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

26

After Bridget leaves, Jeanie picks up the potatoes. Two are pressed so deeply into the ground that she has to dig them out with a knife. She lobs them into the bushes, angry with herself for not standing up to Tom more, for not pushing him out of the caravan. The remaining potatoes go in a pot to boil, and in a frying pan on the second ring she cooks six sausages until they are brown, and then adds to the potato water a few handfuls of broad beans which she picked that morning.

When the sausages and vegetables are ready, she puts them on plates with saucepan lids on top to keep the food warm, and she sits in a plastic chair with a blanket across her shoulders, waiting for Julius. At nine when the bushes and trees turn shadowy, she puts Julius’s plate on the ground and whistles for Maude. She sits with her own plate on her lap and eats savagely, using her fingers to hold the sausages. She knows where Julius is. He’ll be with Shelley Swift, sitting on her sofa, nice and warm, watching television, snuggled up close, her feet in his lap. Jeanie throws the rest of her food on the ground, but the dog hasn’t come. She whistles repeatedly. She’s sure Julius will be home later. He’s got to be up early to get to Stockland’s Farm again, the other side of Froxfield, for the milking. She sits and watches the bats, quick black shadows flitting amongst the trees. If Julius isn’t back soon, she’ll bolt the caravan door and he’ll have to hammer on it to be let in, and then she’ll take her time getting out of bed. She calls for Maude and goes inside, leaving the door open. First, she’ll make cocoa—the milk won’t last another day. When the pan is on the stove she goes to the door and calls once more but still the dog doesn’t come. She turns off the gas and whistles from the bottom step. She has a sudden idea that they’re gone together, Maude and Julius, exploring what’s out there in the dusk, without her. Julius hasn’t spent a night away from home for years, and surely he wouldn’t do that without telling her, and Maude always comes back eventually. But when did she last see her? When Bridget left or after that? Maybe before that. It occurs to Jeanie that Julius might be injured, perhaps he’s been kicked by a cow, had his jaw broken and is in hospital with no way of telling her. The idiot.

But she doesn’t need Julius; she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself and the dog. The bloody dog. She calls and then fetches the torch, silver and heavy as a club, and listens: for dog noises, for the sound of Julius stumbling home, for the rev of a dirt bike. She remembers Tom forming his arm and his hand into the shape of a gun and shooting at Maude. There are only the normal rustlings and scuttlings in the undergrowth, the hoot of an owl, the occasional car on the road. She is less fearful of the spinney than when they first arrived and she has never been afraid of the dark, but it feels different now. She knows the location of every bush and tree, where the paths connect, and how to avoid the remains of the brick structures. A crescent moon shines, making the shadows blacker, but the places where the light falls are bright enough to see without the torch.

“Maude!” she calls. In front of the caravan she whistles, turns around, whistles once more. Her lips are dry and the whistle seems to travel only a yard or two.

She walks to the latrine first. Julius is going to dig a new hole next week and move the rickety shed-like structure he’s built around it. Four short planks surround the hole to keep the edges secure. There’s another plank to hide the hole, but it’s cumbersome to manoeuvre and most times they don’t bother. When she gets to the latrine, she calls, disliking her voice away from the caravan, as if there might be people out there listening. The smell is of damp earth, nothing bad. Should she have locked the caravan door? Perhaps Maude has been lured away so that she—Jeanie—can be lured away too. Quickly, she shines the torch into the hole—it’s dark but not so deep that if Maude had fallen in, she would have disappeared. There is no dog down there. Perhaps she’s already back at the caravan, but when Jeanie returns there’s no sign of her, and the sausages and the other food remain on the ground, uneaten.

Jeanie padlocks the door and walks the rest of the spinney, calling and whistling. As she comes full circle she can’t help running to the caravan, sure she will see Maude resting on the ground with her front legs out, or Julius tapping his foot impatiently on a tree stump, although of course they would both have heard her calling. Again, no one is there. No dog. Inside, she sits at the table for a while but can’t settle. With every noise she unbolts the door, expecting Maude, damp and muddy. She whistles from the doorway. It is midnight and she’s livid with Julius. If they weren’t living out here on a disgusting piece of wasteland, then the men wouldn’t have come, and Maude wouldn’t have run off. The wood is silent. Perhaps the dog has gone as far as the main road following the scent of a rabbit and is this moment lying hurt on the verge.

Her wellingtons on, Jeanie jogs through the spinney, hand clamped to chest as if to keep the egg of her heart safe inside. On the main road it’s pitch-black until a car rushes past and she almost falls in the hedge, and a couple of the drivers,