The Night Guest Read Free Page B

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