The Night Guest (13 page)

“And why wouldn’t I assume you were leaving? It’s not as if you live here.”

“Oh, dear.” Frida lifted her feet from the towel, leaving two big damp marks. “Oh, dear. You knew I was staying over, to help with Richard’s visit. Remember?”

“I knew you were coming over the weekend,” said Ruth. “Not staying.”

“And remember, we talked about George, all my trouble with George? And you said I could stay as long as I needed to. So here I am.” Frida spread out her hands as if her definition of
I
included not only her body, but the objects surrounding it, and in fact the entire room.

“That isn’t true, Frida, what you’re saying to me now, it’s not true. I’d remember.” Ruth was certain; but there was a feeling of unravelling, all the same; an unwound thread. She did recognize the part about trouble with George.

“You know your memory’s not what it used to be.”

“I do
not
know that,” said Ruth, but this felt like a confession of ignorance, an admission of something rather than an insistence upon its opposite.

Frida sat on the unfamiliar chair and looked at Ruth, impassive. Her obstinacy had a mineral quality. Ruth felt she could chip away at it with a sharp tool and reveal nothing more than the uniformity of its composition. But her own certainty that Frida was lying had a similar brilliance. Her mind felt sifted and clear; her clear and prismatic mind turned and turned over the fact that Frida was lying. To know something so definitely was gratifying, and if this was true, what else might be? What other knowledge could Ruth be sure of, with such immaculate confidence? She was hungry, suddenly, for more certainties of this kind. All her life she’d been afraid of believing something untrue. It seemed like a constant threat: the possibility, for example, of believing in error that Christ had died for her sins. She turned with horror from the unlikely thing. It was so improbable that Frida would lie; that Richard could want Ruth after all this time; that the house could really be so hot and full of jungle noises and even once a tiger. Who would believe any of it? But it was true.

“You’re embarrassing yourself,” said Frida, in a resigned voice. Her face was so still and blank, there seemed to be no Frida in it. Ruth wanted to make the face move again; or she wanted not to have to look at it.

“I want you to go home,” said Ruth. “I want you to call George and get him to take you home. And then you can come back tomorrow morning and we’ll sort it all out.”

“Are you serious?” Frida’s eyes, at least, opened a little wider. “Are you seriously kicking me out of your house in the middle of the night?”

“You heard me.” Ruth was horrified to hear herself say this, with all its false bravado:
You heard me,
as if she were in a movie. As if she hadn’t spent her adult years teaching children not to say such empty things.

“Think very carefully,” said Frida. She leaned forward, her forearms on her knees, and Ruth realized that somehow their eyes were at the same level, although Frida was sitting and Ruth was standing. How small had she become? And how large was Frida?

Frida said, “Think this through very carefully, Your Majesty, because if you make me leave now, I’m never coming back.”

Then she stood. She was enormous. She seemed to have risen up from the ocean, inflated by currents and tides, furious and blue; there was no end to her. Her hair had surrendered to some force of chaos and was now massed, unstyled, around her head. This was another new thing about Frida: her hair was loose and unbrushed. It added to the impression of divine fury. Ruth’s fingers were tight on the doorknob.

“I won’t put up with ultimatums, Frida,” she said, but she knew how tremulous she sounded, how chiming her voice was, like a small bell rung by the side of a sickbed.

“You’re the one telling me to get out or else,” said Frida, leaning in towards Ruth’s face. Then she wheeled away and threw her hands in the air; she adopted the mystified posture she always did when appealing to the sympathy of a phantom listener, and her face became itself again. “You know what? This is one hundred percent typical. You do a good deed for a little old lady—I don’t get paid extra for staying over, you know—and the old biddy kicks you out of her precious house in the middle of the night. All so she can cuddle up with her boyfriend. That’s the real reason, isn’t it?”

“It’s not kicking you out if I never asked you to stay,” said Ruth.

“So he
is
your boyfriend.”

“He has nothing to do with this.”

“It’s just a coincidence, then, that you’re kicking me out when he’s here? What’s he going to think of that? And who’s going to look after him and you tomorrow, huh? You going to cook for him? And for that matter, how exactly do you plan to get me out of here? You going to carry me? You and whose army?”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Ruth.

“Wouldn’t dare
what
?”

Ruth didn’t know. She pressed against the door. She wished Frida would just go quietly. That’s what she hoped to do one day: go quietly.

“What I’m going to say to you right now is—get out of my room,” said Frida. She began to move towards Ruth. “This isn’t over, oh, no. Maybe I’ll leave tomorrow, maybe I won’t. But tonight you’re going to get out of my room and we’re both going to have a good sleep—if I
can
sleep, after this—and we’ll be having words in the morning, believe me.” Frida kept moving towards the door, so that Ruth was forced to step sideways to avoid collision. “All right? No more orders from you—this is my time off. Right now you’re nobody’s boss. Got it?”

Frida wasn’t threatening, exactly; a funny, frightening smile skewed her face. Then Ruth was in the hall and the door was shut; she was unsure if she had moved into the hall and shut the door, or if Frida had done one or both things for her. She knocked on the door, but not loudly, and Frida didn’t answer. Something heavy was pushed against it. Ruth didn’t dare knock again, or call out; she couldn’t make any more of a fuss with Richard there.

But Richard seemed relaxed in the kitchen, finishing the dishes with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his skinny elbows. He displayed the sort of sweet, studied cheerfulness he might have perfected as the father of teenage daughters. He had rubbed wet hands through his cloudy hair and revealed his architectural ears—when had his ears become so large, like an old man’s? If he’d been less helpfully serene, Ruth might have wept, or at least called upon his medical expertise: “Please, Richard,” she might have said, “how can I tell if I’m losing my mind? Are there definite signs? Please, is there some kind of test? What would
you
say to an old woman who heard a tiger in her house at night, who forgot to wash her hair, who didn’t notice her government carer had moved in?” But his whole manner was designed to convey to her that he had noticed nothing amiss about Frida and the guest room; that he valued Ruth’s dignity; that he didn’t want to get involved. And so she thanked him for washing up, he deflected her thanks, and in a volley of pleasantries they said good-night and went to their respective bedrooms alone.

The cats were buried under the quilt and twisted in protest when Ruth disturbed it by sitting on her bed. The bed seemed haunted, then, by phantom lumps of Harry: one turning arm, or a twitching foot. It was macabre and awful and stupidly comforting all at once, and just thinking of it embarrassed Ruth with Richard in Jeffrey’s room. And Frida in Phillip’s room. When had her house become so populated? Ruth, the cats, Frida, Richard. It occurred to her that Frida might actually do what she’d threatened: that she might leave. Ruth stretched out her feet—sitting on the bed, they didn’t quite touch the ground—and said, “I’ve done it now, haven’t I.” She saw her head speaking in the dresser mirror, and that was another thing she used to do: pretend to be Harry as he watched her move and speak. She turned her head away; she had no time for herself. Had she really forgotten that Frida was living in her house? But she had forgotten to wash her hair, and it was Frida who fixed it.

So the day was over, and Richard would leave tomorrow afternoon. The weekend was just like the boat to Sydney: days of promise with Richard, on which nothing definitive happened. Now she had lost him again, because of Frida. But as she lay in bed and thought this through, and considered Frida’s reading a detective novel and soaking her feet, and remembered Richard’s sad, smug explanation of the difficulties of having a Japanese wife and why that meant he was allowed to kiss whomever he felt like, her anger turned in his direction. Why had he come? And since he’d come, why was he only here for a weekend, when the days of the week didn’t matter anymore? They were both old, and outside of time. She lay in bed, pinned by the cats, and fumed. And why had he told her Frida was in the house at night? Now she would lose Frida, thanks to him. She would lose him because of Frida, and Frida because of him; and with that thought, her last before sleep, the whole house emptied out.

9

Ruth woke late the next morning. The day was so clear that, when she went into the kitchen, she could see the town lighthouse from the dining-room windows. Ruth called for Frida, and Richard answered. He came from the lounge room looking like Spencer Tracy: all that bright hair and good humour, only taller.

“Frida’s gone out for the morning,” he said.

“Gone where?”

“She had some shopping to do. Her brother came in his taxi.”

“How did she seem?”

“Fine,” said Richard. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek good morning; she was far too distracted to enjoy it.

“She’s just gone to do some shopping,” said Ruth. Sufficient, she thought; a little world. “It was all just a misunderstanding.” She resisted the temptation to run to Phillip’s room—Frida’s room—to see if it was empty of Frida’s possessions.

“These things happen,” said Richard.

He made her a cup of tea and sat on the window seat close to her chair while she drank it. He touched her arm and her hair as they talked about the weather and the day’s activities: Ruth’s back was fine, the weather was fine, and they could walk on the beach with binoculars and look for whales. They might even make it as far as the northern headland. George wasn’t coming for Richard until the afternoon: they had hours yet. They talked about these plans, but made no effort to execute them. Ruth couldn’t help thinking about Frida.

“Just a misunderstanding,” she said again. “My memory’s not what it used to be.”

“Your memory is fine. Think what you remember about Fiji, all those years ago.”

“But that’s what they say about being old, isn’t it? That you’ll remember things from years and years ago, and not what you ate for breakfast. And sometimes I do—you know—imagine things.”

“You’re not old,” said Richard. “You’re a girl in Fiji coming to meet the new doctor.”

It was a silly and untrue thing to say, but Ruth ignored that; she inclined her head towards the pleasure of it. He was looking at her now in exactly the way she’d wanted him to when she was that girl. Time and age were a great waste laid out before her; they had also brought her here, so quickly, to Richard. But she was embarrassed by her pleasure, despite herself.

“Look at the birds,” she said, and finally Richard looked away from her and out the window. White and black seabirds gathered in particular places on the bay; they seemed all at once to throw themselves at the water and then rise again. “The whales are there where the birds are—that’s one way to spot them. Can you see anything? A spout? A tail?”

“No,” said Richard. “But the birds are beautiful.”

“Look at everyone on the beach,” said Ruth. Weekend whale watchers stood motionless on the shore, and every now and then an arm would point, or someone would jump up and down. “Should we go down?”

“I predict rain,” said Richard. “Rain, rain, and more rain. Best to stay indoors.”

Ruth gave a small laugh and wouldn’t look at him. Instead she watched the people on the beach, and when they turned and pointed in one direction, she looked there, hoping to see a whale, but only saw the slap of travelling waves. It was odd to watch this from the window without going out or taking the binoculars down. Harry would disapprove. But then Harry wasn’t here. Richard leaned closer and kissed her, on the side of her face at first, and then, when she turned towards him, on her mouth. He was so exact, his hands were so dry, and he gave out such a lonely heat. With the sea and the window and the birds over the water, it was like—but at the same time not at all like—daydreams Ruth had nourished in Fiji; it was as if her youthful tending of those dreams had been so timid that only now could they bear fruit. And of course her body had been through a great deal since then—sex, and childbirth, and the effort of fifty years—and its response to Richard bore little resemblance to that girlish pulse. A dry warmth came up to meet his. And stop thinking these things, she told herself; you are being kissed. Richard is kissing you; isn’t this what you invited him for? You are a chaste and vain and sentimental old woman. She faltered and Richard drew away, but she pulled him back again by catching one hand on his shoulder.

“Frida?” he said.

“We’ll hear the car.”

So she knew that she meant to do more kiss him. What confidence she had! In him, and in herself. She stood and said, “Come with me.”

Richard took her hand and it felt as if she had lifted him from the window seat with her strength. They walked to her bedroom. Ruth didn’t like seeing their reflections in the mirror, but she scolded herself: she knew it was ridiculous to be shocked by this kind of sensible sex. There was no one to ask, Can I have this? Is this allowed? It felt like swearing: something small and private she could pit against the orthodoxy of her life. But she didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. She had refused a little of this, a little of that, until she found there was nothing much left to agree to; now she could agree to this.

They were both prepared to be practical. Ruth arranged the pillows on the bed the way she knew from experience would be best for her back, and Richard drew the curtains. Then, in the false twilight, they approached each other. There was no rush, and as a result no fumbling; she let him unbutton her shirt, but removed her bra herself. It was the sturdy, flesh-coloured kind that left ridges on her shoulders and torso, and her loosened breasts were powdery and white. He ran his hands over the crepe of her skin, as if he had grown old with it and knew every stage of its buckling. Then, still wearing her skirt, Ruth removed his glasses and helped him pull his shirt over his head, where it caught for a moment and submerged his face. She kissed his mouth through the cotton. Richard had a sweet, monkeyish, fluffy chest, and his breasts and stomach were puckered. It seemed important that they both be naked. They finished undressing and Richard stood as if holding his hands in his pockets while Ruth settled herself on the bed. Then he lay over her.