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

“No,” Jeanie says. “Don’t mow it, not all of it. Cut a winding path through the grass, plant some wildflowers, make some spaces around the trees where your daughter can play. A meadow.”

“A meadow,” Saffron says, and grabs Jeanie’s arm with a tinkle of metal. “That’s what this one was going to be called, weren’t you, Angel?”

The child smiles up at them. “I had a banana,” she says to Jeanie, and waits.

“Was it blue?” Jeanie says.

“Yellow, silly,” Angel says, and runs off through the grass, shouting, “Banana, banana.”

Saffron and Jeanie go as far as the tree, which Jeanie names as an Indian horse chestnut, and she gets the job. It’s that simple, and she wonders why she has never thought to do this before. They agree on ten pounds an hour, two afternoons a week to begin with. Whichever days suit. There is a shed full of tools which were Saffron’s father’s, including a lawnmower and a can which they decide contains petrol when they sniff it. Jeanie asks if she can bring Maude but is too relieved to have got the job to dare to mention that she’d like to be paid in cash, and weekly. Back in the kitchen, Saffron makes tea and Jeanie sits with Angel, watching her paint a brown shape which looks like an apricot stone with lines coming off it, black splodges at one end that are too wet and run off the page when the child holds it out for her. “Is it a giant seed?” she asks. “A big brown eye with eyelashes?”

“Maur,” Angel says, and shoves the painting at her.

“I think it’s your dog,” Saffron says, looking over.

When Jeanie gets home, she tapes Angel’s painting to the kitchen wall and tells Julius that she has a job.

She is excited, amazed at what she has managed to do so easily, and although she knows that what she will be earning won’t touch their debts, the idea of doing work other than looking after her own house and garden makes her feel like something inside her—as tiny as an onion seed—is splitting open, ready to send out its shoot. But Julius looks up from his plate of fried eggs and spinach, and says, “That’s great.” He is distracted, about the debts, the missing money, she presumes, and when he doesn’t ask her any questions about what the job is or where, the seed shrivels, and Jeanie thinks that it is too late for both of them and for the cottage.

Still, the following afternoon, which is dry and windy, she cycles slowly to the bungalow with Maude running alongside. In the house, Jeanie introduces Angel to the dog and the child pats Maude so hard on her back that Saffron lifts Angel away, saying she must be more gentle, and the child cries and kicks her legs. Maude doesn’t seem to mind being beaten by small hands, but Jeanie takes the dog outside where she sulks, lying on the patio with her head between her paws. Jeanie pulls the lawnmower out of the shed, careful to do it without exerting herself, and is surprised to see that it is fairly new; it starts first go. The shed is full of all the equipment she might ever need, and going through it, as well as being away from the cottage and Julius, are good distractions from her other thoughts: whether Nathan was bluffing about the eviction, when Stu might ask for his money back, where her mother could have put the cash. Jeanie marks out the path with short lengths of wood which she cuts with a saw from the shed, and is excited to see the shape of it, winding down through the garden, taking the visitor on a tour of one flower bed and another, a tree, a cast-concrete urn she has found in the shrubbery.

Jeanie returns on Sunday afternoon, and when she has finished working, Saffron comes out with glasses of water, cups of tea, and a packet of chocolate biscuits. They sit on the patio—there’s no table or chairs—and Angel approaches Maude again.

“Let her sniff your hand first,” Saffron says. “Hold it out flat. Be gentle.”

“She’s a very mild-tempered dog,” Jeanie says. “A bit of a coward, really.” Maude licks Angel’s hand, then her face, and Angel sits heavily on her backside, her chin crimping and her bottom lip rolling out. Before the wail starts, Saffron crawls on her hands and knees, bangles clinking, and nuzzles Angel’s neck and then licks her face too, and Jeanie is reminded of the play fights she and Julius would have with their father, clinging on to his neck as he roared in mock anger. Angel laughs and the dog bounces off down the garden.

When they’re sitting once more and Angel is focused on her chocolate biscuit, which is melting over her dimpled hands, Jeanie says, “I’ll have to scythe the path first. The grass is too long to mow straight away.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Just a bit more work.” She thinks about the amount of physical exertion this will be and the possible consequences, and decides she no longer cares.

“Okay,” Saffron says. “I guess you’d have to scythe the whole thing if I wanted it all mown.”

“I thought I’d open it out a bit further down, have a circle of lawn that you can see from here so that Angel has somewhere to play.”

“That would be lovely.” Saffron takes Angel’s wrist just before she places her hand on the ground and sucks the chocolate from each fat finger.

“Doggy,” Angel says.

“I have your money.” Saffron takes something from the pocket of her dress—the same dress she was wearing the day before and the day before that. “We didn’t agree on how often I’d pay you, but is weekly okay? Ten hours this week, yeah? And you’ll do the same next week?”

“I’m not sure which days though,” Jeanie says.

“No problem. Whenever you like.” She holds out the slip she’s taken from her pocket—a piece of paper, not