Bridget raises her eyebrows, pops a Polo mint into her mouth. “Of course not, that’s confidential.”
“Do you want to know?”
“Go on then.” Bridget sits back, waiting. Jeanie tries to assess from her expression whether she knows about Dot’s lies, but it isn’t possible.
“All clear. There’s nothing wrong with my heart.”
Bridget’s smile on her big round face is genuine delight. “That’s great news.”
“Except it’s not that I’ve got better. I never had it in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never had RHD. Not when I was thirteen, not ever.”
“But you were diagnosed, weren’t you?”
“Mum told me I had it, not the doctor. And I think she made it up. Told me I was ill when I wasn’t.”
“What? Why would she do that?” Bridget closes her magazine.
“To keep me at home, I suppose. She told me in the year after Dad died when she was going a bit crazy, before the thing with Rawson started.”
All week Jeanie has been thinking about it and this morning finally she decided that it is another simple story: Frank died and in the year that followed Dot realized, or believed at least, that one day she would be alone. Maybe her crying in the doctor’s consultation room was not because of Jeanie’s diagnosis, because there never was one, it was from relief, or just an outpouring at her husband’s death. But at some low point she told Jeanie she had something wrong with her heart in order to keep her at home. The lie grew and could not be undone; Jeanie—and Julius too—would remain in the cottage with her.
“Oh, Jeanie,” Bridget says and puts her hand across the table. Jeanie reaches out and touches Bridget’s fingers with her own, just for a moment, and then shakes her head at the thoughts of her mother, refusing her tears for a second time that day. Bridget starts to say more, she will want to discuss it, unpick it, and analyze it, and Jeanie can’t do that, not yet.
She picks up the envelope, raps it on the table. “This letter then. He gave it to me when I was leaving last time, said he wasn’t very good at saying things out loud. I haven’t told him that I can’t read.” Reluctantly, Jeanie hands it over.
Bridget takes the cream-coloured letter out of the envelope; the paper is thick, expensive. She unfolds it. Jeanie knows it has the farm address printed at the top, and she knows it begins with Dear Jeanie.
“Dear Jeanie,” Bridget starts. “Forgive me for putting this in writing rather than simply saying it to you, but I find that I express myself better on the page, and I want to make sure that what I say is right this time.
“Your mother meant a great deal to me. Perhaps we should have tried harder not to see each other for Caroline’s sake, but I refuse to believe that our love was wrong. I miss Dot every day, as I’m sure you and your brother do. I’m also sure that the nature of our relationship must be a shock to you, especially considering the way you have viewed me all these years, but I have always cared about you and Julius and your welfare, albeit from afar, and it is hard to express how devastated I was when I learned of Julius’s injuries. Updating the cottage and making it accessible for him was the least I could do.
“And this is why I’m writing. I would like your permission for me to instruct my solicitor to transfer the ownership of the cottage and its land into your and Julius’s names.”
“What?” Jeanie says.
Bridget holds up her hand and continues. “Dot, as I tried to explain when I came to the caravan, would never let me do this, but I hope you would agree that all our circumstances have now changed. Perhaps next time we meet you could let me know whether this is acceptable to you and your brother. With all best wishes, Spencer.” Bridget refolds the letter. “Well!” she says. “Can you believe that?”
“He’s giving us the cottage?”
“And the land.”
“Actually, I can’t believe it.”
“I wonder what his wife will make of this?” Bridget scores the paper’s folds with the nails of her thumb and index finger.
“I think she’s gone for good, she’s left him.”
“Really? Probably for the best.”
They sit silently for a moment, taking it in.
“So, what are you going to tell him?” Bridget asks.
“I’ll have to speak to Julius about it.”
“But you’re going to say yes, aren’t you?”
Jeanie takes the letter from Bridget. “I’ll tell him I’m thinking about it.” She opens the letter again, scans the spidery handwriting as though there might be some mistake, and then she puts it back in its envelope. “There’s some leftover soup in a pan on the cooker if you want it. Julius is asleep. I’m sure he won’t wake but if he does . . . well, you know the routine.”
“Fine, fine,” Bridget says, waving her hand.
“I really appreciate you coming round, again.”
“Yes, yes. I’m going out for a fag.”
Jeanie’s first visit to the farmhouse was awkward to begin with, stilted, sitting in Rawson’s white sitting room, drinking tea, talking about the farm and the weather, but Jeanie is sure it will get easier. This time or the next she wants to discuss all the things she has heard on the radio: history and politics and agriculture, and Dot as well, of course. She wants to see what he has to say about her ideas of how to turn the garden into a decent business. Jeanie knows that, like her mother, she is a woman with strong opinions, a woman with interesting ideas.
In Julius’s bedroom, she straightens his sheet. He’s lying on his left so that the scars and his bad eye, which alter that side of his face, are hidden. She can’t help it, she misses the undamaged man: his jokes, his teasing, his crazy ideas. She wanted him to stay with her and not to go with Shelley Swift, she wanted to be back in the cottage, and in the end, didn’t she get exactly that?
Jeanie goes out to the yard where Bridget is smoking and sniffing at a twig of rosemary snapped from the bush.
Bridget eyes her. “You make sure you say yes, okay?”
She smiles. “See you later.”
Jeanie leaves the garden, goes around the cottage and out the front gate. She turns right, along the track towards the farm, where Spencer Rawson is waiting.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It takes many people to make a book. I’d like to thank all early readers of Unsettled Ground, including Indigo Ayling, Henry Ayling, Dawn Landau, Louise Taylor, and Judith Heneghan, and of course the rest of the Taverners who have given me feedback chapter by chapter, including Amanda Oosthuizen, Richard Stillman, Paul Davies, Beth O’Leary, Emma Scattergood, Claire Gradidge, Susmita Bhattacharya, and Jake Wallis Simons. Thanks also to all The Prime Writers for their unfailing support both online and off. To the amazing Jane Finigan, and to Fran Davies and everyone at Lutyens & Rubinstein, and also to the lovely David Forrer. To the whole team at Penguin and Fig Tree (and beyond), including Assallah Tahir, Natalie Wall, Jane Gentle, and Karen Whitlock, but most especially, Juliet Annan. Enormous thanks to Masie Cochran and everyone at Tin House, including Win McCormack, Craig Popelars, Nanci McCloskey, Becky Kraemer, Molly Templeton, Yashwina Canter, Diane Chonette, Elizabeth DeMeo, Alyssa Ogi, and Spencer Ruchti, and not forgetting Anne Horowitz and Allison Dubinsky. To Ursula Pitcher, Stephen Fuller, and Heidi Fuller for their love and support. Many people helped me along the way with research and advice, and so thanks go to Jill Kershaw, Paul Ayling, Sam Hodgson, Sarah Kirwan, Caroline Mitchell, Mark Harbord, Lesley Ann Ritchie, Paul Morris, Dave Sell, Olivia Kane, Jane Bartlett, Martin Stallion, Iain Steel, and Enda Gallagher. Thanks to Henry Ayling and Tia Blake for my writing soundtrack.
And my love, always, to Tim Chapman.
CLAIRE FULLER was born in Oxfordshire, England. She has written three novels: Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize; Swimming Lessons; and Bitter Orange. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.
Author photo: © Adrian Harvey
Copyright © 2021 Claire Fuller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact: Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
Published by Tin House, Portland, Oregon
Distributed by W. W. Norton and Company
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Fuller, Claire, author.
Title: Unsettled ground / Claire Fuller.
Description: Portland, Oregon : Tin House, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020056873 | ISBN 9781951142483 (hardcover) | ISBN
9781951142490 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Domestic fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6106.U45 U57 2021 | DDC 823/.92--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056873
First US Edition 2021
Printed in the USA
Interior design by Diane Chonette
www.tinhouse.com
“We Roamed through the Garden” written by Henry Ayling
“I’m Gonna Be An Engineer” written by Peggy Seeger, published by Harmony Music Limited
Unsettled Ground Page 27
