The Night Guest (26 page)

This woman, also dressed in a red suit, was unlike Jenny Connell. She was older, with broad shoulders, as if she had evolved to move quickly through water, and girlishly cut hair. She wore a wedding ring but bit her fingernails. Her name, according to her badge, was Gail, and then something complicated and Greek.

“Good morning,” Gail said from behind a wall of glass. Her voice issued from a small microphone, as if it needed great assistance to travel so far.

“This is Mrs. Field,” said Frida, and she began to produce items from her handbag: Ruth’s bankbook, some documents, and a piece of paper with numbers written on it.

“Good morning,” said Ruth.

“I’m Mrs. Field’s carer, and I’m here to help her write a cheque.”

“I don’t have a cheque,” said Ruth conversationally.

“We need to purchase an expedited cheque,” explained Frida.

Gail looked between Ruth and Frida as each one spoke, and her face was calm and dispassionate.

“That’s very fast, isn’t it?” asked Ruth. “An expedited cheque?” She liked the sound of the word
expedited
. It sounded risky and important.

“It’s not immediate,” said Gail. “But it does clear in one business day.”

“One day, Frida!” said Ruth. “Usually it’s three.”

“The fee is eleven dollars,” said Gail.

Frida produced eleven dollars like a magic trick from her handbag.

“Thank you,” said Gail. What a polite woman! She began to consult Ruth’s bankbook and then the computer, typing quickly with her bitten fingers, but the rest of her movements were unhurried. Frida gripped her handbag as if she would have liked to vault the counter and manage everything herself.

“Would you like to fill the cheque in right now, Mrs. Field?” asked Gail.

“Oh, yes,” said Ruth.

Then the cheque seemed to swim up to the glass as if Gail could only just contain it; it had a life of its own. It flew through the gap between the glass and the counter, and Gail pushed a pen behind it. Now everyone was looking at Ruth.

“Would you like me to help you with that, Ruthie?” asked Frida.

Ruth peered at the cheque. Her name was printed on it already, and a series of numbers she recognized as belonging to her bank account. Her memory for numbers was good.

“This is for George,” said Ruth.

“For George Young,” said Frida. “That goes right on this line.” She put her finger on the cheque.

“Young Livery,” said Ruth.

“George Young. You write it just here.” Frida looked at Gail again. “I’m her carer.”

Gail nodded. “I believe we have you right here on the account. Technically you could write the cheque yourself.”

“Not for this amount of money.” Frida sounded aggrieved. “I was told Mrs. Field would need to authorize that herself.”

Ruth wrote
George Young
on the line. She wondered why Frida’s name was on her account.

“Excuse me for one moment,” said Gail. A telephone was ringing—had been ringing for some time, Ruth now realized—and Gail went to answer it. She was taller than Ruth expected.

“Concentrate,” hissed Frida. “Here.” She took the pen from Ruth, paused for a moment, then wrote
seven hundred thousand dollars
in an elegant cursive.

“That’s beautiful!” said Ruth.

When Frida wrote the amount in numeral form, however, all those 0’s crammed into one box reminded Ruth of schoolgirl writing, floaty and skewwiff.

“Now sign,” Frida said. She gave Ruth the pen, and when Ruth hesitated, still looking at the crooked zeros on the crowded cheque, Frida flicked open her bag and produced the book.

“Look! Look!” she said, holding it open to the title page; there was writing there, but it was shaking too much for Ruth to read. Why was Frida making such a fuss?

Gail returned to her place behind the glass. Other golden numbers were flashing over other counters, and the line grew longer, and Jenny Connell greeted each gusty new arrival.

“Banks are so friendly these days,” said Ruth, and she smiled at Gail, who failed to smile back.

“We’re holding people up,” said Frida, sliding the book away.

Ruth signed the cheque. Something seemed to deflate in Frida; she shrank a little, as if she’d been standing on the tips of her toes and holding her breath. Ruth passed the cheque under the glass. She waited to see Gail respond to the amount; she was proud to think she could sign a cheque for so much. But Gail made no acknowledgment of Ruth’s generosity. What kind of bank was this, then? Did millionaires wander in every day, passing enormous cheques into the care of indifferent Gail?

“Do you have some form of identification, Mrs. Field?” asked Gail, and Frida gave an impatient whinny.

“Let me see.” Ruth began to dig in her purse. “What kind of identification?”

“A driver’s licence, for example.”

Ruth remembered keeping her driver’s licence in the glove box of Harry’s car. She heard the car, once again, make its final journey down the drive.

“Or a passport,” said Gail.

“A cheque is a cheque,” said Frida. She leaned towards the hole in the glass, and her breath smudged its outer edges.

“My passport is at home,” said Ruth.

“She’s clearly who she says she is,” said Frida. “You have her bankbook.”

“We need photo identification for any large withdrawal,” said Gail, immaculate behind her Frida-proof glass.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” said Ruth. “I know exactly where my passport is. It’s in the top drawer of Harry’s desk.”

“We don’t have time,” said Frida.

“This afternoon!” said Ruth. “We’ll take the bus.”

“What about your Senior’s Card, Mrs. Field?” Gail seemed to have withheld this possibility and now to enjoy suggesting it.

Frida took the purse from Ruth and began to shuffle cards.

“They really get stuck in there,” said Ruth, and she looked to Gail for commiseration, but Gail was watching Frida’s hands. The wind came in and around the edges of Ruth’s suit. She remembered that she wasn’t wearing stockings and was embarrassed. Frida passed Ruth’s Senior’s Card under the glass, and Gail checked it and nodded and typed. Jenny Connell greeted a new customer. “Good afternoon!” she sang. Ruth pressed her knees together. She looked at the clock and saw that it was right on twelve.

17

Frida hailed a taxi to drive them home and paid for it herself. The taxidriver knew her; he was boisterous and nostalgic, describing George at work and play, so Ruth assumed he must once have been part of the ill-fated Young Livery. Frida stayed tight-lipped. No doubt she was maintaining her dignity by protecting George, but Ruth wanted to tell this driver every bad thing she knew.

Ruth was surprised by the state of the house. It was littered and muddy and smelled of salty dirt, as if the tide had washed through it. This was the tiger’s doing, she remembered; it made her tired. She wanted to rest her back in bed. Frida was courteous: she removed Ruth’s shoes, and then her jacket. She offered to bring water or tea.

“I’ll just stay on top of the covers,” said Ruth. “I’ll just stay dressed. I need to be ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“For Richard. Didn’t I tell you I invited him for Christmas?”

Frida lifted Ruth’s legs to help her onto the bed.

“My feet are cold,” Ruth said.

Frida put the jacket over them. She placed one hand over the jacket and said, “You sing out if you need anything.” Then she left, closing the door behind her.

Ruth didn’t sleep. Her bedroom was bright and there were no shadows. Frida was busy in the hallway clearing the buckets and the tarpaulin, and she hummed a little as she worked. At one point the telephone rang and Frida answered it. Ruth heard talking for a minute or two, considered picking up the receiver next to her bed, and decided it would require too much effort. The talking stopped. The house grew so quiet it became possible to hear someone whistling to his dog on the beach; Frida went outside as if summoned by this whistle, but returned almost immediately. The waves were high and loud in the wind. Ruth felt childishly convalescent. She lay in her bed all afternoon, and when she sat up, only two hours had passed.

“Frida!” she called. She coaxed her back with the breathing exercises Frida had taught her, and when she stood, it rewarded her by not hurting.

“Frida!” she called. The hallway was clear. Frida had mopped the area by the front door, and it shone a rich woody red. She wasn’t in her bedroom, the lounge, or the bathroom; but all of these places had been cleared of the worst of their tiger mess. Some small piles of broken glass remained in the hallway, swept up together in a little archipelago that looked vaguely like Fiji.

Frida was in the kitchen washing vegetables in the sink. When she saw Ruth, she dried her hands and said, gently, “Afternoon, Sleeping Beauty.” Then she stepped forward and kissed the top of Ruth’s head.

“What was that for?” asked Ruth.

“Let’s get you ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“For your visitors.” Frida took Ruth’s shoulders and steered her into the bathroom. “Richard for Christmas, and Jeff on Friday. We’ll do your hair.”

“Wash it again?”

“Better than that. Into the shower.” Frida tugged at Ruth’s skirt until it came loose from her hips. Ruth stepped out of it. She raised her arms, and Frida lifted the shirt over her head without unfastening a single button. Ruth removed her bra herself; she was proud of that little operation.

“Don’t turn the shower on,” said Frida, heading into the hallway.

Ruth stepped into the shower with the aid of the railings. She had failed to remove her underpants, but didn’t let that small slip upset her. She sat on the shower stool and waited for Frida, who returned with a comb and a vigorously shaken bottle. Frida was humming. She wrapped a towel around Ruth’s shoulders, instructed her to close her eyes, and then Ruth felt a line of cool liquid on her scalp.

“What is it?”

“Sh,” said Frida. “Close your eyes.”

A sharp, bitter smell came next, pressing against Ruth’s eyelids. Frida combed and smoothed and soaked Ruth’s hair in this awful smell, but its pungency felt powerful, like some kind of protection. Ruth recognized it as the scent of Frida’s hair when she had just dyed it.

Opening her eyes, Ruth saw deep brown stains on her skin where the dye had splashed and fallen. “It’s so dark!”

“Don’t worry,” said Frida. “I’ve done a lovely ash blond, very subtle. You’ll be so pretty when Richard comes. Can you sit like this for a while?”

Ruth thought she could. From her perch in the shower, she heard Frida moving through the house; she heard her in Phillip’s bedroom, shifting things around. She was packing, then. She was leaving. And I told her to go, Ruth thought, and with that thought she became frightened of what she had done. She was in a bell, swinging outwards; she could feel the dome of the bell above her, and also the darkness under her feet where there was nobody, nobody; the fear struck and struck. It echoed, so that every time it came—it came in pulses—it left some of itself behind, and all of that leftover fear gathered under the dome with her. The tiger had never terrified her so much; not even the man on the telephone who told her Harry was dead. She remembered his saying, “Come to the hospital to see your dead husband,” but of course he couldn’t have said that. She swung out over the darkness, holding on to something—was it Richard? It might have been Richard—and didn’t drop, but the fear only grew, and then Frida was behind her.

“Stop crying,” Frida said, so Ruth knew she was crying. The shower stall amplified the sound. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m so frightened,” said Ruth. She held out her hands as if she expected to see something in her palms. “Look how I’m shaking.” But she wasn’t shaking.

“What are you scared of? I killed the tiger. The tiger’s dead.”

“Long live the tiger.”

“No, you ninny,” said Frida. “Death to tigers, remember?”

“Death to tigers,” said Ruth to Frida the tiger killer, and then the fear—which had stilled for a moment—came back again, and now she understood why: it was because Frida was leaving. All the safety she had ever relied on flew away from her, out from under her feet, away over the garden and the sea; that was how it felt.

Frida had turned on the shower, and soft water ran in dark brown lines over Ruth’s pale skin.

“Close your eyes,” ordered Frida. “Close your mouth.” But she said it gently.

Ruth closed her eyes and mouth, but a terrible noise was still coming from somewhere; possibly her own throat.

“I was going to blow-dry your hair, too,” scolded sad, sweet Frida. “But all you’re good for is bed.”

The water ran clear and Ruth was no longer in the shower. She was in the bedroom, and Frida was dressing her in a nightgown. Ruth called out that her face was hot, so Frida left and returned with a wet cloth to wipe it.

“I don’t know what all this fuss is for,” said Frida, which Ruth considered cruel, and when she cried harder—her chest rose and sucked and fell—Frida swatted at her face, without touching her. “Oh, shut up, Ruthie. You’ve taken your pills. You’ll be all right. You want me to go, and Jeffrey’s coming on Friday.” Frida settled Ruth into bed, looked once about the room, and left it, closing the door behind her. Ruth’s cries became deep breaths. She was aware of falling asleep because the childhood feeling of doing so with tears on her face was familiar, but she didn’t believe it would ever happen.

Ruth woke in the night, hungry. When she looked at her clock, it was only eleven. She called out for Frida, but there was no response, and because her stomach was making eager sounds, she sat up and stood up and was out of bed. Her back was calm. It hadn’t felt so soft in months. She saw herself in her dressing-room mirror and gave a small wave—in the dark, she was only a blur of greyish white. Her hair felt damp at the back but otherwise dry. She wasn’t afraid to walk into the hallway. The house was cool and quiet. Frida had left a plate of grilled lamb chops in the fridge, and the fruit bowl was filled with dimpled apples that reminded Ruth of the green-skinned mandarins she had eaten as a child. She stood at the kitchen counter eating the cold, greasy chops with her fingers and looking across the bay through a gap in the shutters. There were no lights in the town; there was not a lamp on for miles. No ships out at sea, either, and no moon. The foil that covered the lamb was the brightest thing in the world, and the loudest. The cats didn’t come into the kitchen, not even with the smell of meat. Ruth felt as she had, younger, when her feet were more steadily planted on the floor, and her children and husband slept; that feeling was like an address she’d returned to, wondering why she’d been away so long. Even the taste of food was younger. The back door was closed, the house was cool, and the tiger was dead. Her head felt rinsed of everything.