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

sight, and then back to him. “It’s nothing,” he shouts. “I’ll tell you later.”

Nothing, Julius thinks. That’s what the Seeders are to the Rawsons.

The woman—Rawson’s wife, Julius presumes—doesn’t reply or come down and in that moment, Rawson seems to catch and compose himself. “I’m so terribly sorry. What happened?”

“She fell, hit her head. Early this morning. I need to call the doctor.”

“Of course, of course.” Rawson fumbles some more with his smartphone, saying, “My wife always uses Alexa for phone numbers, but I can’t get the hang of the thing.”

Julius wonders if the man is going senile; he has no idea who Alexa is. Rawson reads out the telephone number and while it’s ringing he goes back into the sitting room, but Julius is aware of his presence just the other side of the door, most likely listening. A receptionist answers the phone—a different one from Bridget—who makes sympathetic noises and takes the details. She searches for Dot on their computer system and Julius thinks that perhaps she won’t be registered with them any more, but the receptionist finds her name and says that Dr. Holloway will visit this morning as soon as he is able. When the call is finished, Rawson comes back into the hall. His eyes are bright, shiny.

“Okay if I make another?” Julius says.

“Go ahead. Can I get you a cup of—” Rawson starts.

“No.”

“Of course. I’m sure you’ve got lots to sort out.”

“Thanks,” Julius says, although he doesn’t mean it. This man owed my mother, Julius thinks. And now Rawson owes him and Jeanie. “I need another number. A bathroom fitter. I’m supposed to be working for him today.”

When he has the number, Julius phones Craig while Rawson shifts a vase of flowers on a table a centimetre left and pretends not to listen to this conversation too.

At the front door as Julius is leaving, Rawson says, “Hang on. I’ve got some post for you.” The postman won’t come up the track after his van got stuck one time and had to be towed out by a tractor. Julius isn’t sure how or when his mother collected the post. He doesn’t look at the envelopes, just folds them in half and shoves them in his coat pocket.

“Have you thought about . . .” Rawson starts, stops, and begins again with, “Will you be having a thing for Dot? A wake? I’d like to pay my respects.”

“No,” Julius says. “We haven’t thought about any of that.” On the drive, he turns to look back. Spencer Rawson is standing in a patch of snow in his bare feet, watching.

4

Two hours later, without Julius having returned, the doctor arrives at the cottage. His large stomach, wide shoulders, and bull head fill up the kitchen and block out the light. The first thing he says to Jeanie after introducing himself as Dr. Holloway is that he doesn’t have long. He asks where Dot was found, why the electricity is off, and where the body is now. “You probably shouldn’t have moved her,” he says as Jeanie shows him to the parlour and the shrouded figure. She doesn’t stay to watch his examination. When he returns to the kitchen, she’s relieved that he declines her offer of tea.

The doctor rubs his hands to warm them. In front of the window his features are indistinct and Jeanie can barely see his mouth move while he explains that he is certain that Dot died of a stroke and that there is a procedure which involves him telephoning the coroner before he can give Jeanie a particular certificate which she needs before she can get the green form. She has no idea what he’s talking about and at the mention of the word form, her fingers flutter to her heart and press there without her realizing and she can no longer focus on Dr. Holloway’s sentences about Dot’s illness, warning signs, and medication.

At the door, he says, “I’ll see you at the surgery for the medical certificate,” and clamps a meaty hand on her shoulder, adding that Dot was a good woman, and he’s sorry she’s gone. And then he’s gone too, revving off in his jeep, leaving Jeanie wondering how he knew what sort of woman her mother was and why he wasn’t able to give her the death certificate then and there, if that’s the form she needs.

After another hour, in which Jeanie moves aimlessly and unseeing through the cottage, and Julius doesn’t return, she assumes he must have somehow got to the work he has with Craig. She turns on the portable radio and listens to a couple of minutes of a woman talking about how she walked the Appalachian Trail in America, but her voice is too grating even at a low volume and Jeanie switches it off. She finds herself staring out of the scullery window at the chickens high-stepping through the snow, without knowing how or when she got there. Finally, she decides that it is the death certificate they need and for some reason which she doesn’t understand she has to pick it up from the surgery. She clicks her tongue at Maude, and they walk through the snow to the village.

The GP surgery is a series of purpose-built, low-level boxes set in the middle of a car park near the edge of Inkbourne. Jeanie knows that three doctors work there including Dr. Holloway, but she’s never been to see any of them. She last saw a doctor when she was thirteen for a final routine check-up after her bouts of rheumatic fever ended. Then, the surgery occupied one of the double-fronted Victorian houses overlooking the village green. It was a year or so after her father died, when her mother was still listless, still forgetting to cook dinner, to shop for food, or to round up the chickens at the end of the day. They lost six to foxes that year. Her mother had taken Jeanie to see a GP whose name she no longer