“I can ask Bridget,” Jeanie says.
“No.” Julius stands the other side of their mother’s covered body. It’s good that it’s the two of them doing this, he can manage, it’s his duty. Still, he can hear his pulse in his ears and his mouth is dry.
“Ready?”
Julius nods and Jeanie draws down the sheet. His eyes move over the body’s surface, not lingering on any single point. He is adept at not remembering the details of the first time he saw a dead body. The images of it have blurred like a photograph smudged by the rain, and there are no smells that bring it back, no human noises. It is only the sensation of an engine on his bones—the way its bass note resonates through him—that he can’t extricate from his physical reaction.
“I couldn’t get her nightie or dressing gown out from underneath,” Jeanie says. “We have to roll her.”
“Towards me,” Julius says. He pulls the body over, while Jeanie tugs at the nightclothes. The flesh is cold, of course, and the body stiff, the muscles hard.
“Get them out,” Julius says, holding the body. He closes his eyes and thinks of Shelley Swift. He went to her flat today above the fish and chip shop. The sash window in her wedge-shaped kitchen which her cat uses for coming and going was jammed open. The rope was broken on one side, but he greased the parts of the mechanism he could reach without removing the whole window and got the thing moving again. Shelley Swift made tea while her cat purred and sat on the counter. As Julius checked that the window slid smoothly, he watched Shelley Swift from the corner of his eye while she squeezed teabags against the sides of the mugs, flinging the bags into the sink, and when she thought he wasn’t looking adjusting the elasticated neck of her peasant-style blouse, so that it sat below her shoulders and showed her freckled skin. She dragged the cat off the counter and into her arms, cradling it like a huge hairy baby. “Pixie, Pixie, Pixie-pie,” she crooned, rubbing her cheek against the cat, which without moving its mouth or its eyes wore an expression of bored tolerance. Shelley Swift came closer to Julius, rocking the cat and saying, “Meet Julius, Pixie. Isn’t he a nice man, mending your window?” The cat purred up against her breasts, the tops of which showed above her blouse, and when she let the cat go it leaped away, unexpectedly light-footed for its size. Shelley Swift looked down at herself and picked a couple of cat hairs off her skin, tutting. He watched and he knew Shelley Swift knew he was watching. She talked about her flat and the whiff of the public toilets which drifted up sometimes, outdoing the fish and chip shop, the thrillers she liked to read, and her job—stories about her manager and how even if she took her sandwiches in a plastic box, they tasted of brick dust by lunchtime. “It gets everywhere.” She pulled at the elastic of her top and looked down again, laughing, a husky grate, which he found he liked. It was good to hear Shelley Swift laughing the day after his mother died.
He wasn’t planning on telling her what had happened, but she winkled it out of him and they stayed in the kitchen for an hour or more after he finished the window. Her expression of tenderness and sympathy had been almost too much for him to bear.
Jeanie pulls at Dot’s nightie and dressing gown and this time they come free, and Julius lowers the body. She ruches up the knickers, high-waisted greying cotton, which Julius finds more embarrassing than his mother’s nakedness. Jeanie tugs them over the feet, and by dragging one side and then the other she gets them above the knees, but there they stick.
Brother and sister stand back. “If only she’d worn underwear to bed,” Julius says.
“Best to let things breathe,” Jeanie says in an impersonation of their mother.
“Really?” Julius says. “Is that what she told you? I was told pyjamas, always. To stop any fiddling, I reckon.”
“Julius!” Jeanie laughs. She looks at the knickers. “What are we going to do?”
“Maybe the dress will cover them?”
“We can’t bury her with her underwear half on.” Jeanie puts her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing again. “Can we?”
“Inappropriate.” Julius is laughing too.
“Indecent.”
“She’s never been seen naked. We can’t start now.”
The words spill out as they laugh.
“Not even Dad?”
“Especially not Dad.”
“Not on their wedding night?”
“No, surely not.”
And then, just as suddenly as it came, the laughter is gone.
“Poor Mum.”
“It wasn’t much of a life, was it?” Julius says.
“She was happy, I think. She had us, the garden, the cottage. Music.”
“Was that enough?”
“Of course it was enough. It’s enough for me.”
They’re silent, until Jeanie says, “I don’t know how we’re going to get the dress on her.”
“Doesn’t she have one with buttons down the front?”
“They all do up at the back, apart from her house dress which ties at the side. But she did the housework in that. It wouldn’t be right.”
“An apron?”
“Buried in an apron.” Jeanie starts laughing again.
“We’ll have to cut them,” Julius says. “The knickers and the dress. Cut them all the way up the back, and the sleeves of the dress, and then we can lay them over her and tuck them around the sides so it looks like she’s wearing them. It’s only us who’ll see her. And the undertaker.”
Jeanie is still then, and silent.
“And God,” Julius adds.
Jeanie flaps her hand dismissively. She knows Julius is joking. None of them has ever believed in God or gone to church. “He doesn’t care what the dead look like.”
“Even if their knickers are around their knees?”
“Especially then.” Jeanie pulls the knickers off. “I’ve been thinking. What about if we don’t have a funeral or a service? What if we dress her, wrap her up, and bury her in the garden?”
Julius frowns. “Can we do that?”
“Who says we can’t? It’s our land. She’s our mother. There’s a patch near the apple trees which would be nice. What do you think she’d have wanted? To be next to her vegetable garden or some burial place full of people she doesn’t know? Or worse, burned into ash and chucked somewhere? I heard on the radio once that 98 percent of the ash in one of those little boxes doesn’t come from the person who’s been cremated. The ash from all the bodies that have been burned that day gets mixed up and shovelled into pots and handed to the families. We could be scattering anyone’s ashes.”
She is thinking of their father whose body was cremated and ashes scattered on the fields that he loved, and from the way that Julius looks back, she knows he is too. There was never going to be an open coffin or a lingering moment over Frank’s body. And his cremation, Jeanie considers now, might have been Dot’s attempt to erase what her children saw.
“If we do it the way everyone else does it, we still don’t know how we’re going to pay for it,” she adds.
“Okay.”
“What?” Jeanie says. She didn’t expect him to agree. She hadn’t really thought about the spot near the apple trees until she said it.
“Okay, let’s bury her in the garden. We don’t need to tell anyone. We can say we’re having a private ceremony.”
After that decision, so quickly and easily made, Jeanie cuts the knickers, and while she is laying them over the body, Julius cuts the dress.
“At least it was fast,” he says. “She didn’t suffer.”
Jeanie makes a croak of agreement although she’s not sure how fast it would have been. She tries not to think about how long their mother may have lain on the cold flags alone and conscious, but unable to move or cry out.
“She wouldn’t have wanted to spend the rest of her days sitting in a chair, staring out the window and not even able to wipe up her own drool.”
“No one would want that,” Jeanie says.
When they’ve finished tucking
in the clothes, Julius says, “What about her wedding ring?”
“What about it?”
“We should take it off, don’t you think?”
“But it’s hers.”
“She’s not going to need it.”
“Will we?” Jeanie’s question comes out more forcefully than she was expecting. “Besides, she never took it off when she was alive, so why should we take it off now?”
“Yes, she did.”
“No, she didn’t.” Jeanie is suddenly angry that Julius should think he knew their mother better. “Not even when we were gardening. I would remember.”
“She used to put it in that flowered china dish on the windowsill behind the scullery sink.”
“She never took it off.”
“Well, what do you think we should do about it now?”
“Take it, if you really want it. If you think you’ll have a use for it.”
“You might have a use for it.” He winks.
“Why would that be? Don’t be ridiculous.” She refuses to smile.
“You never know. How about . . . Doug Fletcher? He always seems jolly.”
“From the fish and chip shop!”
“What’s wrong with that? Free batter bits at the end of an evening.”
“He’s married for starters.”
They cover Dot’s body.
In the morning, after Julius leaves for work, Jeanie looks again at their mother, lifting back the top half of the sheet. The ring has gone.
7
Jeanie opens her handbag and checks that the medical certificate is tucked into the side pocket. Next to her, Bridget keeps one hand on the steering wheel and with the other flips open a packet of cigarettes and takes one out. She feels in the compartment below the dash and her hand draws out a box of matches, searches again, and finds a lighter which she flicks alight, holds to the end of the cigarette. Bridget smokes too much, Jeanie thinks as she moves her feet amongst the mess of empty crisp packets, old leaves, plastic water bottles, and the dried crumbs of mud from the soles of boots which fills the footwell. She prods her window down and then up, and jabs at it twice more to keep it cracked open. They are driving so slowly, every car that comes up behind overtakes them.
“I could have gone on the bus,” Jeanie says. In truth, there is only one bus a day to Devizes and it would have got her there too late to leave her enough time to catch the one back. And, of course, she is grateful that she can save the bus fare. She’s not sure there was enough in the tin to cover it.
“It’s hard managing these life-changing events on your own,” Bridget says. She sounds like she’s speaking the words from the leaflet Jeanie was given by the doctor, along with the medical certificate. Julius read some of the leaflet aloud in the evening at home and chucked it on the fire. Jeanie watches the cows in the fields, and the hedgerows, and the lines of oaks go past. Her mother is dead and yet oak trees are still growing, cows continue to eat grass. Bridget pushes her window down and taps her cigarette on the edge of the glass. The ash blows into the car, and the wind whips it up and flings it about. She takes another drag and lobs the cigarette out of the window.
“It’s kind of you to offer to come in with me, but thinking about it, I’d rather do it on my own.” Jeanie grips her handbag, determined.
“Don’t be silly,” Bridget says. “I don’t mind. I had to do it when Dad died, so I know how it works. Stu went on his own when Nath was born, I was in the hospital. He wanted to wait until I was out so we could go together but they kept me in for two weeks. Women’s problems, you know. That’s why we never had any more.” Bridget moves her hand above her stomach, indicating Jeanie doesn’t know what. “I thought it was sweet that he wanted us to go to the register office together, he was so excited about being a dad.”
“No,” Jeanie cuts in. “I can do it. Thanks.”
Bridget looks over at her and the car moves towards the verge, bumping along the shoulder until Bridget straightens the wheel.
“Suit yourself.”
They’re silent until they reach the town and begin circling the parking area in the main square. Bridget is too hesitant, indicating first one way and then the other, missing a couple of spaces and going round again. She only learned to drive a few years ago. “I suppose you’ll carry on living in the cottage?” She pulls into a space without indicating, narrowly missing a car already parked.
Jeanie doesn’t know how to answer. What does Bridget know about what Caroline Rawson claimed? About how little money they have in the tin? Jeanie makes a non-committal hmm which could be taken either way. Bridget yanks up the handbrake and puts her fingers on the sleeve of Jeanie’s coat. Jeanie looks at them—the wedding and engagement rings, the nail varnish, a chipped red the colour of Winifred, a rose which grows in the cottage’s front garden. “I know about your mum and the thing with Rawson,” she says softly, as though testing whether Jeanie knows it too.
“The agreement, do you mean?” Jeanie says. Of course Bridget knows about the agreement, this isn’t a surprise. “Nothing changes it now Mum’s dead. It was always supposed to apply to me and Julius too. We can stay in the cottage for the rest of our lives without paying any rent.”
Bridget examines her closely, her eyes flicking from one pupil to the other. “The agreement, yes,” she says, although there’s something false about her tone. She turns off the engine. “Is that what you want, then? To stay on in the cottage?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
Bridget reaches into the back seat for her handbag. “You don’t think it’s a bit unnatural?” She takes out a tube of Polos, puts a mint in her mouth, and offers the packet to Jeanie.
Jeanie shakes her head. “Unnatural? What’s unnatural?”
“Well, I don’t know. Living with your brother when you’re fifty-one. Gardening. That cottage.” Bridget shudders. Jeanie knows she doesn’t like the place, finds it dingy and claustrophobic. She won’t ever use the privy when she visits. Says it’s full of spiders.
“It’s our home. We’ve always been there.”
“Exactly,” Bridget says. “Look, I’m just saying you should live a little. Get a proper job maybe. Earn some real money. Buy some new clothes.”
“New clothes? My mother has just died. I don’t care about new clothes.”
“That came out wrong.” Bridget folds the packet of mints away. “I’m sorry, it’s just, what if you can’t carry on living there? You need to think about that.”
“Of course we’ll carry on living there. That was the agreement.” Perhaps Bridget does know about the rent that Mrs. Rawson says they owe. She and Julius haven’t talked about it since Jeanie told him that Caroline Rawson came round, and he hasn’t yet been to see her husband like she said he should. Nothing has happened. Nothing is going to happen. Still, as much as she tries to dismiss that outrageous amount, it flies around inside her like a bluebottle at a window, making her heart buzz with anxiety.
Bridget seems to think for a moment, starts to say something and then dismisses it. “Well, if you’re going to stay, you must get that man to put in some decent plumbing, a bathroom with an inside loo, get it rethatched. The place needs sorting out.” She takes her purse from her handbag and pokes through the coins. “Do you have a pound? I think that’s what the car-park machine needs.”
Jeanie would like to put her fingers to her heart to keep the creature from escaping but she looks in the compartment in her own purse where she keeps her coins. She knows there is exactly three pounds and fifty-four pence in there—all the loose change from the tin. Julius took back the twenty pounds he put on the table, and she knows he will have bought tobacco with it, rolling papers, matches, maybe topped up his phone. She needs the change in her purse to buy bread and margarine and milk, some cheese if she can make it stretch that far. Bridget peers over and takes the fifty-pence piece. “That’ll help,” she says, and goes to buy a ticket.
When they’re standing on the pavement Bridget checks her phone for the time
. “Your appointment’s in fifteen minutes, so you should be fine.” Bridget has telephoned and got her booked in. Jeanie and Julius discussed whether they needed to register the death if they’re going to be burying their mother in the garden and decided they did. Jeanie feels sick at the thought of the forms and would have preferred Julius to do it, but Devizes is an hour in the car, and he would never have made it without throwing up.
“I’ll meet you back here at half past,” Bridget says.
The waiting area in the register office is empty of people. Tinny classical music is playing and on the wall there is a large painting of flowers in a vase—lily of the valley and roses—flowers that don’t bloom at the same time. She gives her name to the woman at the desk and sits in a chair. They are the same chairs in style and upholstery as the ones in the surgery waiting room. Perhaps waiting room chairs are the same across the country, across the world; perhaps one company has a corner on the sales of waiting room chairs. Apart from the awful music—something that is meant to cover all three situations she supposes: birth, death, and marriage—it is quiet until she hears a roar coming from behind a closed door, cheering and whooping like a football crowd, and the waiting room fills up with people in bright clothes, streaming out and congratulating and clapping a couple who hold hands and laugh. Jeanie stands and smiles too, caught up in the celebration. The group leaves, their chatter fading down the street, and Jeanie is bereft, holding her breath so that she won’t cry at being left behind while the party carries on elsewhere, as always. The tinny music is audible again, and her name is called.
After the registrar has sat on one side of the desk and invited her to sit on the other while murmuring noises of sympathy, he looks from his computer screen to the document which Jeanie has passed to him. He asks her for Dot’s full name, her age and address. These are things Jeanie can answer easily, and gradually as he types, she relaxes, thinking now that there will be no forms for her to fill in. When he spells out her own name and address for her to confirm, she nods. His two index fingers peck at the keyboard and Jeanie watches his expression, wondering at his concentration and the mechanism that transfers her voice to his head, then to an instruction which travels down his arms, making his fingers move, which creates words on the computer, and which other people, perhaps years from now, can look at and comprehend in their own heads. The registrar asks if she has brought Dot’s birth and marriage certificates, but it doesn’t seem to matter that she hasn’t. All the time the man smiles and nods until Jeanie leans back in her chair and releases the tight grip she has on the handles of her handbag.
Unsettled Ground Page 5