The second Sunday of Lily’s visit, we had your christening. After the boys filed out of chapel, the minister led the remainder of the congregation to the font. Lily, Anne, and Mrs. Thornton were to be the godparents. As I took my place beside Matthew, I spotted the woman and the girl standing at the back, beside a pillar. They had dressed for the occasion, not as at my wedding but in sombre old-fashioned clothes, more funereal than festive. The woman wore a misshapen black hat, most unbecoming.
You followed the proceedings, silent and alert in Lily’s arms, until the minister reached for you; then you uttered a single sharp cry. I raised my head and found the woman’s eyes fixed upon me with an expression of urgent gravity. Immediately I thought of you. Now that you were here I had inherited all the anxieties Anne used to speak of. If you sneezed, was it pneumonia? If you cried, were you afraid of light? dark? the kettle? the rooks? I stared back at the woman, begging for a hint, and she stepped behind the pillar.
The minister gave the blessing and everyone crowded around with congratulations. Anne said how pretty Ruth Barbara Livingstone was. Mrs. Thornton claimed you had the hands of a musician. The classics master remarked that you were no heavier than a pint of beer. We adjourned for sherry at the Thorntons’.
As soon as we arrived back at Rookery Nook, Lily changed out of her good suit and began to bustle about with a dustpan and brush; she was leaving the next day and was determined that not the smallest speck of dust should survive her visit. Matthew announced he was going to dig the garden. I nursed you. As you nuzzled my breast, I recalled the woman’s face. Some of my elation slipped away.
When you fell asleep, I persuaded Lily to stop her scrubbing and join me in a cup of tea. Settled in the wing-back chair, she remarked how different your christening had been from mine. “That was such a sad day. Well, how could it not be, the day after Barbara’s funeral? The church was freezing, and no one was there except Violet, David, me, and Mr. Waugh. You let out a good yell when the water touched you, just like Ruth. Afterwards we put you to sleep in a drawer beside the stove. Barbara was so superstitious she hadn’t even bought a cradle.”
Absentmindedly Lily fingered an earring, one of the same gold rings she had used to let me slip in and out of her ears. “Do you remember,” she said, “that time you climbed out of your crib and made your way to the top of the stairs?”
“How old was I?”
“A little older than Ruth, but only a month or two. I look at her and I’m amazed. She could no more leave her crib than pigs can fly. Yet there you were at the top of the stairs. I’m not sure even David believed me.” Lily shook her head. “I’m not sure I believed myself.”
Everything in the room rose slightly and rotated into a new position. Abiku, I thought; they were here even then. “Do you think,” I said, “Barbara was fey?”
“Fey?”
“You know, like seeing things other people don’t see, or—” I stopped, afraid of saying too much.
Lily’s mouth opened in an oh of surprise. “I haven’t thought of this in years. Once I came into the kitchen at Ballintyre, and Barbara was sitting at the table, topping and tailing gooseberries and chatting away. She was quite flustered to see me.”
“Did you hear what she was saying?”
“I did at the time. I caught a couple of sentences but I’ve long since forgotten them. We all talk to ourselves, but I do remember thinking that Barbara really did seem to be addressing another person. For a moment I even wondered if she was hallucinating.” She cocked her head. “Is that Ruth?”
It was Matthew, wanting my advice about perennials. As I followed him outside, a tremendous gaiety bubbled up. The companions were not merely sent by Barbara. They had visited her too. Maybe we even shared them.
“What is it?” asked Matthew. “Do you think larkspur are a mistake?”
“No, no,” I said, “larkspur will be perfect.”
17
Lily’s thank-you letter was folded around a photograph the size of a playing card. The black-and-white had faded to sepia and one corner was ragged, as if chewed by a baby, or a dog, but there was no mistaking what lay within the camera’s lens. From other pictures I recognised Barbara’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm, framed by the back door of the Grange. The third figure I recognised from my own life: standing between the Malcolms, squinting slightly in the sunlight, was the girl. The photograph weighed no more than a leaf, yet it was the key to a room which, for many years, I had been wanting to enter.
I must have made a noise, gasped or sighed. Across the table, Matthew looked up from the newspaper. “My grandparents,” I said, offering the photograph. “And Barbara’s older sister, Elizabeth.”
He raised the picture to the light and glanced from it to me and back again. “She looks a little like you,” he said, “the same dark eyebrows and high forehead. I think Ruth will have them too.” He returned to his paper, leaving me to marvel, again, at how easy he was to deceive.
On the way to Anne’s that afternoon the girl stepped out from between the beech trees. I stopped, holding tight to the pram. “Hello—”! I was about to add “Elizabeth,” but something in her face made me hesitate. I remembered in the churchyard how she had shielded the third grave from my view.
“I found some chestnuts.” She held out her cupped hands. “For Ruth.” She smiled up at me shyly, her cheeks rosy. In the middle of her high forehead was a smudge.
“I’ll give them to her when she wakes.” I smiled back and laid the chestnuts in a corner of the pram. There was no reason to break the habit of a lifetime.
The girl’s identity seemed so overwhelmingly obvious—only a local child would know about the California redwood—that I wondered why I hadn’t guessed it sooner. Several reasons came to mind. David and Lily, although they spoke often of Barbara, seldom mentioned her family. Then, too, the companions were so much alive that it was hard to connect them with the dead. The main reason for my obtuseness, however, I understood only later: they themselves had not wanted me to guess.
Naturally, after this revelation I speculated about the woman, and one day, when we were talking in the living room, I went so far as to ask whether she too was related to Barbara. She vanished, and half a dozen books clattered from the bookcase to the floor. But the next morning, as soon as Matthew drove away, she was back again. Gone were the companions’ huffs and absences. Nowadays neither of them ever left us alone for long. They were in love with you, and no amount of bad behaviour on my part could keep them away.
At first I was thrilled by their affection; month by month, I grew less certain. When you were a baby, your days spent between food and sleep, their presence seemed to make little difference. Soon, though, you began to recognise and remember, your hands grasped greedily, you slept through the night and learned to crawl at a furious pace and, rather unsteadily, to walk. Matthew made jokes about the next Olympics and compared you with Francina Blankers-Koen, the Dutchwoman who had won four medals in London shortly before your first birthday. Then, when the companions appeared, I wanted to ask them to stay away. I could not wish upon you that solitude which they had brought me and which you, at last, had broken.
My desires, however, were irrelevant. You were the arbitrator. When you were a baby, I was sure I had seen your eyes follow their comings and goings, heard you coo in response to their questions. But once you learned to talk, you acknowledged them neither by speech nor gesture. Even when the girl played “Peek-a-boo,” you paid no heed. Could you have lost the ability to see them, as an adult grows deaf to the squeak of the bat? Or had I been mistaken all along?
One rainy afternoon in the spring of your second year, I was at the ironing board when you called, “Mummy, come find me.”
Obediently I set aside the iron. As soon as I opened the living room door, I saw you crouched between the pedestals of the desk; the companions were making a show of searching for you.
The woman went over to the sofa and peered behind it. “Ruth,” she said, “w
here are you?”
You stayed quiet, motionless.
The girl looked behind the curtains, under the table. At last she tiptoed to the desk and squatted down a few feet away. You did not even glance in her direction. After a moment she tossed back her braids and retired to the sofa with the woman.
I approached the desk and you erupted in giggles. “Oh, there you are!” I scooped you into my arms.
Anne had remarked, on more than one occasion, that recovering from Robert’s birth took longer than she expected, and for months I clung to this explanation. I’m still recovering, I would tell myself. That was why washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, making the bed took so much longer. But with each passing season it became harder to ignore that something was amiss. One day in the midst of laying the fire, I felt in my side an odd, deep pain, and as I knelt there I suddenly recognised it; it was a larger, fiercer version of the pain that had assailed me the afternoon I first saw the California redwood. Perhaps I was ill, I thought. Perhaps I had been ill for several years.
Slowly I rolled the paper into knots and crisscrossed the kindling as Lily had taught me. It was as if a heavy bird had landed on my shoulder and leaned down to bury its beak in my side. I was so tired I thought I would never move again. Then from your room came a faint whimpering and at once I was on my feet, hurrying to be there as you woke.
At first the bird came so seldom, and stayed so briefly, that it was easy to ignore. By the time you reached thirty inches on the bathroom door, its visits were more frequent. I would have to come in from the clothesline, or leave the potatoes half peeled, and sit down until it flew away. On the morning of your second birthday I woke with a cry at 4 A.M. and spent the rest of the night pacing the living room.
I spoke of this to no one, not Matthew, not Anne, not the companions, until Dr. Singer, calling unexpectedly, caught me on the sofa in the middle of the day and asked what was wrong.
“Nothing. I just felt a little tired.” I sat up with an attempt at briskness. “Let me put the kettle on.”
“No, wait. You’ve been tired a lot recently.”
Sentence by sentence, he persuaded me to reveal my symptoms. As I spoke, he balanced on the edge of a chair; his hair, newly cut, bristled boyishly. “You must come and see me,” he said.
“That’s silly.” I rose to my feet. “I’m not really ill and you’re so busy.”
“I have an opening at three o’clock on Thursday. You can get the school bus. Bring Ruth. My wife would love to see her.” He told me to sit down again and went to make the tea.
I did not mention the appointment to Matthew beforehand, nor did I tell him afterwards that, although Dr. Singer could find nothing wrong, he was sending me to Perth for a more thorough examination. There was now a weekly bus from the school into town, and three weeks later we caught it. You enjoyed the journey, pressing your nose to the window and pointing to each passing car. But as soon as we reached the infirmary, you began to scream and would not be quieted.
“Dear me,” said the doctor, “somebody’s upset.” He dangled his stethoscope playfully before you. You paused, only to draw breath. “You’d better take her away,” he told the nurse.
The nurse, a spindly girl, carried you from the room at arm’s length, as if she had never held a child before. From the hall your cries continued, unabated.
“Now, Mrs. Livingstone, what can I do for you?”
The urge to rescue you was so strong I had to hold on to the chair, but I did my best to describe the pain. The doctor scribbled a couple of lines, then asked me to undress to my underwear and put on a gown. He left the room. A few minutes later he returned, accompanied by the spindly nurse. He pressed my stomach and abdomen. Does it hurt here? he asked. Does this hurt?
All I could think was: Where is Ruth? Who is holding her now? I answered his questions as shortly as possible. The pain was diffuse. I was tired. The doctor shone lights in my eyes, listened to my chest.
“Everything seems normal,” he said. “I suspect a touch of indigestion. I’d recommend a daily dose of Epsom salts. Don’t eat after eight at night.” He patted my shoulder. “Nothing the matter with you, my girl, that a little country air won’t cure.”
There was another piercing shriek. “Thank you, doctor.” Still in my patient’s gown, I hurried to retrieve you, red-faced and distraught, from the arms of a strange nurse.
On the bus home, we took the seat in front of the Plishkas; you turned around to talk. Mrs. Plishka, as usual, had her knitting, and as we passed Huntingtower she unwound a piece of wool to make a cat’s cradle. “Look, Ruth,” she said.
I watched you pluck the wool with your small hands, and a wave of homesickness swept over me. I longed to have Lily tuck me into bed and stand over me with a cup of nettle tea. Then David would come to tell me stories about Barbara and the Pictish chieftains and the giant. “We’re lucky,” he would insist. “We must share what we have.” I leaned my forehead against the seat in front and wished I had never agreed to Dr. Singer’s suggestion.
Next day when he called in, I repeated the doctor’s comment. “Indigestion? Nonsense. Listen, we’ll get you an appointment with the consultant. He’ll be at the infirmary in January.”
I would have declined if I had not recognised the consultant’s name. Sir Hamilton practised in Edinburgh, but he had sometimes been summoned to Glasgow for problematic cases. He was rumoured to be infallible when it came to diagnosis. At once I became hopeful. I imagined him saying, “Mrs. Livingstone, you have … We’ll soon fix that.” He would order a prescription, or even a minor operation, and I would be well again.
After Dr. Singer left, I went out to the kitchen to make supper. There was nothing in the larder but eggs, potatoes, and a pork pie. I was regarding the last dubiously—perhaps it would do for Matthew—when I heard you say, “You’re too big” In the living room I found you kneeling beside the fort you’d built. The girl was sitting in the armchair, smiling.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked.
“Johnnie.” You held up your stuffed elephant, brown corduroy with blue trousers.
The girl, still smiling, raised her empty hands.
Autumn advanced. The house grew dirtier and meals more perfunctory, but Matthew seemed to notice nothing. Only major omissions, like the complete absence of clean shirts on a Sunday when he had to read the lesson, registered. In the mornings I got up to make his breakfast and, after he had left, returned to bed with you. For a while you listened happily to stories about Percy, the bad chick, and Mrs. Tiggywinkle. Then you grew restless. “Let’s get up,” you said. “Let’s get up and play.”
When I acceded to your demands, I would find the house occupied by the companions. All day long they pressed in with terrible eagerness. On Friday they grew dismal at the prospect of Matthew’s presence; on Monday, as soon as he left to teach, they reappeared. And, as in the months before your birth, they became surprisingly helpful. When we moved we had bought a washing machine, and in the last year I had trained Matthew to fill the coal scuttles. Still, that left many chores, and the companions began to make the beds, pick up your toys, hang out the nappies. Unfortunately they did not care for fire or water or sharp knives, and they detested the odour of cleaning products.
Once or twice, when the pain was at its worst, I caught them watching me with the same gravity I had glimpsed on the woman’s face at your christening. But the tradition of silence still held between us. Do not ask, their eyes said.
One of my first patients in Glasgow, a former missionary to China, had described being in an earthquake. There’s this awful moment, he said, when everything you take for granted begins to shake. And that is how I think of the events that occurred a few weeks after our trip to the infirmary. You were asleep in your cot. I was sitting in the living room, trying to darn Matthew’s socks and chatting to the woman. She was perched on a stool by the hearth. “Guess what I heard Ruth say this morning,” she said. “‘What a palaver!’”
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��It’s an expression of Matthew’s. She has no idea what it means, but she knows we think it’s funny. She says, ‘Goodness gracious,’ too. And ‘dearie me.’”
The woman was laughing as the door swung open and Anne came in with Robert. Our conversation had masked the sounds of her arrival. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you had company.”
I jumped up, dropping the sock. “Anne.” I hurried towards her, took her hand, and drew her out of the room.
In the corridor I stopped, trembling, stupefied. I could not think of a single thing to say. Just as Anne spoke—she asked what was the matter—tears saved me. I sobbed with noisy abandon until first Robert, then you, joined in.
“Hush, hush,” said Anne ineffectually, to the three of us.
In all this confusion there was no time for questions. At last my sobs died down and I tried to appease you; Anne did the same for Robert. Only when we returned to the living room with tea and sandwiches to find it empty, did she ask what had become of my visitor.
“She had to go,” I said. “She left while you were getting Ruth from her room.” I bent to tie on your bib. My mind was racing, searching for a plausible explanation. Someone from the infirmary? No. Someone asking for directions? But a stranger wouldn’t sit by the hearth. A friend of Lily’s, that was it, who happened to be staying at the Fulford Inn.
While Anne poured us tea and busied herself with Robert, I invented Mrs. Watson, on her way to Blairgowrie. How long is she staying? Anne asked. Just tonight, I said. Oh, said Anne, that’s a pity. She looked nice.
Thankfully, it was time for Twenty Questions on the wireless, and we could both pretend to listen.
Eva Moves the Furniture Page 16