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

lettuce. And she recalls her mother waking from a nightmare in the bed they shared after Jeanie’s father died. In the dream, Dot told her, she was in the village shop delivering tomatoes and salad leaves but the place was empty—there was no one there, and somehow she knew there was no one in the pub or any of the houses. And then, Dot said, she was at home, suddenly transported as you can be in dreams, and Jeanie and Julius were gone too, and her mother realized that she was utterly alone.

Now, Jeanie becomes aware of the knocking on the front door only when Maude barks in the kitchen.

“Sit,” she says, and reluctantly Maude obeys. Perhaps it’s the doctor returned for some reason, or Bridget—although she comes in through the back and never knocks. When Jeanie opens the door, Mrs. Rawson is there, with her husband coming up the path behind her. Maude trots to the doorstep, gives a couple of toothy barks, and then shoves her nose in Rawson’s crotch until Jeanie gives a whistle through her teeth, marginally later than she could have, and the dog retreats behind her legs to flop in front of the range.

“We were so sorry to hear about your mother,” Mrs. Rawson says. She leans as though to kiss Jeanie or hug her, but at the last moment holds back.

“Jeanie,” Rawson says, a little awkwardly, showing his white teeth under his white moustache. He holds himself like he knows he’s attractive—for an older man—upright, taller than the doorway, joints loose.

Jeanie feels she has no choice but to hold the door wide and invite them in. She turns off the radio. Mrs. Rawson is younger than her husband by a good few years, and everything about her, from her tight, cropped trousers and high-waisted jacket to the sunglasses on top of her hair—deliberately dyed grey and stylishly cut—says money. Jeanie keeps her own naturally greying hair held back with an elastic band and every couple of months pulls it forward over one shoulder and slices off the ends with the kitchen scissors.

She watches Rawson stare with curiosity around the kitchen, taking in the range and the fire, the piano with the guitar propped next to it, the shadowy corners and the central table scrubbed to brightness, the tidy dresser hung with flowered mugs. She sees it through his eyes, unchanged since he was last inside maybe forty years before. His gaze stops on Jeanie. “Julius called in earlier to use our telephone and he told me what happened. I just can’t believe it.” His head is bent as though he’s bowing in pity or sorrow, but she realizes it’s just that the ceiling and the beams are too low for him.

“We can’t believe it,” his wife chimes in.

Jeanie is surprised to learn that Julius decided to go to the Rawsons’ but says nothing.

“We wanted to come and pay our respects,” Mrs. Rawson continues. She pushes the tops of her fingers into the tight front pockets of her trousers, hunches her shoulders. Her voice is gentle, solicitous. “It must be such a shock. So sudden. Julius told my husband it was a fall.”

“A stroke,” Jeanie says, and hates the word, too soft and beautiful for something so terrible.

Rawson, who is moving towards the piano, stops, and says, “A stroke? Not a fall?”

“A stroke,” Jeanie repeats.

“I’d heard she’d been ill for a little while.” Adding, “Hadn’t she?”

Jeanie wonders how everyone, with the exception of her children, seems to know Dot had been ill. Mrs. Rawson cocks her head and the atmosphere in the room is suddenly dense with something unsaid.

Rawson lifts the piano key lid. “Was this your mother’s?” he asks.

Mrs. Rawson’s sympathetic smile tightens, and Jeanie can see the woman wants to get out of the cottage as soon as it is polite to do so. Jeanie wants them gone too; she needs to be alone with her random thoughts which now, with these people in the house, she must try to keep in order. Rawson, though, seems unaware, deliberately or otherwise, of what his wife wants, and sits on the piano stool—the leather split and the horsehair showing—and plays part of a tune with his right hand, a trill of a song that sounds like it comes from an old-time musical. Immediately Maude is up and barking and Rawson looks down at the dog. “All right, all right,” he says, and smiles.

“Maude!” Jeanie calls the dog back and she goes under the table. “It was my father’s,” Jeanie says, and Rawson lifts his fingers quickly off and puts his hands down, almost appearing to wipe them on his trousers.

“Well—” Mrs. Rawson starts, readying them to leave.

“Did you get the electricity sorted out?” Rawson says. He stands, puts one hand on the top of the piano.

“No,” Jeanie says sharply. She has no time for this man; she despises him. She shouldn’t have let him in, her mother would never have let him put one foot in the cottage.

“Julius told me your power’s off.”

“We’re managing. We’ve got the range.”

“Of course,” Rawson says. “Of course.” Jeanie can tell he has nothing else to say and yet he is lingering.

“Well,” Mrs. Rawson says again. She has taken her car keys out of her bag and is holding them. “Please do let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

“Can I see her?” Rawson says. “That’s if she’s still here. Her body, I mean.” His words stagger out, one over the next. He touches his white moustache which brackets his wide mouth, first one side, then the other.

It’s the last thing Jeanie expected to hear, and from his wife’s expression, hers too. “Darling,” she says, like a warning.

“See her?” Jeanie says.

“Sorry, forget it.” He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, clinking his loose change. He coughs, turns away.

“I think we should go,” Mrs. Rawson says. “Let you get on.” Her voice is mechanical and she doesn’t look at Jeanie, only at her husband.

At the door Rawson turns