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

the entrance are on the shortest side, and the backs of a few gardens adjoin the narrowest corner at the wire fence. No one sees her. No one is looking. She is invisible; to Julius too, she often thinks. Sometimes he is home later than she might have expected but she doesn’t ask where he’s been or who with. He attaches a bolt to the inside of the caravan door and another with a padlock, for the outside, and gradually she comes to feel safe, sitting in the evenings next to the small firepit they’ve made, on one of the plastic chairs. Jeanie waits for Bridget to visit, and at first when she doesn’t Jeanie is offended, but then she thinks that perhaps they have spent enough time in each other’s company for a while.

The steps outside the caravan are new. Julius made them from plank offcuts and by laying bricks in the ground as a foundation to keep them stable. Jeanie sits on them in a patch of sunlight with a bowl on her lap, peeling the last of the old potatoes and watching a butterfly hovering over the pink-and-white flowers of a dog rose. The radio is on in the caravan, tuned to a programme that repeats the best of the week, and she listens to a snippet about a Japanese garden designer’s favourite songs. Julius didn’t come home in between milkings today, and now she has a pan of water on the boil for the potatoes and for him to wash with when he returns. There was a day when she was in the village shop and smelled a sour odour; perhaps, she thought, some fruit had rolled under the display and lay rotting and undiscovered. She passed a man along one of the narrow aisles and saw him turn away with his face screwed up in disgust, and she realized that the smell came from her, from her clothes. Now she washes a few items every day in the tiny sink, using hot water from the kettle, hanging the clothes on a line outside if it’s dry or draped around the caravan if not.

She stops peeling when she hears the throat-clearing cough of a couple of dirt bikes. The noise isn’t coming from the main road, whose whoosh of traffic she no longer notices unless she listens for it, but from the entrance to the spinney. The bikes don’t go past the lay-by; instead the whining becomes louder, closer, among the trees, and with it, whoops and shouting. She puts down the bowl and stands, clicking her fingers to call Maude to her. There is laughing, more shouting and the engines ticking over, and after a pause, a run of notes on the piano and then a thump which she feels through her feet, at the same time as she hears the jangle of piano strings. Her hand goes to her chest. Perhaps they, whoever they are—and she has a good idea—will stay near the piano and the old fire patch.

But the engines come closer and she sees two yellow-and-black dirt bikes race past—each with a central section like a wasp’s thorax. Mud and shredded plants fly from the tyres as they turn, skidding into the clearing in front of the caravan. Maude barks, hackles and tail raised. The riders are laughing, calling out to each other as they get off and remove their helmets: Tom on one bike, Nathan on another with Lewis riding pillion. Jeanie moves closer to the caravan, and Maude scurries behind her legs.

“We heard you was out here,” Lewis says. “What a dump.”

He kicks at the washing-up bowl Jeanie has been using and it turns over, water, peelings, and potatoes spilling out. Lewis laughs. Jeanie steps towards the men and lets her anger rise, but Maude is still barking in the corner formed by the caravan and the steps. Jeanie clicks her fingers at her to stop. Now Lewis goes to the washing line where her and Julius’s underwear is pegged out, and he stands behind a pair of tights, sticking his head under the crotch, holding the legs around his chin so that he seems to be wearing a bizarre tan-coloured bonnet.

“Looks like you brought most of your shit with you though,” Tom says, strutting about. Jeanie tries to keep in mind what Bridget said about his mother.

“Or what was left of it,” Lewis says. He smiles as he speaks, and Jeanie knows for certain who has taken what remained outside the cottage.

Nathan stands in the clearing, looking around him, taking it in. He’s wearing leather trousers and a motorbike jacket. His hair is roughed up from where he removed the helmet and there is blond stubble along his jaw.

“I’d like you to leave now,” she says, low and steady.

“She’d like us to leave now.” Lewis’s poor impersonation of Jeanie has him doubled over with laughter.

“But we only just got here,” Tom says. His nose and eyes are too big for his face, as though he has some growing to do. “We want a tour of your beautiful mansion. Don’t we, Nath?” He puts a foot on the bottom step. Maude growls but it is only for effect.

Beside the plastic chairs, Nathan hesitates, and chooses to sit on a log as though he needs an invitation to take a proper seat. “Yeah,” he says, although he doesn’t sound enthusiastic. He draws his packet of tobacco from a pocket and starts to roll a cigarette.

“Just get back on your bikes and go, and we’ll say no more about it,” Jeanie says. Tom takes another step up. “You can’t go in there.” She snatches at the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Hey, lady!” Tom pulls his arm away. “What have you got in here that you’re so bothered about?” Then he’s inside and Jeanie can’t stop him. She looks from one to the other of the two men outside, trying to assess what they could do without her watching, then she follows Tom indoors.

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