Unsettled Ground Claire Fuller (grave mercy TXT) 📖

tables, candlesticks, teapots, jugs and jars, threadbare rugs, and all the things that a house’s poorly lit corners can hide the wear of. The chest from the parlour is on its side and the contents have fallen out: what remains of the linen is muddy, and the family papers and documents kept at the bottom are scattered. Many pieces of paper have been picked up by the wind and distributed across the hedges and surrounding fields. A sowing of words. Jeanie and Julius sit in their coats on kitchen chairs, the legs sinking into the mud.

“Bloody hell,” Stu says. “Bridget told me it’d be two suitcases. I don’t think it’ll all fit in the back and it’s never going to fit in the house.” He gets out and stands with his hands on his hips. He’s wearing his usual shorts and boots; in between, a stretch of hairy calves.

Julius picks up the suitcases which Jeanie packed—one for him and another for her. “Let’s go,” he says sullenly. He has no fury left, only humiliation. They load the van with the boxes of crockery and food, and another of bedding. Julius’s rucksack of tools is shoved in, as well as the three instrument cases. Julius loads Dot’s—now Jeanie’s—bike into the van. The trailer won’t fit, so he hitches it to the back of his own bike. Jeanie whistles for Maude, who has been running between the piles, sniffing excitedly.

“What about the rest?” Stu says. “You’re not going to leave it here, are you?”

“Let’s go,” Julius repeats. Everything he does feels like an effort, as though he had aged twenty years over this one day. Jeanie sits in the front seat of the van and drags Maude into the footwell by her collar. Julius tries to catch his sister’s eye to smile at her; it’s a false smile, to make her think that he has some confidence in himself and a plan, but she looks straight ahead, lips stuck together, as if she spoke her last words when they were in the garden. He sees she still has the poker in her hand, and he imagines that it’s him she’d like to use it on.

Fuck you too, he thinks, the effort of trying to keep positive finally failing him.

“I’ll see you there,” he says, and slams the passenger door.

17

Nathan’s bedroom is painted blue with a repeating pattern of a white sailing boat stencilled around the walls, across the headboard of the single bed, and on the open door of the wardrobe. Some of his child-sized clothes are hanging inside, and on top are boxes of toys and half a dozen jigsaws. On the wall is a framed certificate for what Jeanie thinks says hockey, with a length of Christmas tinsel around the top. There’s a desk with a computer monitor and keyboard, both with clothes heaped over them. Stacks of DVDs and CDs crowd the windowsill. A giant orange plastic ball is wedged into the corner together with what looks like a small trampoline.

Bridget hugs Jeanie, while Stu makes another journey to the van for the boxes and cases. The house, a pebble-dashed 1950s ex–council house in between two others, has been swallowed up by the new estate built on the edge of Inkbourne. Once, the view from the windows would have been of fields, but now from Nathan’s bedroom window, Jeanie can see other people’s neat gardens and the same modern house repeated over and over, only the colour of the doors distinguishing one from another.

“I tried to reason with him,” Bridget says. Jeanie slides her eyes away. “He wouldn’t bloody listen.” Bridget shakes her head. “And then when Stu had a go, ranting and raving at him, Nathan just dug his heels in. Said he wasn’t going to do what his dad told him to do, ever again. Why doesn’t it surprise me that he’s mixed up in this? Working for the Rawsons?” Jeanie looks at the carpet, which is also blue and in need of a vacuum. “He used to be such a lovely little boy.”

Upstairs in Bridget’s house there are two bedrooms and a green-tiled bathroom—“Be careful with the hot water,” Bridget says as she shows Jeanie around. “It doesn’t last long.” Downstairs is a lounge with a sofa and two peach-coloured armchairs with enormous padded cushions attached to the arms, all crowding round a giant flat-screen television. Beyond this room, at the back of the house, is the kitchen and an area which Bridget calls the sunroom. It’s hard to see what furniture and carpeting there is in here and the rest of the house because every surface, other than the lounge armchairs, is covered with celebrity magazines, stacks of the local paper, unopened post, jam jars with paintbrushes sticking out of them, plastic storage boxes filled with unknown things, electric fans and portable radiators, an airer collapsing under the weight of the bedding piled on it, an ironing board with a plastic washing basket on top filled with what looks like a dismantled chainsaw.

“That’s us,” Bridget says, lighting a cigarette when they reach the kitchen, the only room Jeanie has been in before. “Stu reckons I should retire this year, but what for? Cleaning and ironing? No thank you.” They stand together at the kitchen sink; a frying pan and plates smeared with egg fill the washing-up bowl. They watch Maude outside, digging in what once might have been flower beds, now overgrown with weeds. Bridget puts her cigarette in her mouth and raps hard on the window. “Oy!” she calls, and Maude stops to look at them and then goes back to her digging. “Best keep her outside,” Bridget says.

When Stu has finished unloading the van, he comes into the kitchen and says, “Fancy a cup of tea, love?” He puts his arm around Bridget and gives one of her breasts an affectionate squeeze with a loud honking.

She laughs and pushes him off. “I could murder a cup of tea, Stu-pot,” she says.

Jeanie moves