The Night Guest (2 page)

“You’ll have to excuse me,” said the woman. “I’m done in. I was worried about you! I knocked at the front, and when you didn’t answer I thought I’d come round the back way. Didn’t know what a hill there’d be! Woof,” she said, as if imitating an expressionless dog.

“I didn’t hear you knocking.”

“You didn’t?” The woman frowned and looked down at her hands as if they had failed her.

“Do I know you?” Ruth asked. She meant this sincerely; possibly she did know her. Possibly this woman had once been a young girl sitting on Ruth’s mother’s knee. Perhaps this woman’s mother had been ill in just the right small way that would bring her to Ruth’s father’s clinic. There were always children at the clinic; they dallied and clowned, they loved anyone who came their way, and they all left punctually with their families. Maybe this woman came out of those old days with a message or a greeting. But she was probably too young to have been one of those children—Ruth guessed early forties, smooth-faced and careful of her appearance. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but she had the heavy kind of eyelids that always look powdered in a soft brown.

“Sorry, sorry.” The woman released Ruth’s hands, propped one arm against the house, and said, “You don’t know me from Adam.” Then she adopted a professional tone. “My name is Frida Young, and I’m here to look after you.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize!” cried Ruth, as if she’d invited someone to a social event and then forgotten all about it. She stepped away from the bulky shadow of Frida Young’s leaning. In a fluttering, puzzled, almost flirtatious voice, she said, “Do I need looking after?”

“Couldn’t you use a hand round the place? If someone rocked up to my front door—my back door—and offered to look after me, I’d kiss their feet.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ruth. “Did my sons send you?”

“The government sent me,” said Frida, who seemed cheerfully certain of the results of their chat: she had eased off her shoes—sandshoes from which the laces had been removed—and was flexing her toes in the sandy grass. “You were on our waiting list and a spot opened up.”

“What for?” The telephone began to ring. “Do I pay for this?” asked Ruth, flustered by all the activity.

“No, love! The government pays. What a deal, huh?”

“Excuse me,” said Ruth, moving into the kitchen. Frida followed her.

Ruth picked up the phone and held it to her ear without speaking.

“Ma?” said Jeffrey. “Ma? Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me.”

“I just wanted to check in. Make sure you hadn’t been eaten in the night.” Jeffrey indulged in the tolerant chuckle his father used to employ at times of loving exasperation.

“That wasn’t necessary, darling. I’m absolutely fine,” said Ruth. Frida began to motion in a way that Ruth interpreted as a request for a glass of water; she nodded to imply she would see to it soon. “Listen, dear, there’s someone here with me right now.”

Frida clattered about the kitchen, opening cupboards and the refrigerator.

“Oh! Then I’ll let you go.”

“No, Jeff, I wanted to tell you, she’s a helper of some kind.” Ruth turned to Frida. “Excuse me, but what are you, exactly? A nurse?”

“A nurse?” said Jeffrey.

“A government carer,” said Frida.

Ruth preferred the sound of this. “She’s a government carer, Jeff, and she says she’s here to help me.”

“You’re kidding me,” said Jeffrey. “How did she find you? How does she seem?”

“She’s right here.”

“Put her on.”

Ruth handed the phone to Frida, who took it good-naturedly and cradled it against her shoulder. It was an old-fashioned kind of phone, a large heavy crescent, cream-coloured and attached to the wall by a particularly long white cord that meant Ruth could carry it anywhere in the house.

“Jeff,” Frida said, and now Ruth could hear only the faint outlines of her son’s voice. Frida said, “Frida Young.” She said, “Of course,” and then, “A state programme. Her name was on file, and a spot opened up.” Ruth disliked hearing herself discussed in the third person. She felt like an eavesdropper. “An hour a day to start with. It’s more of an assessment, just to see what’s needed, and we’ll take things from there. Yes, yes, I can take care of all that.” Finally, “Your mother’s in good hands, Jeff,” and Frida handed the phone back to Ruth.

“This could be wonderful, Ma,” said Jeffrey. “This could be just exactly what we need. What a good, actually good use of taxpayers’ money.”

“Wait,” said Ruth. The cats, curious, were sniffing at Frida’s toes.

“But I want to see the paperwork, all right? Before you sign anything. Do you remember how to use Dad’s fax machine?”

“Just a minute,” said Ruth, to both Frida and Jeffrey, and, with bashful urgency, as if she had a pressing need to urinate, she hurried into the lounge room and stood at the window. The yellow of the taxi was still visible at the end of the drive.

“I’m alone now,” she said, her voice lowered and her lips pressed to the phone. “Now, I’m not sure about this. I’m not doing badly.”

Ruth didn’t like talking about this with her son. It offended her and made her shy. She supposed she should feel grateful for his love and care, but it seemed too soon; she wasn’t old—not too old, only seventy-five. Her own mother had been past eighty before things really began to unravel. And to have this happen today, when she felt vulnerable about calling Jeffrey in the middle of the night with all that nonsense about a tiger. She wondered if he’d mentioned any of that to Frida.

“You’re doing wonderfully,” said Jeffrey, and Ruth winced at this, and her back vibrated a little, so she put out her left hand to hold the windowsill. He had said exactly the same thing when, on his last visit, he mentioned retirement villages and in-home carers. “Frida’s only here to assess your situation. She’ll probably just take over some of the housework, and you’ll relax and enjoy yourself.”

“She’s Fijian,” said Ruth, mainly for her own reassurance.

“There you are, some familiarity. And if you hate it, if you don’t like her, then we’ll make other arrangements.”

“Yes,” said Ruth, more doubtfully than she felt; she was heartened by this, even if she knew Jeffrey was patronizing her; but she knew the extent of her independence, its precise horizons, and she knew she was neither helpless nor especially brave; she was somewhere in between; but she was still self-governing.

“I’ll let Phil know. I’ll tell him to call you. And we’ll talk more on Sunday,” said Jeffrey. Sunday was the day they usually spoke, at four in the afternoon: half an hour with Jeffrey, fifteen minutes with his wife, two minutes each with the children. They didn’t time it deliberately; it just worked out that way. The children would hold the phone too close to their mouths; “Hello, Nanna,” they would breathe into her ear, and it was clear they had almost forgotten her. She saw them at Christmas and they loved her; the year slid away and she was an anonymous voice, handwriting on a letter, until they arrived at her festive door again; for three or four years this pattern had continued, after the first frenzy of her husband’s death. Ruth’s younger son, Phillip, was different: he would spend two or three hours on the phone and was capable of making her laugh so hard she snorted. But he called only once every few weeks. He saved all the details of his merry, busy life (he taught English in Hong Kong, had boys of his own, was divorced and remarried, liked windsurfing); he poured them out over her, then vanished for another month.

Jeffrey ended this call with such warmth that for the first time Ruth worried properly for herself. The tenderness was irresistible. Ruth was a little afraid of her sons. She was afraid of being unmasked by their youthful authority. Good-looking families in which every member was vital, attractive, and socially skilled had made her nervous as a young woman, and now she was the mother of sons just like that. Their voices had a certain weight.

Ruth followed the phone cord back to the kitchen and found Frida sitting at the dining table drinking a glass of water and reading yesterday’s newspaper. She had removed her grey coat and it hung lifelessly, like something shredded, over the back of a chair. Underneath it she wore white trousers and a white blouse; not exactly a nurse’s uniform, but not unlike. A handbag, previously concealed by the coat, was slung across her body, and her discarded sandshoes lay by the door. Frida’s legs were stretched out beneath the table. She had hooked her bare toes onto the low rung of the opposite chair, and her arms were pressed down over the newspaper. She read the paper with a mobile frown on her broad face. Her eyebrows were plucked so thin they should have given her a look of permanent surprise; instead, they exaggerated each of her expressions with a perfect stroke. And her face was all expression: held still, it might have vanished into its own smooth surface.

“Listen to this,” she said. “A man in Canada, right? In a wheelchair. They cut off his electricity one night, it’s an accident, they get the wrong house, and he’s frozen stiff by morning. Dead from the cold.”

“Oh, dear,” said Ruth, smiling vaguely. She noted that Frida’s vowels were broad, but her
t
’s were crisp. “That’s terrible. You found the water all right?”

Frida looked up in surprise. “Just from the tap,” she said. “Who’d live in a place you could freeze overnight? I don’t mind heat, but I feel the cold. Though I reckon I’ve never been really, truly cold. You know”—she leaned back in her chair—“I’ve never even seen snow. Have you?”

“Yes. Twice, in England,” said Ruth. Her back trembled but she bent, nevertheless, to reach for a cat. She wasn’t sure what else to do. The cat evaded her and jumped into Frida’s lap. Frida didn’t look at the cat or remark on it, but she stroked it expertly with the knuckles of her right hand. She wasn’t wearing any rings.

“He’s nice, your son,” said Frida. “Got any more kids?”

“Just the two boys.”

“Flown the nest.” Frida folded the newspaper to frame the blurry face of the frozen Canadian and shook the cat off her lap.

“Long ago,” said Ruth. “They have kids of their own.”

“A grandmother!” cried Frida, with bloodless enthusiasm.

“So you see, I’m used to being alone.”

Frida lowered her head over the table and looked up at Ruth so that each brown eye seemed cradled in its respective brow. There was a new gravity to her; she seemed to have absorbed it from the room’s more important objects, from the newspaper and the table and the rungs of Ruth’s chair. “Don’t think of me as company, Mrs. Field,” Frida said. “I’m not a guest. I come for an hour every morning, same time every day, I do my job, and I’m out of your hair. No surprises. No strangers showing up any time of the day or night. I’m not a stranger, and I’m not a friend—I’m your right arm. I’m the help you’re giving yourself. This is you looking after you, this is you mattering. Does that make sense? I get it, Mrs. Field, I really do.”

“Oh,” said Ruth, who believed, at that moment, that Frida Young “got it”: that she understood—how could she understand?—the tiger’s visit, the smell in the hallway, Fiji of course, that strange, safe place, and the dream of consequence in the silly night.

But Frida broke the spell by standing up. Her bulk arranged itself quite beautifully around her; she suited her size. And her voice was cheerful now; it had lost its thrilling, tented quality. “Let’s leave it at that for today,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in. And I’ve left my bag outside.”

Ruth followed her into the garden. “Lovely day,” Frida said, although it was a flat, pale day, and the sea lay dull against the dull sand. Frida paid no attention to the view. She stepped down the dune towards the suitcase with her elbows folded in and her hands up near her shoulders, as if afraid of falling. She was more graceful in descent; her back had so much strength that it made Ruth’s ache. Having retrieved the case, Frida paused to check the state of her hair, which was dark and drawn into a no-nonsense knot at the back of her head. The suitcase was heavy and she chatted as she heaved it.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Field,” she said. A rim of sweat shone on her forehead. “We’ll talk duties tomorrow. I cook, clean, make sure you’re taking your meds, help with exercise. Bathing? You’ve got that covered for the time being, is my guess. Whatever’s hard on you now, I’m here for. You’ve got a bad back, am I right? I can see how careful you are with it. Gotta look out for your back. Here we go.” Frida hoisted the suitcase over the lip of the dune, swung it across the garden and into the house, and brought it to rest next to Ruth’s chair under the dining-room window.

“What’s in there?” asked Ruth.

“Only about three thousand kilos. I’ve got to get me one of these with wheels.” Frida kicked the suitcase at the same moment a car horn sounded from the front of the house, so that the suitcase appeared to have honked. “That’s my ride,” she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock suit you?” She seized her coat and hunted for her sandshoes until Ruth pointed out where they lay beside the door. The car horn came again; the cats jumped and flew in giddy circles around Frida’s feet. Frida didn’t bend to pet them; instead, she looked around the kitchen and dining room as if surveying the goodness of her creation, and walked with confidence down the hallway to the front door.

“You have a nice house,” she said. She opened the door. Ruth, following, saw the rectangle of light from outside, the shape of Frida in the light, and, dimly, the golden flank of a taxi.

“The suitcase?” Ruth asked.

“I’ll leave it, if that’s all right with you,” said Frida. “Bye now!” She was closing the door. By the time Ruth reached the lounge-room window, there was no Frida and no taxi. The grass stood high in the winter garden, and there was no sound besides the sea.

2

Ruth’s husband, Harry, used to walk, every day, to the nearby town to buy the newspaper. He undertook this exercise on the advice of his father, who retained a spry step well into his eighties and had the blood pressure of a much younger man. It was on this walk that Harry died, in the second year of his retirement. He proceeded from the front door of his house down a narrow lane (Ruth and Harry called this lane their drive), heading away from the sea. The sea disappeared; the air altered suddenly, became more dense, and smelled of insects rather than seaweed; the laneway was just wide enough for a car, and so Harry, a tall man, could stretch out his arms and touch the high grass and casuarinas on either side of the drive. Behind him was the house, the slope of the dune, the broad beach, and the beginning of the sun. This was six-thirty in the morning no matter the weather. He was in his stride by the time he reached the coastal road, which fell away down the sandy hill on which his own house stood. At the foot of this slope, a small bus stop waited in humble circumstances—a torn billboard, a splintered bench—and here Harry leaned against the black-and-yellow sign that read
STOP! BUS
and felt the strange movement of his active heart. Or so Ruth imagined. Harry sat on the bench with his back to the road. He wore a light blue down vest that was swollen in the back, just a little, as if designed to accommodate a minor hunch. From here he could observe the passage of seagulls over the estuary that separated the road from the beach. He had loved this beach since childhood.