The Night Guest (27 page)

“What a tantrum,” she said, scolding herself.

Ruth knew Frida’s bedroom would be empty, but she looked all the same, just to confirm her own instincts. She was surprised, nevertheless, to see it arranged as it had been before Frida moved in: as if Phillip, seventeen, had just walked out and left it for some nobler destiny. Frida had changed the sheets and swept up the crushed pills. She’d removed her mirror and all her grooming equipment, and Halley’s Comet had returned to the sky of the mirrorless wall.

Ruth looked through the rest of the house for signs of Frida, but she could find none beyond those that were her enduring legacy: the twilight gleam of the floors, for example, and the new order of the books on the shelf above the television. Otherwise she might never have come. The clocks ticked louder. The furniture was lifeless without the tiger or the birds or Frida, and so it reverted to its previous function, which was to provide comfortable familiarity. The lace was lit grey at the windows, and Ruth crossed to it and looked out at the front garden. An unexpected shape occupied the front step: it was Frida. She sat completely still, but intent. She was stone that had been carved into life. She had her suitcase, and she was waiting for someone. It must be George; whom else did she ever wait for? But George had stolen her money and the house her mother died in. Why wait for George?

Ruth was calm. She felt no desire to cry out, to rap the window, or to open the front door. She knew Frida was leaving her, and not because she had demanded it; after all, she had ordered Frida to leave before, with no results. Frida only ever did what she wanted. Ruth knew that, just as she knew that Frida was not honest and had fooled her in some important way. The clocks ticked louder. Ruth went to her bedroom, where she didn’t bother to check for her shape in the mirror. There was no one in the mirror: not Frida, not Harry, not even Richard. The cats followed on their springy feet, and they slept the rest of the night the way she did: motionless, undreaming, and without making any sound. In the morning, when she woke, Ruth returned to the lounge room and looked out the window. Frida was still sitting on the doorstep.

18

That morning was spare and bright. The sun had risen clear, the whole sea was visible and without shine, and there was no wind in the grass. It was springtime still; it was only November. Ruth knocked at the window, moved the lace curtain, and continued knocking until Frida turned to face her. Frida looked very young, sitting on the doorstep and staring up at Ruth, as if staying out all night had wiped her face clear of everything she had collected on it, and now she was only tired and childish. She was smooth, like delivered milk. Then she turned away, and although Ruth knocked again, and called “Frida!” through the glass, loudly, with her hands cupped at her round mouth as if that might help the sound travel, Frida remained on the step for another twenty minutes; then she came in.

“I just need to make a phone call,” she said heavily, and she walked heavily to the kitchen, where she eyed the phone as if it were a disguised enemy. She said, “Aren’t I allowed one call, Officer?”—and then she laughed.

Ruth stayed in the lounge room and looked out at the doorstep again. Frida’s suitcase still sat in the sandy grass. It could convincingly have grown from a stalk into a grey-white fruit.

“Your suitcase, Frida!” called Ruth, but Frida didn’t respond. She was pacing in the kitchen, cradling the phone, and she wrapped the cord around and around her arm until she could no longer pace and had wound herself to the wall. She was waiting and listening. Then she hung up and tried another number; then another. Only once did a voice respond at the other end of the line, but even at this distance—Ruth hovered at the end of the dining table, leaning on it for support—the voice was obviously recorded. Ruth went into the kitchen. Frida took a deep breath, replaced the receiver, and pressed her head gently against the wall.

Then she turned and looked at Ruth. “George is gone,” she said.

“I know,” said Ruth.

“No, I mean, this time he really is. This time it’s real. And he’s taken all my money. Which means he’s taken your money, too, my darling. He’s taken everything.”

How could this mean anything? It meant very little.

“He’s done it now,” said Frida. She leaned against the windowsill. She was so amazed that her face looked slightly happy. “He’s actually gone and done it.”

It began to mean something. Frida was no longer in control; Frida was frightened. She had fought the tiger, but now she was leaning, pale in the face, against the windowsill because she couldn’t trust her legs to hold her.

How could he have taken everything? Everything was still here: the house, the cats, the sea, Ruth, Frida.

“He’s taken us both for a bloody ride,” said Frida, still with that note of wonder in her voice. “A bloody joyride.” Now her voice rose. “That bastard has ruined everything, and I have worked
so hard.
Look at this!” She flung one arm out. “I’ve washed these floors a thousand times or more, I’ve cooked and cleaned, I’ve
lived here
because he said we could save on rent, we could get more done, he said, we could worm our way in—I’ve lived and breathed this house and you, Ruthie, you! For months! All he did was say, ‘You’ve earned it, just you wait, you deserve it,’ and drive around in that bloody taxi, and now he’s taken everything.”

Frida looked at Ruth as if she might be in a position to right things; as if she might be in a position, at least, to acknowledge Frida’s misfortune. Ruth gave her a small smile. She wanted to say it would be all right, but she seemed to be having trouble breathing; some part of her, she thought, was furious; but which part? She was supposed to be angry at George, and so she was.

“I told him we needed to wait for a man!” raged Frida. She stood now. “There’s no use with a woman. I
told
him how much harder it would be. People always fuss over a woman. A woman with sons! Sons always fuss. But oh, no, not a minute to lose, this is the one, Frida, this is it. What I should have done”—she spun to look at the telephone, as if it connected her to George in some mystical way—“what I should have done is make
him
come along and do it all.
I
could be the one running off into the sunset, and then where would he be?”

“Oh, Frida, I couldn’t have had a man in the house,” said Ruth. “What would people think?”

“Exactly!” cried Frida. “The two of you would be married by now, my love. Oh, yes, you would. Don’t look at me like that, so innocent! And George would have driven Richard off with a stick.”

“I don’t even know George,” objected Ruth.

“But
I
do,” said Frida. “Jesus, do I know George. He’d screw a goldfish if he thought it had any money.” She stood at the window and beat it with one flat hand, so that the glass and the sea all shook, and she stamped one foot as if it were chained to the table. There was a quiet minute in which Ruth tried to determine whether Frida was weeping. Then Frida turned suddenly and cried, “What now, what now?” and there were no tears, but her face was so fierce and so abandoned; suddenly she doubled over as if in pain. Her buried head said, softer, “What do I do now?”

“Stand up,” said Ruth. “I can’t bend.” She tried, anyway, to bend, and Frida held out one hand to stop her.

“No,” Frida said, and righted herself, but as she did so she gathered Ruth in her arms and lifted her a little way off the floor. Frida’s face was softly creased. Her body vibrated. “He’s left me, Ruthie,” she said. “I’ve got nothing. What do I do?”

“Put me down,” said Ruth, although she wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted, and Frida set her back on her feet.

“I had this dream that the sea came right up to meet us, up here on our hill.” Frida was looking out the window at the water, and the wondering expression had returned to her reddening face. “And there were all these boats on the waves—old-time boats, you know, like they have on TV, some with sails, some with clouds of steam and huge chimneys. They were heading straight for us up on the hill, and the people in all of them were waving like crazy. I couldn’t tell if they were waving hello or telling us to get out of the way.”

“What did you do?” asked Ruth. It seemed like a comforting vision; it would be like the boats on the water at Suva, and in one of the boats would be the Queen. The Queen had sailed away in a boat with Richard, all the way to Sydney.

“I woke up,” said Frida.

“I suppose that’s best,” said Ruth, disappointed.

Now Frida walked to the back door. She wore her sandshoes and coat, but under the coat, Ruth noticed, were brown trousers. Ruth had never seen Frida in brown. She must have changed clothes in the night.

“What should we do, Ruthie?” Frida asked in a considering voice. “Because this is the thing—we can do anything. You know that? Should we go out in the garden? Should we go down to the beach? No, not yet. There’s things to do first. What things? What things?” Frida was talking to herself. She backed into the kitchen. “What’s today?” she asked herself. “Thursday? Thursday! Do you understand, Ruthie, that George has left me and stolen all our money?” And she went out of the kitchen and down the hallway towards the front door.

So George had taken everybody’s money. Ruth clapped her hands once, twice. It was what she did when the cats were brawling, or her children misbehaved. The sharp sound appeased her. Her back didn’t hurt; it was perfect. But still: all our money! She remembered her empty purse in the butcher’s, and the patient, pompous look on the Sausage King’s face, and she wondered exactly when George had done it. They were so worried about the tiger, and all along the real danger was George. Ruth felt most sorry for Harry, because he was proud and careful and wouldn’t, for example, have let her keep the door open at night. It was an embarrassment for Harry and would hurt him if he were here. Where was he? All our money! Frida came back with her suitcase.

“I want you to know that if it came to choosing—you or George—I’d always choose you. I want you to know that.” Frida was very serious. She had her suitcase on the dining table, unlocked, and was removing things from it; things made of glass and silver and gold, which Ruth thought she recognized. “If I’d known how everything would work out, is what I’m saying,” said Frida, still explaining. “If I’d known what a bastard he was.”

Ruth peered at the objects on the table.

“Look at me,” said Frida, and Ruth looked, and then back at the table, and then at Frida again, because Frida took her chin and made her. “Tell me you know I would choose you.” What was clear on Frida’s face was neither love nor hate but conviction.

“What’s all this?” asked Ruth, pulling her head away.

“Presents.”

“For me?”

“They
were
for me,” said Frida. “But you can have them, now. May as well.”

One of them looked like Ruth’s mother’s engagement ring. Ruth stretched her hand out, and Frida passed her the ring. It was gold with a nest of diamonds; it was her mother’s ring.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” said Frida, who had never said the word
beautiful
in Ruth’s hearing, and so Ruth was filled with pride. She put the ring on her finger, where it spun above her other well-fitted rings. Frida gave a small humph and said, “Too big.” Then she took Ruth’s hand, tapped Ruth’s own engagement and wedding rings, and said, “I told him I wasn’t going to take those. They’re yours forever.”

Ruth made a fist with her hand. “They
are
mine. Harry gave them to me.”

“That’s what I told him. Now there’s something I need to show you.”

“Can you spare the time?” asked Ruth.

“It’s only Thursday.”

Frida went to look for something in the study; when she returned, she held a letter on thin blue paper and shook it in the air like a thin blue flag. “You may as well see this now,” she said. “What difference does it make?” She passed the paper to Ruth with delicate fingers.

The letter was from Richard.

“This is the latest one,” said Frida. “There are others. He wrote nearly every day after he left. I’ll get them all for you if you want.”

“Oh.” Ruth felt squeezed inside, a great clenching, and then release. She looked at the letter, which began, “My dearest Ruth”—but couldn’t bring herself to read any more.

“You trusted me, didn’t you,” said Frida. It wasn’t a question.

“There are no guarantees,” said Ruth. She considered it likely that she had never trusted Frida. But then she didn’t trust herself.

“You said it.” Frida was writing something on a piece of paper and taping it to the telephone. “This is Jeff’s number, right here on the phone.”

“You press star and then one to call Jeff,” said Ruth.

“Forget that. I wiped that weeks ago. You need to call this number—see it on the phone? You remember how to work the phone? That’s something else—sometimes I turned the ringer down low, so you wouldn’t hear it.”

“Why did you do that?”

“To stop you from talking to people. I couldn’t stop Jeff, though. A guy like Jeff fusses. Do you love me, Ruthie?”

“Yes,” said Ruth, without thinking, which meant she did love.

“I knew it,” said Frida. She lifted Ruth into her arms, like a baby.

Ruth still held the letter. “Where are we going?”

“Just outside.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?”

Frida shook her head. “I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Ruth didn’t believe her. As they passed out of the house, Ruth saw herself reflected in the dining-room windows: high in Frida’s arms, with different hair.

Frida carried Ruth to a shady part of the garden and set her down so she stood on the uneven grass. Her back was partially propped by the bending limb of the frangipani tree.

“I’ll be right back,” Frida said.

Ruth watched Frida walk to the house. Something about her was different, but what? Her hair was still dark and straight, she was still tall and wide; she was still Frida. Because Ruth held Richard’s letter, she looked at it again: “My dearest Ruth, Frida tells me you’re beginning to feel better, which is such good news, it calls for a celebration.” And lower on the page: “Will it embarrass you to hear you are the best of the lovely things?” She remembered his handwriting; once, she used to hoard every example of it she could find. She liked the long, adult forward tilt of his
t
’s and
h
’s and
l
’s. He had kissed her at the ball and then in the bedroom. Would he be a good husband? Had he been a good husband? Or was that someone else? Harry was the husband—but he was missing.