The Night Guest: A Novel Part 4

Returning to her windows, Frida said, "Jeff's happy with my salary, is he." It wasn't a question. The flesh of her arms shook as she rubbed at the windowpanes; the windowpanes shook, too. She had grown so attached to the house that this mutual trembling seemed a kind of conversation. Ruth found it comforting.

Now that she had told Jeffrey, Richard was definitely coming. Ruth inspected her heart: there was a leaping out, and also a drawing back. Difficulties presented themselves. The house was so hot, and there were possibly birds in the night, and almost certainly unseasonal insects. The cats threw up on the floor and the beds, and their fur seemed to sprout from the corners. For the first time in months, Ruth noticed the state of the garden: it seemed to be shrinking around the house. Harry had spent so many hours tending this garden against the sand and salt, climbing ladders and kneeling in the gra.s.s wearing soft green kneepads which gave him the look of an aged roller skater. He would be horrified to see it now. His shrubs and hedges had worn away in patches; they reminded Ruth of an abandoned colouring book. The hydrangeas looked as if enormous caterpillars had chewed them to rags; snapped frangipani branches lay across the gra.s.s; and the worn turf gave the impression of faded velvet. The soil had failed under the brittle gra.s.s-had simply blown away. Now there was sand; there was more sand than lawn; the few trees stood embattled against the sea, and the only flourishing plants were the tall native gra.s.ses that surrounded the house on three sides.

"He'll take it as he finds it," said Frida, who saw the dismay with which Ruth surveyed the garden through the dining room's soapy windows.

"Yes," said Ruth.

"It's wild. You said yourself you like it better this way."

"Yes," said Ruth.

"And inside will be pure gold."

Frida seemed very sensible of the honour of the house; it reflected her own honour, after all, and so she set about cleaning every corner in preparation for Richard's arrival. Ruth had never observed this level of zeal in her before. She wouldn't accept any help, but confined Ruth to the dining room, where she would be "less likely to cause trouble."

As Frida cleaned, Ruth told her more about Richard; talking about him made her less nervous. She may have told each story more than once. There was the green sari he'd given her for her birthday, and how embarra.s.sed he'd been when she tried it on. There was the first time he ate a k.u.mquat and chased her through the house trying to make her eat one, too. There was the Christmas he made her a puppet theatre out of a tea chest because she was a teaching a.s.sistant at the Girls' Grammer School. There was the royal ball.

"I had a dress made up in pale blue Chinese silk," she said airily, as if she had been in the habit of ordering silken dresses. Ruth didn't mention that Richard had kissed her at the ball and that ever since, Ruth had felt an unshakeable grat.i.tude towards the Queen, whose dark royal head had been visible, now and then, among the people in the ballroom. She was newly crowned and not much older than Ruth. The Queen! And Richard! All in the same night. The blue silk lit Ruth's yellow hair. Richard danced with her and asked if she was tired and guided her through the crowd with his hand in the small of her back without telling her why; he led her to a corridor and kissed her there among the potted palms until Andrew Carson came and flushed them out. Andrew Carson, the maybe-Communist, the kiss-killer! It was no chaste kiss, either. Ruth had saved the dress for the daughters she might have and had no idea where it was now.

Frida encouraged these reminiscences by not objecting to them; otherwise she gave no sign that they interested her. She stayed late that Thursday, cleaning and cooking, and for the first time they ate their dinner together. Frida made a slim stir-fry, piled Ruth's plate with rice, and picked at her own vegetables.

"Still dieting?" Ruth asked.

Frida nodded, serene. "Maybe you haven't noticed," she said, "but I've lost an inch off my waist."

It was strange to have Frida at the dining table, fiddling with her food. She ate a little and a little more, and stood to clear the table.

"No hurry," she said, gathering plates, so Ruth pushed her rice away.

"I'm too nervous to eat, anyway."

"What on earth are you nervous for?" asked Frida, who was already wetting dishes in the sink. The water surged among the saucepans and plates and Frida's hands.

"There's something I'm worried about," said Ruth.

"What thing?"

"I wouldn't be so worried except that we have guests coming."

"We have one guest coming."

"Is it normal for my head to be so itchy?" Ruth held her hand to her hair but wouldn't scratch in front of Frida. "It's driving me mad."

Frida shook the suds from her fingers and said, "How long since you last washed your hair?"

Ruth began to cry. This was unprecedented; it was terrible. But while Ruth knew this to be terrible, she let herself cry, in part because she was so horrified at forgetting to wash her hair and allowing the itch to continue without remembering. She'd worried in the night that she had lice or some parasite, or that she was imagining the itch and going insane. She woke greasily from sleep with these fears and pulled at her hair in an effort not to scratch, and now Frida was reminding her that this was simply the way hair felt when it hadn't been washed. Frida observed Ruth's tears with evident disapproval. But this mode of Frida's disapproval was usually the prelude to an act of helpful sacrifice on Frida's part, and Ruth was comforted by the thought of this a.s.sistance.

"You want me to wash your hair for you?" asked Frida, and Ruth said, gulping, "I wash every night."

"I know you do."

"I'm very particular about it."

"I'd know if you didn't, love. You'd smell," said Frida, so kindly that Ruth pressed a bashful hand to her face. Her scalp raged. It may have been weeks since she last washed it. Frida pulled the plug from the sink. She wiped her hands with a tea towel, rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, and smoothed her own hair back.

"Don't you worry," said Frida. "We'll get it washed. It'll be nice. Like going to a hairdresser."

"Oh, dear," said Ruth, feeling herself settle into a helplessness that was pleasant now, for being a little artificial. She looked forward to surrendering to the complete attention of beneficent hands. "It's a lot to ask, isn't it?"

"That's what I'm here for."

At first Frida planned to wash Ruth's hair in the bathroom basin. Ruth liked this idea. She explained that this was how her hair had been washed as a girl. She described the bathroom of the house in Fiji, with its narrow, shallow bath (her father could only squat in it, pouring a small bucket of water over his back). Her mother had hung green gauze at the windows, for privacy and also because she, like the other women she knew, considered green a cooling colour.

"Blue is the coolest colour," said Frida. And blue, when Frida said it, was the coolest colour; it simply was.

But when Ruth tried to rise from her chair to go into the bathroom, her back objected. Frida-sceptical, impatient Frida, whose reliable spine usually prevented any sympathy for Ruth's lumbar condition-decided the basin would be too much. Instead, she directed Ruth to the wingback recliner in the lounge room: a "subtle recliner," Ruth had once called it, because she didn't entirely approve of recliners, which she supposed was a very Protestant way to think about a chair. Frida filled a large bowl with water and spread towels over the chair, the floor, and Ruth. She cranked the recliner beyond any previous limits, so that Ruth could see, beyond her small stomach, the tops of her toes.

Frida was good at washing hair, which was the result, Ruth a.s.sumed, of so much practice on her own healthy head. She took great care over each of the steps: the wetting, the shampooing and conditioning and rinsing, even a head ma.s.sage in the able, indifferent way of trained hairdressers. Her skill wasn't unexpected; what surprised Ruth was the way Frida, washing hair, began to talk. She started by complaining of sleepless nights, nervous headaches, and bowel trouble.

"If you could just feel my neck and shoulders," said Frida. "Like concrete."

The problem, it seemed, was her brother. More specifically, the house he and Frida owned between them. The house had belonged to Frida's mother, who died four years ago and left her property to her three children: George, Frida, and their sister, Sh.e.l.ley. Sh.e.l.ley died not long afterwards, leaving George and Frida in joint possession of the house.

"A c.r.a.ppy little place, really," said Frida. "Exhousing commission. But it's home, and the view's good. The land's worth a pretty penny these days."

The house was in the nearby town. Frida's mother and Harry had, it turned out, purchased their houses in the same year. At that time, the town was functional and quiet, with an atmosphere of helpless evacuation: the canning industry that once gave it purpose had disappeared a decade before. In those quieter days, Harry and Ruth, holidaying, would drive in with the boys to buy groceries and linger only to eat slightly greasy ice cream on the waterfront. Ruth recalled streets full of neat fibro homes. They could easily have been housing commission: the cannery workers would, after all, have needed somewhere to live.

Frida's mother and Harry had bought their houses in and close to this una.s.suming town, and within a few years cafes and boutiques began to open among the greengrocers and newsagents of the main street, and in the old cannery buildings; a small hotel was built, and then a larger; the caravan park shrank to a third of its size to accommodate a marina. Frida's mother and Harry had inadvertently made excellent investments. They were both, as Frida put it, "sitting on a gold mine." Ruth imagined them congratulating each other. Frida's mother, in this image, was a rosy, stout Fijian woman who embraced tall, patrician Harry; Harry, never more pleased than when discovering himself to have been astute, shook a bottle of champagne over her head.

But now this house of Frida's mother's was causing trouble. George, it seemed, was a gambler.

"Not big-league," said Frida. "Just the pokies and keno when he's at the club. But I tell you what, that's more than enough."

Ruth loved poker machines; she enjoyed the small lights and the tinny music, the complicated b.u.t.tons and the promise of luck. She didn't come across them often, but she insisted on playing whenever she did and referred to this as "having a flutter," a phrase she always said in a fake c.o.c.kney accent. It had never occurred to her that a person could fall into debt from a love of poker machines, but this is what George had done. She pitied him and knew Harry wouldn't have, because Harry was so sensible, and every now and then a sn.o.b. Ruth suspected she was a sn.o.b in ways she wasn't even aware of, but felt that her sympathetic, impressionable heart made up for it.

Ruth felt sorry for George, but mostly for Frida. George had taken out two mortgages, the first to bankroll a business importing and packaging car-phone parts, and the second to establish his taxi company when the first failed. By this time he had moved into the house, and Frida joined him there soon afterwards.

"To protect my inheritance," she said. "Or he'd let it go to the p.i.s.s."

Ruth didn't comment on Frida's sudden bad language. She liked it. She liked the way Frida's swift hands moved over and through her hair to prevent any water from running onto her face. It was a long time since anyone had touched her.

At first George's taxi was a success. He'd purchased two licenses from the friend of a friend, and by the time the town took off, he was in a position to franchise. There was a time when nearly every taxi in town bore the words YOUNG LIVERY. But, according to Frida, poor business sense, lack of organization, a surly manner, and a reputation for unreliability-"an arrogant p.r.i.c.k to all and sundry, customers and employees and drivers alike, not to mention his own sister"-ruined things for unlucky George. His gambling intensified as drivers quit, cabs broke down, and insurance payments lagged. Now he was back to just the one cab, which he drove himself. Only last weekend, a lengthy love affair with one of his former telephone operators had ended in a fight with her husband, and George spent the night in hospital as a result.

In short, George was a mess. Frida had tried everything, but he didn't want to be helped. Ruth sympathized with people who "didn't want to be helped"; she felt that generally she was one of them, despite her current submission. Frida's concern now was her mother's house, which she referred to as "the house she died in." Ruth made supportive noises. She had never been to the house her mother died in, which was a rectory in country Victoria. Her mother had been visiting friends and died of a stroke in the night. Ruth's father died in hospital. And there was Harry, who didn't die in a house at all.

Frida took the bowl to the bathroom to exchange dirty water for fresh. Ruth thought Frida moved much faster than usual, but perhaps less efficiently. Soapy water splashed onto her handsome floors.

"I have no idea why I'm telling you all this," she said on her return, suddenly prim, but she relaxed again as she combed the conditioner through Ruth's hair. She held the hair at the roots so that it wouldn't tug, just as Ruth's mother had done in the green-lit bathroom. Here was the trouble: two mortgages on the house, and payments lagging. Not minding losing the house so much, except that it was "the house she died in." Government carers being paid so little these days.

"I don't need to tell you that," said Frida. "You know how underappreciated we are."

And George too proud to ask for help. Both of them too proud, really. Certain family members might lend a hand, for their mother's sake, and for Frida's, but pride prevented her asking.

"Once you've left home, you've left," said Frida. "You go back with your head held high, or you don't go back."

This indicated to Ruth that Frida had severed her ties with Fiji; that her leave-taking had been dramatic and that she expected the rest of her life to live up to it. So Ruth nodded to indicate that she understood, and Frida stilled her head with strong fingers.

"I thought about taking a second job," said Frida. She paused as they both considered the n.o.ble step of taking a second job. "Then I thought, 'Excuse me? I barely have time for this one.' But it's not like I'm making millions. You know how helpful it is to have this extra work from you, cooking this weekend? It's paying my electricity bill. George leaves every light on. If it wasn't for me, he'd have the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree, all night every night. And the time he spends in the shower!"

"So wasteful," said Ruth.

"Well, who doesn't like a good, long shower?" said snippy Frida. Now she was drying Ruth's hair with a towel. "How does that feel?"

"So much better." Ruth pressed experimentally at her scalp, which responded by flaring into itch.

"What else needs doing? We want you all done up for your visitor, don't we." Ruth listened carefully for any insinuation in this, but found none. "Let's take a look at your feet."

Ruth hadn't thought about her feet in some time. She was mildly surprised to find them intact at the end of her legs; she held them out in the air with pointed toes, and Frida, Prince Charmingly, removed her slippers. Her small feet were freckled, and her brittle nails nestled in her long toes. Frida was shocked by the dryness of her heels.

"We can't have this," Frida said, and bustled to the bathroom. She returned with another bowlful of hot water, and a small grey lump of pumice stone. "You know," she said, "I once heard the best remedy for cracked heels-you won't believe this-nappy-rash cream!" Frida smirked and lowered Ruth's feet into the steaming bowl. She scrubbed with the stone, and the water went a milky white, none of which seemed to revolt her.

Ruth flexed one experimental foot. It felt heavy and boneless in the heat of the water. "You're too good to me," she said.

Frida remained quiet. The wet bowl slopped.

"My father used to do this," said Ruth. "He used to hold a foot-washing ceremony once a year. He washed all the patients' feet, then the clinic staff, the household staff, and mine, and last of all my mother's."

"What for?"

"To remind us and himself that he was there to serve us, and not the other way around."

Frida paused in her scrubbing and closed one dubious eye.

"And because it was nice," said Ruth. "It was a nice thing to do."

Ruth remembered those ceremonies as gold-lit days, brighter than usual, but there was something uncomfortable about them, a feeling of potential disaster. Her mother prepared everyone: had the patients' feet uncovered and their toenails cut and cleaned, and lined up the staff. The Fijian nurses giggled as they removed the soft white shoes Ruth's father made them wear. The hospital groundskeeper, a thin, cheerful man, rinsed his feet beneath the outdoor tap until he was beaten back from it by the nurses' cries.

"What if he sees you! What if he sees you!" they scolded.

The clinic was for the Suva poor. They came voluntarily with pains and injuries and difficulty breathing and blood in their stools and numb limbs and pregnancies and migraines and fevers, and Ruth's father repaired them or referred them or sent them home. They weren't supposed to stay overnight, but frequently they did, when the Fijian wards in the hospital were full. So on the morning of the foot washing there would be the patients who had stayed and their visiting families, and there would be the new patients, who had arrived that morning, and before seeing to any of them, Ruth's father washed their feet.

The washing took place on Good Friday: that solemn, reposeful day, set apart from the rest of the year (although the patients still needed tending, the floors still had to be swept, and Ruth's mother had to arrange lunch with the help of the houseboy). First there was church, which at that time of year, right before Easter, was full of tense expectation. The chosen hymns were grateful and the Bible pa.s.sages subdued; the entire service was a form of sheepish mourning. Then Ruth's family walked down the road from the church to the clinic. Ruth's father walked in front, his shoulders set in his church suit. He was a man of tireless industry, of easy good cheer, and he was broad over the back the way a bricklayer is broad, or a sportsman; but his head was small, his Adam's apple prominent, and his hair persisted in a boyish cowlick at the back of his crown. It was fine hair, and his eyelashes were long. He was thick and strong in the trunk, but contradictory in his extremities: his fine ankles and long kangaroo's feet, his surgeon's hands, his neat head and filigree hair. This gave him a slightly flimsy look. New mothers winced to see their bulky babies in his slim hands. When, on the day of the Easter washing, those bony hands pa.s.sed soapily over the feet of his staff and patients and family, they felt like a woodworker's precise tools. Ruth recalled the pressing of a knuckle against an instep, and the two long hands held together over her foot as if in prayer.

He crawled along the floor before his staff and patients, loose of limb and unwieldy of body; a baby elephant over the tiles, pulling his bucket of water along with him. The palms at the windows distributed the sun in stripes over the brown feet. After every four sets of feet he stood to fetch new water in a small bucket. They all watched him in silence. The nurses, beforehand, worried they would laugh as he washed; they never did. They stood in a bashful line. As he approached, they might hide their smiles, but during the washing, as he knelt in humility before them, their faces were serious and stern, and even the youngest of them murmured and touched his head. Sometimes they wept.

If only, Ruth would think, he could maintain his dignity as he washed: more than once he farted as he stood, and his knees clicked, especially as he grew older. By the time Ruth was a teenager she was embarra.s.sed by the whole thing; was wrung with protective pride and fear and irritation. She began to notice some resistance among the staff or the patients, but couldn't be sure if it signified boredom or reluctance or dissent. He lost face with some. Others were grateful. Ruth felt maternal towards her father on his clumsy, wholesome knees, felt superior to his defined and allegorical world, and in her superiority broke her heart over him, whose head shrank as he grew older.

Richard refused to take part. He wouldn't wash feet, and he wouldn't allow his feet to be washed. The family stirred with this trouble; Ruth's mother was full of sensitive suggestions, and her father was thoughtful and grave. Ruth swam at the edges of this quiet consternation, indignant for her father and conscious of a mild but growing sense of rebellion. She was ashamed of the ceremony. That couldn't be helped, she decided; nevertheless she admired it. It was pure and good-hearted. Perhaps it was misjudged. But it made Richard so angry. When Ruth asked him why, he wouldn't say. There was n.o.bility in that, too. He vacillated, unsure (she suspected) of her loyalties. She promised not to tell her father, and he said, "It isn't that."

On the evening of the ceremony they sat together on the terrace. He was quiet, and smoked, which kept the mosquitoes away. No one had seen him all day. Ruth sat beside him, desperately curious and tending towards comprehensive admiration. There wasn't a part of his body that didn't move her: his firm shoulder, the tic of his tapping foot, his calm eye. The smoke rose around their heads. Their arms weren't touching-but Ruth was conscious they were almost touching. There was that atmospheric sympathy. Wasn't he aware of all this: their arms, the moonlight, the smoke? A dog barked. After the foot-washing, Ruth and her parents had eaten a lunch of Easter lamb imported from New Zealand. Richard's place at the table was empty, and Ruth, digging her fork among the lamb's st.u.r.dy grey fibers, couldn't bring herself to wonder where he was eating. Now she asked him.

"Where did you eat today?"

"At Andrew Carson's," said Richard.

"Why?"

"They invited me."

Ruth considered and then spoke. "Did you complain to them about my father?"

"No. No, I annoyed them all enough without mentioning your father. They all think your father's a saint. He probably is."

"How did you annoy them?"

"Oh, politics." Richard waved his hand with the cigarette in it. "All this repatriation business-get rid of the Indians, get rid of the Chinese. Send them home or give them the Marquesas, just get them out of here. Let them all kill each other somewhere else, and leave Fiji to the Fijians." He was silent for a moment. "And the English."

"You don't agree." Ruth knew he didn't agree; they had talked this through before; Ruth never cared so much as when she cared with him.

"I'm tired of controversy today," he said. "I think I'd better just go to bed."

"Not yet," said Ruth. "Not until you tell me why my father's so wrong."

Richard looked at her in a patient way, but it was enough to shake her heart. He seemed to be taking her measure. He had not yet kissed her at the ball.

"All right," he said. "All right, tell me something: When does he give them a chance to wash his feet? Is it that he's the greatest, the n.o.blest servant of them all? This privilege of service! He calls himself a servant and I know he's referring to certain ideas-abas.e.m.e.nt, humility, sacrifice, the servant Christ, that whole Christian model of service-I know all that, but hasn't he ever stopped to think that he's in a country where people work and live every day as servants, for him? You have a houseboy! He doesn't wash your father's feet in a great public show-he scrubs dishes every night when no one's there to see him. I'm sorry, it infuriates me. No, but I'm not sorry-G.o.d!"

And no one spoke this way; no one grew angry. Ruth was astonished, and in her admiration became clumsy and receptive. None of what he said surprised her; she'd begun to think most of these things herself. But she had never heard a respectable man blaspheme, and this made the strongest impression. She would at that moment have ceded the Church, her family, and Fiji and fled with him in pilgrim haste to any land of his choosing-if only he would ask her. But he didn't, so she remained loyal and, as a result, defensive; it was the same impulse that made her ashamed of her father's audible knees.

"You haven't been here long enough to understand about servants," she said, but that sounded feeble (she had heard so many people say it to newcomers before), so she continued, "And what else should he do? No foot-washing at all? Just hope they all know he doesn't think he's above them?"

Ruth shifted and touched Richard's arm with her elbow, which produced no sensation. But she wanted him to put his hand on hers and agree with her, very badly.

"This morning," he said, "I drove that b.l.o.o.d.y truck over those b.l.o.o.d.y roads because somebody told somebody else who told me that a pregnant woman collapsed at Nasavu-and they wouldn't let me near her, they said the problem was caused by walking on uneven land and she'd go to the temple and be fine, and meanwhile I'd blown a tire, I rode back to Suva with a b.l.o.o.d.y monarchist, Fijians are all monarchists, and the truck's still out there, I'll have to get myself back tomorrow, and I told you I should go to bed. I really should go to bed."

And he stood and kissed her on the top of her head, which was nothing at all; she was at her most chaste when she was angry with him, or embarra.s.sed, or particularly in love, and at this moment she was all three. Also, she felt very young.

"Can we talk about this tomorrow?" he said. And then, because he was kind: "You're absolutely right, about everything, probably, but I couldn't be fair to you tonight. I'm far too sad."

This astonished her, too. What was there for Richard to feel sad about?

There was another moment like this, Ruth remembered, without mentioning it to Frida: on the boat to Sydney. Richard was returning to Sydney to take up a position with the World Health Organization; Ruth was "going home," as her parents called it, to find work. She spent the trip in terror that nothing would happen with Richard; that nothing would happen with her whole life. She knew, foolishly, that she had counted on being her parents' daughter forever, even while she contemplated such things as university or teaching or nursing (could she be a nurse, like her mother? Would she really go back to Fiji as a teacher? She vacillated on this point daily). And the trip pa.s.sed, and on a September morning she stood next to Richard on the boat's deck where schoolgirls played paddle tennis. She looked out at the heads of Sydney Harbour and said, "Apparently I'm going to have to be something."

"It's terrible, isn't it," said Richard, "this having to be something."

And Ruth was astonished that a man so obviously something-a doctor, a soldier, the saviour of Indian women-could sound so sad about it. But he had held her hand twice on the boat, once to steady her in a rough sea and once for three minutes because she'd been stupid enough to cry a little about leaving Fiji. He had sought her out with drinks and, as the weather grew colder the farther they sailed from the equator, brought rugs for her knees. They were sitting on the sundeck, and because she wore gloves, which might hide a ring, a man had smiled at them and a.s.sumed-Ruth was sure-they were married. And Richard had kissed her at the ball for the Queen, although she wondered sometimes if she had imagined that. None of it was enough, but it was the beginning-it was the pa.s.sage over, and then Sydney waited, this city Ruth belonged in without knowing anything about it. Richard would show her Sydney, and she would love him, and he would love her back.

The boat entered the Harbour. The wide, bright city crowded up against the water, but drew back from its very edge; Ruth saw green parklands full of trees, with white flocks of parrots bursting out of them. The parrots surprised Ruth, who had expected Sydney to be much more like England than Fiji. And then Richard leaned forward against the railing of the deck and spoke so that she couldn't see his face, but the wind still carried every word he said, and what he said was that he was engaged to be married.