Unsettled Ground

by Claire Fuller

  Ed is back and she stays in the caravan to avoid him. Can she tell him now that she doesn’t want him to collect the rest of their belongings from outside the cottage, and that of course she doesn’t want him to fetch the piano? She remembers his grin and the long drawn-out way he said done. She will not tell him she’s changed her mind; she’ll have him collect everything and the piano too.

  But how will she and Julius stay here even for a few days? Most of their belongings, certainly the furniture, won’t fit, and there’s only one bed. What will they do for water, for the toilet? When Ed has gone for what must be the final box, Jeanie goes outside and turns away from the caravan, following a track which might be used by badgers, ducking under branches, pushing through bushes until she comes up against a wire fence. On the other side is a back garden with a shed, a new wheelbarrow propped against it. There is a compost heap with perhaps the first grass cuttings of the year dumped on top, and beyond this is a lawn and, at the end, a brick house. A woman enters a downstairs room, holding a cat over her shoulder. Jeanie puts her fingers through the wire, gripping tight enough to feel it digging into her skin. The woman dances with the cat, turning one way and then the other to some unheard music, until together they dance out of the room.

  22

  For an hour or more Jeanie sits on a broken wall which must once have been part of a small building—an electricity substation or an outhouse. Maude runs about, nose down, following smells and rustles in the undergrowth, returning every few minutes to check Jeanie hasn’t moved. There is the almost constant undertone of cars on the main road, and when Jeanie closes her eyes the sound might be waves on shingle. She went to the seaside once on a day trip organized by the social club her father had belonged to. An act of charity she supposes now, since Frank had died the previous year. It seemed to take all day to drive there in the coach, and although she was disappointed that the beach was made of pebbles rather than the golden sand she’d imagined, she and Julius huddled under towels to change out of their clothes in the raw wind. While her brother hobbled as fast as he could to the water and charged straight in, Dot insisted that Jeanie stay close and only paddle in the shallows.

  When finally Jeanie hears men’s voices—Ed and his mate with the rest of the stuff, she presumes—she dusts off her skirt and returns to the caravan, Maude bouncing along ahead. Inside, she hums a tune, loud enough for the men to hear, while she sweeps thoroughly. She opens the sink and flings the glove out of the door, and then takes hold of the fitted cushion on the couch to brush behind it. As she pulls, it splits open and four tiny pink creatures tumble out. Maude eats them in an instant and Jeanie shrieks at the shock of it, kicking the cushion outside.

  Ed is there, next to the step. “Problem, love?” he says.

  “No.” Jeanie hugs herself. “Just doing some clearing up.”

  “That damn piano’s gone as far as it’s going. Even with the dolly and some planks, it’s not gonna budge now.”

  “Where is it?”

  Ed points towards the lane. “’Bout halfway. Near where some kids have had a fire.”

  What does it matter, halfway or all the way to the caravan, it was never going inside.

  “You’ll go back for everything else?”

  “There is nothing else.”

  “The things outside the cottage, on the track, like we agreed.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, ain’t nothing there.”

  “Where is it, then?”

  “How should I know?” Ed says. “It was your stuff to look out for.”

  “There’s nothing there? Are you sure?”

  “A few bits of paper, box of old shoes. Didn’t think you’d want them.”

  “But the furniture? The table and chairs?”

  “Someone must have took it.”

  “Who? Who would have taken it?” With a rising panic Jeanie sees their possessions: the bucket her father mended, the binoculars for when they watched birds together, the rag rug her mother made from old clothes. These are people and memories, not just objects.

  Ed shrugs, gives her a look that suggests she’s stupid to think it would still be there. “We’ll be off then,” he says. “Let you get settled in.” There’s that smirk again and Jeanie thinks about punching him, asking for her money back, but there’s something about him that makes her afraid, and she lets him go.

  She sits on the step and puts her head in her hands, and Maude, disturbed, comes and paws at her leg. She puts her arms around the dog. “All of it gone,” she says. Maybe she should call Ed back to double-check that he’s correct—that he went to the right place, that he looked hard enough.

  Julius pushes his bicycle with the loaded trailer past the bushes at the opening to the little area of wasteland. Everything glows with a green freshness and a clarity he’s not noticed before. The outlines of the new leaves on a magnificent beech, the feathery seed heads lifting from clumps of coltsfoot in the slight breeze. The thought that his mother is dead and the cottage gone continues to jolt him at odd moments, but he can’t keep down this feeling of joy. And then, amongst the lanky grass near a clearing where someone has had a fire and where the light falls to the ground in yellow puddles, there is a piano. An upright piano. He leaves the bike and comes round the front and sees that it is their piano from the cottage with its ornate front panel and candle sconces. Here, cockeyed, with two wheels sunk into soft earth, it seems fantastical, part of a fairy story, and he laughs. He lifts the key lid and, bending, plays the beginning of the Bach prelude he played for Shelley Swift on his fiddle. The notes go up and away like his music never did in the cottage or her flat, echoing off the trees and expanding skywards. He has half a mind to get his fiddle and see how that sounds too. He’s been humming the music for three days and now here he is, in a wood, playing it on their own piano.

  When he played the Bach for Shelley Swift she said it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for her. He kissed her while they sat on the sofa and then, in a quick move, she straddled his lap to face him, her legs either side of his thighs. She pressed herself against his chest, against his erection inside his jeans, and she took both his hands and put them on her breasts. When they stopped kissing, he said, “I found somewhere else to live today.”

  “What?”

  “A caravan in a little bit of woodland. Off the main road. You should come out sometime for a visit. Reckon you’d like it.”

  “A caravan?”

  She moved off him and adjusted her skirt. “Me and camping don’t mix. Insects, moths. Squatting in the bushes.” She laughed.

  “It’s not camping, not exactly.”

  She had a hand in her bra, adjusting herself. “For your sister too, is it? The caravan?” And Shelley Swift’s laugh had rolled out again.

  Now in the spinney, Jeanie says from behind him, “I wanted it,” and Julius stops playing the piano as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t, something pleasurable that is his alone. But he can’t take his fingers off the keys, he can’t let go of his laughter yet. “Ed brought it over. Stu’s ill in bed.”

  He plays quietly and the prelude becomes something syncopated, his fingers running across the keys in unexpected ways.

  “We can’t live here, Julius,” his sister says, and he knows he should stop and listen to her, but it’s an effort to drag himself away from the music. After a few more notes he stands straight and faces her.

  “It’s small, but we’ll make it cosy.” He does believe what he says: Jeanie is a good homemaker, and he will look after her. “Did the move go okay?”

  “It’s all gone,” Jeanie says. She knows she’s being deliberately obtuse as though to make him realize it’s his fault. She needs someone to blame.

  “What’s gone?”

  “All of it.” She speaks petulantly, like a child, and then is angry. “Someone’s taken everything.” And she sees that a delicate joy which was in her brother’s face while he was playing has gone. “I asked Ed to f
etch it, but it isn’t there.”

  “I don’t understand. The things at Bridget’s?”

  “The things from the track, outside the cottage.” She snaps at him to make him feel stupid for not understanding quickly enough, or guilty for having been happy.

  “All the things? Who the hell would have taken them?” He closes the key lid.

  “I don’t know, Julius. Who do you think? Nathan or one of his mates? Rawson or maybe even Ed? You tell me. Who do you think?”

  Julius runs his hand through his hair, the lines in his face deepening, and then suddenly gone. “It’s just stuff. Things.” He puts out an arm and at first she resists, leans away from him, but not so far that he can’t get her, and she lets herself be tucked into him, and her body relaxes.

  “It’s nearly everything we own.” She’s almost crying.

  “Come on, come on,” he says. “I brought some water and a bottle of gas. Let’s make a cup of tea. I’m knackered.”

  She pulls away as she sees that the trailer fixed to the back of his bike is loaded with a large water container and an orange gas cylinder, both strapped on with bungee cord.

  “I was paid today,” he says.

  She knows he wants her to say thank you, but she can’t do it. “There was a mouse nest in a cushion and there’s only a single bed, and no loo. We can’t live in this place, Julius. It’s not possible.” Her pulse beats in her throat.

  “It’s just temporary until I sort something else out. It’s better than Bridget and Stu’s, isn’t it?” His voice is cajoling, working on her.

  “You’ll always bloody sort something out and now see where we are.”

  “I’m trying. For God’s sake, I’m doing my best.”

  The thumping anger of her heart makes her bend over, palms on knees again, her breath coming fast.

  “I’m sorry.” He rubs her back. “Breathe, just breathe. Slowly.”

  When she can stand upright, he says, “Come on, I’ll show you.” And he pushes the bike and trailer towards the caravan and there is nothing else for her to do except follow on behind. She stands in the doorway, trying not to inhale the terrible smell, while Julius manipulates the table and the bench seats. “See,” he says when he’s finished. “Another bed. We’ll have to do something about the cushions, re-cover them. And here’s the sink.” He lifts the counter to show her the sink she’s already found. “I’ll attach the water in a moment.” He’s like a child allowed to camp out overnight and excited by the equipment: the billycans which fit one inside the other, the sporks, and the tin opener you have to lever up and down by hand. But he hasn’t thought about how much more laborious these things are to use for longer than a weekend, and how in the middle of the night he’ll be frightened and want to go back to his proper bed.

  “I’ll fix up the gas and we’ll have a cup of tea. And I have another surprise for you—a treat.”

  “What happens when the owner of this crappy piece of land finds us living here and chucks us off?” Jeanie says, from outside. “What then?”

  “No one owns it.”

  “Everywhere is owned by someone.”

  “It’s been forgotten, cut off. Why else do you think this beauty is still here?” He slaps the side of a cupboard. “It’s just until we get back on our feet. Save up some money so we can rent somewhere decent. It’ll be fun, living in the woods. Look at Maude, she loves it.” Behind Jeanie the dog is running, stopping to dig through last year’s leaves and running again. Julius comes out and goes to the trailer and lifts up a carrier bag. “Get some water boiling for the tea because here’s your surprise.” He opens the bag and wafts it under Jeanie’s nose. “Fish and chips,” he says in a sing-song. She thinks about Shelley Swift living above the fish and chip shop and wonders whether he bought some for her too, but Jeanie’s empty stomach rumbles and her mouth waters at the smell of fish and vinegar. And once more, she forgives him.

  23

  Jeanie tucks her knees in tight where she lies on the bed which Julius made from the table and bench seats. She is freezing in her sleeping bag even with a blanket on top. From the other end of the caravan, her brother’s slow, sleepy breaths both reassure and irritate. Under her head the cushions are damp and the stink of them is in her nose. Tomorrow she will find somewhere else to live. Tomorrow she will heat a pot of water on the stove and clean the caravan thoroughly. Tomorrow she will take the cushions outside and air them in a patch of sunshine. The previous evening, before it became too dark to see, they brought the instruments indoors and as many of the boxes and bags as they could fit; the rest they tucked under the caravan. The piano remains where Ed and his mate left it.

  She turns on her back and traces the outlines of grimy stains which blotch the ceiling. It is ten past five on her wristwatch when she hears the first drops of rain tapping on the caravan roof. A steady patter and, within a minute, a downpour.

  24

  In a corner of the lounge bar of the Plough, Jeanie and Julius tune their instruments. They are watched without curiosity by two elderly women sitting under the front window with their coats on. Jeanie can imagine what they’re thinking; what they will whisper to each other later. Two sherry schooners, almost empty, are on the table in front of the women. Behind Jeanie is chatter and the chink of glasses and cutlery from the few people eating in the conservatory, while to her right the counter curves out of sight into the public bar, where conversation and laughter outdo each other in volume. The red swirled carpet, the beaten copper over the fireplace, and the lights reflecting off the bottles and mirrors all press up against Jeanie’s eyes, and the thought that there are only two people in the audience makes her hot with embarrassment, even while the idea that anyone else may come and listen—or worse, watch—makes her queasy with nerves. She doesn’t understand how her brother talked her into this.

  Jeanie and Julius haven’t discussed what song they will begin with. When they play at home, either of them will start with a note and the song is begun. But here, self-consciously, they dither, starting and stopping and beginning again, until Jeanie, in exasperation, begins definitively with “As I Walked Out One April Morning.” One of the two women at the far end picks up both glasses, takes them to the bar, and passes the musicians on her way to the ladies. Jeanie doesn’t catch her eye. The slow song is about a French girl who has been convicted of killing her lover and who asks her executioner to make her death under the guillotine quick and sharp, and Jeanie hasn’t realized how interminable and dreary the song is until she sings it to the silent and mostly empty lounge bar. She cuts out the penultimate verse, and Julius, not noticing that now the girl seems to live, plays three more notes after Jeanie has finished, then stops abruptly and frowns at her. The barmaid appears and fills two new schooners with sherry. The woman returns from the ladies.

  “We should go,” Jeanie says from the corner of her mouth.

  “We won’t ever get another booking.”

  “I don’t ever want another booking.”

  The public bar is quiet and then suddenly loud with laughter. The women at the far end continue to sit and stare.

  Julius raises his fiddle, strikes a note, and starts very fast.

  Jeanie shakes her head, she can’t do this, she won’t do it, but Julius carries on, one foot stamping out a beat. He sings, “Hoi, hoi, a pretty little maid.” Shouting it above the hooting coming from the other room.

  “A pretty little maid,” Jeanie repeats, half-heartedly.

  “Had a demon lover.”

  “Had a demon lover.”

  The women in front of the window sit up straighter. After the next verse the barmaid comes back through to the lounge and rests her forearms on the bar to watch. When someone shouts that they need serving she shouts back that they’ll have to come through to the lounge if they want a drink—she’s listening to the band. Julius winks at Jeanie. There are three men and a woman in the pub’s lounge when that song finishes, and two more when they play the jig “Bryan O’Lynn.” Th
e newly arrived women, middle-aged and drunk enough to be slightly unsteady on their feet, hold each other around their waists and join in with the chorus:

  “‘It’ll do, do, do, do’

  Says Bryan O’Lynn, ‘it’ll do.’”

  A few people call out song names, most of which Jeanie hasn’t heard of, but they play a version of “Scarborough Fair” which the crowd sways to. The people in the conservatory finish eating and join the others in the lounge bar, and more come through from the public. Jeanie sees a smiling Dr. Holloway, and Bridget taking a photo on her phone. Behind her is Stu, pint in hand, which he raises to Jeanie. She grins back, she can’t help herself, and then looks down. At the table beside her and Julius, the drinks line up.

  Each song is the same as the version they have always played and yet different, recomposed by a change in emphasis, an alternative word, a minuscule modification, which has always made Jeanie wonder at what point in its mutation it can be said to be a different song. When people join in with the chorus she strains to hear their own music and voices, but she is always aware of Julius—an indication that he is passing her the lead, that he is slowing when the lyrics are sad, and his pause before the final phrase so that they end together, to applause and whistling. They finish the evening in harmony, with “Polly Vaughn”:

  “He ran up beside her and found it was she

  He turned away his head for he could not bear to see

  He lifted her up and found she was dead

  A fountain of tears for his true love he shed