Eva Moves the Furniture Read online

  During the weeks that followed, Samuel and I fell into a kind of routine. His hours were even longer than my own but usually we managed to go to the cinema on Friday or Saturday and sometimes during the week we would go to Tommy’s Café to eat shepherd’s pie and chat about our days. On the unit he treated me just as he did everyone else: kindly, straightforwardly. No one would ever guess, Daphne assured me. She herself was in love with a radiologist, a tall, witty man with slightly crossed eyes who seemed to dote on her.

  Early in January a pilot named Neal Cunningham was transferred to the unit from Aberdeen. I was off duty the day he arrived, but the following morning, as I made the beds with Mollie, the ward probationer, the men could talk of little else. Patient after patient described how the newcomer had kept them awake with his screams. Bloodcurdling, claimed Archie. Like a wolf, said Brian.

  Neal, when at last we reached his bed in the far corner, lay with the covers drawn up to his chin. His face was dark as a Negro’s, not from the burns themselves but from the tannic acid they still used as a coagulant at the first-aid stations. His wavy brown hair—he must have worn a helmet—was the only clue to his colouring. “Och, Neal,” Mollie said, “I hear you behaved like a football hooligan in the night.”

  From behind the black mask came a murmured apology. His skin was so badly burned that even to whisper seemed an effort, but that did not dull his nocturnal screams.

  The same scenario was repeated the next night, and the next. Sedatives had no effect and soon Neal was moved to one of the private rooms, which—since Samuel’s decision that officers and ordinary ranks would share the wards—were usually empty. Almost everyone, from the matron to the maids, had complained about this lack of segregation, but Samuel stood firm. “If you’re waiting for a new jaw you don’t need solitude,” he had insisted. “You need someone to beat you at dominoes and make bad jokes about your dentist.”

  That evening as I left the unit, I decided to look in on Neal. Something about his helplessness engaged my sympathy. When I stepped into his room, he was sitting up in bed, staring at the door as if Göring himself might appear.

  “I just came to say good night,” I said, drawing my cloak closer. I was abashed to have caused such fear.

  “Thank you, nurse. Good night.”

  Outside it was that time of day when, before the war, the street lamps would have begun to glow. Now the twilight faded without interruption. I walked along, thinking what it must be like to be a fugitive from one’s own dreams; I had had my share of troubles but, until recently, I had been lucky in sleep. I didn’t notice Samuel coming out of the newsagents until he called my name. Although he was due at the unit, he turned around to accompany me to the hostel. We spoke of Tiny Rossiter the anaesthetist’s birthday—the patients had given him a boisterous party, with skits and a cake—then I mentioned Neal.

  “God damn the dressing station for using tannic acid on him,” Samuel said. “He told me a bizarre story.”

  As he spoke, I caught sight of the unit sister walking ahead of us and tried to make sure that several clear feet separated me from Samuel. Even now that I was fully qualified, my life was controlled by a multitude of rules.

  “He wakes up screaming,” Samuel continued, “because the dead men in his troop appear in his dreams and tell him he’s to blame for their deaths, that he gave the wrong orders. I reminded him that all orders come from HQ—if he’d given the wrong ones he’d be court-martialed—but it made no difference. He kept talking about how the men scream and swear at him, make him look at their injuries and lie down in the mud. I pointed out that these are just figments of his imagination, and he said that didn’t matter. The dead men were still speaking the truth.”

  Samuel gave a little snort, not unlike the sound Lily used to make when confronted with some far-fetched tale. The sister had outstripped us and was lost in the crowd.

  “I’ve asked the chaplain to talk to him,” he went on. “Sometimes this kind of nonsense disappears if the right person offers absolution. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to get the hospital psychiatrist in for a chat. I can’t risk operating while he’s in this state.” He drew me out of the flow of pedestrians to stand beside a greengrocer’s, already closed for the night. In the gloom his brown eyes, normally flecked with gold and topaz, were almost black. “Should I have humoured him, Eva? Pretended to believe in his dreams?”

  I pressed my palm to the cold glass of the shop window. “When you told me about the dybbuk,” I said, “you seemed to think there might be things some people could see but not others.”

  “What does the dybbuk have to do with Neal’s nightmares?” Samuel’s voice was sharp and his dark eyebrows rose.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. He had been in the theatre since dawn, I reminded myself, and still had work to do; now was not the moment to discuss dreams and apparitions. “I must go,” I added, “or I’ll miss dinner.” In the dining room Daphne launched into an account of her latest run-in with the night porter, then broke off to ask if I was all right. I pleaded a headache and retreated upstairs. In my room a chair lay on the floor. The maid, I thought; she must have knocked it with her broom and been interrupted before she could pick it up.

  The next day as soon as rounds were over I hurried to see Neal. He seemed less startled this time, perhaps because it was broad daylight. “Spring cleaning,” I announced, waving my alibi, a yellow duster. “How was breakfast?”

  “Dreadful. You wouldn’t think,” he whispered through his blistered lips, “the cooks could burn porridge every day.”

  “Are you sleeping better?”

  His head gave a little jerk. “No.”

  I bent over the bed, willing him to confide in me. “Neal, does something trouble you?”

  He shrank back, pulling the bedclothes higher. “Nothing troubles me,” he said, “nurse.”

  Against the white of the linen his skin looked even blacker. I stood there, trying to catch his downcast eyes. I had thought I would offer sympathy, tell him I understood about his dreams, perhaps even hint at my own situation, but in the face of his stubborn silence, I did not know how to begin. And what if Neal were to betray me? Some loony nurse, I could hear him saying, some nutter.

  Then I took in his ruined features, his hands puffed to twice their normal size; he would be in the unit for months, possibly years. There was plenty of time to win his trust. “Well,” I said, wiping the top of his locker, “I’d better get going or Sister will be down on me like a ton of bricks.”

  Later I would try to tell Samuel about the events of the following afternoon, and it would only lead to more confusion between us. Just before teatime, I was passing Neal’s room on my way to the saline baths when the door opened and he appeared in a wheelchair. Over infirmary pyjamas he wore an expensive-looking tartan dressing gown. An older man, dressed in an unfamiliar uniform, was pushing the chair. “Neal,” I said, “where are you going?”

  The uniformed man—he had a plump, jovial face—answered. “He’s off to Loch Lomond to convalesce. Peace and quiet, that’s what Neal needs. Time enough for this medical nonsense when he has his strength back.”

  Neal’s face moved in what might have been a smile.

  “How long will you be away?” I stepped closer, hoping he might speak for himself. His fine brown hair stirred, as if a breeze were passing. It touched me too. I breathed in a fragrance I recognised, not of medicine or disinfectant but of heather and the sea. As the older man wheeled the chair swiftly forward, I seemed to hear the words, “A long time.”

  An hour later I was in the linen room, stocking the dressing trolley, when Mollie and another probationer came in, talking in excited voices. The nurse who was serving tea had been unable to rouse Neal Cunningham. Quite unexpectedly, his heart had failed.

  “He was a strange fish,” said Mollie.

  A bandage tangled between my fingers and slipped to the floor. Mollie, laughing, bent to retrieve it. “Back to the sterilizer with this one.
r />   Only the iron routine carried me through the next couple of hours. At the hostel I went directly to my room. The thought that I had seen someone else’s companion was overwhelming. I remembered how brisk the older man had been, how good-humoured. What would have happened if I had tried to intervene? Then I remembered Neal’s tiny smile and my stupid caution of the day before. I felt sick with disappointment.

  Because of Barbara’s death we had never celebrated my birthday in April; instead, I shared a cake with Lily in May. Now, somehow, Samuel discovered the actual date and announced that he was taking me to the Royal Hotel, a place I’d heard other nurses talk about but never been to. Later, after I moved to Glenaird and became friends with Anne, it turned out that she and her husband had dined at the Royal that spring on their first visit to Scotland. She couldn’t remember the exact date, but it pleased us both to think we might have been there together.

  All day on the unit I walked around smiling for no reason, laughing at even the men’s stupidest jokes. That evening I allowed myself an extra inch of bathwater and borrowed some of Daphne’s precious perfume. Might Samuel at last say something? It was six months since our trip to Troon, and always in our conversations he avoided the topic of the future.

  When I came downstairs, my black net rustling, he was waiting in the hall, so handsome in evening clothes that for a moment I didn’t recognise him. His face, newly shaved, shone against his pristine shirt, and his dark hair gleamed; he could have just stepped out of a film.

  “Eva,” he said, bending to kiss my hand, “you look gorgeous.”

  The walls of the Royal Hotel were lined with sandbags, but inside it was as if the war were already won, the dining room filled with people in evening dress. At our corner table, Samuel produced two packages. The first contained a silk scarf of cornflower blue, the colour that always reminds me of the Little Mermaid and her garden beneath the sea. I draped it round my shoulders and felt the lovely slipperiness against my skin. “Where on earth did you find silk?” I asked.

  “I have my sources.”

  The other gift was a book of Jewish folk tales with an old man in a purple and yellow coat on the cover. Over oxtail soup, Samuel told me the man was a famous king, about to be bamboozled into giving all his money to a beggar.

  After the waiter brought our venison in mushroom sauce, I explained my normal birthday ritual. “My father used to say this was an unlucky day long before Barbara died.”

  Samuel nodded. “My cousin Daniel says that too. April twentieth was the day the Germans went into the Warsaw ghetto.”

  I had heard of Warsaw, but as with the Struma I had not paid attention. Now, watching Samuel’s face, I knew better than to ask. I sat, not daring to eat or drink until he spoke again.

  “Such gloomy thoughts.” He reached out to touch the scarf. “It suits you. I had my brother send it from Montreal. Leo says they’re crying out for doctors there, nurses too. Look.”

  He showed me a set of postcards, coloured views of Toronto, Lake Ontario, Montreal. One card showed a man in a barrel heading for Niagara Falls. As Samuel described the Canadian medical system, the price of land, I felt myself being swept along, like the barrel man. “But Canada is so far away,” I said.

  “That’s what I like about it. After everything that’s happened, I’m sick of Europe. Your father would understand.”

  “Samuel, he has no idea you’re a Jew.”

  He paused, knife and fork raised. “You didn’t tell them.”

  “There was no reason,” I stammered.

  “Eva, people don’t know me if they don’t know I’m Jewish. They—” He stopped and I saw his Adam’s apple bob as if he were literally swallowing his words. He drank some wine, and when he continued I could hear the restraint in his voice. “Please tell them. I expect to know Lily and David for a long time.”

  I promised I would, on my next visit. While we waited for dessert, Samuel asked me to dance. As I followed him between the tables, I thought about what he had said: about knowing Lily and David for a long time. It was as if a small piece of the radiance I saw on all sides had bloomed within me. A waltz started. Samuel gathered me to him. I heard him humming under his breath. I remembered David’s stories of dancing at the Palais with Barbara. “She sang every tune,” he would say.

  On the bus to Troon I stared at the scudding clouds and wondered how on earth to bring up Samuel’s religion, but almost as soon as I arrived at Ballintyre, Lily provided an opening. The local newspaper had a story about an Ayrshire family who had offered hospitality to Jewish refugees. “Those poor people,” she said. “The trouble is, they don’t have a country of their own.”

  “I don’t think I mentioned that Samuel’s family is Jewish?” I said, as if there was indeed some question.

  “We thought as much.” Lily reached for the next stitch with her crochet hook; she was making a table mat.

  Encouraged, I told her about Canada, how Samuel’s brother was there, how he was thinking of going. Everything slowed down. The web of crochet hung motionless from Lily’s hands. The tick of the kitchen clock reverberated. Even the fire, with the terrible wartime coal, seemed to burn more slowly.

  “Your father’s getting old,” she said at last. “The war gave him a new lease on life, but he’s not strong.”

  As if on cue, the back door opened and David came in, carrying a coal scuttle. “Eva, I didn’t hear you arrive.”

  He put down the scuttle, kissed my cheek, and went over to the sink. As he washed his hands, I cast a professional eye upon him. He was overweight, stooped, his colour poor, his breathing laboured. I had nursed plenty like him and too often watched them leave the hospital in the worst way.

  When my departure drew near, David offered to walk me into town. While he put on his coat and hat, Lily wrapped a jar of precious raspberry jam. “Come again soon,” she said, hugging me tight. “We never see you nowadays.” Once again, I knew, she was trying to keep me close to home.

  As David and I threaded our way among the puddles in the lane, he talked about some difficulty at the insurance office; a company was trying to default on claims. Then he asked about the unit and I described one or two of the men. We were nearing the outskirts of the town when he suggested a visit to Barbara. I tried to conceal my surprise. In the five and a half years since I moved to Glasgow, I had visited the grave only occasionally; David too, I’d assumed, went less often.

  At the churchyard I unlatched the gate and, stepping inside, came to an abrupt halt. On the watery surface of the path that led to Barbara’s grave writhed a mass of pale pink worms. Beside me, David sighed. “I had her coffin lined with lead,” he said. “It’s the one thing that lasts.”

  10

  At half a dozen junctures in my life I have longed, with particular passion, for the gift of reading the future. In fact, I suspect I see less of what lies ahead than most people. Tea leaves, spilled salt, black cats, magpies, mirrors, molten lead—none of them speak to me. I have never had the glimpses others claim, often smiling sheepishly: good news about money; oh, my, a tall dark stranger; a journey soon. So I like to think that if I had glimpsed what was coming between Samuel and me, I would never have allowed my admiration for him to turn to love.

  The autumn after D-Day, Samuel was asked to take a Maxillo Facial unit to Europe. We spent his last night in Glasgow at the Trattoria and throughout the meal he enthused about his new position. During World War I there had been almost no way to treat men with facial injuries; as a result, many had died of shock or been left severely disfigured. Now these small mobile outfits, nicknamed Max Factors, would treat casualties within hours and prepare them for the reconstructive surgery to come. No more tannic acid, Samuel boasted; he had hopes of constructing a portable saline bath. Trying to set aside my own hopes, I asked questions and listened. He was going to Europe to join the great final push, and it seemed useless to expect a declaration.

  At the gates of the hostel he pulled me to him. “Don’t forget me, Ev
a,” he whispered.

  Next day he was gone, and a few weeks later letters began to arrive in his crabbed writing. He wrote about his patients and, although he signed himself Love, he did nothing to nudge our relationship out of the vague romantic terrain where we had spent the last year. When one of the residents invited me to the cinema, I made excuses and, sitting in my room sewing on buttons, wondered why.

  As Samuel’s unit followed the Allied forces deeper into Europe, his correspondence grew increasingly erratic; there would be no letters for a month, then two or three in a week. Meanwhile, the newspapers carried the first accounts of the Nazi concentration camps. I read them with pained attention. I still haven’t had any Jewish patients, Samuel wrote, but I hear terrible rumours.

  Now that the war was ending, there was no longer the same sense of urgency in the infirmary, and the unit, under dour Dr. McFarland, was a very different place. Several of our friends had switched to private nursing, and Daphne was toying with the idea. One afternoon when we were out trying to buy soap, she persuaded me to accompany her to an agency.

  The woman behind the desk looked up as we came in. At the sight of our uniforms a smile split her face. “Girls like you,” she gushed, “are worth your weight in gold.” Then, seeing Daphne’s sceptical gaze, added, “Almost.”

  She flicked through the cards on her desk. “You can take your pick. Mr. Sinclair, he has a hernia. Mr. Morpeth wants a companion for his wife—nerves, he says. We also have some permanent positions. We had an inquiry the other day from a public school for a matron.”

  The name of the school rang in my ears, a low sweet note; it was in the valley where Barbara had grown up. “Could I have the details of that?” I asked.