Eva Moves the Furniture

by Margot Livesey

  Years later, in a cinema queue, I repeated these sentiments to Samuel. I’ve no memory of what film we were trying to see, or why the abdication came up, but his reply stays with me. “You people are such hypocrites,” he said. “You put Shakespeare on a pedestal, yet you ignore everything he tells you. Anthony threw away an empire for love. Othello strangled his wife. What Edward did was nothing.”

  “Who are ‘you people’?”

  “Everyone who’s not a bloody foreigner.”

  “But Samuel, you grew up in Edinburgh.”

  “No, I grew up a Jew.” He traced something on his chest which later I guessed must have been the Star of David. “There are different ways to be a foreigner, Eva. Look at our patients. They’re foreigners, until we fix them.”

  And I am too, I wanted to say, as the queue shuffled forward.

  Shortly after the abdication, David brought home a wireless he’d ordered from Glasgow, and on a warm May afternoon the three of us listened to George VI’s coronation. “These words are being spoken four hundred miles away,” David marveled. Afterwards we walked to Saint Cuthbert’s in our best clothes for a service of thanksgiving.

  From then on David listened to the news most evenings. Sometimes I kept him company, but I found the prim English voices hard to follow, and the dark events of Europe seemed far away. While Samuel’s cousins fled from Prague and Berlin, I was preoccupied with sports and the school play.

  In July 1938 I finished school with a medal for high jumping and a third prize in English. The following Monday I began my first job, looking after the children of a Mrs. Nicholson, who was spending a month in Troon to convalesce in our sea air. The arrangements had been made by Aunt Violet (the two were neighbours in Edinburgh), and as I cycled into town I imagined my new employer wraithlike and consumptive. But the woman who jumped up to greet me in the lounge of the Station Hotel was plump-cheeked and ruddy with health, only a few years older than myself.

  She led me over to two children playing in the bay window. “Eva, this is Peter. He’s four and a half. And Bella was six last month.”

  Peter hid behind his mother, while Bella came boldly up to me. “Do you like paddling?” she demanded.

  “Very much.”

  “Goody.”

  Peter soon got over his shyness, and so did I. Every morning when I came into the dining room, he and Bella shouted, “Eva, Eva,” and I hurried to join them, embarrassed and pleased by the attention. Mrs. Nicholson would pour me a cup of coffee. I grew to like the bitter woody taste, and we would discuss plans for the day. In fine weather my task was easy. I took the children to the beach, where we built immense fortresses, paddled, and watched Punch and Judy. If the day was wet, however, it was hard to keep them entertained without disturbing the other guests. One rainy afternoon, at my wits’ end, I remembered how, as a little girl, David had sometimes taken me to the forge. I got the hotel taxi to drive us there.

  Ian Hunter was at the anvil, hammering a metal bar; he had been apprenticed to his father for nearly two years. For a minute he pounded away. Then he caught sight of me standing in the doorway, a child in either hand. “Hello, Eva. You’ve been busy.”

  As I introduced Peter and Bella, his meaning came to me. I blushed but the children were already pulling towards the furnace. Ian showed them his tools and allowed Bella to have a go with the hammer and Peter to work the bellows. “Is it very hot?” Bella asked.

  “Hotter than Hades,” Ian said, turning to smile at me.

  In the glow of the coals, I saw the faint scar across his eyebrow where he had cut it fighting at Miss MacGregor’s. Since then Ian’s reputation for troublemaking had steadily deepened; nonetheless I found myself smiling back.

  Five years later I was bending over a navigator, syringing the black silk stitches in his palate, when I saw a similar scar. “Norm,” I asked, “where did you get this?”

  He reached for his pencil and pad. Scrapping in the schoolyard, he wrote. Amazing you noticed, nurse.

  Ian had been dead for eighteen months, but for a moment I felt the heat of the furnace on my face, the chill wind at my back. “Keep still,” I said, and refilled the syringe.

  On the last day of the month, after I handed over the children, Mrs. Nicholson asked me to join her for supper. I bicycled home at top speed and ran into the house with such a clatter that Lily demanded what was wrong.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Mrs. Nicholson invited me for dinner. I can’t decide what to wear. Perhaps my white dress and the shoes I got for Isobel’s party? Maybe I could borrow your jacket?”

  “But I’m making toad-in-the-hole.” She indicated the bowl of eggs she was beating.

  I took in the set of Lily’s shoulders, the angry clack of the whisk. “I’m sorry,” I said, more carefully. “She only asked me now. Can’t you save some for tomorrow?”

  “It’s not as good the second day. Besides, your white dress is dirty.”

  “I’ll wear the green one. She knows I don’t have grand clothes.” I walked around the table. In my mind Lily still towered over me, and I was always surprised to discover this was no longer the case. “Do you want me to finish that?” I asked, pointing at the eggs. Lily shook her head.

  I retreated upstairs and fussed over my appearance until the sound of the wireless told me David was safely home. “You look pretty,” he said when I stepped into the kitchen. “Where are you off to?”

  I explained, trying not to glance in Lily’s direction. Clearly she had not mentioned my dinner, but David gave no sign of noticing the omission. “Lucky you,” he said. “I’ve heard the food is excellent. You’ll have to tell us all about it.”

  “’Bye,” said Lily from beside the stove.

  As I walked down the lane, I fretted over her mysterious disapproval. Why should a dinner invitation make her cross? Looking back, I realised that almost every time she spoke of Mrs. Nicholson, it was to say something critical. She should not have come to Troon without her husband; her ideas about child-rearing were very odd. But the instant I stepped into the hotel dining room such thoughts vanished. Beneath the twinkling chandeliers sat women bright as birds of paradise accompanied by men in dinner jackets. I might have remained gazing at the spectacle indefinitely, if the maitre d’ had not appeared. He led me across the room and, in one swift movement, had me seated opposite Mrs. Nicholson, glamourous in a deep red dress. She smiled and said she’d ordered me a sherry. “I hope that suits you?”

  I would have agreed to anything, drunk any potion, eaten any concoction. The waiter brought menus. The words were like a poem: sautéed, flambéed, seasoned. Mrs. Nicholson made recommendations, and soon we each had a plate of buttered prawns. She asked what I planned to do next. “Insofar as one can have plans these days,” she added, spearing a prawn.

  It was a question I had no practise in answering. Everyone assumed I would go on living at Ballintyre until, in some vague way, I got married. And my own thoughts were equally vague, daydreams of following Amy Johnson into the air or discovering the source of some great river. I was still pondering my reply as Mrs. Nicholson described her brief career as a research assistant at the university. “I felt like Sherlock Holmes,” she said, “tracking down obscure books.”

  The waiter cleared our plates and set bowls of asparagus soup before us. A second waiter filled our glasses with wine, the same watery gold as the cairngorm brooch I had given Lily for Christmas. “Here’s to your future.” Mrs. Nicholson raised her glass. “Whatever it may be.”

  Emboldened by the sherry and the wine, I asked the nature of the illness from which she was recovering.

  “I had a miscarriage.”

  I was so startled I almost dropped my spoon. Of course such events were sometimes hinted at around town, but never, never spoken aloud.

  “I was terribly upset,” she went on, “but they do say these things happen for a reason, nature’s way of taking care of problems. This soup is delicious. Did I ever tell you about our cook’s attempt at haggis?
”

  We were nearly at the end of the meal, eating our chocolate mousse in tiny bites, when she surprised me again. “I must say,” she said, “your aunt is a bit of a battle-axe.”

  “My aunt?”

  “She absolutely tyrannises the church choir.” Mrs. Nicholson pulled back her shoulders. “‘Aren’t we being a little too jolly during this hymn?’”

  I laughed, as much at my mistake in thinking she meant Lily as at her imitation of Violet.

  In the hotel lounge she embraced me, and my eyes filled with tears. But outside I cheered up immediately. I set off down the main street, gliding across the cobblestones, past the Co-op and the butcher’s. Near the post office I almost tripped over Tiger, the postmistress’s cat. As I straightened, someone took my arm.

  Once more tears threatened. This had been the most wonderful evening of my life, and now here was the girl to remind me of certain inescapable facts: that I was five foot six, that I had a birthmark the size of a shilling on my left thigh, that I was what Lily called cack-handed, that I could not carry a tune, that I had secret companions. Each cobblestone was wholly separate and distinct.

  “Do you know what’s the matter with you?” she asked, giving me a little shake. “You’re drunk.”

  I stepped beside her docilely. I had read descriptions of men being drunk, but I had never imagined it could be such a pleasant, airy sensation. At the bottom of the lane she stopped. “Don’t let them smell your breath,” she cautioned, and headed back towards town.

  In the kitchen Lily and David were playing cribbage; there was dance music on the wireless, just like they’d been playing at the hotel. “Eva,” said David, “did you have a good time?”

  I gave a quick account of my evening. “Very la-di-da,” said Lily. “Well, madam, it’s long past your bedtime.”

  At first I was happy to return to my usual activities. I played tennis with Isobel, went fishing with David, helped Lily bottle the last of the summer’s fruit. As week followed week, however, each day began to seem like a huge, empty loch which it was my duty to fill with a thimble. I remembered Mrs. Nicholson’s question and tried to talk to Lily about my future.

  “You have a job,” she said, “helping with the house. I’m not as young as I used to be, and it’s more than I can cope with.”

  If this had been true, perhaps I would have been content, but for the most part Lily still delegated to me the tasks that were mine at six or seven: laying the table, feeding the hens. The evenings were drawing in, and I felt increasingly confined. After supper the three of us sat in the kitchen. David read or did embroidery. Although his fingers were growing stiff, he still made several fire screens a year for the church fete. Lily mended. I read book after book from the library. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye I saw a chair twitch or a curtain flutter, but when I raised my head everything was motionless, and there was Lily eager to converse.

  One evening I came into my chilly room to find the woman sitting on the bed, her raincoat in her lap. “Eva,” she said, “you ought to have a job.”

  “I tried. I spoke to Aunt Lily, but she needs me here.”

  The woman shook her head. By this time, I could see that she was not really so old. Beneath her brilliant hair, her face was smooth, with only the faintest lines around her deep-set eyes. “Listen,” she said. “Lily would give her life for you, with no more fuss than if you asked to borrow a pair of gloves. Meanwhile”—she fiddled with a button of her coat—“she’ll take your life. Tell David what you want.”

  That Sunday, I remember, was the harvest festival. On Saturday, David and I carried our offerings to Saint Cuthbert’s: two loaves of Lily’s bread and a basket of apples. All the way to church I had been trying out different phrases in my head. As we approached the altar, I burst out with my request.

  “A job?” David was placing the apples next to a sheaf of corn. “That’s not a bad idea. Maybe something in an office. Look at Mr. Cameron’s beautiful carrots.”

  We left the church and walked past the copper beech tree. The leaves were nearly all fallen. As I tidied the grave, David recounted a dream he’d had, something about the Hanscombes, but I was too excited to listen. I was picturing myself in a suit, taking dictation, perhaps even speaking on the telephone.

  When he was satisfied, he nodded farewell. “She was a lovely woman, Mrs. Hanscombe,” he said at the gate. “I would never have married Barbara without her help.”

  “How do you mean?” I said, paying attention at last. “You fell in love at the optician’s.”

  “I did, but Barbara took a little longer. Mrs. Hanscombe gave us a chance to get acquainted by asking us to tea every Sunday. Speaking of tea, wasn’t there something Lily wanted?”

  We halted, each struggling to recall Lily’s request. Then I remembered: a packet of digestive biscuits.

  We were both quiet on the walk to the Co-op. Perhaps David was preoccupied with his dream. As for me, I was glimpsing that the stories I’d been hearing all my life had been changed in the telling, made into fairy tales for a little girl. Now I have some understanding of why one might want to protect a child, but at the time it gave me an unsettled feeling. Were the facts I had taken for granted going to start shifting like the furniture? Yes, of course—the whole world was shifting—and that unsettled feeling lasted, on and off, for years, until I saw an olive-complexioned man exclaim over an operation and waltz a sister around the ward.

  A few days later, at supper, David announced that he had arranged for me to train as a secretary with Mr. Laing, one of the two solicitors in town. “Lily will be able to give you lots of advice,” he said when I finished embracing him. “She was a first-rate secretary before she came to take care of us.”

  Suddenly nervous, I looked across the table at Lily. “What will the hours be?” she asked, pulling her napkin out of its ring.

  “Eight-thirty to five, but no Saturdays,” David said.

  “Well”—she smoothed the napkin over her lap—“I suppose it won’t be so different from school.”

  For the rest of supper she reminisced about her own office experiences: how clients had asked for her specially; how Mr. Bonner, her employer, said she had the fastest fingers in Scotland. The following week we went to Glasgow and I used Mrs. Nicholson’s money to buy a skirt, two blouses, and a cardigan; I had never had so many new clothes at one time before.

  David had told me Mr. Laing was a nice man and at my brief interview this seemed to be true, but I soon discovered that he seldom emerged from his inner room, the entrance to which was guarded by Miss Nora Blythe. Miss Blythe had run the office for twenty years and looked as if she had spent most of that time squeezed between two ledgers. Immensely upright and efficient, she bullied me to within a blink of tears. I turned out to have the slowest fingers in Scotland. Only Angus, the messenger boy, saved me from misery.

  I had been at the office for three weeks when one morning the door swung open and Mr. Wright appeared in his farm clothes. He strode across the room, leaving a tang of manure in his wake, and, before Miss Blythe could prevent him, disappeared into the inner office. “Mr. Laing, this is an outrage.” Further remarks were obliterated by the hailstorm of Miss Blythe’s typing. Slowly I tapped: “As stated in my letter of the 12th inst.”

  Half an hour later, when Mr. Laing showed Mr. Wright out, whisky mingled with the manure. “Happy to be of service,” Mr. Laing said, and, in a very different tone, “A word, Miss Blythe.”

  When she emerged, I tried to keep typing, until I heard the unmistakable summons.

  “Do you recognise this?” She held out a sheet of paper.

  It was the letter I had typed to Mr. Creighton the previous week about the dispute he and Mr. Wright were having over a field by the river.

  “You sent this to Mr. Wright, and presumably his letter went to Mr. Creighton.”

  Beneath Miss Blythe’s sardonic gaze, my cheeks glowed. “I’m sorry,” I said at last. “I don’t know how I could have.”

/>   “I imagine you were chattering to Angus. This may cost the firm hundreds of pounds.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I’ll talk to Mr. Wright on my way home. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. You’ve already caused enough trouble. Just be more careful.”

  That evening I met the girl loitering outside the forge. “I hear you’re in hot water,” she said. She was sucking a piece of grass between her teeth.

  I remembered her shoving me into a ditch, throwing the stone at Catherine. “You didn’t have anything to do with the muddled letters, did you?”

  “Of course not, silly.” She spat out the grass and disappeared behind the hedge.

  In spite of my best efforts, mishaps continued—papers I had filed could not be found, a client was billed for the wrong amount. Once or twice I set traps, made a note of where a document was filed or showed a letter to Angus; naturally nothing happened. As I cycled to and from the office, I argued with the companions in my head. Why would they first help me to get a job and then ruin it? It made no sense. But why should they make sense? Joan’s voices, too, had finally betrayed her.

  On the last Friday of the month, Mr. Laing called me into his inner sanctum to announce he would have to let me go. Outside, Miss Blythe was waiting. “I’m sorry, Eva. I’ve always said I could train anyone, but you’re just not suited to office life.”

  Not until I was pedalling home did I take in what had happened: I had been fired. At the bottom of the lane I jumped off my bike. “How could you?” I demanded of the dry grass, the sagging fence, the potholes, the leafless trees.

  But the air remained empty. They would not appear to answer my charges. This was their prerogative, to come and go in my life as they pleased, meddling or helping, while I was left to cope with the consequences. I wheeled my bicycle the rest of the way to Ballintyre.

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