Eva Moves the Furniture (20 page)

Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Eva Moves the Furniture

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“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 â¦ . [Her] wonderful new novel will haunt you in a sweet way, and leave you with a spark of hope for us all.”

â
Chicago Tribune

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

â
The Washington Post Book World

“Perfectly structured â¦ In prose direct and precise she limns Eva's story with steady authority.”

â
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.”

â
Entertainment Weekly

“A novel of great depth and care.”

â
Elle

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

âAlice Hoffman

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

â
USA Today

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

â
The Austin Chronicle

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

âBoston Herald

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

â
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.”

âAndrea 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.

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eISBN 9781466815209

First eBook Edition : March 2012

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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 companionsâFiction. 2. Maternal deprivationâFiction. 3.Young womenâFiction. 4. ScotlandâFiction. I. Title.

PR9199.3.L563 E84 2002
813'. 54âdc21

2002066778

First published by Henry Holt and Company