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 best left,” Bridget says. “Your mum’s gone. It’s finished.”
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, fo
r 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, seeing her at the last second, blast out their horns and flash their lights. She trudges back to the caravan and lies on Julius’s bed, fully clothed, with her boots on and the heavy torch beside her. She sees three o’clock come and go on her wristwatch and falls asleep.
Just a quick pint, Julius thinks as he cycles through the village on the way back from his day at the dairy. There is more relief milking coming up and he reflects that apart from the stink of the shit and the early mornings, he likes the cows and he’s probably pretty good at this job. Maybe he could do it full-time, perhaps he’d be able to save enough for a deposit so he and Jeanie can rent somewhere decent, buy his own herd of cows, lease a field. How hard can it be? When he comes out of the pub, he can’t resist wheeling his bicycle past the fish and chip shop. He props it against the window and writes Shelley Swift a text: What you up to? He imagines he can hear the ping of her phone above his head. Reading, comes back immediately. You home? he asks. Why? she texts. Look out your window, he writes just before his phone’s battery dies.
He always means to go back to the caravan; Jeanie will have cooked for him, and she isn’t used to being there on her own after dark. But she has Maude, he thinks, she’s fine. Shelley Swift invites him in for a drink, and then to stay for supper—which turns out to be fish and chips from downstairs which he pays for—and supper leads to her bed. Even when he wakes in the middle of the night he has the intention of leaving, but rests in the dim light thinking about the effort of finding his clothes, which lie in a trail from the sitting room to the bedroom, like a seduction scene in a romance novel, except that Shelley Swift was the one doing the seducing. He strokes her back and they make love again. In the morning when he wakes fully, he reaches out to touch her once more, but she laughs and elbows him away, saying she has to get to work. He hears the shower, then the kettle boiling in the kitchen, and the smell of toast reaches him. He’s still in bed when she comes back in to shed her dressing gown and choose underwear from a drawer. She balances half a slice of toast and Marmite on a pile of paperbacks. As she passes the bed, he makes a grab for her and she falls backwards, laughing. He kisses her and the taste of Marmite is awful, but he wants her.
“Don’t you have a job to go to?” she says, escaping. She picks up his underpants and flings them at him. He was meant to be at Stockland’s Farm three hours ago but he doesn’t care. “Come on, lazy bum, time to get up and out.”
He raises himself on his elbows and watches her get dressed. “Can I see you tonight?” he asks.
“Tonight?” She folds the rest of the toast into her mouth and lights up her phone. He remembers that his is dead and his charger in the caravan. “I’m not sure,” she says, her mouth full. “I’ll probably be catching up on the sleep I missed.” She winks at him and then stares at something on the screen, types fast with both thumbs, and only when she’s finished does she give him her attention. “I’ve got to go. Make sure the front door is locked when you leave.” She blows him a kiss from the bedroom doorway.
Just after six, the morning sun hits Jeanie’s eyelids and wakes her. Outside, everything is as it had been before she fell asleep: the firepit, the plastic chairs, the washing line. Last night’s dinner has been disturbed by a fox or some other creature, but it can’t have been Maude because she would have eaten the lot. The air is fresh and cool, and the weak sun warming as she turns her face up towards it. She whistles for Maude and listens: only birdsong and the early traffic on the road. For no reason, except that she didn’t think of it the night before, she crouches to look below the caravan. At one end are planks and corrugated iron that Julius has salvaged, but in the middle the grass is long and yellow, tangled with bramble. A brownish lump lies amongst the plants, unmoving. Jeanie’s breath catches and she is down on her stomach, scrabbling forwards, saying, “No, no.” She pulls herself towards it—dog-shaped now, she’s sure—unaware of the thorns tearing her skin and clothes. It is a cardboard box, one they left out in the rain when they first arrived and must have emptied and shoved under there out of the way. Jeanie lies flat, her feet in wellingtons sticking out beside the steps, her head resting on the rotting cardboard, and cries.
27
All day, as Julius shovels cow shit—the job he’s been given because he arrived so late for his shift—details of the previous night with Shelley Swift return in flashes to jolt him. The coffee-coloured mole at the top of one thigh, the pinkness of her unpainted toenails, the hollow where the back of her head meets her neck, hair dark with sweat. She, in return, seemed to enjoy his attention and was a much more enthusiastic and vocal lover than any of the three women he slept with when he was younger. When he cycles home from the dairy to the caravan there is a Shelley Swift buzz running through his veins.
In the early evening, Jeanie sits on the top step with another bowl of water on her lap, carrots in the bottom this time, swirling them with her hand, trying to remember what she’s supposed to be doing. Her head feels too large for the rest of her body and dizzy after her walk to the cottage and around the fields looking for Maude. There’s nothing for dinner apart from these carrots. No milk, no bread for the morning or for Julius’s sandwiches, no eggs, and she doesn’t care. She waits and she washes carrots.
She hears Julius coming, recognizes the siss of his bicycle as he wheels it through the spinney. The way his feet snap twigs.
“Hello,” he says.
&nb
sp; “Hello.” The word is barely there and she won’t look at him.
“Okay, let’s just get the apologies over and done with. I’m sorry.” He props his bike against the caravan and squats beside her with a quiet groan of tiredness. “I’m sorry I stayed away all night. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know.”
She can hear the smile in his voice. The carrots are clean, but she swills them and watches the dirt settle. She can smell the sweat on him and the fetid, shitty stink of cows. There’s no water on for his wash. “You can do what you like, Julius,” she says finally, her words seething. “I’m not your mother and you’re fifty-one.” She is the pot of water on the stove, bubbles forming on the bottom, coming to the boil.
“What’s for tea?” Julius says, still trying to mend it. He stands, stretches.
“I don’t know, what is for tea?”
“Don’t be like that. I’ve been at work all day. I’m starving. I want to wash, eat, and go to bed.”
“You didn’t get enough to eat last night? Enough sleep?” She speaks under her breath.
“What’s that?”
“Either you live here or you don’t.”
“We live here.”
“While you are living here, Nathan and his two bullies came around on their dirt bikes, making threats and tearing the place up. They thought we had some money hidden away. Money!”
“Oh, Jeanie.” He takes the bowl from her, sets it down, and gently lifting her hands, makes her stand. If she lets him put his arms around her she knows that all her anger will seep away. She isn’t going to cry.
She feels with her foot for the step up behind her and withdraws her hands from his. “No more ‘Oh, Jeanie’! You also wouldn’t know that Maude has gone. I think she must have been run over or else they’ve poisoned her. Shot her, maybe. I thought those bloody men were going to kill me too!” She didn’t know she thought this, but now, in the way her hands are shaking, she sees it’s true.
Unsettled Ground Page 19