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

“I need to have that word with Stu.”

“We can sort this out ourselves.” She leans back on her elbows, legs straight. “It’s a misunderstanding. The house is ours. It’s just the Rawsons’ empty threat to make us pay up.”

“But we haven’t paid up.”

“Because we don’t owe them anything.”

Jeanie and Julius get home in the late afternoon. They don’t talk about the eviction, each gaining confidence from the other that nothing will have happened, so that when Jeanie sees the piece of paper pinned over the front door’s lock, she doesn’t believe it, until Julius is pushing past her, saying, “Fuck.” And even she can work out the start of the word in red letters. Then the sickness returns, the desire to go to bed and sleep to forget the debts, the worry about what they can do without, how they will manage. Only sleep takes these circling thoughts away, although that is becoming more difficult, and now even working in Saffron’s garden won’t stop the sweat dampening her palms or keep her heart from rocking.

“Fucking ridiculous,” Julius says, reading as he goes indoors. “A week. We’ve got a week.”

“Is that all?” Jeanie says, although she knew it already.

“Maybe we could take it to a solicitor.” Julius runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up on one side.

“Where would we get the money for a solicitor?”

He turns to her, his expression a snarl. “I don’t know. Sell the piano?”

“Or Mum’s wedding ring,” she shouts.

“Neither of them are worth anything.”

“This is crazy. We don’t owe them any money.” Jeanie thinks she might actually throw up. “What about the council?” She sits on a kitchen chair. Maude goes under the table. “They have to help people when they’re made homeless, don’t they? A council house or whatever.” She can’t believe it’s come to this.

“I’ve already had a word with someone,” Julius says, more quietly now.

“What?”

“That bloke who looks after the market, the one who came to the wake. He used to work in the housing department. There’s not a chance in hell. We’re too old, or not old enough. We need to be married or have children, or something.”

On Sunday morning after Jeanie hears Julius leave for a relief milking job he’s managed to get for a couple of days, she goes downstairs in her nightie and dressing gown. She’s barely slept for thinking about what might happen tomorrow. Every time she has tried to talk to her brother about the impending eviction, they’ve argued. In the early hours she decided that she would get some things together—just a couple of boxes in case they really do have to leave tomorrow. She tells herself that this isn’t giving up, it’s being prepared. But what do you pack when you don’t know where you’re going or for how long?

There had been a day in that long feverish time when she was about six and off school, that she’d woken on the sofa to see a man standing at the kitchen table, stuffing a slice of bread and butter into his mouth. The coat he wore was tied closed with a length of string and crumbs had fallen into his grey beard, which was long enough to lie on his chest. His sour odour reached her across the room and when Jeanie cried out, the man shovelled the food in faster—pieces of ham and then a whole hard-boiled egg which he didn’t stop to peel—his eyes darting and his cheeks bulging. Another egg went into his coat pocket, followed by an apple. At Jeanie’s cry her mother hurried in from the scullery, and the tramp, perhaps used to being chased away, made a few steps towards the front door.

“Mr. Jackson,” Dot said calmly. “Won’t you sit down to eat?” She pulled out a chair and, cautiously, the man sat. “Mr. Jackson is our guest, Jeanette. He’s come to tea.” Her mother returned to the scullery for more food and Mr. Jackson relaxed, and popped the hard-boiled egg, whole, out of his mouth, shell intact. He put it in one ear and drew it out of the other before tapping it on the table and peeling it.

She remembers, dropped by the table leg, his canvas bag—his only belongings apart from the clothes he wore. What, she wonders now, did he carry with him?

In the scullery, Jeanie stands for a long time watching a beam of sunlight slide across the farmhouse sink. If they’re evicted tomorrow, what will they do about their mother’s body? They can’t leave it and risk it being discovered, but they certainly can’t take it with them. Jeanie doesn’t have a solution. With a gasp and a rush of energy she goes into the old dairy, where half a dozen flattened cardboard boxes have been shoved in a corner. The cardboard is damp, and it takes her an age to find a roll of parcel tape, but she makes them up and packs them with plates and other pieces of essential crockery, wrapped in towels. She tucks in the portable radio, the torch, cutlery, two saucepans, and a frying pan, as well as whatever food she has in the cupboards. Angel’s painting of Maude is secured with an elastic band and placed on top. On Tuesday, she tells herself, she will be unpacking everything and putting it back on the shelves, laughing at her own caution. She stuffs another box with two sleeping bags, spare pillows, and blankets, and puts everything in the old dairy. She is only preparing because she can’t bear to be unprepared.

15

Jeanie sits in the kitchen, still in her nightie, fingerpicking the same phrase over and over on her guitar. The need to play it three times in a row at the same tempo with the same stress on the top string has kept her on the chair for an hour. She hears the back door open and Bridget call, “Jeanie? It’s only me.”

She stiffens, keeps the guitar on her