The Night Guest (9 page)

“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, Shelley. Shelley died not long afterwards, leaving George and Frida in joint possession of the house.

“A crappy little place, really,” said Frida. “Ex–housing 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 unassuming town, and within a few years cafés 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 buttons 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 Cockney 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 snob. Ruth suspected she was a snob 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 piss.”

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 prick 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 noble 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 passages 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 passed 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 embarrassed 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 nobility 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 sturdy 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.”