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

Nathan stands and walks around Jeanie and Bridget, leaving a wide gap, as though he thinks his mother might reach out and grab him.

“Nathan,” Bridget says. “What’s going on here? Why have you come to see Jeanie?”

“Let him go,” Jeanie says. She wants it over with.

“See you, Mum.” Nathan tugs his helmet on, climbs on the bike, and starts it up.

“What have you and Tom been up to? You get off that thing and tell me right now.” Her voice rises.

Nathan revs the engine but Lewis, perhaps thinking it’s impolite to leave while she—Nathan’s mother—is speaking, lingers. “We were just having a bit of a laugh,” he says.

“I can’t see Jeanie laughing.”

“Nice to see you, Mrs. Clements,” Lewis says, sitting behind Nathan and putting his own helmet on.

Bridget stands beside the bike’s high front wheel. “I hope you’re not still working for those Rawsons,” she says fiercely. “Is that what you’re doing here?”

Nathan doesn’t look at her, doesn’t reply. Lewis puts his hands on Nathan’s waist, the bike roars, and Bridget jumps back.

It occurs to Jeanie as they watch Nathan and Lewis leave that while Tom did come looking for the money, Bridget is right, Nathan didn’t join in with the search or the chanting and must have come on some other business, the Rawsons’ business, and she isn’t sure what that could be.

“Did you pass a piano?” Jeanie says to Bridget. She puts down the bowl and the drawer and crouches in front of the caravan, clicking her tongue. Jeanie thinks she can hear Maude panting under there, little whines at the top of every breath.

“I saw what I thought was a piano,” Bridget says.

Jeanie slaps her thigh, but the dog doesn’t come.

“It was on its back. Ed told Stu that you’d got him to bring it. What were you thinking? And why did you invite that Tom out here?”

“Damn them. I loved that piano.” Now the men have left she’s shaking with anger as much as with fear. “I didn’t bloody invite them. They just turned up and started pulling the place apart and threatening me and Maude.”

“Oh, Jeanie. I’ll send Stu round again to see Nath. He’ll have to listen this time.”

“And the bloody potatoes are ruined.”

“Come on. Don’t worry about the potatoes. Sit down. They’ve gone.” Bridget squeezes Jeanie’s arm. “I came to see how you’re getting on. How about I make us a nice cup of tea?” She looks around, unsure whether that’s possible.

Jeanie doesn’t want to sit, the anger is surging through her and she wants more than ever to let it take hold, creep along her veins, into her jaw, her gums, sparking the roots of her teeth, down into her heart. She could be anything—a boxer, a fighter, a murderer. She breathes in deep through her nose, puts her finger to her neck, and blows out slowly. “I’m okay, Bridget. Don’t fuss. But there is something I want to show you, something I want you to do for me.” Jeanie goes to the caravan and Bridget follows, stepping over the potatoes and, once inside, over the cutlery strewn across the floor.

“Did those boys do this?”

From under the lining paper in the kitchen cupboard which Tom slid open, Jeanie pulls out the empty brown envelope.

“Let me pick up this mess.” Bridget bends towards the floor.

“Leave it. Just sit down,” Jeanie says. “Please,” she adds more gently. Bridget sits on Julius’s couch. “This is the envelope that had the money in it. The one I found in Mum’s banjo case. I gave a bit of it to Stu to pay back some of what Mum borrowed, and the rest to Ed for moving us out here.” She isn’t going to admit to the mistake of paying Ed too much.

Bridget puts her handbag down beside her. “I know Stu’ll wait for the rest. But you weren’t supposed to pay Ed for moving you, that was meant to be a fav—”

“Bridget.” Jeanie catches her before she can go on and holds out the envelope. “I want you to tell me what’s written on the front.”

Bridget takes the envelope warily but doesn’t look at it.

“I know it’s Mum’s handwriting but I can’t work out the word.”

“Why don’t you read it? Although, come to think of it, your mum had terrible handwriting—I was always saying that it was illegible.”

“Because I can’t.”

“You can’t read it?” Bridget hasn’t looked at the envelope and she seems embarrassed on Jeanie’s behalf.

“I can’t read or write, not properly. I know that you know.” She always thought it would be a monumental effort to admit this lack out loud, this failing, this stupidity, but the words slip out easily and she doesn’t feel any shame.

Bridget’s mouth opens a little and then she closes it. “Well, I had an idea but—”

“What does it say?” Jeanie nods at the envelope.

Bridget hesitates, sighs, looks down, and smooths the paper across her large thighs. Finally, she speaks. “Spencer.” She is unsurprised.

“Spencer?” Jeanie says. “What, as in Spencer Rawson?”

“Spencer Rawson, that’s right.”

“Mum wrote that man’s first name?” She and Julius and their mother had never used Rawson’s first name on the rare occasions they spoke about him. They didn’t even use Mr. Somehow, it seems impossible that Rawson has a first name because it must mean he had parents and was once a baby.

“He’s not that bad, Jeanie. If you just gave him a chance.”

“He killed my father.”

Bridget looks down, the envelope held out, and when Jeanie, still standing, doesn’t take it, she puts it beside her on the seat and with a groan kneels on the floor and begins to gather up the cutlery and the poker.

“Don’t worry about that,” Jeanie says, but she waits until Bridget has collected them all. Bridget stands with an effort and looks around for the drawer and, perhaps remembering that it is outside, puts the things on the counter where they spread out with a clatter.

“What was going on between Mum and Rawson?” Jeanie says.

“It’s