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

“It was on one fine March morning when I bid my home adieu

And took the road to London town my fortune to renew

I cursed all foreign money, no credit could I gain

Which filled my heart with longing for the trees of Hadlington.”

The piano jangles loudly, its out-of-tune-ness amplified. She hums along while she tries to get the piano part correct. It’s a song she has only played on the guitar.

She sings another verse, hesitantly, but enjoying the reverberation of the piano bouncing around the empty room. She closes her eyes to see the fire lit again behind her, Julius eating at the table, Maude twitching in her sleep on the sofa.

“If it weren’t for the wolves and the bears, I’d sleep out in the woods . . .”

Another voice joins hers, and she jumps off the log basket, the falling piano lid closely missing her fingers. Julius is leaning on the doorjamb, a smile on his face.

“I knew you’d be here,” he says.

“Aren’t you meant to be putting up a fence somewhere?” She sits again.

“It doesn’t feel like ours any more, does it?” He looks around. “It’s already stopped being a home, somehow. Just a horrible, mouldy little house.”

His description offends her. “Go back to work, Julius. We need to give Bridget some money for food. We need to pay Stu back.” She doesn’t say and Rawson.

“Turns out the work was twenty miles away. I would have had to go in the van.”

“Oh, Julius.” She half rises to go to him, but he shifts his shoulders, rejecting her sympathy.

Perhaps he realizes it and tries to compensate by sounding concerned. “I’m not sure you should have lifted that ladder on your own.”

“It was fine. I managed.”

“I phoned Richard Letford earlier. The kitchen fitter?”

“Another job?”

“Not exactly.” He smiles. “I needed to check on something he mentioned at Mum’s do.” Julius comes to the log basket, nudges her along with his hip, and she moves over. He opens the piano and plays a few chirpy notes with his left hand.

“I have some news,” he says over the piano, his right hand joining in to make the music swing.

“What news?” She’s impatient, she doesn’t have time for his teasing, the way he likes to make her wait.

He carries on playing the jingly tune and sings:

“When I was a little girl, I wished I was a boy

I tagged along behind the gang and wore my corduroys

Everybody said I only did it to annoy

But I was gonna be an engineer.”

“Julius.” She gives him a shove with her body, and he sways sideways to almost horizontal and comes back upright, still playing and singing.

“Julius, what news?” she says, laughing now. She’s heard him play this song before.

“Mamma said, ‘Why can’t you be a lady?

Your duty is to make me the mother of a pearl

Wait until you’re older, dear

And maybe you’ll be glad that you’re a girl.’”

“Tell me.” She closes the piano over his fingers and he has to stop.

“I think I’ve found us somewhere to live.”

“Really?” She wants so badly to believe that he has.

“I haven’t seen it yet, but I think it’ll be fine. We’ll make it fine. Better than living with Bridget and Stu.” He stands.

“Anything will be better than that. Where is it? What is it? Another cottage?”

“Richard’s giving me a lift there this afternoon. Let me go and see it first, and then I’ll take you.”

“A lift? Will you be okay?”

“It’s not far. Ten minutes in a car.”

“Why don’t I come too? If we can move in today, we could get the things off the track before it rains.”

“I’d better go.” He lights up his phone to check the time. “Richard’s picking me up from the village.” He goes into the scullery, Maude and Jeanie following.

“But you haven’t told me anything.”

“And I meant to say, I bumped into Dr. Holloway too. He’s got us a gig.”

“A gig? No, Julius.”

“At the Plough. He said he put in a good word with Chris, the landlord.”

“No. I can’t play in front of people.”

“You played in front of everyone after we buried Mum.”

“That was different.”

“Then you can play with your back to the audience. Anyway, we might not have an audience.” He gives her a quick hug and is through the door. He pokes his head back in. “I’ll put the ladder away.”

Julius cycles to the village with his fiddle in its case strapped to the back of his bike. He’s hungry and hot but he can’t go to Bridget and Stu’s because they haven’t given him a key, and what would he do there? A pint of bitter would slip down easily now, and one of the Plough’s steak and ale pies. He doesn’t have enough cash for that, although tomorrow he has another relief milking job starting for a week. He wonders if Chris would let him order a pie and pint, and pay later, but in the end he buys a bottle of Coke, a sandwich, and a bag of crisps from the shop and eats them standing on the pavement, reading the adverts in the window. Someone’s advertising an upright piano, free to anyone who can collect it—Frank’s old one left in the cottage isn’t going to be worth anything either.

Julius waits for Richard opposite the fish and chip shop, looking up at Shelley Swift’s windows. She’ll be at work now, but he has a date with her later, and he thinks he might play her something on the fiddle. He’s not going to tell her about the gig in the pub; he hardly acknowledges the thought, but he doesn’t want her to see him with his sister again—her clothes, her funny hair and lack of make-up. Holloway has told some bloke about their music—a journalist or collector of regional folk songs, Julius didn’t quite follow—and this man is hoping to come along. Waiting for Richard, Julius decides that he won’t play the usual folky stuff for Shelley Swift, but something else. Something classical.

On Sundays when he was young, his mother and sister