When she comes around, she is lying on the floor in the corridor, a pillow under her head and her feet on a chair. Bridget and nurses surround her. Shouldn’t they be looking after Julius? “She’s got a heart condition.” Jeanie can hear Bridget’s voice. “Rheumatic heart disease. She had rheumatic fever when she was a child.”
I’m alive, Jeanie thinks, and touches her chest above her heart. There is no blood, nothing has burst out of her.
They want her to go to A&E, and a wheelchair is brought. She sits in it but refuses to go, although she knows that Bridget is disappointed at missing the opportunity to push her through the hospital. Instead Bridget sits beside her and tells her how it’s now thought best to elevate the legs rather than lower the head to the knees when someone faints. The nurse who helped her up isn’t happy that Jeanie won’t go to A&E and has her promise that she will make an appointment with her GP as soon as possible. Bridget wheels her back to Julius.
In the car on the way home, Jeanie rests her head against the window and tries to sleep but still sleep won’t come although she’s never been so tired. She watches silhouettes of the drivers who overtake them on the A34, their headlights sweeping the verges. She looks for a bulky shape motionless by the side of the road, and then squeezes her eyes closed against the thought. She misses Maude with a physical pain which aches in time with the beat of her heart. That dog could listen without talking back. She thinks of the things that Rawson told her about her mother and how he has turned everything she knows on its head.
“Rawson said something about Dad too,” Jeanie says.
“I thought you were asleep,” Bridget says, reaching for her cigarettes.
“It was about how Dad died,” Jeanie continues. “Something else that Mum insisted we shouldn’t be told. I’ve been trying to work out what it could be.”
Jeanie tries to get her thoughts in order, make herself wake up. “Julius and I have always thought that Rawson made the tractor’s hitch pins, that he was the one who insisted on making new ones out of nuts and bolts. When they broke, Julius was thrown into the hedge and Dad died.”
Bridget fumbles for a lighter in the storage compartment in front of the gear stick and drops it.
“And to stop Mum telling the police or the health and safety people about Rawson and what he did, we were allowed to stay in the cottage, rent-free. That’s what we assumed, that’s what she let us believe. But I’m not sure that’s right.” Jeanie scrabbles for the lighter amongst the rubbish in her footwell and lights the cigarette. Bridget’s face glows orange.
“The reason we were able to stay in the cottage wasn’t because Mum agreed to keep quiet about Rawson making the hitch pins. We were able to stay in the cottage because they were”—Jeanie falters, searching for the words—“having an affair. So that must mean she had nothing to keep quiet about, there wasn’t anything she was keeping from the police or the health and safety people. Or not about Rawson, anyway.”
A speck of red ash falls on Bridget’s skirt and goes out.
Jeanie is following her thoughts now, one after the next, each making a path in front of her: a line of stepping stones she has never walked across before. “If there was nothing for her to keep from the police about Rawson, that means he didn’t make the hitch pins. He didn’t kill Dad.
“It was just a story to make it seem believable that we could stay in the cottage. Mum insisted on that lie, so that we wouldn’t find out about them, about their affair. It must have been one of her conditions. That’s the word Rawson used in the caravan: conditions. Julius and I have hated Rawson for years because we thought he killed our father, and it wasn’t true. Dad made the hitch pins, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Bridget says, her eyes on the road. “He did.”
Jeanie sighs. “None of them are the people we thought they were. Not Mum, not Dad, and not Rawson.”
When Bridget turns the car west along the A4, Jeanie says, “The police told me there’s a warden at the council who deals with stray dogs. I was thinking they might have found Maude. Can I call them tomorrow morning on your mobile? I think the police must have Julius’s. Or your home phone if that’s easier.”
Bridget pitches the end of her cigarette out of the window and closes it. Jeanie sees, in the car’s poorly lit interior, that Bridget has become suddenly rigid, embarrassed. “Of course you can. But I’ve been thinking about you staying with me and Stu tonight. I know you can’t go back to the caravan, but you’ll have to sleep on the sofa, if that’s all right. It’s just that Nath’s come home. We brought him back with us when we went to see him. He’s in his old room. I think it’ll be good for him to be with us, spend some time with Stu. Sort himself out.”
Jeanie feels unexpectedly unmoored, shaken with the realization that Julius isn’t here to fix things and there is no plan to get them out of trouble, however crazy. “No problem,” she says, knowing that Bridget doesn’t really want her on the sofa even if she feels she must offer it. “That’s great—that Nathan’s home. It must be a relief. Actually, I was thinking I could stay with Saffron. The woman I’m gardening for. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
“No,” Bridget says. “You should stay with us.”
“Really, Saffron won’t mind.”
“Without any warning?”
“She’s very relaxed. She has a nose piercing. It’ll be fine.” They are being so polite with each other. “Could you drop me there? She lives on Cutter Hill. Near the old phone box. She’s the one who keeps it stocked with books.”
“Are you sure she won’t mind? I’m not working tomorrow, so I can pick you up in the morning and take you back to the hospital.”
“I can get the bus,” Jeanie says, although she has no idea if she can afford a ticket.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll take you. A bus to Oxford would probably be about three changes and you’ll be on it for hours. All round the houses. You know what they’re like. I’ll pick you up outside Saffron’s at eight thirty. How does that sound. Where is it exactly?” They are already on Cutter Hill.
“Up here, on the left,” Jeanie says.
Bridget pulls the car up to the driveway entrance and lets the engine idle.
“Will she be able to give you something to eat? I can call her now. Is she even in?” They peer through the windscreen. Jeanie hasn’t thought about food since the biscuit she was made to eat after she fainted. “Perhaps you should come back with me. Nath can sleep on the sofa.”
“Look, there are lights on,” Jeanie says. “It’ll be fine.” She pulls on the car door handle. “If you’re sure you can take me tomorrow? Can you pick me up from the village? I’ve got to see Max, have a word with him about deliveries. Eight thirty, then.” Jeanie has one foot out of the car.
“If you’re sure,” Bridget says.
“Of course,” Jeanie says, and she’s out, the door closed. As the car pulls away, Jeanie puts a hand on the gate and with the other, she waves.
∙
Police tape is strung from orange cones placed at intervals across the lay-by. But there is no police car parked there, no officer standing in the night, guarding the spinney and ready to stop her entering, or to lift the tape for her to duck under. She takes the path that the paramedics and police took before her—grass flattened, the moonlight showing white residue in tyre and boot prints. The place doesn’t scare her, its familiar shapes and sounds are a comfort, like coming home, but it feels as though she has been away for months. Only the out-of-place shadow near the scorched circle brings her hand to her mouth until she recognizes its boxy shape and sharp angles as the toppled piano.
The caravan door is closed but police tape has also been attached here, and ripped off, and when Jeanie opens the door, nothing inside is as she left it. The cupboard doors are open, the contents strewn across the floor, trampled clothing, Julius’s phone charger, their sleeping bags and pillows. Immediately she thinks of Tom, but he has been taken in by the police, and Nathan is at Bridget’s. It must have b
een Lewis, although he won’t have done this on his own; or perhaps it was Ed. Maybe one of them told someone about the place: probably unlocked and vacant apart from a non-existent stash of money. She steps inside. The plastic bag she’s been using to carry her things and her little bit of cash around is in the sink, and when she lifts it up, she sees that it has been emptied. The photograph of her parents is on the floor, the glass smashed, the handle is broken off the Toby jug, and Angel’s painting of Maude is torn. She wonders if the police have Julius’s wallet as well as his phone and clothes, and how much money is in it. The lids of the bench seats either side of the table are open and what was inside is topsy-turvy, and when she checks, Julius’s gun has gone—most likely taken by the police—but also the fiddle and banjo cases. It’s then that finally she shouts and kicks at the stuff on the floor—the dog’s water dish, the washing-up bowl, a frying pan—and slams her palms against the caravan walls, making all of it shake, making something else fall from a cupboard. Yelling incoherently, she sweeps the detritus off from Julius’s couch, raises the lid, and there, unexpectedly, is her guitar case, heavy when she lifts it out. She takes the guitar from the case, cradles it, and weeps, her tears falling onto the wood. After a while she begins to play.
“Then home he did run with his dog and his gun,
Crying, ‘Mother, dear Mother, have you heard what I have done?
I met my own true love, I mistook her for a swan,
And I shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun.’
She’d her apron wrapped about her and he took her for a swan,
And it’s so and alas, it was she, Polly Vaughn.”
After she’s finished, she gets up and bolts the door, finds her coat and puts it on, and lies down on Julius’s bed. Her limbs ache as though she is coming down with flu, and her head pounds. She puts her hand against her heart, but its rhythm is regular.
When she opens her eyes again, a greenish light is flowing over her from the window. There are birds singing in the holly bush and the whoosh of cars on the main road. Her teeth are woolly when she runs her tongue across them, and she gets herself up with a groan. It’s just after six. She finds a mug and holds it under the tap, pumping the water pedal with her foot. When the mug is half-filled, the water splutters and gives out. Julius was the one who brought the water and changed the gas bottle. She brushes her teeth and drinks; she would like to wash but that isn’t possible. She’ll need to get water and maybe gas on her bicycle using the trailer, but she knows before she even steps outside to look that they will have been taken. Julius’s bike, which he must have pushed through the spinney, isn’t anywhere either—did she see it when she found him in the woods? There is a tin of baked beans in a cupboard and a saucepan on the floor, and she heats the food on the gas and gobbles the beans straight from the pan with a spoon which she wipes first on the bottom of her cardigan. The beans make her thirsty. She changes her clothes and underwear, and into her plastic bag she puts her toothbrush, toothpaste, a bar of soap, another tin of beans, and some soup. The soup doesn’t have a ring pull, so she searches until she finds the tin opener, and at the same time she comes across a pair of Julius’s pyjamas and a flannel. She shoves in as well the ashtray with the wooden bear with bead eyes. The plastic bag is full now, so she looks for Julius’s rucksack of tools but it is gone too. She finds a large carrier bag with others shoved inside, and in the biggest she crams a sleeping bag and a jumper, some clean underwear, her hairbrush, the spoon. With the bread knife she cuts open the rest of the plastic bags and wraps them around the guitar case—with the guitar inside—as best she can. Before she leaves, she pushes it below the caravan, hiding it under the disintegrating cardboard which is there.
Carrying her two plastic bags, she walks to the village and goes to the public WCs that abut one end of the village hall. The brown concrete block is covered with a filigree of ivy strands, white and dead after the council put weedkiller on the roots. In the ladies, there is a hand dryer, two sinks, and two cubicles with blue wooden doors and white toilets—one missing its seat. The walls are tiled in white, and the floor is some sort of blue poured plastic. The room smells—of pee and old water—and there is residual dirt in the corners and along the grouting.
A sign above the sinks has some words on it and a symbol of a tap crossed by a red line. She knows what it means, but still she cups her hands under the running water and drinks, then washes her face and armpits with the soap and the flannel.
31
In the ITU, nothing is changed: Julius is still being helped to breathe, still being monitored, fluids are still being pumped in and taken out. At lunchtime when Jeanie is faint with hunger, Bridget buys sandwiches and crisps, and she and Jeanie eat them in the Relatives’ Room.
“When Julius is better and home again, I thought maybe he should look for a regular job, something permanent. Learn a trade,” Jeanie says, taking a bite of her prawn mayonnaise. She wants to eat it quickly, to stuff it in, but she forces herself to go slowly so that Bridget won’t know how hungry she is. Bridget raises her eyebrows at Jeanie’s words. “What?” Jeanie says. She’s tired of Bridget, even while grateful for her help. The way Bridget considers herself the medical expert. “It’s never too late to learn something new.” The words snap out.
“It’s not that,” Bridget says. “Has anyone talked to you about Julius’s prognosis? If he recovers, and God knows I hope he does, there’ll be some damage, Jeanie.”
“His eye—”
“Brain damage.”
“You don’t know that, no one knows until he wakes up.”
“He has three bullets in his brain.” Bridget says it softly as though Jeanie is just learning this.
“Shotgun pellets,” Jeanie says pointedly.
“Whichever. They’ll have done a lot of damage. Brain damage.”
“He’ll come home though.”
“Where to?”
They look at each other.
“To the caravan?” Bridget asks, her voice a whisper. Jeanie shakes her head; she doesn’t want this conversation. “He might be in a wheelchair, he might need lots of help. How is that going to work? There isn’t even a toilet out there.”
Jeanie reaches for the other half of her sandwich, but she’s already eaten it. “I should go back.” She picks up the crisps.
“It’s a lot to take in, and you’re right, who knows?”
Jeanie doesn’t like Bridget’s patronizing tone and how, whatever she says, her voice sounds like she doesn’t think Julius will survive.
Before they leave the Relatives’ Room a temporary truce is reached when Bridget offers to look up the number for the local dog warden. When Jeanie gets through, she asks if a whiskery, biscuit-coloured lurcher has been found with a collar although no tag, but no dog fitting that description has been brought in.
Bridget goes into Oxford to do some errands, and as Jeanie is throwing away their sandwich wrappers she sees two plastic bottles in the bin. She takes them out and shoves them into her small carrier bag—she has hidden the large one round the back of the WCs in the village. In the toilet next to the Relatives’ Room she fills both bottles from the cold tap. There is no sign or symbol above the sink.
With Bridget not back and no nurses close by in the ITU, Jeanie takes Julius’s pyjamas out of her carrier. She pulls the sheet down to below his feet and is embarrassed that the hospital gown is rucked up and his privates exposed. She hurries to scrunch up the pyjama legs, concertinaing them into short tubes, and a memory of a smell comes to her of rosemary cut from the bush outside the cottage’s back door. She manages to manoeuvre both pyjama legs over Julius’s white and hairy toes. His calves are heavier than she expected and difficult to move. She is dragging the pyjamas over his ankles, first one side and then the other, when Julius’s nurse comes and stops her. Calmly he talks about infection control and hygiene, and Jeanie wants to tell him that Julius’s clothes are always clean, but she remembers that she picked the pyjamas up off
the floor of the disordered caravan that morning and carried them into the public toilets in the village. She lets the nurse take them off Julius’s legs and watches while her brother is wiped down with some sort of disinfectant. “You should talk to him,” the nurse says, and Jeanie sits in the chair beside Julius’s head and tells him that she doesn’t know what to do now.
On their way back to Inkbourne, Bridget says she has to go to work tomorrow but that she’s arranged for someone from a volunteer transport organization to pick Jeanie up from Saffron’s house in the morning and drive her to the hospital and then bring her home, as well as on the other days that Bridget has to work. Jeanie knows this is charity however it’s described, but she can’t see an alternative, and besides, she’s had enough of Bridget and she knows that Bridget has had enough of her.
While she drives, Bridget talks about Nathan and smokes cigarette after cigarette. She goes on about how Nathan is developing a new relationship with his father.
“You remember that afternoon when Nath and the others went to the caravan?” Bridget says.
Jeanie doesn’t reply; how could she forget?
“Well, Nath told me that it was Caroline Rawson who asked him to go out there.” Bridget speaks like she’s relating the storyline of a soap opera. “Nothing to do with the money that Tom was looking for; it was because she felt bad. Can you believe it? Apparently, she sent him to check up on you, make sure you were doing all right. Nath’s not working for her any more. Stu’s put his foot down. He’s looking for a job in a pub or maybe a warehouse. Whatever he can get.”
Jeanie zones out Bridget’s voice. That Nathan was at the caravan to make sure she and Julius were okay doesn’t excuse him, she thinks. He could have stopped Tom from going inside, maybe he could have stopped Tom from returning with his gun. She lets Bridget ramble on until she asks, “Was it all right at Saffron’s last night? Shall I drop you there again?” and Jeanie sees that they’re nearly in Inkbourne.
“In the village, please,” Jeanie says. “I need to pick up some things from the shop.”
Unsettled Ground Page 23
