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

“Shelley Swift? Why’d I invite her?” He continues to bow the fiddle, slowly. “I barely know her. I’m going round tomorrow to do her window.”

“And it went well with Craig today?”

Julius removes the fiddle from under his chin and holds it by the neck, the bow in his other hand. “He docked seventy-five quid because I threw up in his van.”

“Oh, Julius.” She goes to him, but he takes a step backwards, won’t look at her. It’s been a long while since he was sick in a car or a van, but then it must be a long while since he’s been in one for any length of time.

“I had no choice but to go in the van. I couldn’t cycle in the snow. It’s too far to walk and Craig was kicking off about lifting that bloody cast-iron bath.”

“You told him about Mum?”

“Of course I told him. And he started going on about how the job was booked in with the customer, and how I’d be letting down the other guys, all his usual crap. I had no choice. And anyway, didn’t you tell me I had to go to work?” The tendons in Julius’s neck are standing proud. “He picked me up outside the Plough. I managed just about on the way there, got him to stop the van. Chucked up by the side of the road.” For the first time since their mother died Jeanie feels tears come to her eyes, but not for Dot; for Julius and what he saw—what they both saw—when they were twelve. “On the way back, I don’t know. It took me by surprise, I suppose. Happened quicker than normal. All over the door and the edge of the seat and down the side. Hardly touched me.” He gives a sour laugh. “Craig reckoned the van will need an industrial clean and he’s probably right. They’ll have to take the passenger seat out.” Holding the bow and fiddle with one hand, he fishes in his back pocket. “I should go and change, but here’s the money. He had to stand me lunch too, because I didn’t take any with me.” Julius puts a twenty-pound note on the table. Twenty pounds for a day’s work.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll manage.” Jeanie knows that neither of them believe it. They look at the money.

“Nothing is going to change,” he says.

“Really?”

He puts his fiddle to his jaw and runs the bow across the strings. “It’s always been the three of us, here. Hasn’t it? Now it’ll be the two of us.”

She sits, crosses her legs, settles the guitar, and plays.

6

The half-acre garden is bounded on three sides by scruffy hedging with assorted pieces of salvaged wood—planks, panels, another old door—filling the gaps. Behind the compost heaps, the polytunnel, and the large greenhouse, rabbits are digging, and here the ground and the perimeter are continually threatened with collapse. On the fourth side, facing the cottage, the picket fence built to keep the chickens out of the vegetable garden is better maintained. A central gate opens to a long strip of paving, mostly brick, interspersed with the odd piece of concrete or flint where the bricks have crumbled. Heavy-duty scaffolding planks lie in between each bed, coming off the central path at an angle, positioned like ribs extending from a spine. The garden slopes gradually uphill so that it is possible to sit on the bench at the top and look out over the rich brown beds and the plants, to the apple and cherry trees behind the old dairy, and onwards to the track and the beech wood beyond. Rosemary and thyme grow close to the house, lovage and angelica, and in the summer, basil and tarragon. Up against the western boundary is the fruit cage, filled with raspberry canes, blackcurrant bushes, and gooseberries. The garden is south-facing and sheltered, and the plants, which have never seen chemical fertilizers or insecticide, thrive in the loamy soil. Julius often tried to persuade Dot and Jeanie to consolidate and grow just two or three crops over the whole garden. He would say that the opportunities for better sales outweighed the risk of a whole crop failing because of some pest, but the women always grew many different vegetables and fruits, and never let Julius grub any of it up.

Jeanie spends the morning resowing the gaps where the snow killed off some of the tender plants, but most have survived, and where the garlic has pushed up its green spikes, flowers are already forming, spearheaded and trapped in their paper cocoons. Her knees ache from the crouched position she has been in for an hour and from the cold. Her joints are getting stiffer, prone to pain in the mornings; she’s noticed it more in the past year. As she works, she wonders again why Dot didn’t tell her and Julius that she’d been ill. She was stubborn and proud, it was true. She’d taught them not to take anything from anyone, because as night turns to day, they—especially if they were the government—would come knocking and asking for it back, or more. Jeanie isn’t surprised that her mother hadn’t claimed her free prescription, neither is she too shocked that there’s so little money in the tin, but still she can’t help calculating expenses in her head: the funeral or cremation, a coffin, funeral directors, a hearse, and flowers. What are you supposed to do if you can’t afford any of it—bury your mother in the garden?

Beside the back door she snips off four rosemary twigs and rubs them to release the scent. The bush has become leggy and will need to be replaced soon and she reminds herself to take some cuttings. She holds the twigs under her nose and inhales.

In the parlour she places the rosemary around her mother’s body and another piece she tucks into the neck of her own dress. She’s kept the door closed so Maude can’t get