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

Jeanie takes it out, she sees a single word on the front in her mother’s poor handwriting and, trying to work it out, can’t get past what might be the letter S. But inside are sixteen fifty-pound notes.

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Once again, in the early evening, Jeanie and Bridget stand at the kitchen sink looking out at the unkempt garden and ignoring the noise Maude is making. The only way Jeanie was able to persuade the dog to go into the greenhouse this time was to tempt her with gravy and a raw egg, although Maude had already been fed tonight. When the food disappeared, in less than a minute, Maude, realizing she was locked in, began to bark.

Bridget fries pieces of frozen diced chicken and adds a jar of white sauce to the pan which she says is Chicken Tonight. She does a funny dance around the kitchen, waggling her elbows, bending her knees, and singing about the sauce, but Jeanie doesn’t know what the hell Bridget is doing, and shaking her head and laughing, Bridget goes back to the pan on the stove. Jeanie suggests they add some of the spinach and fresh garlic she brought with her, but Bridget says Stu can’t stand garlic, and when she reads the ingredients on the back of the jar she says it has carrots in it already, so they don’t need more vegetables.

“Sorry about last night,” Jeanie says. “Julius coming in drunk.”

Bridget makes a grunt that isn’t quite acceptance or forgiveness.

“And the broken bowl. I’ll get you another.”

“Well.” Bridget leans in, confidentially, “I have to admit that Stu does have a bit of a temper when something annoys him.”

“Easily riled,” Jeanie says, and Bridget stiffens as though she’s allowed to say that her husband gets angry, but Jeanie isn’t supposed to agree.

“Will Julius be eating with us this evening?” Bridget’s tone is pointed. She pours white rice into a saucepan and puts the kettle on. Jeanie is irritated that Bridget doesn’t rinse the rice first; it will be full of starch and stodgy when it’s cooked.

“I saw him earlier, but he didn’t say.” She isn’t going to tell Bridget about him finding them somewhere to live. Bridget will ask her about it, and when Jeanie admits she knows nothing more, Bridget will roll her eyes and dismiss it as one of Julius’s fantasies. She can almost hear the fuh which Bridget likes to make and see the wave of her hand. A long tale about the many things Julius has begun and not completed will follow and Jeanie will feel the conflict of needing to defend him and wanting to agree. And besides, now she’s found the money, perhaps they can sort things out with Rawson and move back into the cottage.

“Probably with Shelley Swift,” Bridget says in a voice designed to hurt. “I’ve heard he’s sniffing around the fish and chip shop.” She laughs as though this were a brilliant joke. If she and Bridget are to remain any sort of friends, Jeanie thinks, she will have to leave this house very soon. Bridget moves on to the story of how she met Stu when he and Ed came to clear the contents of a house belonging to some dead relative. It was love at first sight and Stu kissed her within an hour of them meeting. Jeanie has heard it before and can’t understand the attraction, not just between Stu and Bridget but between anyone. She has never felt any longing, any desire, and notices that this is something others feel only when she can’t avoid it. While Bridget is talking, she thinks of a time in the cottage’s kitchen when she was thirteen and Bridget was visiting. It must have been late May, nine months after her father died, because the tomato plants were ready to be moved outside. Jeanie was at the table cutting pictures from a magazine. Bridget and Dot were sitting on the sofa talking about a local farmer.

“Apparently, he died on the job,” Bridget said. Dot’s head jerked sideways, and Jeanie started to pay attention to the women’s conversation. Bridget didn’t notice Dot’s warning and continued with her story.

“You remember what a big man he was, stomach out to here, heavy with it.” Her voice dropped but not so low that Jeanie couldn’t hear. “Died with it inside, and her trapped underneath for three hours before anyone heard her shouting.”

“Poor woman,” Dot said quietly. It was one of her unhappy times.

“Poor man more like. His heart stopped just like that!” Bridget snapped her fingers and Dot lunged for her friend’s hand, pulling it down and shushing her.

Later, Jeanie was in the greenhouse, cramming potted-up tomato plants into the wheelbarrow so she could take them out to the cold frames. Dot, sitting on an upturned crate, started speaking in a rush as though to get the words done with. “You know when a woman and a man fall in love, they might go to bed together?”

Jeanie, who couldn’t believe her mother was talking about this now, kept her head down. “They sleep together, they make love,” Dot said. She hesitated and Jeanie hoped her mother wasn’t thinking of the times she must have done it with Jeanie’s father.

“I know all this,” Jeanie said, hoping to shut her mother up. Jeanie had missed the sex education lessons at school and had tried to piece together the bits of information she heard from other girls, who talked about having to roll rubber johnnies over bananas after the boys left the room and being made to watch a horrific film about having a baby. But there were gaps in her knowledge of how it worked and terms that meant nothing.

“It can get quite strenuous,” Dot said.

Jeanie thought of the stallion she’d once seen mounting a donkey, all bared teeth and hooves. “They did this at school, Mum, last year.”

“Yes, but listen. If the man or the woman has a bad heart like that farmer had, it can be dangerous. And