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

reached when Bridget offers to look up the number for the local dog warden. When Jeanie gets through, she asks if a whiskery, biscuit-coloured lurcher has been found with a collar although no tag, but no dog fitting that description has been brought in.

Bridget goes into Oxford to do some errands, and as Jeanie is throwing away their sandwich wrappers she sees two plastic bottles in the bin. She takes them out and shoves them into her small carrier bag—she has hidden the large one round the back of the WCs in the village. In the toilet next to the Relatives’ Room she fills both bottles from the cold tap. There is no sign or symbol above the sink.

With Bridget not back and no nurses close by in the ITU, Jeanie takes Julius’s pyjamas out of her carrier. She pulls the sheet down to below his feet and is embarrassed that the hospital gown is rucked up and his privates exposed. She hurries to scrunch up the pyjama legs, concertinaing them into short tubes, and a memory of a smell comes to her of rosemary cut from the bush outside the cottage’s back door. She manages to manoeuvre both pyjama legs over Julius’s white and hairy toes. His calves are heavier than she expected and difficult to move. She is dragging the pyjamas over his ankles, first one side and then the other, when Julius’s nurse comes and stops her. Calmly he talks about infection control and hygiene, and Jeanie wants to tell him that Julius’s clothes are always clean, but she remembers that she picked the pyjamas up off the floor of the disordered caravan that morning and carried them into the public toilets in the village. She lets the nurse take them off Julius’s legs and watches while her brother is wiped down with some sort of disinfectant. “You should talk to him,” the nurse says, and Jeanie sits in the chair beside Julius’s head and tells him that she doesn’t know what to do now.

On their way back to Inkbourne, Bridget says she has to go to work tomorrow but that she’s arranged for someone from a volunteer transport organization to pick Jeanie up from Saffron’s house in the morning and drive her to the hospital and then bring her home, as well as on the other days that Bridget has to work. Jeanie knows this is charity however it’s described, but she can’t see an alternative, and besides, she’s had enough of Bridget and she knows that Bridget has had enough of her.

While she drives, Bridget talks about Nathan and smokes cigarette after cigarette. She goes on about how Nathan is developing a new relationship with his father.

“You remember that afternoon when Nath and the others went to the caravan?” Bridget says.

Jeanie doesn’t reply; how could she forget?

“Well, Nath told me that it was Caroline Rawson who asked him to go out there.” Bridget speaks like she’s relating the storyline of a soap opera. “Nothing to do with the money that Tom was looking for; it was because she felt bad. Can you believe it? Apparently, she sent him to check up on you, make sure you were doing all right. Nath’s not working for her any more. Stu’s put his foot down. He’s looking for a job in a pub or maybe a warehouse. Whatever he can get.”

Jeanie zones out Bridget’s voice. That Nathan was at the caravan to make sure she and Julius were okay doesn’t excuse him, she thinks. He could have stopped Tom from going inside, maybe he could have stopped Tom from returning with his gun. She lets Bridget ramble on until she asks, “Was it all right at Saffron’s last night? Shall I drop you there again?” and Jeanie sees that they’re nearly in Inkbourne.

“In the village, please,” Jeanie says. “I need to pick up some things from the shop.”

When she’s waved Bridget off, Jeanie collects her large carrier bag from behind the toilet block. Around the back it smells more of pee than inside, and she wonders why anyone would go here and not in the toilets when they’re open all day and all night and you have to walk past the doors to get to the back. She sits on the bench on the green. On Wednesday evenings the fish and chip shop is closed, and Jeanie is relieved; she doesn’t think she could have tolerated the smell of the frying food without being able to buy any. The lights are off in the flat above, and Jeanie wonders if Bridget or anyone else has thought to tell Shelley Swift about Julius. She opens the tin of baked beans she took from the caravan and eats them surreptitiously with the spoon, hoping no one will pass by. Although she scrapes out the tin, she’s still hungry, but decides to wait until it’s nearly dark to open the soup with the tin opener. It’s condensed cream of mushroom, thick to the point of being almost a jelly; salty and delicious. This soup, which she’s eaten all her life, has never tasted so good. Time passes slowly while she’s sitting on the bench waiting for the pub to empty, and as it gets colder, she has to stand and stamp her feet and wrap her arms around herself. Finally, when the village is quiet, she returns to the ladies toilets, and under the sinks on the hard floor, with her clothes on, she wriggles into the sleeping bag, using her coat and jumper stuffed inside one of the plastic bags as a pillow. Tiny flies and moths flutter around the fluorescent light on the ceiling, and the husks of their forebears dangle in loops of stringy web.

After an hour, Jeanie is so cold she can’t stop her teeth from clacking and her limbs from juddering. She puts on her jumper and coat and crams herself into the corner with her back against the wall. The pain of missing Maude returns