Eva Moves the Furniture

by Margot Livesey

  “Abiku?”

  “May I have some more toast? A baby who’s taken over by a spirit.” He began to spread the jam. “People recognise them when they leave their cribs before they can walk. Abiku don’t live long, because the spirits only want to visit the world for a while. Then they get tired and want to go home. Are you coming to the carol service? I have a solo, an awfully small one.”

  “Goodness,” I murmured, remembering the Jewish folk tale Samuel had told me. Then I saw Scott’s puzzled face and quickly assured him I would be at the service. What were his plans for Christmas? He was still talking about going to stay with Fox, their hopes for snow, when Matthew arrived home.

  “Come again,” I said, as Scott put on his bicycle clips.

  “But not tomorrow,” added Matthew. “We’ll be in Perth.”

  We stood in the doorway, waving, as he rode unsteadily away. “I didn’t know we were going to Perth,” I said.

  “Well, I had to say something to stop him coming every day.”

  As we made Welsh rabbit, Matthew told me that Mr. Thornton had promised us a school house by the end of June. “I wish it could be next week. I worry about you here alone.”

  I looked up from the cheese grater, touched by the sudden intimation of his concern. I had often thought that, between the time he drove away in the morning and returned at night, Matthew forgot me utterly.

  Scott got his wish for snow with a vengeance. The winter of ’46—’47 was the worst in fifty years. By January our windows were lined with ice and even the pigs at the farm were subdued. The journey to the school could only be made on foot. Twice our electricity failed, and once the pipes froze. One day when Matthew was teaching and I had climbed into bed to keep warm, the woman appeared. “For heaven’s sake,” she exclaimed. “You don’t have the brains you were born with. What about Anne’s spare room?”

  The next morning, in icy sunshine, Matthew tied our suitcases to a sledge and we set off along the main road. No tractors or ploughs had passed and we had only his steps from other journeys to guide us. On the far side of the valley the hills shone so brightly my eyes ached. Matthew compared us to Scott and Oates and, when I protested, substituted Amundsen.

  We stayed with Anne and Paul for nearly a month, an oddly happy period. Anne and I cooked and played with Robert. Matthew and Paul stoked the fires and fetched groceries. In the evenings the four of us settled to canasta and gin rummy. My only real concern was Lily; for a fortnight there was no mail. Then a letter arrived. They had abandoned their top-floor flat for that of the widower downstairs, who had a boy to help with the heavy work. “Violet has grown positively lax,” she wrote, “and we have a hand of whist after supper.” She and I were both sorry, I think, when the thaw took us back to our respective homes.

  Soon after midsummer the new house became available. I was eight months pregnant, a ship in full sail, and although both Anne and Lily had offered to help with the move, neither was available. Robert had measles, and the day before Lily was due to arrive, she sent a letter. “Violet has hurt her wrist and insists it’s broken. The doctor thinks she might have a sprain.”

  Since her reaction to my engagement, I had felt myself estranged from Lily. Now the sharpness of my disappointment made me realise that my coldness was as superficial as a layer of dust; beneath it lay all my love for her, unchanged. “Isn’t there something we can do?” I asked Matthew.

  “We could send a telegram saying you’ve broken a leg.”

  In spite of myself, I smiled. “We’d better keep our excuses for after the baby. Then we can all three claim broken legs.”

  On the day of the move, Matthew forbade me to lift so much as a book. “It’s your job to supervise. Point your hand and say, ‘Take the wardrobe in there, my men.’”

  For our wedding, his parents had given us several pieces of Victorian furniture: a wardrobe, a sideboard, a rolltop desk, a table, a wing-back chair. Now these were fetched from storage and installed in the new house, along with the furnishings from the cottage.

  “Where do you think the desk should go?” Matthew said. We were standing in the living room. Through the open door we could hear the men swearing as they manoeuvred it down the corridor.

  “How about that corner?” I suggested.

  “Wouldn’t it be better under the window? There’s more light.”

  “Fine.”

  “You’re sure?” He patted my shoulder. “We won’t be able to move this furniture once a week.” At the cottage in the steading, I had rearranged our small number of possessions so often it had become a joke.

  As soon as the men were through the door, I excused myself and went to the baby’s room. This side of the house faced the main road, though the road itself was hidden by a copse of firs. Gazing out of the window, I saw, in the topmost branches, a group of black birds, cawing and swaying.

  “What are those?” I asked when Matthew came in.

  “Rooks. You can tell because they’re in a crowd. Rooks live in a rookery, whereas crows are solitary. What about the chest of drawers?”

  That night in our new bedroom I could not sleep. I lay on my back, my belly pressing down, missing the noises of the animals at the farm. On the far side of the room I saw the dark outline of the new wardrobe. Suddenly there was a soft thud and, after a brief interval, another. I crept out of bed and along the corridor. The sounds came from the living room. As my hand reached the doorknob, I heard something clatter to the floor.

  There were no curtains at the windows, and the room was silvery with moonlight. I entered in time to see the wing-back chair rise unsteadily. The desk twitched and a lamp floated above the wireless. For five minutes gentle pandemonium reigned. Then the spirits returned each piece of furniture to its exact and proper place. I went back to bed and slept soundly.

  At breakfast I told Matthew I must finish unpacking; the baby might come at any moment. But I was too distracted to work steadily. I would open a box of china and, after unwrapping a plate or two, wander over to a suitcase. As I hung up a blouse, it would occur to me that it was time for a cup of tea. A fortnight later, when Anne was out of quarantine, she found me still surrounded by boxes; only the baby’s room was ready. At the sight of the chaos, she handed me Robert. “Let’s start in the kitchen,” she said. “Show me where you want things.”

  By the end of the afternoon, most of the boxes were empty and Anne had promised to return the next day. Alone, I decided to go and pick raspberries. The girl had recommended a place at the back of the Grange where the canes grew wild. Earlier I had heard the ratcheting of the mower, and now, as I walked across the lawn behind the big house, the soft green smell rose around me, mingling with the gnats.

  Fanning away the insects, I caught sight of my belly, strange yet familiar in its largeness. Beneath my palm the baby moved. Such a specific feeling, both part of me and apart. A foot or elbow jutted out, and it came to me that, just as my baby pressed against me, so had I once pressed against Barbara. She too had felt the drumming of my heels against the thin skin of her belly, swimming towards daybreak. I used to think she had never known me. On the contrary, she had known me intimately.

  That night when we sat down to supper, Matthew raised his glass. “A toast,” he said, “to our new home, Rookery Nook. May health and happiness dwell at our hearth.”

  “To Rookery Nook.” I sipped cautiously from my own glass; these days even the smallest amount of beer made me dizzy.

  As we ate, Matthew told me how he had come home from school to see the rooks dive-bombing the treetops. “They were trying to chase away an owl. There must be some chicks left in the nests.”

  “And did the owl leave?” I asked and, before he could answer, began to yawn helplessly. Suddenly, sitting at the table even a minute longer was impossible. Although the sun was still shining and would be for several hours, I headed for bed. Between the cool sheets sleep claimed me instantly.

  I woke in darkness, bewildered. For a brief moment I thought I was
at Ballintyre, the branches of the apple tree scratching at my window, Lily and David sleeping nearby. Then I came back to myself in this bed, with my husband, and I knew what had roused me. I went to the toilet and then woke Matthew.

  He sat up, wide-eyed and anxious in his striped pyjamas. “Should we go to the hospital?” he asked.

  “Not yet. I need to move around.”

  Together in our nightclothes we walked up and down the main road. The longest day of the year was only a few weeks past; already the sky was lightening. From the trees came the sounds of birds beginning to stir, and in the fields I could distinguish the gleam of newly shorn sheep.

  Arm in arm we strolled back and forth. No one else was awake and it was as if the world that emerged from darkness appeared solely for our benefit. As a boy Matthew had memorised a poem a week. At my request, he rolled out the cadences of “Tintern Abbey.”

  “And I have felt

  A presence that disturbs me with the joy

  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

  Of something far more deeply interfused,

  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

  And the round ocean and the living air,

  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”

  Soon the sun rose over the hills, and the tall grass along the roadside was bright with dew. More and more frequently I stopped to catch my breath and count. Shouldn’t we go? Matthew would ask, and I would beg another poem. At six we went inside to dress and collect the suitcase that had stood at the foot of the bed since we moved. I wouldn’t let Matthew drive faster than twenty mph for fear I might cry out and startle him. We were at the infirmary by seven. A brisk staff nurse dispatched him to the waiting room. “We’ll call you when there’s news, sir.”

  Now all the names I had learned from textbooks were amplified into new meaning. And all the words I had offered in consolation to patients in pain evaporated. From somewhere nearby I heard a series of piercing screams, and in the interval before the next contraction, I experienced pity for this other sufferer. Then, as the nurse said, “Hush, hush,” I realised it was I who had screamed. Another spasm rushed through me and I screamed again. The magical summer night, the beauty of the morning, vanished. I had never known anything but pain.

  At last the baby began to move, to move in response to my movements. The pain changed. I had never felt so alive. Around me I saw the brightly lit figures of the nurses and the doctor, urging me on. And I went on.

  Everything converged into that time and place as you came into the world.

  Part IV

  YOU

  16

  After six days at the infirmary Matthew brought us home. You spent the journey open-eyed and silent as I pointed out landmarks. “There’s Huntingtower Castle, Ruth … . Here’s where Matthew proposed.” The moment I laid eyes upon you, I had known your name with the same immediate conviction as David had known mine. As we pulled up outside the house, I was struck by the amazing fact: only two of us had left, three of us were returning.

  Mrs. Plishka rushed out, waving her apron. “Eva, Matron McEwen, Mrs. Livingstone,” she exclaimed.

  “This is Ruth.”

  “Darling,” said Mrs. Plishka, and poured out a torrent of Polish.

  Matthew had hired her to help for a month. Beforehand I had protested the extravagance; now I was glad to have those days to devote to you. The weather was unusually fine, and while Matthew and Paul played golf, I spent many hours with Anne in the garden. Her mother had managed to get hold of a copy of Dr. Spock’s book about babies, and we took turns reading it aloud. Or Anne weeded with Robert and I sat with you in a deck chair beneath the laburnum tree. The blossoms spun a cocoon of golden shade, like the willow tree in Troon, and I remembered the endless afternoons I had passed there, plotting heroic futures, while David fished nearby. Then I would think of Lily. I longed for her to meet you, but Violet insisted she could not manage alone, even for a weekend.

  There was no delay, however, in introducing you to the companions. On our second day back, as soon as Matthew left to fetch Mrs. Plishka, they appeared. I was at the sink, rinsing a cup, when I heard the woman say, “Eva, we came to meet Ruth.”

  She stood in the kitchen doorway wearing the same yellow dress as at the cricket match; behind her stood the girl, hands clasped. “We came to meet Ruth,” she repeated. “I know it’s awkward but we couldn’t wait.”

  Both her use of my name and her apology were unusual, but in my excitement I barely noticed. I led the way to your crib and lifted the blanket so that they could see you sleeping, your arms and legs still coiled in the embrace of the womb. You had the frowning, elderly expression of very young babies, as if you had recently arrived from another world and found this one sadly wanting.

  “She looks like a little Buddha,” said the girl.

  “Buddha,” said the woman. “She’s exquisite. How dark her hair is—and see, her ears are like shells. Hello, Ruth.” She bent to kiss your cheek and I remembered she too had had children, and not just children but a child who nearly died. As she straightened, I saw her eyes bright with unshed tears.

  For a fortnight after our return, the only sounds at night were your cries and those of the owls hunting in the woods. Then I woke one night to hear the scrapes and thuds. My heart leapt in panic. What if the spirits, not knowing their strength, made you fly across the room? Or dropped something on the cot? I raced out of bed.

  On the threshold a low sweet humming stopped me. By the light from the hall I saw the cot sway. They were holding it just above the floor, rocking it gently, so that you might sleep with greater ease.

  Finally, after many letters and negotiations, Lily arranged to come for a fortnight at the end of September. Although she had persuaded a distant cousin to stay with Violet, I was on tenterhooks that something might go wrong at the last moment. While Matthew went to Perth to meet her, I waited anxiously, plumping the pillows on the sofa, moving the knickknacks around the mantelpiece. At last came the noise of a car rattling over the gravel. I flew out of the house. Matthew was approaching, a suitcase in either hand. And there was Lily, standing beside the car in her white blouse and dark skirt. I ran into her arms.

  As I felt her cheek warm against my own and breathed in her familiar talcum powder, my adult life dropped away. All the years of childhood and youth, when she had been my main refuge, returned. “Aunt Lily,” I stammered.

  Presently we stepped apart. Matthew had disappeared into the house, and save for the car, still creaking from the journey, and a single rook cawing in the treetops, everything was quiet.

  “Oh, Eva,” she said, “you don’t know how I’ve missed the countryside.”

  In spite of my protests, Lily cleaned the house from end to end, polishing floors and windows and fireplaces until they shone. Together we rearranged the furniture, although the desk, which I would have liked to move into a corner of the living room, was beyond us. When she was not cleaning or cooking, Lily took you for walks in the pram I had inherited from Anne. In the evenings she embroidered your christening robe. Whatever small difficulties still lingered from the time of my engagement vanished. She liked Matthew—and you, she adored. As I watched her singing “Oh, my darling Clementine” and telling you stories about Rapunzel and the Little Mermaid, I thought how she had given up her life to care for me and gone on to lose, at a blow, her home and her place in the world. How could my marriage not have struck her as yet another kind of loss? Only now, as she held you in her arms, could she believe there was gain too.

  One chilly afternoon, when the leaves blew in handfuls of red and gold across the road, I asked Matthew to drive us around the valley to the village; I wanted to show Lily the Malcolms’ graves. You fretted until the first cottages came into view, then fell asleep. I tucked you into the passenger seat and, leaving Matthew to keep watch, led Lily to the churchyard. As we passed the school, I glimpsed the rows of children at their desks and recounted my previous visit.


  “But what made you think they were her initials?” said Lily. “Plenty of people must have them.”

  I stared at the ground, momentarily silenced. Why did you throw the stone? Catherine asked. Who taught you cat’s cradle? Shona said. “Somehow I was certain,” I offered at last.

  The sheep had gone, and the gate to the churchyard stood ajar. I led the way to the yew tree. The previous autumn Matthew had planted lavender and heart’s-ease on the graves. I knelt to pluck the dead flowers.

  “What a beautiful situation,” said Lily. “Did I tell you that Mrs. Wright organised the church fete committee to take care of David’s and Barbara’s graves?”

  Next summer, I thought, next summer I would take you there, and Matthew too. “Oh, I am glad,” I said. “And here’s Elizabeth. Barbara’s older sister.”

  “Gracious me.” Lily stepped forward to examine the stone. “She must be the girl in the photograph.”

  “What photograph?” From where I knelt, my hands full of faded blossoms, I could not see her face, nor she mine.

  “When I finally sorted out David’s papers, there was a snapshot of Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm with a girl who wasn’t Barbara.”

  Before I could question her further, Matthew was calling my name. Lily said she would take a quick look at the church, and I hurried back to the car. You lay where I had left you on the seat, wailing, while Matthew hovered over you, wringing his hands. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I haven’t a clue what she wants.”

  Muttering about cigarettes, he headed to the pub, and I rocked you into silence. Although Matthew doted on you, he was hopeless at fatherhood. Anne, and even Lily, joked about his clumsiness, but I was not bothered. David had grown close to me only when I began to walk and talk; Matthew would be the same. Meanwhile, I was happy to have you to myself. Sometimes I felt almost guilty at the degree to which you had replaced him. When he talked about partition in India, much in the news at that time, or his classes, I would nod as if listening, but really my mind was filled with your crystalline eyes and dimpled limbs.