says, making conversation and not waiting for an answer. He gives Julius the handset. “No problem up at the cottage, is there?” Rawson is searching on his mobile for the surgery’s number, walking about the room and back to the hall. Julius follows.
“My mother’s dead,” Julius says bluntly, just to see if he can stop the man’s mumblings, but the words shock Julius too. She really is dead. The two men stare at each other and Julius sees his own expression mirrored on Rawson’s face.
“What?” Rawson puts a hand out to the wooden mantelpiece.
A woman’s voice comes from above: “Who is it?”
“Julius,” Rawson calls while looking at him. “From the cottage.”
“What does he want?”
Rawson continues to stare at Julius, and Julius looks back, waiting to see what he will say, until Rawson raises his eyes to where the wooden banister turns squarely out of sight, and then back to him. “It’s nothing,” he shouts. “I’ll tell you later.”
Nothing, Julius thinks. That’s what the Seeders are to the Rawsons.
The woman—Rawson’s wife, Julius presumes—doesn’t reply or come down and in that moment, Rawson seems to catch and compose himself. “I’m so terribly sorry. What happened?”
“She fell, hit her head. Early this morning. I need to call the doctor.”
“Of course, of course.” Rawson fumbles some more with his smartphone, saying, “My wife always uses Alexa for phone numbers, but I can’t get the hang of the thing.”
Julius wonders if the man is going senile; he has no idea who Alexa is. Rawson reads out the telephone number and while it’s ringing he goes back into the sitting room, but Julius is aware of his presence just the other side of the door, most likely listening. A receptionist answers the phone—a different one from Bridget—who makes sympathetic noises and takes the details. She searches for Dot on their computer system and Julius thinks that perhaps she won’t be registered with them any more, but the receptionist finds her name and says that Dr. Holloway will visit this morning as soon as he is able. When the call is finished, Rawson comes back into the hall. His eyes are bright, shiny.
“Okay if I make another?” Julius says.
“Go ahead. Can I get you a cup of—” Rawson starts.
“No.”
“Of course. I’m sure you’ve got lots to sort out.”
“Thanks,” Julius says, although he doesn’t mean it. This man owed my mother, Julius thinks. And now Rawson owes him and Jeanie. “I need another number. A bathroom fitter. I’m supposed to be working for him today.”
When he has the number, Julius phones Craig while Rawson shifts a vase of flowers on a table a centimetre left and pretends not to listen to this conversation too.
At the front door as Julius is leaving, Rawson says, “Hang on. I’ve got some post for you.” The postman won’t come up the track after his van got stuck one time and had to be towed out by a tractor. Julius isn’t sure how or when his mother collected the post. He doesn’t look at the envelopes, just folds them in half and shoves them in his coat pocket.
“Have you thought about . . .” Rawson starts, stops, and begins again with, “Will you be having a thing for Dot? A wake? I’d like to pay my respects.”
“No,” Julius says. “We haven’t thought about any of that.” On the drive, he turns to look back. Spencer Rawson is standing in a patch of snow in his bare feet, watching.
4
Two hours later, without Julius having returned, the doctor arrives at the cottage. His large stomach, wide shoulders, and bull head fill up the kitchen and block out the light. The first thing he says to Jeanie after introducing himself as Dr. Holloway is that he doesn’t have long. He asks where Dot was found, why the electricity is off, and where the body is now. “You probably shouldn’t have moved her,” he says as Jeanie shows him to the parlour and the shrouded figure. She doesn’t stay to watch his examination. When he returns to the kitchen, she’s relieved that he declines her offer of tea.
The doctor rubs his hands to warm them. In front of the window his features are indistinct and Jeanie can barely see his mouth move while he explains that he is certain that Dot died of a stroke and that there is a procedure which involves him telephoning the coroner before he can give Jeanie a particular certificate which she needs before she can get the green form. She has no idea what he’s talking about and at the mention of the word form, her fingers flutter to her heart and press there without her realizing and she can no longer focus on Dr. Holloway’s sentences about Dot’s illness, warning signs, and medication.
At the door, he says, “I’ll see you at the surgery for the medical certificate,” and clamps a meaty hand on her shoulder, adding that Dot was a good woman, and he’s sorry she’s gone. And then he’s gone too, revving off in his jeep, leaving Jeanie wondering how he knew what sort of woman her mother was and why he wasn’t able to give her the death certificate then and there, if that’s the form she needs.
After another hour, in which Jeanie moves aimlessly and unseeing through the cottage, and Julius doesn’t return, she assumes he must have somehow got to the work he has with Craig. She turns on the portable radio and listens to a couple of minutes of a woman talking about how she walked the Appalachian Trail in America, b
ut her voice is too grating even at a low volume and Jeanie switches it off. She finds herself staring out of the scullery window at the chickens high-stepping through the snow, without knowing how or when she got there. Finally, she decides that it is the death certificate they need and for some reason which she doesn’t understand she has to pick it up from the surgery. She clicks her tongue at Maude, and they walk through the snow to the village.
The GP surgery is a series of purpose-built, low-level boxes set in the middle of a car park near the edge of Inkbourne. Jeanie knows that three doctors work there including Dr. Holloway, but she’s never been to see any of them. She last saw a doctor when she was thirteen for a final routine check-up after her bouts of rheumatic fever ended. Then, the surgery occupied one of the double-fronted Victorian houses overlooking the village green. It was a year or so after her father died, when her mother was still listless, still forgetting to cook dinner, to shop for food, or to round up the chickens at the end of the day. They lost six to foxes that year. Her mother had taken Jeanie to see a GP whose name she no longer remembers. His consultation room was cold and frost patterned the window. He told her to lie on the high bed in the corner and lift up her vest. Behind him, her mother nodded her encouragement, and although shy, Jeanie lay down and revealed her narrow ribcage and the sore little swellings that were developing behind her nipples. She remembers the grey hairs growing from the doctor’s nostrils and the chill of his stethoscope as he pressed it against her chest. When he took the thing out of his ears, he shook his head, and her mother started crying in a way that Jeanie thought might never end. Dot got her handkerchief out from her handbag and covered her face with it, rocking back and forth where she sat on the chair next to the doctor’s desk. He called for the receptionist to come in, and Jeanie was led by the hand back to the waiting room. There, heels on her chair and arms hugging her knees, she stayed until her mother came to fetch her. Was it then, when they got home, that Dot explained that the fever and the aches Jeanie had suffered from when she was younger had weakened her heart and made it fragile, or was it later? Either way, her mother said, “Think of your heart like an egg. You know what happens if you drop an egg?” Jeanie was worried her mother was going to start crying again and if she did Jeanie wouldn’t know what to do. Perhaps the doctor had given her mother a pill to stop her crying when Jeanie had been in the waiting room. As her mother spoke, Jeanie imagined something within her chest the size and shape of a duck’s egg but with a pinkish tinge and its shell so thin that the creature inside was visible: curled, bloody, and featherless, it knocked and scraped on the shell’s inner layer. What mayhem would it cause if it broke free?
Added together, the amount of school she’d missed from rheumatic fever was probably a couple of years, and after the diagnosis of her weak heart she missed more, but Dot was happy to keep her at home tucked up on the sofa or helping out with the easy jobs in the garden. Dot might not have expressed it clearly, but the message Jeanie received was that an education for the kind of people they were—poor people, country people—would only steal her away from where she belonged—at home. Even Julius left school at sixteen having sat and failed two exams.
Outside the surgery, she takes the dog’s lead from her pocket and ties Maude to a metal pole. The dog protests, whimpering at being abandoned, but Jeanie shushes her. At the set of glass doors, she hesitates, her heart jumping at the thought of going in, the way people will look at her, but a woman comes out and holds the door open, and Jeanie enters. The waiting room is filled with rows of chairs with upholstered seats, some of them occupied. The place smells of disinfectant and furniture polish. Easy listening pop music plays over a loudspeaker and a baby is crying.
Bridget, her mother’s best friend, is sitting behind the low desk beside another receptionist, and when Bridget sees Jeanie, she rushes out, her moon-face crumpling and her eyes filling.
“Oh, my love,” Bridget says, opening her arms, and Jeanie lets herself be embraced. Bridget’s hold is soft, different from Dot’s, which was quick and bony, or Julius’s, which is enveloping and tight and expels the air from Jeanie’s lungs. Bridget smells of cigarettes and Polo mints. When she lets go, she says, “Has Dr. Holloway been out to the cottage yet? I was going to come over as soon as my shift finished.” The other receptionist shoos Bridget away and Bridget mouths a thank you. “Let’s go into one of the nurses’ rooms.”
They walk beside the back of a row of chairs where a young man with dirty blond hair and large lips is flicking through a magazine, his boots resting on the chair opposite. As they pass, Bridget gives him a shove on his shoulder. “Feet off!” she says near his ear, and while Jeanie is shocked that Bridget might be this rude to a patient, the man lifts his feet one by one off the seat and puts them on the floor. When Jeanie looks at him over her shoulder, the man gives her a grin—a wide, cheeky smile—and she hurries on.
In the nurses’ room, Bridget says, “Why didn’t you call me? Julius phoned and spoke to one of the women here who was opening up. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it.” She puts her hands either side of her face and opens her mouth, squashing her cheeks like a cartoon character. Jeanie wonders where Julius phoned from; perhaps he used Craig’s mobile. “Was it a stroke?” Bridget continues. “Oh, I hope it was quick.” She sits heavily on a swivel chair. “Was she taking her medication?”
Jeanie has forgotten how much and how fast Bridget can talk. Just listening makes her tired and she can’t help speaking in a voice that sounds as if she’s falling asleep. “I didn’t know she had any medication to take.”
“I bet she didn’t collect it from the chemist, did she? I kept telling her that it would be free because she’s over sixty. Was over sixty. Oh God. It wouldn’t have cost her anything.”
“Mum didn’t like being given things for free.” Jeanie sits on the chair beside the desk, the patient’s chair she supposes. Behind Bridget are rows of kitchen cupboards and in the corner a high bed similar to the one Jeanie was examined on. Being in this room is making her anxious. “I didn’t even know she was ill or had been to see the doctor.”
“Oh, my love,” Bridget says again, and leans forwards to touch Jeanie’s knee. “She’d had a couple of mini-strokes a month or so ago. I’m so sorry. She didn’t tell you? No, I can see she didn’t. I’m sure it was just that she didn’t want to worry you and Julius, it would have only been that. But she should have got the prescription at least. Aspirin, that’s all it would have been. God, I could do with a fag. Let’s go out the back.”
They stand shivering against the windowless back wall of the surgery and Bridget takes a packet of cigarettes from her uniform pocket. “Snow at the end of April,” she says, shaking her head and lighting up. There had been girls at Jeanie’s school who stood outside the back gates smoking and talking about boys, but she had never been one of them.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it out to the cottage before you walked all the way here to tell me,” Bridget says. “Well, anyway, the other receptionist told me.”
“I didn’t come here to tell you,” Jeanie says. “I came to get the death certificate.”
“Oh, okay,” Bridget says, her voice tight. She drops the match by her feet where it joins a few others and a number of scuffed cigarette butts mashed into the dirty snow. “Well, it’ll be the medical certificate you need from Dr. Holloway first, but he probably has to phone the coroner. Did he mention that? He has been, hasn’t he? Then you’ll have to take the certificate to the register office in Devizes.”
“Devizes?”
“To get the death certificate and the burial certificate—the green form.”
Jeanie puts her hand on the brick wall to steady herself. “Can’t the doctor give me those?”
Bridget stares at her, draws on her cigarette. “You have to register a death, Jeanie. At the register office.” She speaks as if Jeanie were a child. “That’s how these things work. You’ll need the certificates for the vicar, or the cremator
ium, and you’ll probably need the death certificate for other things too.”
“Other things like what?” Everything is beginning to jostle for space in Jeanie’s head.
“Like Dot’s bank account—”
“Oh, she never had a bank account. None of us ever had a bank account. We keep all our money in a tin in the scullery.” Jeanie laughs, a mad-sounding laugh, knowing she shouldn’t have said this, and wondering how it was only yesterday that she and her mother were out in the garden weeding the onion bed. The wall she is pressing against seems soft, as though if she leaned harder, she might be able to fold herself into it and be gone.
“I can take you to Devizes.”
“I’ll catch the bus.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly. I am capable of catching the bus.”
“Look.” Bridget scrapes the lit end of her cigarette against the wall and the falling sparks melt pinpricks into the snow. “You’re going to have to get through a lot in the next few days. I know—I buried my father last year, remember?” Jeanie has forgotten this and feels bad for it. “It’s not just the certificates, but there’s the funeral, the wake.”
“Wake? I don’t want a wake.” The thought of people milling about the kitchen, the babble of them, the way they would stare at her and Julius: pitying the weirdos who still lived with their mother at age fifty-one.
“Of course you want a wake.”
“Mum didn’t know many people. I can’t think of anyone who’d want to come.”
Unsettled Ground Page 2
