Eva Moves the Furniture

by Margot Livesey

  The initial rush of the morphine had died down, and in its wake I understood my predicament. I knew, as surely as if Dr. Halliday had told me, that there was no hope. My body had been occupied by an invisible enemy. If they would not operate, then already it was too late. I gazed at Dr. Halliday until reluctantly he raised his eyes to mine. In them I saw the words he could not say. He patted my hand and turned away.

  During the days that followed I forgot night and day. The hours were marked not by the sun but by the course of the pain. It rose swift and unassailable, and each attack I thought must be the zenith would prove to be a mere foreshadowing. Then an injection would come and for a few hours I could think of you.

  I pictured myself back at Rookery Nook. You were kneeling on the living room floor, building a house for Johnnie, your elephant. Your face was fierce with concentration as you reached for the next brick. I remembered the morning of your birth, when Matthew and I had walked up and down the road in our nightclothes. If I were strong enough, I thought, I would walk from Newcastle to Glenaird. I imagined myself putting one foot in front of the other on the long smooth roads until at last I came up over the rise in the road where Matthew had proposed and down into the valley which I now knew as home.

  Every time he came to see me, I asked for you. “Darling,” he said, “can’t you wait a few weeks? You’ll be better and the three of us will take a holiday. Your first visit to England. You mustn’t spend it all lying in bed.” He laughed at his feeble joke. Then he read Lily’s daily letter. Soon after I arrived in Newcastle, she had come to take care of you.

  Ruth and I are managing fine. I’ve discovered the hard way that she detests mince and can only take a bath if Johnnie is watching. We’re both looking forward to seeing you very soon.

  I smiled faintly. It gave me pleasure to think of Lily doing with you the things she had once done with me.

  I woke in darkness to the voices of two women talking beyond the screens that always seemed to surround my bed. For a moment I wondered if the companions had come.

  “How is she?” one said.

  “It’s a miracle she’s still alive,” said the other. “The cancer’s spread from the liver to the pancreas. No one thought she’d hang on this long.”

  “Poor thing. You know she has a daughter?”

  “That must be the Ruth she’s always talking about. And Mrs. Murphy?”

  As soon as the women mentioned you, I knew they were nurses; the companions would never speak of you that way. It was possible, I thought, that Mrs. Hanscombe and Elizabeth would never come again. I was not entirely sure what had happened the night I tried to move the desk, but dimly I recalled I had betrayed them.

  In bits and pieces the nurses’ remarks came back. Cancer. The word was as well-worn as the stones Ian had taught me to skip over the water. It had been there all along, nestling on the pillow, waiting to be picked up. Beyond grief or despair, I felt momentarily a sense of vindication. I was not a hypochondriac.

  Then I understood the gravity of my situation. I had allowed myself to be lulled by Matthew’s optimism, by the intermittent peace of the injections, into forgetting what Dr. Halliday had inadvertently told me. The only time to see you was now. In the hours that followed I held fast to this thought.

  It was barely light when Matthew appeared. As he launched into his customary remarks—“The landlady served fried bread”—I summoned all my energy.

  “Matthew,” I interrupted. “I heard the nurses talking last night. I’m not going to get well.” I spoke deliberately in the same simple sentences that I used when explaining to you how to tie your shoelaces. “Please ask Lily to bring Ruth. I have to see her. Before it’s too late.”

  “Nonsense, Eva.” He paused to clear his throat. “You’re on the mend. Dr. Halliday is positive you’ll be fine by spring.”

  “Please,” I said.

  But he had already begun his litany about my recovery, the famous holiday. We would go to Troon and I would show you both my home. “We’ll splurge,” he said, “and stay in the best hotel. No expense spared.”

  His lips were trembling. He knows, I thought, and briefly I longed to comfort him.

  Then visiting hours were over. Matthew bent to kiss me, and in his place a nurse appeared. Before I could grasp what was happening, the needle slid into my arm. “You’ll feel better now,” she said. I recognised her voice. She was one of the two whom I had heard talking in the dark. Then I remembered you, Ruth. Before I could follow the thought further, the morphine carried me away, far out of reach of words or deeds.

  That night I woke to find Marian Hanscombe sitting by my bed. Standing behind her was Elizabeth. I was overjoyed. I tried to utter the words of apology that had been running through my mind for days. No sound came, but Marian seemed to understand. She stroked my forehead, and her touch made me feel clear and calm. “My dear,” she said, “don’t worry about us. You owe us nothing. It’s we who owe you. We’ve come now to pay our debt.”

  “Did you know I was ill?” I whispered.

  “We’ve known all along. There was nothing we could do. Nothing anyone could do.”

  Again I tried to speak, but Marian’s hand soothed away the need for questions and answers. “Listen, we’re going to take you to Ruth. She’s expecting you. Close your eyes.”

  I let my eyes fall shut. I felt Marian kiss my cheek and then Elizabeth. The sheets and blankets fell away as they lifted me from the bed. There was a rush of warm air and a faint prickling sensation, like the falling of dew on a summer evening.

  “Open your eyes,” said Marian. “Don’t be afraid.”

  I was standing in the doorway of your room. The night-light burned on the table, and I could see you asleep in bed with your doll beside you. I took a step forward but Marian held me back. “Will you do something for us?” she asked.

  “Anything”

  “Tell Ruth we’re here. We need her.”

  I nodded, all opposition ironed away in the heat of my desire for you. And yet, between one breath and the next, I remembered and took comfort in what Marian had told me, that I myself had chosen the companions. I could have sent them away. You too, I thought, would make your choice.

  They helped me walk to the bed. As we drew near, you woke. “Mummy,” you exclaimed.

  You climbed out of bed and ran to me, arms outstretched. I stepped away from the companions. I found the strength to lift you up. I kissed your forehead and your cheeks and the warm crease in your neck.

  “I built a fort for us,” you said.

  I raised my head and saw at the foot of the bed a circle of bricks and pillows. “What a big fort,” I said. “It looks very strong.”

  I carried you over and stepped inside. Something soft brushed my foot. Looking down, I saw your stuffed elephant propped against a cushion. “You brought Johnnie.”

  “So he’ll be safe.” You tightened your arms round my neck.

  Marian and Elizabeth retreated to the doorway. Slowly I knelt down. I stroked your hair where it stuck up in little tufts. “I’m sorry I went away,” I said.

  You pursed your lips. “Promise you won’t go away again.”

  For a moment I closed my eyes. Then I opened them and drew back slightly so as to look into your face. Matthew was right; you do have Elizabeth’s dark eyebrows and high forehead, and I think you have her sense of mischief. “I promise, but you may not always know that I’m keeping my promise.” I kissed your forehead. “Now it’s the middle of the night. You have to go back to sleep.”

  “Tell me a story.”

  “I know a good story,” I said. “Once upon a time there was a girl called Elizabeth. She was your grandmother’s sister. She had very long pigtails and she knew the names of all the birds and flowers. When she was fourteen she caught polio and died. But she came back to take care of her sister, and then of me. She used to play with me when I was a little girl. If you want her to, she’ll play with you too.”

  You yawned and buried your head
in my chest.

  “Years after Elizabeth died, your grandmother was walking by the sea when a boy fell into the water. She rescued him, and his mother, Mrs. Hanscombe, became her friend. Mrs. Hanscombe has been my best friend, too. She has silver hair and speaks excellent French. It’s because of her that I came to Glenaird and married your father and you were born.”

  I felt you sliding into sleep, and myself sliding into something deeper and longer. I looked across the room. Marian and Elizabeth were smiling. Then I saw a third figure, the companions’ final gift.

  Barbara stepped forward, lightly, as if she were humming a song under her breath. Her long blue dress rustled like autumn leaves and her brown hair was pinned, untidily, into a bun. She wore the circular spectacles that had reduced her to tears at the optician’s and made David try to comfort her. She crossed the room, and when she reached the fort she held out her hand.

  Without letting go of you, I took my mother’s hand. I found myself gazing into the face I had always known. Barbara smiled at me with gentle gaiety. “Eva, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I don’t want to leave Ruth.”

  “You won’t,” said Barbara. “What you told her is true. You’ll never leave her.” She gave the slightest pull to my hand.

  By this time you were sleeping steadfastly. I kissed your cheek and whispered in your ear again the promise I had just made. Then I laid you down beside your animals and stepped out of the fort into Barbara’s arms.

  As we embraced, I realised I was several inches taller than her. No wonder her wedding dress had been too small. My cheek lay against Barbara’s hair and I breathed in a faint bitter tang. It must, I thought, be the odour of explosives.

  I was buried in the village churchyard on the first day of February in a plot next to my grandparents and Elizabeth. As the school’s bachelor masters carried the coffin across the churchyard, a flock of small birds rose, twittering, from the branches of the yew tree. Sleet fell from the dark sky upon the heads of the mourners and into the open grave.

  Only three people had come to my christening. Many times that number came to my funeral. Scott was crying. Mrs. Thornton had her handkerchief to her face. Matthew stood motionless between Lily and Anne; throughout the brief ceremony his gaze never left the coffin. Only the person upon whom I had turned all my last thoughts was not present that day. You were with the first of many strangers. Anne had brought a bunch of violets on your behalf, and when the coffin was lowered into the grave, she stepped forward and placed the small purple flowers upon the shining wood. I have them still.

  ALSO BY MARGOT LIVESEY

  Learning by Heart

  Homework

  Criminals

  The Missing World

  Additional Acclaim for Eva Moves the Furniture

  “Livesey is a writer of tremendous grace and precision … . [Her] wonderful new novel will haunt you in a sweet way, and leave you with a spark of hope for us all.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Livesey writes with such restraint that the shock lies in events themselves, not her language. She uses metaphors beautiful in their precision … . Simultaneously chilling and compassionate.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Perfectly structured … In prose direct and precise she limns Eva’s story with steady authority.”

  —The Atlantic Monthly

  “Livesey’s prose, gentle and restrained, turns the novel into a wistful fairy tale. She offers an acute understanding of the connection between death and its companion, helplessness.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A novel of great depth and care.”

  —Elle

  “A quirky and enchanting novel about the thin curtain that separates our world from the next.”

  —Alice Hoffman

  “[Livesey’s] lyrical voice infuses the deceptively simple story with its own power.”

  —USA Today

  “Conjured with economical and vivid detail … In fashioning a novel that is both moving and mysterious, she has also put an original spin on the ghost story.”

  —The Austin Chronicle

  “Eva Moves the Furniture is a finely crafted, exquisitely wrought novel.”

  —Boston Herald

  “Livesey’s novel elegantly traverses loneliness, love, and the bond between mother and daughter.”

  —Portland Oregonian

  “Not since Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping has there been such a beautiful novel about the bond between mother and daughter. Radiant, perfectly poised, Eva Moves the Furniture casts a powerful spell.”

  —Andrea Barrett

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A novel written over a decade incurs many obligations. My apologies if any, in the fullness of time, have been forgotten.

  In my reading about the Second World War, two books were particularly helpful: A Nurse’s War, by Brenda McBryde, and Faces from the Fire, by Leonard Moseley. Those familiar with the latter will recognise that Samuel Rosenblum is loosely based on the legendary plastic surgeon Archie McIndoe, head of the famous burns unit at East Grinstead.

  Although this novel is set in Scotland, I have taken certain liberties with the landscape. My versions of Troon and Glasgow cannot be mapped exactly onto those real places.

  I am grateful to Amanda Urban, who believed that this book could see the light of day, and to Jennifer Barth, John Sterling, and the other wonderful people at Henry Holt for making that possible.

  Various friends commented on the manuscript and encouraged me, perhaps unwittingly, to keep going. My thanks to Tom Bahr, Charles Baxter, Robert Boswell, Carol Frost, Eddy Harris, Jim Shepard, Chuck Wachtel.

  To those who understood that the life and the work were intertwined and who helped me to live the former and write the latter, I owe a special debt: Eric Garnick, Kathleen Hill, Camille Smith, Holly Zeeb. To Susan Brison, whose friendship has happily sustained me for twenty-five years, I offer my deep thanks.

  The story began with Merril and Roger Sylvester on a Scottish hillside. Andrea Barrett helped me to finish it.

  This book is for Eva Barbara Malcolm McEwen, whose short life I regret making, in the interests of fiction, still shorter.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MARGOT LIVESEY is the award-winning author of a story collection, Learning by Heart, and the novels Homework, Criminals, and The Missing World. She grew up in Scotland and currently lives and teaches in the Boston area.

  EVA MOVES THE FURNITURE. Copyright © 2001 by Margot Livesey. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.picadorusa.com

  Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Henry Holt and Company under license from Pan Books Limited.

  eISBN 9781466815209

  First eBook Edition : March 2012

  For information on Picador USA Reading Group Guides, as well as ordering, please

  contact the Trade Marketing department at St. Martin’s Press.

  Phone: 1-800-221-7945 extension 763

  Fax:212-677-7456

  E-mail: trademarketing@stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Livesey, Margot.

  Eva moves the furniture : a novel/ Margot Livesey.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-42103-6 (pbk)

  1. Imaginary companions—Fiction. 2. Maternal deprivation—Fiction. 3.Young women—Fiction. 4. Scotland—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.L563 E84 2002

  813’. 54—dc21

  2002066778

  First published by Henry Holt and Company

 

 

 
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