Eva Moves the Furniture (15 page)

Read Eva Moves the Furniture Online

Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Eva Moves the Furniture
7.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Marriage, it turned out, did not entirely banish memories of Samuel. I meant to forget him, I had the best of intentions, but in the long hours of housework and reading he sometimes slipped into my mind, and before I knew it I was picturing him as he bent over a patient or leaned towards the cinema screen. Sometimes, I'm ashamed to say, this happened even when Matthew and I were together, listening to the wireless or playing cribbage; happily, he never seemed to notice.
And then all thoughts of Samuel vanished. I was pregnant. I knew, with utter certainty, after only a few weeks but until Dr. Singer confirmed my condition, I mentioned it to no one. During this period of secrecy, I oscillated between joy and dread. I could not help worrying that history would prevail: the life growing within me would cost my own. Then I would remind myself that
Anne had confessed to similar premonitions, and here she was, fit and well, with Robert.
The companions seemed to guess my state almost as soon as I did myself. Because no house was available in the school grounds, Matthew had rented a cottage on a small farm a mile west of Glenaird, and there was always fetching and carrying to be done. One morning as I stepped out to the clothesline, the woman barred my way. “You have to be careful now,” she said, taking the laundry basket out of my hands. Between them, she and the girl hung the wet sheets on the line.
The day after my appointment with Dr. Singer, I broke the news to Matthew at breakfast. “How could you be?” he said. His hand jerked and the boiled egg I had just set before him flew to the floor. On the one occasion before our wedding when we'd discussed children, Matthew had claimed he was too young for fatherhood. “You're twenty-eight,” I had said. “The prime of life.” I had not thought he was serious.
Now the viscous mess of egg on the linoleum made my stomach heave, and the reflection of the single bulb above the table off Matthew's glasses hid his expression. Before I could overcome my queasiness, he glanced at his watch, announced he was late for morning prayers, and hurried from the room. A moment later came the cranking of the car. As the engine fired, I rushed to the door. Too late. All that remained was a plume of exhaust hanging in the chilly air.
I wandered out to the main road. The hills were hidden in mist, and the narrow strip of wet macadam stretched to the horizon with neither car nor tractor in sight. I was standing, staring bleakly in the direction of the school, when the woman tapped my shoulder.
“Come inside,” she said. “It's freezing.” Her silvery hair was beaded with moisture.
She led the way indoors, and there, to my amazement, a middle-aged man was seated on our sofa. He had the ruddy cheeks of a countryman and the same kind of moustache as David had favoured. I sat down in the armchair, studying him as closely as I dared. He looked familiar, but for the life of me I could not place him. The infirmary had filled my head with faces briefly glimpsed.
“That's better,” said the woman. “You shouldn't be loitering in the cold.”
“My father had a theory about the weather,” the man said in a soft Highland accent. “Buchan's cold spells. It all has to do with certain key days—you know, if December the sixth is warm then the rest of the month will be cold.”
“That sounds like mumbo jumbo,” said the woman.
“No, no, it was quite scientific, but we're not here to prattle about the climate.” A smile creased his cheeks. “Don't mind Matthew. He behaved badly this morning, but he'll come round. Men are odd about these matters. I myself was quite shocked to learn that my dear wife was expecting.”
The woman nodded. “You must take care of yourself. Eat sensibly and don't worry. When I was carrying my first child, my mother made me eat an apple and an orange every day.”
She dispatched me to put on the kettle, and when I returned the room was empty. Still in a daze, I finished stoking the fires and made soup. Only as I sat down to write to Lily did I realise who the man reminded me of: Barbara's uncle Jack. His wedding photograph had stood, next to that of her parents, on the sideboard at Ballintyre.
Did Lily still have it? I wondered. And why, after all these years, was a new companion visiting? Then the excitement of telling Lily about the baby dispelled even these speculations.
An hour later I heard the latch lift. Before I could rise, Matthew had me in his arms. “Eva, I'm sorry I was such a beast.” He kissed me, took off his glasses, and kissed me again.
“So you don't mind?” I whispered.
“On the contrary, I'm delighted. I was just taken aback. I thought being a father was one of those impossible things, the sort the White Queen tells you to practise imagining before breakfast.”
The difficult hours vanished like ice on the griddle. That evening over supper we discussed names. He favoured the heroic: Frederick, Tristram, Georgiana. I was more inclined to the biblical: Mary, Sarah, Ruth.
“Do you want a boy or a girl?” I asked.
Matthew wrinkled his forehead. “Both—either—I don't care.”
“Nor do I.” But I was sure I carried a daughter. For the first and only time I could read the future.
 
 
A few weeks later, walking along the main road to visit Anne, I saw a boy approaching. Head lowered, he was dawdling along, swishing idly at the long grass on the verge with a stick, the picture of dejection. I must have walked like that, I thought, as day after day I wandered home from school with only the girl for company. Then, at the same instant, Scott and I recognised each other. He dropped the stick and ran towards me.
“Matron!”
We shook hands. In the months since I'd seen him he had grown
several inches, and everything about him was too long and thin. I started walking again and he fell in beside me. “This is the wrong direction for you,” I said.
“It doesn't matter. I haven't seen you for ages.”
“We live out at a farm now. You know I got married.”
“The new matron is awful. She doesn't allow any visitors.”
Other people had made similar remarks about my successor, a London woman who'd rejected all my overtures of friendship; I tried not to show my pleasure at Scott's comment. Instead I asked interested questions about his schoolwork. When we reached Anne's house, he gazed at me beseechingly until I invited him to tea next day.
Inside, Robert was asleep and Anne was at the kitchen table, peeling brussels sprouts. I made tea and told her about meeting Scott. “All the time he was ill, I thought if I could nurse him back to health, he would live happily ever after. And there he was, the picture of misery.”
Anne plucked at a sprout. “It's awful being a child. I remember wanting things so badly and feeling so powerless.”
“What did you want?”
“Piano lessons. More attention from my father. To be taller than Oliver.” She cut a cross in the bottom of a sprout. “What about you?”
I gazed around Anne's cosy kitchen, the kettle still steaming on the stove, the gingham curtains hanging in the windows. “To be like everyone else,” I said. It seemed a safe approximation. “Yet here we are having babies.”
“It'll be different for them, though, won't it? They can have piano lessons if they like.”
I did not dare to answer. Anne peeled another couple of sprouts. “Of course, our parents said that too. Sometimes I watch Robert
sleeping. One minute he's perfectly peaceful, and the next it's as if a storm has struck.”
“Perhaps he has bad dreams,” I offered.
“But how does he know about anything bad? Paul and I dote on him, yet already we can't protect him. There's something in the air”—she spread her hands—“a dark wind that blows him dark thoughts.”
I sympathised with Anne's anxieties but they were the anxieties of plenty; how happy I would be when I could worry about my plump, healthy baby having bad dreams. For now, all my wishes, all the good luck I had garnered from magpies and black cats, ladders and four-leaf clovers, was bent on that single moment of double desire: to bring my daughter safely into the world and to remain here to show it to her.
 
 
The next day when I told Scott about the baby, he smiled and said he had always wanted a brother or sister. “My friend Fox has two younger sisters. I helped one of them learn to read. And in Nigeria my father's assistant had a baby, but I wasn't allowed to play with him. They said he was an
abiku.”
“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.

Other books

Murder on the Silk Road by Stefanie Matteson
Snow Blind by Archer Mayor
The Secret of Ashona by Kaza Kingsley
Holidays in Heck by P. J. O'Rourke
Quantum Poppers by Matthew Reeve
The Janus Reprisal by Jamie Freveletti