The Night Guest: A Novel Part 6

"How long did you live here together?"

"Just over a year," said Ruth. Really, it was such a little time. "I always planned to be one of those old women who kept very busy. You know-involved in things, taking cla.s.ses, cooking elaborate dinners, visiting friends. And I was, in Sydney. I was working-well, work isn't the right word-I was helping at a centre for refugees. I taught elocution, did you know? I still had private students, and I taught p.r.o.nunciation cla.s.ses at the centre. Then we came out here, because Harry was set on it. He retired so late, which I always knew he would, and what he wanted was to rest by the sea. He'd say, 'I'm ready to put my feet up, Ruthie.' But of course when we got here, Harry spent all day gardening and walking for hours every morning and fixing things up in the house, and we would drive to this lighthouse or that historic gaol, and the boys came at Christmas and we visited the city. He could just generate busyness for himself. But I'm not like that. Especially not without him. I came out here and just sort of-stopped."

"That seems a shame," said Richard. Ruth felt, for a minute, as if he had called her a bad book or a bad play, but he was no longer that man; he was tired, she thought, and it had loosened him. He had been tired by the difficulty of having to be something.

"I don't know," said Ruth. "Everyone expected me to go back to Sydney after he died. I mourned so beautifully in every other way, they expected me to be rational about that. Or they thought I should move to be near one of my boys, or that the boys should move back home. But Phil is completely tied up in Hong Kong, and Jeffrey's father-in-law is very ill in New Zealand, and I wouldn't let them. And I turned out to be the one who wanted to rest by the sea."

The rain stopped in the afternoon. Ruth and Richard stood out on the dune with binoculars, looking for whales. Ruth was in suspense. If we see a whale, she decided, then nothing will happen between us. If we see two, then everything will happen. She was unsure what she meant by everything. There were no whales.

Frida had roasted a pork loin and sweet potatoes for dinner. She set it all out on the table and refused to eat, no matter how Ruth and Richard pleaded.

"No! No!" Frida insisted, and laughed as if she were being tickled; she sounded pained and unwilling.

"Then at least leave the dishes," said Ruth. "We can sort those out ourselves."

Frida objected and then acquiesced. Ruth noticed that Frida had trouble looking at Richard. Whenever he spoke to her, she looked to the left of his face and patted her neat hair. She took her coat from the hook in the kitchen, mumbled, "Bon appet.i.t," and went down the hall. The front door opened and closed.

Now Ruth was ready for something to happen. She kept her hopes vague. Richard was in the best of health. He ate with good appet.i.te and laughed a great deal while telling her about the one and only time his daughter took him to a yoga cla.s.s. He promised to cook her a j.a.panese meal. It grew dark on the dune, and Ruth drew the lounge-room curtains while Richard closed the seaward shutters. Neither of them made any attempt to clear the table of dishes. They moved into the lounge room, where Ruth regretted her decision to sit in an armchair and not next to him on the couch. Her nineteen-year-old self would have made the same mistake.

"I was thinking the other day about that ball we went to for the Queen," she said.

"So was I," said Richard. He sat on the end of the couch closest to her, and his hands were clenched and unnaturally still on his knees. That's how he quit smoking, thought Ruth, by forcing himself to keep his hands still. That's how he would do it.

"I still have my menu somewhere. I saved it," she said, although, now that she mentioned it, she was certain Frida had made her dispose of everything of that kind in the spring cleaning of her early employment.

"What were you thinking, about the ball?" asked Richard.

"I was thinking about you kissing me, of course. How much I liked it."

"Why were we even there? Why was I even invited?"

"All kinds of people were invited. I remember someone getting upset about it-about your being invited, and my parents left out. Do you think they minded? I thought they probably didn't care."

"And I whisked off their daughter and kissed her." Richard laughed at himself. "I thought I was so old and wise, and you were so young. I was very ashamed of myself."

"So you should have been. With your secret fiancee and everything."

"You're teasing me," said Richard. "And I think I was drinking. Was I drinking?"

"Everyone was drinking," said Ruth. "I never saw a group of people so willing to toast the Queen." Ruth felt herself lit with the pleasure of laughing with him. It was so good to flirt; it made her think that flirting should never be entrusted to the very young. "And listen-I told you a moment ago how much I liked you kissing me, and you didn't even say thank you."

"What I should have said was how much I liked kissing you." Richard bowed his head at her, courtly. It was ridiculous! And wonderful. Richard in his twenties would never have talked like this. When had he become so much less serious? Even their kiss at the ball had been serious. What we should have done, thought Ruth, was sleep together on the boat back to Sydney and then been done with it, since it would have been a mistake to marry his bad books and good plays. But this, now, was delightful.

"What made you do it?" Ruth asked.

"You were so lovely, of course. Like a milkmaid, remember? And I was thinking-well, I was drinking, but also I was thinking how sweet and straightforward it would have been to love you. You even looked like a bride, in your white dress."

"It was pale blue," said Ruth. "And why straightforward?"

"Less complicated," said Richard. He moved his hands; this movement was the first evidence of any nervousness. "It's all so long ago, it's hard to imagine. Kyoko's family disowned her, and the first house we lived in together, well-the neighbours got together and put Australian flags in their windows and refused to speak to us. We expected it, but nothing prepares you. If I'd married someone like you, they would have come to us with cakes and babies."

"So it wasn't me in particular," said Ruth. He'd kissed her to see how it felt to be simple and safe; why hadn't she thought of that?

"It was n.o.body else but you," he said. The room was quiet. "I really was ashamed of myself."

"I was heartbroken," said Ruth. When she saw his genuine surprise, she smiled and cried, "Let's have a drink! To toast our reunion. There's still some of Harry's Scotch."

"All right," said Richard.

"It's good Scotch."

"Lawyers always have excellent Scotch."

"Now where"-Ruth stood up with a small frown and moved towards the liquor cabinet-"has Frida put the tumblers? She's always moving things around."

"You seem to manage very well out here," said Richard.

Ruth was proud to hear this. She poured the drinks and sat down next to him on the couch. Proceedings had a promising air. The Scotch tasted shuttered and old, but golden.

"You seem very sufficient to me," said Richard.

"Self-sufficient?"

"I think you and Frida together are a sufficiency. You're like a little world, a little round globe."

"That sounds claustrophobic, actually." Ruth added the cats to the population of this little world. They sat at Richard's feet without touching him. How still they were, how like artificial cats.

"I think it sounds wonderful. I like to think of her looking out for you at any given hour."

"Not really at any given hour," said Ruth. "She goes home at night."

"Really? I just a.s.sumed she lived in."

"'Lived in'?" It's like we're discussing servants!"

"Isn't it," said Richard, mildly.

"Believe me, Frida's no servant. She's usually only here on weekdays, just for the morning. She leaves after lunch and then her brother, the mythical George, brings her back in the morning in his golden taxi. Young Livery, he calls it. I think it makes him sound like a youthful alcoholic."

"The driver who brought me here?"

"Yes, of course, you met George! What was he like?"

"He's Frida's brother? Well, he certainly looks Fijian. He seemed-I don't know, self-possessed. He didn't talk much. So Frida's just staying over while I'm here, is that it? She seems very settled."

"She's not staying at all," said Ruth. "What gave you that idea?"

"Well, her bedroom." Ruth lifted her head like a wary cat; Richard paused with his gla.s.s at his mouth, as if she could hear an alarm that he, deaf but alert, still listened for. He said, with apology, "I just a.s.sumed it was her bedroom."

"Which room?"

"At the end of the hall."

"Phil's room?" asked Ruth, but Richard didn't know the rooms by the names of her sons. He had never met her sons.

He said again, "At the end of the hall."

At the end of the hall Ruth found Frida, who earlier in the night had opened the front door in her grey coat and then closed it again behind her. In Phillip's room, Frida lived among her things. The room wasn't cluttered or in any way untidy, but it was distinctly inhabited: the furniture had been rearranged, unfamiliar postcards were stuck to the otherwise denuded walls, and her suitcase was tucked neatly on top of the wardrobe. Frida sat in a chair Ruth didn't recognize, soaking her feet in a basin of water and reading a detective novel. The knowledge that Frida's feet ached and that she enjoyed detective novels was almost as shocking to Ruth as the fact of Frida's living-all the evidence suggested it-in her house. Frida laid down her book.

"What's going on?" said Ruth.

The upper half of Frida's body remained still, but she lifted her feet, one at a time, out of the basin of water and set them down on a towel that lay on the floor. She had a steadfast quality, as if she had always been in this room and would always remain; it also seemed that she would never speak. In Frida's silence, Ruth heard the sound of Richard in the kitchen, turning on the taps and shuffling dishes.

"What are you doing in here?" asked Ruth, holding tightly to the doork.n.o.b.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" said Frida. "Relaxing at the end of a long day."

"But why are you here?"

"Why wouldn't I be here?"

"I saw you leave," said Ruth.

"How could you see me leave when I didn't?"

"I heard you leave, then. I heard the front door. You came in with your coat and said good-night."

"I was taking the bins out," said Frida. "It's rubbish night."

"With your coat?"

"Yep." Then: "It's cold out there."

"I thought you were leaving."

"You a.s.sumed I was leaving, obviously. Who knows why."

"And why wouldn't I a.s.sume 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, impa.s.sive. 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 embarra.s.sing 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 ma.s.sed, 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 doork.n.o.b.

"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 n.o.body'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 embarra.s.sed 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 j.a.panese 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.