“Surely, Tom will tell you, tell the police?” Bridget said. “Can’t you just ask him?” And Jeanie felt a guilty pleasure that Bridget didn’t know the answer to everything.
“There’s no requirement for him to,” Alisha said.
Jeanie had gone over that night in her head many times, imagining what happened between the two men, and Alisha was right—Julius couldn’t tell her, or not yet. She thinks that in fact there’s nothing much to tell; it’s a simple story, even if it is one she holds herself responsible for. Tom was returning to the caravan with his shotgun to have another go at getting the money he believed was hidden there, and Julius was coming home because Jeanie had insisted on it, because Jeanie thought she was dying. Julius, perhaps remembering that Tom had threatened Jeanie, had confronted him, they argued, and Tom fired. Maybe it was supposed to be a warning shot since only three pellets found a target.
“I should also let you know,” Alisha continued, “that he’s been charged with and pleaded guilty to GBH, grievous bodily harm, and also possession of a firearm.”
“Not attempted murder?” Bridget said, and Jeanie put her hand on Bridget’s arm to quieten her.
“We don’t believe he went to the caravan with an intention to kill.”
“No, but—”
“And because he’s pleaded guilty,” Alisha went on, finally finding her stride, “there has been a plea bargain. The judge has already passed sentence.”
“Already? What?” Bridget said. She had to swallow a mouthful of tea before she could get the words out. Jeanie could tell from looking at Julius that he wasn’t following this, it was too fast, too quiet, too much. She would have to tell him later.
“Tom was sentenced to eight years.”
“Eight years!” Bridget slammed down her mug and tea slopped over the edge. “Eight fucking years. That’s pathetic. Look at what he did to the man.” She waved in Julius’s direction. Julius moved his head, mumbled again, and Alisha looked at him, then down at her tea.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Bridget, stop,” Jeanie said quietly. She needed time to process this.
“He’ll be out in, what, four, five years if he behaves. And then how safe will Jeanie and Julius be out here in the sticks? Eight fucking years.” Bridget had shaken her head.
A few times after Alisha’s visit, Bridget has brought up the subject of Tom and his sentence, and said Jeanie should at least consider the social worker’s offer for her and Julius to meet with Tom. Restorative justice the social worker called it, but Jeanie has decided that Tom doesn’t deserve any more room in her thoughts and refuses to discuss it. Meeting Tom now, Jeanie feels, would be either too soon, or too late.
In the old kitchen, Saffron says, “I brought a couple of Angel’s books with me. I thought you could try and read them to her. Can you believe this weather?” She goes into the new kitchen and fills a glass with water.
Jeanie puts a tray on the table and gets out a tin of buttons she bought at a local car boot sale. She seats Angel on a cushion on a straight-backed chair and turns Julius so he can watch. Angel tips the buttons into the tray at the same time as Saffron is speaking from the other room.
“What was that?” Jeanie calls. She likes the noise and bustle of Saffron and Angel in the house—thinking about what treat she can arrange for the child, enjoying clearing up the mess they leave behind—and then the quiet when they’ve gone.
Angel picks up individual buttons, has them introduce themselves to each other in squeaky voices as she slides them about. Saffron comes to the doorway of the old kitchen with the letter from the white envelope unfolded in her hands. It’s Saffron who usually reads aloud the letters that Jeanie receives—the ones with details of hospital and doctor’s appointments for her and for Julius—but Jeanie knows that this letter isn’t from the NHS, she knows she should have thrown it away before Saffron could open it.
“This is odd,” Saffron says, still reading. “It’s from the General Register Office in Southport.”
“Will you put the kettle on?” Jeanie says, leaning over the table and shuffling buttons around on the tray.
“No,” Angel says forcefully to Jeanie, sweeping the buttons away from her. Jeanie stands upright.
“I think it’s about your mum. Dorothy Seeder, it says.” Saffron frowns, reads again, and looks up. “They seem to be saying that they need part of the burial or cremation certificate. It was never returned by the funeral director or crematorium, although they don’t seem to know who that was.” Saffron holds out the letter.
“That’s the third they’ve sent. Must be some mistake.” Jeanie stands beside Saffron and looks at the page, and although Saffron is teaching her to read, her heart is beating too fiercely for her to take in the simplest words. “What does it say they’re going to do?” She tries to ask as though she isn’t concerned.
Saffron looks at the bottom of the letter. “Well, nothing, I think. The wording kind of suggests they’re giving up.”
“I should hope so too,” Jeanie says. “Waste of everyone’s time.” She lifts the letter from Saffron’s hands and takes it into the new kitchen where she folds it up and stuffs it underneath the vegetable peelings saved in a pot for the compost.
Saffron stands on the cottage path with Angel, holding on to Maude’s collar. “You will go slowly, won’t you?” she says as Jeanie straddles her bicycle out on the track. Jeanie bought it cheaply from Kate Gill, whose husband gave her a new one for her birthday. It’s much better than the bicycle which used to be Dot’s.
“I’ll be an hour and a half at most,” Jeanie says.
“Take as long as you need.” Saffron remains on the path as Jeanie cycles off. It is ridiculously hot and although she would like some breeze in her face and over her body, Jeanie doesn’t go fast. She is careful with her heart these days—the thought of what would happen to Julius if she died is too awful to contemplate. For a year after leaving the ITU Julius lived in a rehabilitation unit. Alastair drove Jeanie there a couple of times a week to see him and the improvements he was making: learning to walk with a frame, to feed himself, to use the bathroom. But between the unit and returning to the cottage he’d had to spend a while in a home for the severely disabled: a smelly, worn-down place, desperately understaffed, and his moods swung between anger and depression.
At the GP surgery Jeanie sits on an upholstered chair and waits until her name is called over the tannoy system. Bridget isn’t working today. Jeanie put on some lipstick before she left, a muted red that must have been Dot’s, hiding at the back of a dresser drawer. She rubs her lips together, feels the sticky slide, and sits up straighter, bolstered by it. Ridiculous, she thinks. When she goes in, Dr. Holloway stands and shakes her hand, invites her to sit on a chair beside his desk. The room is small, and out of the window the sun glares off the windscreens of the cars in the car park. Dr. Holloway goes through the preliminaries, commenting on how well Julius has settled into the cottage, his epilepsy, how there’s plenty of possibility for improvement. He says she’s doing a great job. Jeanie doesn’t think so.
“And so,” Dr. Holloway says, “your results.”
She expects him to open something on his computer, put his reading glasses on, set the machine to printing—something—but he turns to her and says, “There is nothing wrong with your heart. Everything is completely normal.”
Her hand goes to her chest without her realizing, feeling for the thing inside. She’s sure it’s still there, turning around and around, settling itself inside its shell. “What?” she says.
“The echocardiogram showed no damage to any of your heart’s valves, your blood flow is fine, there’s no murmur. You don’t have rheumatic heart disease.”
Jeanie can feel her face folding in on itself, the sting in her nose as the tears come.
Dr. Holloway touches her arm. “It’s good news, Jeanie.”
“Is it?”
He hands her a tissue and she holds it to her eyes, until she
remembers her mother in a similar room, years ago.
“Of course it is.”
Jeanie shakes her head. “Did I ever?” she manages to get out. During her first appointment, which Saffron and Bridget bullied her into, she told Dr. Holloway about her visit to the GP when she was thirteen and what Dot said to her afterwards.
“Did you ever have RHD, do you mean?” Dr. Holloway asks. “I went and found your old Lloyd George envelope—we have a room full of them.” He leans forwards. “There’s nothing in there to indicate that you ever had a problem with your heart. There was a check-up noted, after your rheumatic fever cleared up, but nothing to say you had RHD.” He sits back, picks up a pen, and turns it between his fingers. “And to be honest, if you did have it, or a heart murmur, I would have expected you to be having regular checks, maybe be on some medication. You didn’t think that was odd? That you weren’t?”
“I just believed her. She told me I had a weak heart and I believed her.” Jeanie is suddenly angry. “She wouldn’t let me do anything. I wasn’t allowed to run or climb trees or get overexcited. I wasn’t allowed to have a bloody job! And what, it was all a lie?” She is shouting and she is aware of her blood pumping, heart beating too fast. She is still afraid of it and can’t help but take the deep long breaths that Dot taught her.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Holloway says.
“And Julius,” she whispers. “She kept him at home too, to look after me.” The different lives they might have lived are too enormous to comprehend. She could have had a husband and a child, like Bridget. Or no, not that. A child and no husband, like Saffron. She could have been a proper gardener, a garden designer, a garden designer in Japan, or an engineer. She could have been anything. And poor Julius. If Dot hadn’t said she had a weak heart when she was thirteen, would he have been hurrying through a patch of wasteland late one night, returning to a caravan? Is it possible to trace that event backwards?
“Why did she do it?”
Dr. Holloway can only shake his head.
35
On Friday evening, after she and Julius have eaten, Jeanie helps him to the new bathroom. She only needs to be nearby these days in case he calls out for her, and he rarely does, but she hovers in the kitchen wondering how using the toilet, brushing his teeth, and washing his face can take so long. Over the past four months, builders have converted the old dairy and joined it, via a short level corridor, to the end of what was the scullery. The bathroom has a shower without doors or a shower tray, and handrails around the toilet and attached to the walls, in the place where Jeanie once lay down and tried to sleep.
When Julius comes out she follows behind him and his walking frame to the parlour, and it’s his slow and methodical shuffling that tonight makes her clench her teeth with frustration. She is envious of Saffron having Angel’s noise and energy around her.
In the parlour—now Julius’s bedroom—she helps him undress, taking off his slippers, pulling down his trousers and underpants while he stands holding on to the frame. He has lost weight in his legs and arms, the muscle that was there has wasted through inactivity, and he has a little paunch that he never had before. She guides one foot at a time into his pyjama bottoms and tugs them up around his waist. She no longer notices that she can see his private parts. They know the routine well, and Julius positions himself with his back to his bed and lowers himself down, letting go of the frame. Jeanie unbuttons his shirt, takes one arm out of its sleeve and then the other, but he is slow to help her tonight, doesn’t move his shoulders or elbows like he normally does.
“Come on,” Jeanie says, her irritation showing. “I’m going out, I have to get ready.” She hasn’t told him that tonight she’s going to see Rawson for the second time. “Bridget is coming to babysit.” Julius makes his throat noises, twitches his shoulders and gurns.
“Not babysit,” she backtracks. “Look after you. I know you’re not a baby, Julius, I know. Maybe soon you won’t need anyone here when I pop out.” The occupational health woman says they need to get him a mobile phone with big buttons which he can learn to use in an emergency. Another thing for the to-do list.
Jeanie starts to feed one of Julius’s arms into his pyjama top and he squirms away, jerking his torso and bellowing.
“Stay still,” she says crossly. “I can’t do it if you won’t stay still.”
His hands turn backwards, his fingers clench, and his arms flail. One of his elbows catches her in a rib, and with a stab of pain she cries out and then flops on the bed beside him, the pyjama top on her lap. Only now does she remember that on that morning when they knelt over their mother’s body on the stone flags, Julius hadn’t been wearing a pyjama top; perhaps he’s never liked wearing the tops of his pyjamas? How else is he going to tell her except by resisting? She lays the arms of the pyjama top together, folds it in half. “It’s too hot for this today, isn’t it?” she says.
Jeanie wonders if maybe he understood something of what was going on when she came back from seeing Dr. Holloway and sobbed quietly in the old kitchen while Saffron held her and stroked her hair like she sometimes does for Angel when she’s upset. Jeanie still hasn’t told him about their mother’s lie, just as she hasn’t told him about the fact that she wasn’t dying when she got Jenks to text him to come home. And now she realizes with a shock that all those times when she thought her heart was beating too fast, all the days she missed of school and lay on the sofa in the kitchen imagining the animal inside her, scared of the pain—there couldn’t have been any pain, there was nothing wrong with her. It is hard to rewrite your own history.
Julius lies on his bed and Jeanie pulls just the sheet up to his chest. She fetches her guitar, sits on a chair, and tunes the instrument quickly, knowing that even this will quieten him and steady his breathing. When she first started playing she worried he would be upset by the music, reminding him of what he was missing, but she’s found that it helps calm him so he falls asleep more easily after she’s played. “What’s it to be?” she says and almost begins “Polly Vaughn” but, recalling the lyrics, stops after a couple of notes and instead starts:
“Before our singing is through
And our voices lie broken
Before the silence speaks true
And all the lies we led have spoken
For here we would stay
With all that we borrow
And owe to the day
For holding back tomorrow
Do you know, where then we’ll go?”
When he’s breathing deeply, she puts the guitar down and goes out to the garden, Maude following. She will not cry, she thinks. Not again.
Jeanie comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, to find Bridget sitting at the table in the old kitchen flicking through a celebrity magazine she’s brought with her.
“You’re early,” Jeanie says.
“Nath gave me a lift. My car’s in the garage, ready tomorrow.”
“Nathan?”
“He’s back home. Jobs, money, I don’t know.” She rolls her eyes. “He didn’t have time to come in. Sends his regards.”
“Is he picking you up later?”
“Stu said he’d come and get me about ten thirty. Is that okay?”
“That’s good of him.”
“He’s not a bad husband when he puts his mind to it. He said people were asking after Julius in the Plough. I told him to tell them that they should call in. It’d be good for Julius to have a visitor or two, give you a bit more time off. You could take this dog for a proper walk.” She grabs Maude and waggles the dog’s head, digging her fingers into Maude’s fur.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jeanie says. “Shelley Swift came last week and Julius had a seizure. On the floor, foaming at the mouth, the works.”
“She won’t be back, then.” Bridget turns a page of her magazine. From upside down it looks like a comic strip.
“I don’t know. Maybe she will.” Jeanie starts up the left staircase to her bedroom.
&nb
sp; “Stu told me that Chris from the Plough was wondering if you’d do another gig, when you’re ready. Said that some bloke had come in asking about you and your music. He couldn’t make it last time. Something about an interview or a recording?”
Jeanie stops halfway up the stairs, where Bridget can’t see her. She thinks about the night they played in the pub: Julius’s hair falling over his face, the singing, how much fun it had been. Her fingers go to her chest out of habit.
“I don’t think I could do it again. Not without Julius,” she calls down, her voice lighter than she feels.
“I told him that, but apparently it was you in particular the bloke wanted to see.” Jeanie hears her turn another page and she doesn’t know what to think about that.
“Bridget,” she says tentatively. “Would you do something for me?” Another page turns. “Would you read me a letter, from Rawson?” She can’t get used to calling him Spencer. Jeanie puts her palms on the wood panelling which divides the old kitchen from the staircase. The white paint which she can’t remember being done in her lifetime is scratched and marked and yellowed.
“A letter?”
She can hear that Bridget’s interest is piqued.
“I’ve tried, but I can’t work out his handwriting.”
“Of course I’ll read it. No problem.”
“Okay. I’ll get dressed and I’ll show you.” Jeanie pushes herself off the panelling and goes up the rest of the stairs. She puts on a clean dress, one she’s had for years. It’s too hot for tights.
∙
In the old kitchen, Jeanie sits opposite Bridget, the letter in a cream envelope in front of her, her hands placed on top. She knows Rawson has written her name on the front.
“I went to see Dr. Holloway on Monday for the results of my echo,” Jeanie says.
“I know,” Bridget says. She’s eyeing the letter but clearly trying not to show her curiosity.
“And I suppose you heard what they were?” Jeanie says sarcastically.
Unsettled Ground Page 26
