Unsettled Ground

by Claire Fuller

  “I’ll find out,” the man says, but he doesn’t return.

  She shouldn’t have agreed to go with the police, she thinks. Should have insisted that she travel in the back of the ambulance with Julius. “You’re not under arrest,” they said. “We’d just like to ask you a few more questions and it might be more comfortable in the station. We’ll keep you updated about your brother as soon as we know anything. You can leave at any time.”

  The clock says it’s just after twelve, but her body can’t work out whether that’s midnight or noon. She leans over the table, pulling her cardigan around her; she didn’t stop to put a coat on when she left the caravan. She wants to go, but she doesn’t know where they have taken Julius or how she might get there. So, she waits. There’s no window in the room. There is a pain behind her eyes and all her limbs and muscles ache, and her internal organs are heavy; she needs to sleep but thinks sleep will never come again. Finally, the door opens a second time and she stands. A woman and man introduce themselves, and the word detective is all she can remember. They put a mug of tea in front of her and apologize for keeping her waiting.

  “How’s my brother?” she asks, and the woman says, “That’s just what we were trying to ascertain. I’ve asked someone to come in and tell us as soon as there’s any news. Have a seat.”

  The man puts a notepad and pen on the table as though he expects Jeanie to write. There was a time when these objects would have sent her into a panic but they don’t scare her now. The detectives sit opposite her and ask about what happened, and the man writes things in the notebook.

  Jeanie’s story is jumbled at first, out of sequence and complicated. She tells them about Shelley Swift who lives above the fish and chip shop, and about Nathan, and Lewis, and Tom; she tells them about the cutlery and the eviction. She says that her dog is missing and she cries, and the woman passes a box of tissues from her end of the table. “Has a stray dog been handed in?” she asks. The male detective says that the police don’t deal with stray dogs, she’ll have to contact the dog warden at the council. She explains that she’s been visiting the cottage to tend the garden and that Rawson came to the caravan to talk about it. She tells them she thought she was having a heart attack and she got Jenks to send a message for her brother to come home. The female detective asks her if she needs a doctor, but it’s too late for that. She has to explain who Jenks is. She says that Bridget Clements came to the caravan yesterday and picked up the cutlery from the floor. She says she spilled some potatoes which got trampled and she had to wash them again. They tell her to stick to the important information. She wants to say that potatoes are important, but instead she tells them about the sound of the dirt bike and the two men’s voices, arguing, and Tom’s pretend shooting of Maude. They ask if she knows his full name and where he lives, and for a while they both leave the room. When they return, she tells them about the poker, that she lay on the floor of the caravan, and about the awful noise of the shot in the dark.

  She tells them everything except what Rawson told her about his relationship with her mother.

  The woman explains that they need Jeanie to write a statement in chronological order about everything she’s just told them. The man pushes a form and the pen across the table. Jeanie pushes them back. “I find it difficult to read or write,” she says, chin up, expecting them to argue. A glance passes between them and then laboriously they go through the sequence of events once more with the man writing Jeanie’s words, and then reading them out to her.

  “Sign here,” he says.

  “A cross will do,” the woman says.

  Jeanie sniffs, picks up the pen, and signs her name, using the same scrawl she used at the register office.

  They ask if they can take her fingerprints and she wonders whether they will want to swab the inside of her mouth with a long cotton bud, and if they will ask her to undress so they can take her clothes away in a plastic bag. Julius would have been shouting about his rights and his liberty by now, but she lets them roll her fingers in the ink and across the paper. When they say she is free to leave, she remains in her chair and they have to say it again.

  In the reception area the lights are painfully bright. A policeman comes out from behind the desk and sits next to her on the moulded plastic seats. “We’ve heard from an officer who’s been waiting at the hospital,” he says gently. She imagines a cold tiled floor, the folding back of a sheet. She remembers her mother’s body on the door in the parlour, and then suddenly, ridiculously, feels a pang of concern about what underwear Julius is wearing. “Your brother’s having surgery at the John Radcliffe in Oxford,” the policeman says. “There’s no more information at the moment, but your friend telephoned. Mrs. Clements? She’s on her way, she says she’ll take you.”

  Bridget arrives twenty minutes later, bursting into the reception area. She opens her arms and this time Jeanie clings to her. “Oh, my love,” Bridget says. “What happened?”

  Jeanie shakes her head against Bridget’s shoulder.

  “Come on,” Bridget says. “I’ve got the car outside.” She grips the tops of Jeanie’s arms, holding her up. She looks hard into Jeanie’s eyes. “Just remember, he’s alive.”

  The sun is rising as they drive, a deep yellow spreading above the tree-line like a distant city burning.

  “I rang the hospital,” Bridget says. “They wouldn’t tell me anything. I knew they’d only speak to close relatives, but Jesus. I think you should prepare yourself. A gun.” She shakes her head.

  Jeanie rests her temple against the window and closes her eyes, drifting off to the rhythm of the engine, while Bridget smokes and talks some more.

  “I’m surprised the police didn’t ask for my statement at the station, maybe they’ll come to the house later. We only found out because Nath called first thing. I had that terrible feeling when I heard Stu’s phone ring. You know? How your stomach turns over when the telephone goes in the middle of the night?” Jeanie doesn’t know, but Bridget keeps on. “You always think the worst. Nath, that’s what I thought. And not Something’s happened to him, but What’s he done now? Isn’t that awful?” Bridget lowers her window a little way and flicks her cigarette ash towards the gap.

  “Anyway, Stu was on the phone and making all these noises so I knew something terrible had happened, and I was about ready to pull the bloody mobile from his ear to find out what was going on, but then he covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘Julius Seeder’s been shot and Jeanie’s being questioned at the police station.’ And he carried on talking to Nath. ‘Jeanie!’ I said. ‘Jeanie’s shot Julius!’ And he said, ‘Don’t be silly, Bridgey. She’s there to give a statement.’

  “Christ, I was out of that bed and getting dressed to come and find you, or Julius, or someone. I don’t know. Putting my tights on back to front, in a right state. Then Stu said, ‘They’ve already got the lad who did it.’ And it was that Tom, the one who was round at the caravan the day I visited, the one who lives with Nath.”

  Jeanie lifts her head. “Tom?” She isn’t surprised.

  Bridget shakes her head again, drags on her cigarette. “I couldn’t believe it. Tom, with a shotgun. We drove straight over and Nath was just sitting on the sofa in his boxers. Just sitting there. Stunned, white as a ghost and shaking. In shock, I think. I wanted to call 111 but Stu said I was making a fuss. The police had hauled Tom off by then. Apparently, he came back from your place with the gun and woke Nath up. Crying his eyes out, Nath said. Nath called the police, and they came and took Tom away. Christ. Nath has to go in later to make a proper statement.” Bridget stubs out her cigarette and begins negotiating another out of the packet; she’s stopped bothering with the Polos. “Can you believe it? Poor Julius. What was that lad doing out there in the middle of the night with a shotgun, that’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Rob us, I suppose. He didn’t believe me when I told him we didn’t have any money.” Jeanie closes her eyes. She tucks her hands under her thighs—her fingers are free
zing, all the heat of her body is contained in her core, her heart is expanding and crushing her lungs, squeezing her stomach. “It was my fault, Bridget. I got this bloke—Jenks—in the pub to text Julius and tell him to come home. I thought I was having a heart attack.”

  “A heart attack! Why didn’t you phone for an ambulance?”

  Jeanie shakes her head. “I don’t know. I just didn’t. The pain went away. But Julius came home. He was there in the spinney because of me.”

  “Oh, love.” Bridget sucks on her cigarette. “You mustn’t think that. Maybe he was on his way home anyhow. Maybe he never saw the message.”

  Jeanie keeps her eyes closed, hoping Bridget will think she’s asleep. She wants her to drive faster. What if Julius dies while they are in the car because Bridget is pootling along the dual carriageway like she’s on a Sunday afternoon outing? When Jeanie opens her eyes, the sky is white and morning has come and cars are overtaking them one after another, their drivers on their way to early shifts or home from late ones. Jeanie looks at Bridget, mascara caught in the lines at the corner of her eye, her body tilted forwards, concentrating on the road, driving Jeanie to the hospital when she could be comforting her own shaking son.

  “Did Mum visit you sometimes without her wedding ring on?” Jeanie asks.

  “What do you mean?” Bridget changes down a gear for no reason, the engine squeals, and she changes back up.

  “That’s what she used to tell Julius—that she was going to see you. You were her excuse, her alibi. Except she always left her ring on the scullery windowsill, that’s what Julius remembers. Me too, maybe.”

  Bridget glances at Jeanie as though to assess something, the extent of her knowledge perhaps.

  “Rawson came to the caravan,” Jeanie continues. “He told me about him and Mum.”

  “He told you?” Bridget looks at Jeanie again and the car swerves towards the side of the road and back out.

  “Thirty-eight years. How could we have not known? All that time.”

  Bridget sighs, a long, drawn-out sigh, and her body relaxes.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” Jeanie says. “Everyone knew.”

  “She made me promise not to tell.” Bridget shrugs her shoulders. “She said she was never going to tell you and Julius, even though I told her she should. I kept saying you’d understand.”

  “Understand? What is there to understand? Rawson is an awful man who took advantage of a woman when her husband had just died—”

  “Oh, Jeanie, no, it wasn’t like that. It was nothing like that.” Bridget reaches out her hand and then seems to think better of it and returns it to the wheel. “There was something between them even before your dad died. Dot said they never did anything about it and I believe her. And the thing with Spencer didn’t start until at least a year after Frank had gone. When she was with him, Spencer, I mean, I think those might have been the only times she felt like something more than a mother. She liked his company, and probably, yes, the sex too. I know you don’t want to hear it. But why shouldn’t she have had some fun? Your dad was dead a long time.”

  Jeanie can’t reconcile this woman Bridget is talking about with her mother. She turns her face to the window.

  “It’s the eviction I can’t understand,” Bridget says. “Why Spencer Rawson would chuck you out of the cottage. Your mum said he always had a soft spot for you and Julius.”

  “That was his wife’s doing,” Jeanie says. “I suppose that’s who Nathan is—was—working for.”

  Bridget sighs again. “But it belongs to Rawson, doesn’t it? The farm, the cottage?”

  “She didn’t tell him she’d had us evicted. She must have thought she could do what she wanted if he wasn’t there to stop it. He told me we could move back in,” Jeanie says.

  “To the cottage?” Bridget sounds excited, hopeful for her.

  “He suddenly wants to play happy families. Pretend everything’s all right. Have me and Julius over for tea or something. Like he can replace Dad.” Jeanie can feel the bump of her heart, insistent. Her breath steams the window and she sits upright.

  Bridget glances at her and the car weaves. “Would that be so bad? Not a replacement, but he did love her, you know, and she loved him.”

  Jeanie makes a dismissive pfff.

  “What did you say?”

  “What did I say? You have to ask? I told him to get out.”

  They are in the city now and Bridget slows the car to a crawl until someone hoots behind them. “Bugger off!” she shouts, and then, “Wait, I have to concentrate, I have to see where to go.” She peers to look up at the road signs. Aloud, she reads, “Hospital, A&E.”

  30

  Jeanie lies on the stained orange sofa and closes her eyes. They are dry and itchy, all of her is dry, as though the fabric beneath her is drawing the moisture out from her body, and if she lies here for long enough she will become a hollow husk, some kind of giant chrysalis from which no butterfly will ever emerge. She knows she won’t be able to sleep, and she knows that Bridget will make a fuss if she doesn’t appear to be trying. There’s a single long window in the Relatives’ Room which overlooks a car park. Bridget is out there having a cigarette and putting a permit in the car, which the Neuro Intensive Therapy Unit receptionist has given her. Already Jeanie is learning the terminology. She wants to open the window for some air but there is not even a locked catch. The sky is a light cloudless blue, and she thinks about the things that need doing: the plants in the greenhouse and polytunnel that should be watered, the fence behind the compost heaps where rabbits are getting in which must be mended, and in Saffron’s garden the newly planted lavender will be demanding attention. She has to phone the council about Maude; where is Julius’s phone, and his clothes? There was a policeman here earlier, but he’s gone now. Julius was wearing a good shirt and he’ll want it back. Jeanie’s thoughts run on. She and Bridget have been waiting for hours. Someone, they were told, will come and speak to them when the operation is over.

  When Bridget returns, she brings sandwiches and two teas in disposable cups, and asks Jeanie if she’s slept, though Bridget must have been gone for less than fifteen minutes. The smell of her recently smoked cigarette hangs around her. Jeanie worries about the cost of the sandwiches and the tea, calculating prices in her head and wondering whether Bridget will expect her to buy the next round. She takes a bite of her sandwich but can barely swallow. She doesn’t want to eat, and she doesn’t want to talk. Just as she lies down again, two men come into the room and she sits up. One, in blue scrubs and a matching cloth hat, introduces himself as Mr. McKenzie, the surgeon who has operated on Julius. The other man, Mr. Jones, says he’s an intensivist, and when he doesn’t explain further, Bridget leans towards Jeanie and says in a confidential tone, “That’s a doctor who specializes in the care of very poorly patients.” They all sit.

  “Your brother has made it through the surgery,” Mr. McKenzie says to Jeanie. “But he did come to us pretty poorly.” She wonders if there are similar coverings to his hat but for beards, or whether they simply wear the hats upside down. “Three shotgun pellets went into his brain and unfortunately I wasn’t able to remove any of them.” The surgeon’s shoes have rounded toes like clogs or those Crocs that everyone was wearing a few years ago. His are splashed with brownish marks. Jeanie has been given a pair of paper slippers to replace her muddy boots. Mr. McKenzie is still speaking, something about a piece of Julius’s skull being stitched into his abdomen. Surely she has misheard? She feels Bridget’s hand touch hers and clasp it. She tries to focus.

  “I wasn’t able to save his left eye, but there’s no damage to his right.”

  “He’ll be able to see, then,” Jeanie says. “One eye is enough, isn’t it?”

  Bridget squeezes Jeanie’s hand.

  “Well,” Mr. McKenzie says. “It’s not his sight I’m worried about.” He leans, bare elbows on blue knees, hands clasped. “We’re keeping him asleep and we’ll just have to see what happens over the
next few hours and days.”

  “A medically induced coma?” Bridget says.

  Jeanie sees a glance shared between the two men.

  Mr. Jones speaks: “Julius will be under my care while he’s in the unit.”

  Bridget wags her head and says, “Intensive Therapy Unit, ITU.”

  The man feigns a smile. Bridget doesn’t notice. “He’s being monitored and he’s having help with his breathing, but we’ll hopefully be able to remove his breathing tube soon and have a go at waking him up, and we’ll keep an eye on how well he responds.”

  “Can I see him?” Jeanie says.

  There are four beds in the Neuro ITU, and more women and men in blue clothes checking monitors and charts, writing things. Julius is furthest from the door, and when Jeanie walks past the other beds with Bridget, she doesn’t look in them, but she sees the weak smiles that each visitor beside each bed gives her. Julius is in a hospital gown with a sheet pulled up to his chest. Most of his head is bandaged and a wodge of dressing covers his left eye, a yellow stain showing around the edge. A man in a similar blue uniform as the rest introduces himself as Julius’s nurse, and explains what each of the tubes, wires, and monitors is for. Jeanie doesn’t take any of it in. The room is hot, airless. The person in the bed doesn’t look like Julius and she wonders if she’s been brought to the correct bed, or perhaps it wasn’t Julius in the spinney after all, and they have picked up and operated on someone else. Perhaps her brother is in the caravan now, waiting for his dinner and complaining about where the hell she is.

  “I should have brought his pyjamas,” she says. Bridget shushes her and puts an arm around her shoulders. The nurse is speaking but his voice is distant. When she looks down, she sees that she’s holding an information leaflet with a picture of the hospital on the front. When was she given that? She’s cold but her forehead is sweating. She presses her fingers to her chest, and the egg inside her cracks.

  “Oh!” she says.