Eva Moves the Furniture (19 page)

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Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Eva Moves the Furniture
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I was not surprised to open my eyes and see the green screens around my bed. From the familiar odour that greeted my first conscious breath, I had known I was in a hospital. But where were you? In my fear I tried to get up, but the normal link between impulse and action was broken. I was as helpless as if bound to the bed. Even to crook my little finger was an effort.
Then I thought Anne would be taking care of you; it was better for you not to see me like this. I lay back, hoping someone would come. On the ceiling two roughly triangular cracks resembled the shaky maps of Africa and India I had drawn as a child. I stared at them, trying to recall the different countries, the spice routes.
At last a nurse appeared between the screens. She had dark hair, and for a confused moment I mistook her for Daphne. Oh, she'd soon have me well. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Livingstone?”
I shaped a response, but no words emerged. I held on to the nurse's sleeve. Up close she was nothing like Daphne. Her hair was straight and no one would have accused her for a moment of using makeup. After a minute I managed to whisper, “Where am I?”
“Newcastle Infirmary. They brought you in last night.”
“Newcastle.” Fear gave me the strength to speak louder. “Could you get the sister?”
She disappeared and I lay with my heart struggling in my chest. How could I be in Newcastle and not know it? Where were you?
The sister bent over me, her face large as the moon. “Good morning, Mrs. Livingstone, this must be very confusing. You collapsed, and your husband arranged for you to be brought here to Newcastle Infirmary so that you could be under the care of Dr. Halliday, an old friend of his.”
“Where is my daughter?”
“Your husband is in the waiting room. We don't normally allow visitors now but I'll have him fetched. He'll explain.”
A few minutes later Matthew tiptoed towards the bed. He was unshaven and his collar and cuffs were edged with grime. I recognised the maroon tie you had given him for Christmas. “Eva,” he murmured, “thank God.” He sank down on the edge of the bed and took my hands in his.
I felt my eyes fill with tears as I waited for news of you.
“I woke up,” he said, “and you were gone.” Although this often happened, for some reason he had been alarmed and had got up at once. He had found me lying on the living room floor with you curled beside me. “At first I thought you were both asleep,” Matthew said, “but I couldn't rouse you. Ruth woke and I told her I was going out for a few minutes.
“I rushed from the house and drove to Anne's. She was wonderful. She sent Paul to telephone Dr. Singer, then she came immediately. When we got back, Ruth was having a sort of fit. She was shaking you and shouting, ‘Mummy, wake up! Mummy, come back!'
“Dr. Singer arrived and said you were unconscious. While we were waiting for the ambulance, I telephoned Tink Halliday and he suggested we bring you down here.”
“What about Ruth?”
“Ruth is fine. She's with Anne.”
“Can I see her?”
“When you're better, darling. It would only upset her to bring her here. Besides, what would I do with her? I'm staying in a lodging house just round the corner.”
“Please, Matthew. I want her to know that I'm all right.”
He shifted his chair and cleared his throat. “Why don't we wait until Tink has examined you? Then we'll make plans. He's coming to see you as soon as he's finished his rounds.” Matthew smiled. “He's a wonderful doctor, Eva. He used to practise in Stoke-on-Trent. I remember when the fishmonger's boy was run over by a cart. Everyone said he'd lose his legs, but Tink had him walking in less than a year. And there was a woman—”
“I'll have to ask you to leave, sir. We're doing the beds.”
The nurses lifted me briskly from side to side, talking as if I were still unconscious. “The carrots are always soggy,” the taller one said, stretching the bottom sheet.
“And cabbage three times a week. Can you move her a bit higher?”
When they had gone, I sank back against the clean sheets. The
image of you trying to wake me was unbearable. But Anne would look after you, I thought, and perhaps at long last the doctors would discover what was wrong. They would operate and I would be cured. I remembered how ill Scott had been; he had recovered.
Comforted, I allowed my eyes to close. But before I could fall asleep, the pain began to rise. Since I woke it had been flickering dully. Now it twisted into my side, sharp and fierce, as it had when I tried to move the desk. Escape was impossible.
When Dr. Halliday came, the first thing he did was give me an injection. He stood beside the bed, a small neat-featured man, watching until he saw from my eyes that the morphine was taking effect. “So, Eva, I hear you've been poorly. We'll soon have you back on your feet.”
“Do you know what's wrong?”
“We did some tests while you were unconscious,” he said. “We should have the results in a few days.”
“And then you'll operate,” I whispered.
“Operate.” He seemed to be examining his stethoscope. “Why would we operate? Nothing the matter with you that a little rest won't cure.”
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.”

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