Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (best large ereader txt) 📕

spent years ripping those buggers out and now they all want them put back.”

She carries on playing her guitar quietly while his stomach growls again.

“I found out about funerals today,” he says. “I used Craig’s phone to call an undertaker.”

“And?”

“And Christ.” He sweeps his hand through his hair. “They’re bloody expensive. Thousands. They didn’t want to give me prices over the phone, kept umming and ahhing and trying to get me to make an appointment to come and look at some coffins. ‘So sorry about your loss’ and crap like that, when all they want is your money. They said there was some social fund, but you’ve got to be on benefits.”

“Thousands?” Jeanie says.

“Do you remember a few years ago having that conversation about how we all wanted to be buried?” Julius says.

“No.”

“Yes, you do. We were sitting round the table, here. You’d heard something on the radio about green funerals or some other rubbish. Said you wanted to be buried in a wicker coffin and put under a tree.”

“I would never have said that.”

“Well, you did. I remember. And Mum said, ‘You must be joking. I want the full works. Proper comfy silk-lined coffin and one of those carriages pulled by black horses with black plumes, all the way to the church.’”

“And everyone in the village had to come out and stand on the pavement while she went past.”

He knew she remembered. “Hats off, heads lowered.”

“And hymns, she wanted, didn’t she? Hymns and then weeping. Lots and lots of weeping.”

They smile and Jeanie puts her guitar behind her, propped in the corner between the wall and the piano. They don’t look at each other, taking in the information about the cost of a funeral. They’ve never had thousands, never will. Jeanie feels queasy with it, thinking about money.

“How much is in the tin?” Julius says.

In the scullery, Jeanie searches behind the sink skirt, behind the box of ant powder, groping for the housekeeping tin. It’s circular and rusted, with a picture of a Spanish dancing woman on the top, and once must have been filled with biscuits. Jeanie has never opened it herself before. Dot was the keeper of the household income and in charge of all outgoings. Each week Jeanie handed over whatever cash she’d collected from the honesty box screwed to an old table at the bottom of the lane where she put odd vegetables—the carrots with many legs, nibbled turnips—and surplus eggs, although people often weren’t very honest. And Julius handed over his money from the bits of work he managed to get—helping with removals, farm jobs, a few days of tiling or decorating—all of it paid in cash. Jeanie knows he keeps some money back for beer and tobacco, and to top up the credit on his phone. Dot contributed the money that Max gave her for the produce they supplied to the deli, as well as the cash from Kate Gill who took their eggs and fruit for breakfasts at the B&B. Money was always watched, especially when Dot had to pay the council tax and other bills at the post office counter in the village shop. But there was never anything Jeanie wanted that Dot didn’t agree to save for, although there wasn’t much that Jeanie wanted. Before Maude, all she’d have asked for was another dog—the one they’d had died of old age when Jeanie was fifteen—but Dot had always refused, saying they were too much trouble, too expensive. They’d managed with very little money, and Jeanie has always assumed this was because years ago Rawson had agreed not to charge them rent for the cottage.

At the kitchen table she prises the lid off the tin. She doesn’t know how much she expected to find but certainly more than the change rattling around in there now. Julius puts his finger in and stirs the coins, counting. Jeanie has always struggled to understand columns of numbers and the mathematics that was taught at school which required her to do written calculations. Show your workings—the phrase would make her feel exposed, in danger, and to avoid doing maths she acted up in class and was often sent out to the corridor or the headmaster’s office. Jeanie has never had a problem with money or mental arithmetic. She can see that the tin contains three pounds and fifty-four pence. The price of four loaves of sliced bread from the village shop.

“Three pounds and fifty-four pence,” Julius says. “That can’t be right.”

Jeanie moves her fingers to her opposite wrist, presses, and counts. “How will we pay for the funeral?” she says.

Julius shakes his head. “There must be more money somewhere.” He puts the lid back on the tin.

“The cost of the coffin? Getting it to the church or wherever?”

“I don’t know,” Julius says.

“And the rest of it? Flowers, whatever else it is we have to do.”

“The wake.”

“Why does everyone keep going on about a wake?” Jeanie snaps. “The Rawsons were here earlier, acting all weird, asking about a wake.”

“I used their phone this morning.”

“So I gather. Anyway, we don’t need a wake.”

“We’ve got to have a few drinks after.”

“Who says?”

“It’s the right thing.”

“We don’t need anyone else. Traipsing in here, smoking, pitying us.”

“I’ve already told people.” Julius is leaning against the dresser. His feet are incredibly white and bony. The way he’s standing, what he’s saying, is irritating her like it’s never done before.

“Who? Who have you told?”

He comes forwards and now takes his fiddle from the top of the piano. “Aren’t we going to play?” He tunes the instrument quickly, and with his bow starts the accompaniment to the piece Jeanie played earlier. “Bridget will want to come,” he says.

Jeanie’s blood pulses in her neck. She breathes long and deep through her nose. “Who else?”

“I shall tell of a hunter whose life was undone . . .” Julius restarts the words to “Polly Vaughn” and plays the long sad notes on his fiddle. “By the cruel hand of evil at the setting of the sun.”

“Shelley