Eva Moves the Furniture

by Margot Livesey

  “Certainly. A very nice position for someone ladylike.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Daphne smirking. As soon as we were out in the street, she burst into speech. “What a frightful woman! And all those hypochondriacs. Imagine being with someone’s hernia day after day. That’s not my idea of nursing.” She fulminated all the way to the tearoom.

  Shortly after my twenty-fifth birthday, when I hadn’t heard from Samuel for almost a month, a crumpled letter arrived. I opened it on the tram to the library.

  Conditions are dreadful here. Women beg on every street corner. The children are tiny and bowlegged with rickets. The only thing that makes it tolerable is knowing that the war is coming to an end. If it weren’t for the politicians, we’d have peace already.

  Now I can ask you the question that I’ve been wanting to ever since you rushed to defend me from the woman on the bus. I love you, Eva. Will you marry me? We could go to Canada and start a new life together.

  The vehicle lurched; so did my heart. Sometimes Samuel’s handwriting was hard to read, but he had written the word marry with especial clarity. For a couple of stops I was filled with happiness. Then, just as swiftly, happiness ebbed and the companions loomed. Until Samuel knew about them, he could not really ask me to marry him. Their existence was like his being a Jew: a fact so central that without it nothing else about me could be fully understood.

  Two days later I was still struggling with my reply when I returned from night duty to find Samuel waiting at the door of the hostel. “What are you doing here?” I exclaimed. Before he could answer, I was in his arms.

  He had three days’ leave which, minus travel time, gave him twelve hours in Glasgow. As we walked down the street he kept tight hold of my hand, and I was too excited to care who saw us. At Tommy’s Café he ordered fried bread, black pudding, and beans.

  “And you’ll be wanting tea,” said the waitress.

  “Enough tea to float the Armada.” He smiled at me. “You don’t know how often I’ve dreamed of breakfasts like this. All we get in the morning is a kind of rusk—the sort of thing they give to pigs and babies.”

  I laughed, but I did not feel like laughing. Sitting opposite him, I could see that his face was much thinner. His jaw was dark with stubble and his hair straggled dully. More than any single feature, though, I sensed some deeper change; this man would never waltz a sister round the ward.

  Over breakfast he described his journey. How calm the Channel was and how everyone on deck sang “The White Cliffs of Dover.” I waited for him to talk about the Max Factor unit and their slow advance into Europe, fill in the gaps in his letters, but when I asked about his patients, the state of the towns he’d passed through, his face grew sombre. “Later, Eva,” he said, “when we have more time. I’ve seen things I thought were impossible.” For a moment he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again we talked instead about the unit here and his old patients.

  We lingered at our table until even the friendly waitress showed signs of impatience. Then we walked to Queen’s Park, a few streets away. Before the war the park had been famous for Lily’s beloved botanical gardens; now it was filled with rows of vegetables. We sat on a bench near a herbaceous border where the carrot fronds waved young and green. I slipped my arms free of my cape. Beside me Samuel leaned back against the creaking wood.

  “Did you get my letter?” he said.

  “Yes.” With every breath I felt myself approaching the crucial moment, as years before I had run towards the high jump. Soon I would launch myself into the air, and there would be nothing to do but trust that I would clear the bar.

  “I owe you an apology,” said Samuel. “I know I must have seemed closemouthed during this last year. I couldn’t think about my own life until I was sure the war was settled and that I had done whatever I could.” He flexed his hands, the same gesture I had seen him make at the White Hart, and I thought of all the stitches he’d sewn, the eyelids and noses and jaws he’d made. “Will you marry me, Eva?”

  And now he was looking at me, lips parted, eyes glowing, the old Samuel. “You don’t mind,” I said, “that I’m not a Jew?”

  “Of course not. That would be as bad as you minding that I am.” He reached for my hand. “I did wonder if you might convert so that our children would be Jewish, but we can talk about that.”

  Two elderly men strolled by. The taller of them nodded, and I saw how Samuel and I must look to passersby, both in our uniforms, young, in love. “Samuel, do you remember Neal Cunningham? That boy on the unit who kept everyone awake?”

  As I spoke, the air rippled. The woman sat very upright at the end of the bench, her handbag in her lap. During my many meetings with Samuel, she and the girl had never once appeared; it had seemed as if, finally, they knew when they were unwanted. Suddenly I remembered what had happened with Catherine Grant, and my vow of secrecy. But this was different. If Samuel was going to be my husband, I had no choice. I tried to convey this to her in a quick sidelong glance.

  Samuel let go of my hand. “Neal Cunningham. What was wrong with him?”

  “His face was coated in tannic acid; he died before you could operate. He had nightmares about giving the men in his troop the wrong orders.”

  “Eva, what does this have to with anything? Were you in love with him?”

  “No, no, I only talked to him once.” I had meant Neal’s story as a prologue to my own. Now dismay at the misunderstanding made me heedless. “I’m trying to tell you that I see people.”

  Beside me I felt the woman startle, but I was too busy watching Samuel to care. Just as certain words in his letters had resisted all my attempts to decipher them, so now his expression eluded me.

  “What do you mean?” he said at last. “People?”

  “Well.” I fixed my gaze on his boots; they were creased and muddy. “I see—” How dark the mud was. “They’re like people, but no one else can see them.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “All my life, since I was five or six.” Not daring to raise my eyes, I counted the crisscrossings of his laces as I described the companions. Samuel asked what did they do, this woman, this girl, and I explained how they had saved me from the gypsies, dug me out during the air raid. “So,” I concluded lamely, “I thought you ought to know.”

  I had hoped his questions were a sign of belief. Now I realised he had simply been pursuing a diagnosis. “Eva,” he said, “many children have imaginary playmates. You were a lonely child and you grew up with two adults who were always talking about a dead woman. No wonder you got confused. But you’re an adult. You don’t need pretend companions. You have me.”

  I had been up all night, and the weight of exhaustion fell upon me. An unpleasant metallic taste, like that of the pennies from the bottom of Lily’s handbag, flooded my mouth. To my left lay the woman’s fury; to my right Samuel’s scepticism. All I wanted was to retrieve my words and rest my head on his shoulder.

  He was still watching me. “Do you have control over them? Can you summon them at will?”

  “I’ve never tried.”

  “Because if you can, then you can send them away.” He spoke quickly, firmly, as if he had solved a difficult problem.

  “Samuel, please. Let’s forget about them. We’ve only got today, and there’s so much I want to ask you.”

  He ignored me. Something else had occurred to him. “Do they ever appear when you and I are together?”

  “Occasionally,” I said, in a low voice.

  “So we might be married, we might be in bed, and you’d be chatting away to your so-called companions.” He stared up and down the empty path. “Are they here now?”

  I gasped. The woman had seized my arm as she had the night of the air raid. Tighter and tighter she squeezed until I whispered, “No.”

  Among the carrot fronds two sparrows squabbled. Overhead a plane droned, perhaps returning from France or Belgium.

  “Samuel,” I went on, “it’s not imp
ortant. How much longer will you be in Europe?”

  Without bothering to answer, he stood up and began to pace back and forth in front of the bench. The woman watched for a couple of turns. Then she too rose and stepped into his path. She stood waiting while Samuel walked towards her. He took one step and another, shortening the distance with greedy strides.

  I clutched the bench. When only a few feet separated them, I whispered, “Please don’t.”

  The woman gave me a triumphant smile. As Samuel took the final step, she vanished.

  He noticed nothing. “You’re telling me,” he said, “that you regularly talk to ghosts and that it isn’t important? If you were a patient, I’d send you to a psychologist or a neurologist.”

  “You don’t have to be mad to see a ghost,” I said. I told him about Father Wishart and the ghost of Sir William.

  “Wishart is a Catholic priest. Listen, Eva, I don’t think you’re mad. I think you’ve indulged a common childhood fantasy to a dangerous degree. But I’m convinced it’s within your control. You just have to decide you don’t want to see them again, and you won’t.”

  He stopped to bend over me. I had known all along that Samuel was committed to the tangible, to what he could touch and heal, but his ready sympathy, his ability to imagine his most damaged patients as whole, had made me hope he could understand my situation. Now, gazing into his cold brown eyes, I saw that I was wrong. Perhaps when we first met he might have, but not since he had been in Europe. “Can we walk?” I said.

  As we strolled around the park, I asked about the Max Factor: Had he been able to implement the saline baths, was it hard to keep dressings and instruments sterile? But Samuel kept returning to the companions. He was not satisfied with my tacit denial. He wanted me to swear that I understood the error of my ways, that I would give them up. Over and over I repeated that this was beyond my power. When that made him angry, I pleaded fatigue, said I had exaggerated, that they were irrelevant.

  As the day wore on my despair grew. My confession had rendered every remark suspect: nothing I could say would convince him of my affection. Only in the dark cinema did we escape the spiral of argument. At Glasgow Central, while we waited for his train, Samuel told me he would not write. “I’ve offered you my life,” he said. “It’s up to you, whether you want me.”

  That morning he had embraced me as if I were all that he needed to be whole. Now, on the station platform, he raised his arms, not to draw me close but to keep me at a distance; a stranger might have taken us for casual acquaintances.

  Samuel’s train left at eight, and I was on duty at nine. The night was an endless series of small difficulties. The staff nurse had a headache, a sergeant complained that his Tobruk plaster pinched. By the time I returned to the hostel, I was too tired even for breakfast.

  Hours later I woke with a feeling akin to anger, not with the woman—she was just doing what she’d always done, trying to keep me to herself—but with Samuel. If he loved me, he should try to understand. He should be grateful to the companions for saving my life. While I slept two chairs had overturned. Beneath one of them I found the piece of paper from the agency with the address of the school: Mr. Frank Thornton, Headmaster, Victoria College, Glenaird.

  11

  Mr. Thornton invited me for an interview by return of post. Later I learned I was the only applicant for the position. With Daphne’s help, I put together a respectable outfit, borrowing a hat from one nurse and a handbag from another, and retraced the journey Barbara had made nearly thirty years before. One of the masters met me at Perth Station and drove me the ten miles to the school. As we came over the final rise into the valley, I felt I was seeing a landscape I had always known. The rough fields and woods stretched down to the river, and on the far side the bare hills rolled away in either direction as far as the eye could see. This is where Barbara grew up, I thought, and beneath the overcast sky everything that lay within my gaze glittered.

  Sitting in Mr. Thornton’s oak-panelled study, I seemed possessed of an unusual fluency, and on our tour of the school sanatorium I found it easy to ask appropriate questions. Still, when Daphne asked how the interview had gone, I shrugged and said so-so. The next day I volunteered for all the overtime available; I worked early and late and at night fell into bed too tired to think.

  A fortnight later a second letter arrived from Glenaird and I carried it around, rustling in my pocket, for an entire day before opening it. “The school matron,” Mr. Thornton wrote, “is an essential part of our community and a force for good in the lives of boys and masters alike. We hope very much that you will accept the position.”

  I had not heard from Samuel since he left Glasgow, nor had I been able to bring myself to write to him. That night after supper I sat down at my desk. Several of Samuel’s patients were still in the unit, and I started with the simple part, an account of Raymond’s wrists, Duncan’s eyelids. Then “I fear we’re not suited. You want to go to Canada, and I could never leave my father and Aunt Lily. They’re the only family I have.”

  For a long while I sat holding my pen, looking at those three abrupt sentences; nothing more occurred to me. But as I folded the letter into the envelope, everything I liked about Samuel rushed back. I remembered the pleasure he had taken in keeping me out until the last minute of curfew. I remembered the evening we had played charades at the unit, how the patients had cheered his young Lochinvar. Suddenly I was convinced I was making a terrible mistake. I could ask the companions to stay away. They would understand. And if I promised to go to Canada eventually, surely Samuel would agree to live in Scotland for now. I was about to tear up my letter, and write a refusal instead to Mr. Thornton, when Daphne knocked on my door with cocoa.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a cup. “Am I interrupting?”

  “No, I was just trying to write to Samuel.”

  Daphne took up her customary perch on the edge of the bed. “So”—she blew on her cocoa—“forgive me for being nosy, but what happened? You’ve been awfully glum since his visit.”

  For a fleeting moment, as she eyed me over her cup, I thought of telling the truth. Then I remembered my last attempt and fell back on Canada, an excuse which made Daphne bob in sympathy; she had often said she could never leave her Glasgow family.

  In bed that night my dreams were as turbulent as if I were contemplating murder. I smelled again the boy’s beery breath; I heard the explosion that had trapped me in the doorway of the haberdasher’s. Meanwhile the furniture flew round the room. Between dreams I glimpsed my clothes dancing.

  First light showed my desk empty except for the letter to Samuel; a stamp had been affixed, not by me. In my dressing gown, I carried the envelope downstairs and dropped it into the box.

  Lily and David both greeted the news of the school with delight. Although I would be farther away, I would have three months’ holiday a year, and going to Barbara’s birthplace gave the plan an inevitable legitimacy. In July I quit the infirmary and returned to Troon. I had not been home for more than a week since I left, and Lily was determined to treat me as a guest. “Rest. Take it easy,” she kept saying. “You deserve a holiday.”

  She did not understand that I would happily have scrubbed the floor from dawn to dusk to keep at bay the thoughts that breached too easily my idle hours. As the days passed, I found myself growing more, not less, preoccupied with Samuel. When I thought that I had given him up for the companions, I cursed my own stupidity. Then I cursed them. They had followed me back to Troon but, as if sensing my anger, kept their distance.

  The Saturday after my return, David and I went to visit Barbara. The results of the general election had been announced the previous week, and the impromptu party at the hostel had also been my farewell. Now, as we ambled down the lane, David remarked how glad he was he had lived to see a Labour government in power.

  I told him Samuel had said it would be the best thing to happen since the repeal of the Poor Laws.

  David smiled. “I don’t kno
w if I’d go that far, but the situation after the last war was a scandal. At least this government cares about working people.”

  At the grave, dandelions had sprung up and the grass was littered with leaves and beech mast. As I bent to retrieve a branch, he apologised. “I’m not as spry as I used to be.”

  “Never mind. I’ll come back on Monday and tidy up.”

  He was staring at the stone. “Barbara and I talked about Glenaird so often, I can still picture the valley. We meant to go there after you were born. I suppose in a way we are.”

  I gazed at the map of lichen that spread across my mother’s name and tried to hold back tears.

  The end of July brought David’s seventy-third birthday. Lily had hoarded eggs and sugar to bake a cake, and she and I joined together to give him a new fishing rod. It was too long to wrap. Instead, I wound nasturtiums and morning glories from the handle to the tip.

  “My goodness,” David said. “You’ll make me into an angler yet.”

  He mimed a cast, and the orange and blue flowers swayed as if the rod had magically bloomed in his hands; for a moment he was young again. Then he began to wind the reel, and I saw with dismay how stiffly his fingers moved.

  Lily carried in the cake with seven big candles and three little ones. “Don’t forget to wish,” I said.

  He paused, lips parted. “I wish—”

  “You mustn’t tell,” I interrupted. “Else it won’t come true.”

  He closed his eyes and blew out the ten candles in a single swoop. Lily and I clapped.

  The next day was unusually warm. A haze hung over the meadows, and even the blackbirds were silent. After lunch, David announced that he was going fishing. Lily made him a thermos of tea, and I lined the bottom of his basket with long grass. “I’ll be providing the supper tonight,” he joked.