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

After the registrar has sat on one side of the desk and invited her to sit on the other while murmuring noises of sympathy, he looks from his computer screen to the document which Jeanie has passed to him. He asks her for Dot’s full name, her age and address. These are things Jeanie can answer easily, and gradually as he types, she relaxes, thinking now that there will be no forms for her to fill in. When he spells out her own name and address for her to confirm, she nods. His two index fingers peck at the keyboard and Jeanie watches his expression, wondering at his concentration and the mechanism that transfers her voice to his head, then to an instruction which travels down his arms, making his fingers move, which creates words on the computer, and which other people, perhaps years from now, can look at and comprehend in their own heads. The registrar asks if she has brought Dot’s birth and marriage certificates, but it doesn’t seem to matter that she hasn’t. All the time the man smiles and nods until Jeanie leans back in her chair and releases the tight grip she has on the handles of her handbag.

“What funeral home are you using?” the man asks, looking at her over the top of his glasses.

Jeanie stares at him, seeing Dot in her sliced dress on the table in the parlour.

“If you haven’t decided yet, that’s no problem. Do you know which crematorium or church?”

She thinks of the plot near the apple trees which she and Julius marked out the night before, and which he says he might be able to start digging today.

“I can put it down as undecided, but you do need to let us know as soon as you’ve reached a decision. I’ll be giving you a green form today which you must pass on to the person who buries or cremates your mother’s body, and they must return the bottom part to us.”

He touches a few more keys on the keyboard while Jeanie waits, until eventually he says, “I just need you to check that everything I’ve entered is correct.” A printer behind the desk starts sucking in paper. He puts the sheet in front of Jeanie and she stares at it, the words incomprehensible. Surreptitiously she presses the fingers of her right hand under her left breast, feeling for the tapping of the creature. Can she be suddenly ill? she wonders. Unexpectedly indisposed? A mist gathers in between the paper and her eyes and she blinks to refocus.

“Sorry?” Jeanie says.

The man points and reads, upside down. Upside down! thinks Jeanie. He goes through each line and she nods. “If you’re happy with that, I sign here.” He takes the paper back and signs, and then turns it to her once more. “And you sign here.” She peers at the page and then back up at him. He is holding out his ink pen. “Careful with it, it can be temperamental.”

“Sorry?” Jeanie repeats.

He moves the pen towards her, and she takes it. She looks again at the page: the printed words, the man’s signature. They swim around, dancing and merging. She puts the nib on the paper, conscious of the watching registrar. Her fingers are too far back, the pen held too lightly; it slips but before it can fall she moves her hand, pressing so that the ink spits, and from the corner of her eye she sees the registrar wince, but a line comes out which zigzags and sputters across the page. She keeps her head lowered and lifts the pen from the paper, waiting to be accused of incompetence, but the registrar takes the pen from her and turns the paper back to himself. He makes no comment about the signature.

“Would you like a copy of the death certificate?” he asks.

“Isn’t that what I came to get?” she says, confused.

All Jeanie hears is that a copy of the certificate costs eleven pounds. She doesn’t have that on her. Julius might have some change from the twenty pounds, and doesn’t Shelley Swift owe him some money? He’s working today, cleaning gutters, but when will he be paid? A trickle of sweat runs down her back, her thighs and buttocks are hot, she’s afraid that when she stands, she will leave a line of condensation on the seat. She wants to get out of there, her mother was right about officialdom always trying to get something out of you. The registrar explains that another form which doesn’t cost anything will do the same job. And then he says it’s all done and hands her a folder containing various bits of paper and shows her to the door. She is on the pavement outside breathing real air, high on her success, as though she has got away with it, escaped, and then someone calls her name. When she turns, the registrar is coming towards her with a glossy leaflet in his hand. “I forgot to include this in your folder,” he says. “It’s about what you need to do next. Do you have someone at home who can read it to you, or we could—” She snatches the leaflet, and without looking at him, she shoves it in her bag and strides away.

When she gets back to the car a bird has made a mess on the windscreen and Bridget isn’t there. Jeanie hovers nearby but not too close, worrying that a traffic warden will come and tell her she needs to drive away or buy another ticket. Bridget finally arrives, trotting in bursts and breathlessly apologizing, carrying bags. Jeanie hasn’t managed to do her food shopping. In the car, Bridget puts the windscreen wipers on, and the bird shit smears across Jeanie’s side, worsening with each swish of the blade.

“I was thinking about getting a job,” Jeanie says when they’re on the road home.

“What about the garden and the chickens?” Bridget says, sucking on a Polo.

“Didn’t you tell me