Unsettled Ground

by Claire Fuller

  Julius waits for Richard opposite the fish and chip shop, looking up at Shelley Swift’s windows. She’ll be at work now, but he has a date with her later, and he thinks he might play her something on the fiddle. He’s not going to tell her about the gig in the pub; he hardly acknowledges the thought, but he doesn’t want her to see him with his sister again—her clothes, her funny hair and lack of make-up. Holloway has told some bloke about their music—a journalist or collector of regional folk songs, Julius didn’t quite follow—and this man is hoping to come along. Waiting for Richard, Julius decides that he won’t play the usual folky stuff for Shelley Swift, but something else. Something classical.

  On Sundays when he was young, his mother and sister would be in the cottage cooking a roast, and he and his father would sit side by side in the old dairy with all the little jobs Frank was supposed to catch up on piled in front of them on the workbench: a basket with a broken handle, the sole of a shoe which was flapping loose from the leather upper, old tools that needed sharpening. A tiny radio the colour of English mustard and small enough to fit in a pocket stood on the windowsill, tuned to Radio 3. The Third Programme, his father called it. Frank liked Beethoven, Chopin, and Bach—Mozart was dismissed as too sweet, music for the ladies. His father spoke over the pieces he knew well, saying, “Listen to this bit, listen to this,” and waving a shoe or a chisel in the air. Sometimes he would sing along—sounds, not words—so that although Julius couldn’t really hear the music over his father’s commentary, he was swept up in Frank’s enthusiasm. When Dot and Jeanie were out of the house, he and his father would attempt to play some of the pieces they’d heard—his father on the piano and Julius on the fiddle, although he learned to call it a violin when they played classical music. “That’s it,” Frank would say encouragingly. “You’ve got it.” A month or so before his father died, Julius overheard him talking to one of his pals from his social club. “Plays like a dream,” Frank said. “A bloody dream.” Julius listened harder. “She gets it from her mother, of course, both of them are naturals.”

  Jeanie rounds up the chickens early and sits beside Dot’s grave to eat a sandwich she made at Bridget’s. Already the earth mound is green with a forest of seedling weeds and the area is visible only if you know to look for it. She feels as though she should apologize to Dot for making a mess of things in such a short space of time, when her mother managed to keep them all together in the cottage for more than fifty years. Undone in a couple of weeks. Although perhaps her mother should share some of the blame, except Jeanie can’t unravel it yet; doesn’t have the energy for it until she and Julius are settled. She’s excited that he has found somewhere, hopeful—as always—and she tries not to remember the schemes and plans that have gone wrong in the past. Instead she picks some spinach, garlic, and the last winter cabbage and cycles with Maude in the trailer to Cutter Hill, to work on Saffron’s garden. Saffron and Angel are not at home, but an envelope has been taped to the handles of the lawnmower and inside is another cheque. Jeanie wonders how easy it is to tell that a cheque hasn’t been paid into an account—she has heard about online banking, but she can’t imagine how it works. She puts the envelope in her pocket, knowing that, just like Julius with Shelley Swift, she is working without being paid.

  To get to Bridget’s from Saffron’s house, Jeanie has no choice but to cycle through the village. Across the green is the fish and chip shop, already open, with a woman at the counter being served by Doug, and five children climbing on the bench inside, pressing their hands and faces against the glass. Jeanie would have cycled past but she is tired, and she slows and comes to a stop, wondering if she has enough money for some chips. One child, seeing her looking, puts his open mouth on the window and puffs out his cheeks like some peculiar sea creature, his mouth a pink hole. Above the fish and chip shop, the grubby windows on the first floor seem to be positioned too close together, giving the front a shady cross-eyed look. Ignoring the boy at the glass, who is pulled away by a sibling, she hears the notes of a violin coming from the windows above and the thing inside her chest shifts and kicks. She gets off the bike and, holding Maude on the lead, loiters outside the village hall next door and pretends to read the leaflets on the noticeboard. The violinist makes a couple of false starts, and when they do get going it isn’t any music she’s played with her brother, but she knows it is Julius and she knows this is where Shelley Swift lives. The piece is classical, something he played with their father accompanying him on the piano. Bach perhaps. Their mother scorned the classical stuff: rich people’s music, she called it, and Jeanie hasn’t heard this piece played in years, maybe not since their father died. The music flows out of the windows one wavering note at a time, achingly sweet, a pear drop caught in her throat. When the playing is finished, she hears Shelley Swift and Julius laughing, and she knows that she’s lost him.

  19

  In Nathan’s old bedroom, Jeanie searches through the things that Stu brought from the cottage. It isn’t that she needs confirmation that Julius’s fiddle is gone, but that she wants to see if he has taken anything else, something that might mean he’s gone too. She comes first to her mother’s banjo case behind the stack of boxes. No one has opened it since Dot died. She sits on the bed and takes it onto her lap. The smell of the interior is the same as she remembers. Dust in the crevices of the green velvet insides, the comforting odour of an old bus: worn upholstery mixed with engine oil.

  She removes the banjo from the case and plucks at the five strings, out of tune, of course. She sets it beside her and opens the case’s top compartment: a yellow duster and a thumb pick which Dot never used. The second compartment, below where the neck of the banjo would sit, is smaller, and wedged in tightly is a brown envelope, thick with whatever it contains. When Jeanie takes it out, she sees a single word on the front in her mother’s poor handwriting and, trying to work it out, can’t get past what might be the letter S. But inside are sixteen fifty-pound notes.

  ∙

  Once again, in the early evening, Jeanie and Bridget stand at the kitchen sink looking out at the unkempt garden and ignoring the noise Maude is making. The only way Jeanie was able to persuade the dog to go into the greenhouse this time was to tempt her with gravy and a raw egg, although Maude had already been fed tonight. When the food disappeared, in less than a minute, Maude, realizing she was locked in, began to bark.

  Bridget fries pieces of frozen diced chicken and adds a jar of white sauce to the pan which she says is Chicken Tonight. She does a funny dance around the kitchen, waggling her elbows, bending her knees, and singing about the sauce, but Jeanie doesn’t know what the hell Bridget is doing, and shaking her head and laughing, Bridget goes back to the pan on the stove. Jeanie suggests they add some of the spinach and fresh garlic she brought with her, but Bridget says Stu can’t stand garlic, and when she reads the ingredients on the back of the jar she says it has carrots in it already, so they don’t need more vegetables.

  “Sorry about last night,” Jeanie says. “Julius coming in drunk.”

  Bridget makes a grunt that isn’t quite acceptance or forgiveness.

  “And the broken bowl. I’ll get you another.”

  “Well.” Bridget leans in, confidentially, “I have to admit that Stu does have a bit of a temper when something annoys him.”

  “Easily riled,” Jeanie says, and Bridget stiffens as though she’s allowed to say that her husband gets angry, but Jeanie isn’t supposed to agree.

  “Will Julius be eating with us this evening?” Bridget’s tone is pointed. She pours white rice into a saucepan and puts the kettle on. Jeanie is irritated that Bridget doesn’t rinse the rice first; it will be full of starch and stodgy when it’s cooked.

  “I saw him earlier, but he didn’t say.” She isn’t going to tell Bridget about him finding them somewhere to live. Bridget will ask her about it, and when Jeanie admits she knows nothing more, Bridget will roll her eyes and dismiss it as one of Julius’s fantasies. She can almost hear the
fuh which Bridget likes to make and see the wave of her hand. A long tale about the many things Julius has begun and not completed will follow and Jeanie will feel the conflict of needing to defend him and wanting to agree. And besides, now she’s found the money, perhaps they can sort things out with Rawson and move back into the cottage.

  “Probably with Shelley Swift,” Bridget says in a voice designed to hurt. “I’ve heard he’s sniffing around the fish and chip shop.” She laughs as though this were a brilliant joke. If she and Bridget are to remain any sort of friends, Jeanie thinks, she will have to leave this house very soon. Bridget moves on to the story of how she met Stu when he and Ed came to clear the contents of a house belonging to some dead relative. It was love at first sight and Stu kissed her within an hour of them meeting. Jeanie has heard it before and can’t understand the attraction, not just between Stu and Bridget but between anyone. She has never felt any longing, any desire, and notices that this is something others feel only when she can’t avoid it. While Bridget is talking, she thinks of a time in the cottage’s kitchen when she was thirteen and Bridget was visiting. It must have been late May, nine months after her father died, because the tomato plants were ready to be moved outside. Jeanie was at the table cutting pictures from a magazine. Bridget and Dot were sitting on the sofa talking about a local farmer.

  “Apparently, he died on the job,” Bridget said. Dot’s head jerked sideways, and Jeanie started to pay attention to the women’s conversation. Bridget didn’t notice Dot’s warning and continued with her story.

  “You remember what a big man he was, stomach out to here, heavy with it.” Her voice dropped but not so low that Jeanie couldn’t hear. “Died with it inside, and her trapped underneath for three hours before anyone heard her shouting.”

  “Poor woman,” Dot said quietly. It was one of her unhappy times.

  “Poor man more like. His heart stopped just like that!” Bridget snapped her fingers and Dot lunged for her friend’s hand, pulling it down and shushing her.

  Later, Jeanie was in the greenhouse, cramming potted-up tomato plants into the wheelbarrow so she could take them out to the cold frames. Dot, sitting on an upturned crate, started speaking in a rush as though to get the words done with. “You know when a woman and a man fall in love, they might go to bed together?”

  Jeanie, who couldn’t believe her mother was talking about this now, kept her head down. “They sleep together, they make love,” Dot said. She hesitated and Jeanie hoped her mother wasn’t thinking of the times she must have done it with Jeanie’s father.

  “I know all this,” Jeanie said, hoping to shut her mother up. Jeanie had missed the sex education lessons at school and had tried to piece together the bits of information she heard from other girls, who talked about having to roll rubber johnnies over bananas after the boys left the room and being made to watch a horrific film about having a baby. But there were gaps in her knowledge of how it worked and terms that meant nothing.

  “It can get quite strenuous,” Dot said.

  Jeanie thought of the stallion she’d once seen mounting a donkey, all bared teeth and hooves. “They did this at school, Mum, last year.”

  “Yes, but listen. If the man or the woman has a bad heart like that farmer had, it can be dangerous. And if his sperm reaches her egg, they might make a baby.” Even Jeanie knew Dot was skating over the details. Jeanie mixed up the birthing film she’d been told about with what little she knew, and imagined a tiny hinny—the product of a stallion and a jenny—sloshing out from between a woman’s legs. “And if they do—make a baby, I mean—it’s always hard for the woman, hard for her heart, carrying a baby around inside for nine months. And you know, Jeanie, that you have a very special heart.” Here her mother paused, her hand on her own heart, tears maybe in her eyes. Jeanie looked away, embarrassed. “It would be dangerous for you to have a baby. Not good for your heart, Jeanie. Do you understand?” Jeanie quite liked the idea of having a hinny, but the sex stuff and the boyfriends she couldn’t care less about.

  “I understand,” she said to her mother.

  Jeanie, Bridget, and Stu watch another two episodes of the police drama with their dinners on their laps again, and then the two women go into the kitchen—Bridget to smoke and Jeanie to empty and reload the dishwasher; she needs to feel she’s earning her keep. Bridget talks about her day at the doctors’ surgery and who came in with what, a long flow of information about illnesses and prognoses. Jeanie interrupts to say, “Stu told me that Mum borrowed some money from him.”

  Bridget stops talking and blows smoke up to the ceiling. “You shouldn’t worry about that now. You can sort it out when you’re settled somewhere.”

  “The Rawsons say we owe them rent. They say Mum got behind. Did Julius tell you?” Jeanie turns off the tap where she’s been rinsing the dirty plates.

  Bridget stubs out her cigarette and puts a Polo mint in her mouth. “I tell you what, how about a nice cup of hot chocolate?” She gets up, opens the fridge, and takes out the milk. The interior light makes her face look sick.

  “Stu said she borrowed eight hundred pounds.”

  “I expect it was about that. I leave the lending to him.”

  “Was it to give to Rawson?”

  “I think she did get a bit behind.”

  “So, she was paying for the cottage all these years?”

  “There was some sort of arrangement, you know that.” Bridget speaks in a way which makes her sound desperate not to have to answer fully. She spoons chocolate powder from a jar into three mugs, adds milk, and opens the microwave.

  “When did Stu lend her the money?” Jeanie feels like she’s wading through deep water and Bridget isn’t going to help pull her out.

  The microwave’s interior is splattered with old food. Bridget presses buttons. “Why does this matter now?”

  “Please.”

  Bridget sighs. “I suppose it might have been a month ago, or a bit more.” Jeanie slaps the counter with her palms and Bridget startles. “Don’t upset yourself,” she says. “You know it isn’t good for you.”

  With her fingers on her ribs, over her heart, Jeanie closes her eyes. “I’m trying to understand. The agreement is that we can stay in the cottage. That the cottage is ours until we die. And free. There was no rent to pay, ever. And now we find out that all this time Mum’s been paying the Rawsons. She borrows money but doesn’t use it to pay off the debt, which isn’t due in the first place. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe she mislaid it,” Bridget says hopefully.

  Jeanie shakes her head. “It was in her banjo case. I found it today. She wouldn’t have forgotten it there.” Jeanie waits to see if Bridget will suggest she return the money to Stu.

  The microwave pings, and Bridget opens the door, stirs the hot chocolate, and resets the buttons. “Just let it go. Maybe it’s best you’re out of the cottage, the place is damp and falling down. Keep the money, use it as a deposit for somewhere else. I won’t tell Stu you’ve found it. You can pay him back whenever.”

  “What I don’t understand is why she didn’t tell us any of this. The rent, getting behind, borrowing from Stu. Being ill, even. We’re adults. We could have helped.”

  “You and Julius need to move on, and you’ll be fine. Buy yourself something nice. You deserve it.” The microwave pings a second time. Bridget puts a mug in front of Jeanie. “Bring it into the lounge,” she says, heading out of the kitchen with the other two mugs. But Jeanie doesn’t follow; she stays at the counter, remembering how her mother used to make hot chocolate with powdered cocoa and sugar, heating the milk in a saucepan with a glass disc in the bottom so she would know from its rattle when the milk was boiling. Where is that glass disc now? Probably cracked and ground into the mud outside the cottage.

  Later, when Bridget is in the bath and Stu is still watching television, Jeanie counts out five hundred pounds of the cash, leaving three hundred in the envelope, and goes into the lounge.

  “Here,�
�� she says to Stu. He takes a moment to draw his eyes away from the television—another crime drama.

  “What’s that?” he says.

  “Five hundred quid. Some of the money Mum borrowed.”

  Stu mutes the television and stands.

  “So that means, just to be clear,” Jeanie says, “that we owe you another five hundred—three for the rest of the debt and another two hundred for the coffin. Plus whatever for the beer at the wake.” She still feels sick about the coffin, all that money, chopped up by Julius’s axe and stored in the old dairy ready to go on the fire—the fire they won’t be having again in the cottage. “Here.” She thrusts the cash at him, and he takes it.

  “Are you sure? You can pay it back later, when you’re more sorted.”

  “I’m sure,” Jeanie says.

  He puts the cash into a baggy pocket in the side of his shorts. As she’s leaving the room he says, “I hear you and Julius are going to be playing at the Plough.”

  She comes back towards him. “Who told you that?” she says.

  “They’ve put a poster up. A week tomorrow.”

  “Well, they should take it down. We’re not going to play.”

  She’s about to turn to go when Stu picks up the remote control and says, “I remember my mum playing the piano. Classical stuff, you know, but without the boring bits. She died when I was four, and that’s all I ever remembered about her. Not even her, really, just the music and her shoes. Brown lace-ups on brass pedals.”

  “That’s a lovely memory, though,” Jeanie says, itching to leave.

  “Yeah,” Stu says, sitting down again, staring at the telly. “Except I saw my aunt a few months ago. Another bloody funeral. Hadn’t seen her for years. Told her about Mum playing, you know, and the shoes. She said Mum never played the piano. We never actually had one. It was my aunt I’d remembered.”