The Night Guest (23 page)

Ruth nodded again. It felt good to nod, so she continued to do so; yes, she said with her pendulous head, and yes and yes again; she was a clock, she thought; she was generous and wise. Frida left, and Ruth went into the lounge room. She went looking for Richard—not because she thought he would be there, but because she might find evidence of him. There might be something to tell her he really had put his hand on her knee and said, “Please think about it.” But the only unusual thing in the lounge room was a dent in the lampshade, which Ruth attempted to smooth and only deepened. Lifting her arms towards the light, she noticed funny yellow patches on her skin.

The cats had followed Frida to Phil’s room and were probing at the closed door with their adventurous noses; they gave out little cries, and Ruth called for them to come. At the same time, Frida raised her voice. She must be shouting at George. Ruth supposed he didn’t want to come and sort out the garden. A new idea came to her: that George, and not the cats, was responsible for its wreckage. Possibly George was responsible for everything. He assumed a new shape for her then: sinister and godlike. Then Frida must have let fly with her foot or her arm; something crashed. The cats baulked and blinked and turned to Ruth for comfort. She coaxed them onto the lounge, where they stretched and sat in funny bundles.

“I don’t think I want an angry man in the house,” she told them, but she wasn’t sure exactly which man she meant. Maybe Jeffrey? But why was he angry? Maybe George. She couldn’t mean Richard, who wanted her to go to
his
house. Frida’s voice rose, indecipherable, from her bedroom.

Ruth sat among the cats. They bumped their heads against her and their claws needled her lap. Every window was open, and the front and back doors, because of the smell of the fire. Still the house was hot, and the smell had only intensified. It was a sharp, unmistakably burnt smell, but it reminded Ruth of the night jungle; it had the same colour. The lounge-room clock sounded five times, and with each chime the cats twitched and sank.

Frida appeared in the lounge-room doorway. She looked undone. Her hair had strayed from its style, her mascara was smudged, and her white beautician’s pants were soiled with ash. “I have some bad news,” she said. “It’s George.”

“What’s George?”

“It’s really bad.”

“Oh, Frida,” sighed Ruth. She thought she knew. She saw George dead in the road, entombed in his taxi. She saw him prone in the grass, maybe a heart attack. Possibly in the sea—buoyant, with burst lungs. There were so many possibilities. Maybe smoking one day, alone in the dunes, and then—the tiger. Yes, she could see that: the water sprawling below his feet, the smoke near his face, a view of her house from where he sat, and also the town—the rigid flag over the surf club—and the tiger, downwind, stalking unfortunate George. She would say to Frida, “I’m sure it was all over quickly. I’m sure he felt no pain.” She would say, “I wish I’d known him better.” But she had no wish to know him better. She preferred him as a dark shape in the front of a taxi.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, but Frida said, “What for?” so quickly that Ruth knew to be quiet.

“Right then,” continued Frida. “George has stolen all my money and lost the house and ruined me.” She calmly announced this deadpan disaster.

“No!” cried Ruth. Panic and horror were a handkerchief at her throat. “But you just spoke to him!” Frida just spoke to George, so he couldn’t be dead in the taxi or from the tiger; he couldn’t have stolen all her money.

“That’s how I know,” said Frida.

“But how?”

“Because he told me, is how,” said Frida, defensive, as if she suspected Ruth of not believing her.

“But how did he steal all your money?” This genuinely puzzled Ruth, who had never considered stealing anyone’s money and wondered how to go about it.

“It’s to do with Mum’s house.”

“The house she died in,” said Ruth.

“Yes, yes,” said Frida, impatient. “I’ve been giving him my salary and he hasn’t kept up with the mortgage and they’re going to take the house.”

“Who are?”

“The bank,” said Frida. “Unless I can pay them right away. And the worst thing is, I can’t just catch up on the mortgage. It’s still legally half George’s house. So I need to get the mortgage up-to-date
and
buy half the house from George. Otherwise I’ll lose it.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” said Ruth. “You just keep giving George money? That can’t be right.”

“It doesn’t matter, because I don’t have any money to give.”

“I know what we’ll do,” said Ruth, and Frida raised her head with a quick, sharp look. “We’ll talk to Harry. He’ll know how to sort all this out.”

“Jesus,” said Frida.

“He’s a very good lawyer.”

Frida sank into the catless end of the couch. “Ruthie,” she said, with unexpected softness, “Harry’s dead.”

“I know that,” snapped Ruth, and she did know it; she had even known it a moment ago when she suggested they consult him. And she was disgusted with him, because nobody could be really, truly dead; nobody could stand it. It was one thing, maybe, to die—and Ruth held his head as Harry died, she remembered that now, she saw the sand on the pavement at the bus stop and Harry’s shaking dying head—but it was quite another to go on being dead. That was obstinate; it was unkind.

Frida buried one hand in the yielding fur of the nearest cat. “I do have an idea,” she said. “We might be able to help each other.”

The cat twitched under her fingers, stood and yawned, and trotted onto Ruth’s lap.

“Richard,” Frida said. “I can help you with Richard, and you can help me with George.”

“Do I need your help with Richard?”

“You need me on your side if you’re going to convince Jeffrey. You need me to say, ‘In my professional opinion, your mother should go live with Richard.’”

“Should I?”

“I went to see his house yesterday. I wanted to see the setup there, whether or not it’d be good for you.”

“And?” A tiredness came over Ruth; it felt like a blanket, suddenly pulled. She thought she might have done the pulling.

“It’s a really nice place. All on one level, a huge kitchen, even a spa bath. It’s too deep for you right now, he doesn’t even use it, but I could put railings in and—bingo!”

“What about the garden?”

“Very pretty. His daughter looks after it. Jacaranda tree, big herb garden, brick patio.”

“Lilies?”

“He picked the last of them for you. And he has this one fat palm tree that looks exactly like a pineapple.”

“Good for the cats.”

“Well, that’s one downside. His daughter’s allergic to cats. I thought about not mentioning that, by the way, just for the record. But you just lock them up when she visits. Easy fixed. The other thing is that he sleeps with this mask at night, it’s for his breathing, and it’s loud.”

Ruth closed her eyes at the thought of these loud nights. “I can’t believe you went there without me,” she said from her lidded darkness. She saw the garden: green, with a fence, and other fenced greens at its edges. She saw that ear of Richard’s again, horizontal against his head, and his head lying still: his sickbed. And no more sea.

“Now, if I help you with Richard, maybe you can help me with George.”

Ruth opened her eyes. “Where are the lilies he picked for me?” She thought perhaps she knew where they were; she thought they might be related to the yellow stains on her skin. But she couldn’t recall.

“They’re gone,” said Frida, and Ruth closed her eyes again; she had been waiting for that answer. If the lilies are gone, she said to herself, if they’re finished and I never saw them, it means—what? The cat squirmed on her lap and couldn’t get comfortable, so she pedaled her knees until it jumped away. There were lumps in her lap—they were the leftover pills from yesterday, still in her pockets. Then she remembered where the lilies were. She remembered falling into the tiger trap. She was wearing the same dress she’d climbed the dune in; she’d slept since then and been to town, with pollen on her arms and dirt in her shoes. Now her gritty grey skin declared itself, and the sand at the roots of her sticky hair. No wonder Ellen had called Jeffrey.

“I’m a wreck,” Ruth said.

“We’ll both be, soon enough,” said Frida. “Unless we act quickly.”

“Why do you want me to go to Richard?”

“I want you to be happy,” said Frida. Ruth suspected her of telling the truth. “You don’t know what it’s meant to me, living here with you these last few weeks. You’re like the mother I—”

“No,” said Ruth.

“No?”

“I won’t go to Richard.” That was easy enough: the lilies are over, don’t go to Richard. Ruth was irritated at herself, actually, for almost falling for it: that version of leaving her house, of ending her life, as if she might scrub out the disappointment of fifty years ago and step, bridal, over Richard’s door. “If he wants me, he can come here. I hope he comes. I’ll invite him.”

“But—”

“You can still help me. You can go away,” said Ruth, and that was easy too. “You leave me alone, and I’ll help you. I’ll lend you the money for your mother’s house. I have plenty of money. I’ll pay the bank—tell them that.”

“I can’t tell them that,” said Frida. She was very still at her end of the couch, but Ruth could see the tick of her temple.

“Why not?”

“It’s too much money.”

“You took care of my house, and now I’ll take care of yours. It’s like a poem.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It rhymes,” Ruth said, explanatory.

Frida sighed. “Do you know how much money that would be?” She shook her head. Something was amazing her.

“I have plenty of money,” said Ruth. “Harry sold the Sydney house. That was a big house.”

“I don’t know what to say,” said Frida. She seemed caught up in a kind of sad, disbelieving relief.

“But you have to leave. You can’t live here anymore. You should live in your mother’s house and leave me alone.”

“I’ll go,” said Frida. “I’m already going. But I want to make you happy, you understand? I don’t want to leave you all alone in this horrible house.”

“There’s nothing wrong with this house,” said Ruth. “Only I worry—isn’t it silly? I do worry about that tiger.”

“Really? The one thing you’re worried about is the tiger?”

Ruth nodded, embarrassed.

“We can’t have that,” said Frida. “You leave the tiger to me.”

“What will you do?” asked Ruth, a little fearful.

“What needs to be done.” Now Frida sat upright. “How do I know you won’t forget all this tomorrow?”

“I might,” admitted Ruth, trying to smooth out the lumps in her skirt. “So I’ll write myself a note. Isn’t that what people do?”

This prompted Frida into action. She rolled up from the couch and into the dining room; the first writable surface she found was Ruth’s detective novel, which she opened to the first page and settled on Ruth’s lap.

“Write it here.” Frida produced a pen from about her person.

Ruth felt as if she were signing a book she’d written. She tested the pen with a little flourish at the top of the page, then wrote, under the title, “TRUST FRIDA.”

“What’s the date?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Frida. “Tuesday night.”

So Ruth wrote, in brackets, “Tuesday night.”

“How do we do this?” she asked, blowing lightly on the book. The pen’s ink had blotted on the cheap paper. “Do we go to the bank?”

“Yes,” said Frida. “But! But! You can’t just go into a bank and say you’re buying a house. We need George, we need a solicitor, we need all kinds of things. I
told
him we couldn’t rush this.”

Ruth, knowing Frida would find a way around these problems, remained silent and waited for it.

“But,” said Frida. “But! How about this? You transfer the money to George, I get a written agreement from him—we sort out the details later. The main thing is to get this done before they take the house.”

“When do they take the house?”

“Friday.”

“I’ll write a cheque,” said Ruth. “Bring me my book.” Ruth had always enjoyed writing cheques. They were so businesslike.

“A cheque’ll take days to clear,” said Frida.

“Not really, not these days.” Ruth remembered Harry’s explaining this. “It’s only about three business days, these days.” And she laughed, because having said
days
three times made it feel as if those days had already passed.

Frida zigzagged up and down the living room. This was her thinking walk. “Three days is too long,” she said. “All right, all right. This is what we’re going to do. If it’s okay by you.” She tapped at her forehead as if coaxing her brain. “We’ll go into town tomorrow and go to the bank. They know you in the bank, don’t they?”

“Some of them might know me. I haven’t been to town for a long time.”

“Yeah, not for
ages
.” Frida shook her head. “And you can buy cheques that clear quickly. There’s a name for that—what is it?”

The word dropped into Ruth’s head.
“Expedite,”
she said.

“That’s it!” Frida raised her jubilant arms. “Is that how you say it? Say it again.”

Ruth cleared her throat. “Expedite.” In her mind’s eye, she saw \ek-spɘ-dīt\.

“Expedite!” cried Frida. “And that’s what we’re going to do. Now what about Jeffrey?”

“What does he have to do with any of this?” Ruth asked, surprised.

“He’s coming on Friday.”

“So let him come!” cried Ruth. “Let them all come! We’ll have a party. If Jeffrey’s coming, and Richard’s coming, I’ll invite Ellen.”

“Richard’s coming?”

“Yes, of course. I told you about Richard, didn’t I—a man I knew in Fiji?” Frida walked impatiently to the lounge-room window. “He’s coming for the weekend. He’s coming for Christmas.”

Frida stood at the window, and because the lights were on and the curtains were open, Frida stood in the window looking back. Her face was so severe; probably she didn’t approve of Richard. She was such a prude, really. She drove those naked children off the beach.

“Are you really frightened of the tiger?” she asked.

Ruth only laughed. “Of course, Phil should come, too, if Jeffrey’s coming. I’ll call him, shall I?”