She hadn’t finished with the broom; she used it to fish under the bed, and with it she caught two boxes. The first looked official: it contained bank statements in orderly manila files. The names on these files were unfamiliar, except for one: Shelley, the name of Frida’s dead sister. Shelley’s surname wasn’t Young, so she must have been married, and the thought of Frida at a wedding—as a bridesmaid—made Ruth feel a little guilty. So she pushed the box under the bed with one foot.
The second box was old, shoe-sized, and made of a dull, thick cardboard. Ruth, bending to pick it up, felt her back seize and burn, as if a wheel under her ribs were turning a long, hot cord up her spine. Nausea welled in her throat, her mouth filled with spit, and she threw up onto Frida’s bed: a dryish welt which looked like something the cats might produce and made her laugh, but sheepishly. Before leaving the room with the box under her arm, Ruth made one last valiant plunge to the floor for a handful of pills. Most of them were the blue ones she took for her back, and she swallowed a couple down, waterless. The rest she pushed deep into the pockets of her dress.
Ruth opened the box out at the dining table. It was full of rocks and bottles of sand; small sections of glass and rock gleamed from the greasy dust. Each object was tied with twine and identified by a small shipping label. One rock was marked Coral, various. Another: Brimstone fr. Volcano, 4000 ft. Another: Shell of the Cowrie type. She looked more closely at this rock, wiping at it with her fingers, and a patterned shell did emerge. Ruth recognized its glossy freckles. She knew these things, and this box—she looked again at the lid and remembered the image on it, an advertisement for boot polish; she cried out and her hands trembled in the air. This box had belonged to her father.
Now Ruth went under the sink for cloths and cleaners. Her back throbbed and stung, but she ignored it; she pictured the tiny blue pills dropping down her long, dry throat into her waiting stomach. She removed every object from the box, one by one, and knew all of them. Small explosions flared in her brain; she felt them in specific places, and she could visualize them, too, as if watching a map on the evening news that identified the locations of burgeoning bushfires. Her kindling mind; the good pleasure of cleaning; every moment of discovery: all this was thrilling, was so deeply satisfying that Ruth found herself tapping her foot the way she would to music. She set to cleaning every item with a singleness of purpose she recognized as belonging to an earlier part of her life; she felt her attention as something laserlike and constant, which she could turn with great pleasure onto any item in the box and watch it emerge, minutes later, from its own ruin. Each item required specific care. The coral clung to its dust; when Ruth tried to scrub it, it disintegrated in her hands. She breathed on it gently instead, and pinched the fibrous dirt between her fingernails—how long they were, she noticed, and still sturdy, just as they’d been when she was a girl. She fetched a toothbrush to clean with, and a jar of water. Shells shone out of their grime, and Ruth listened at each one to hear the irretrievable sea. There it was—and gone—and there. She recognized the distant roar of her own blood.
In the bottom of the box, dust and bits of rock and broken shell all mingled in a filthy glitter. Ruth nudged the wastepaper basket down the hall from Harry’s study to the dining room. She loaded it up with dirty cloths and papers and shook the box out over it. Then she replaced the lid, from which a dark, happy shoeshining boy smiled up with oversized teeth. She lay the box down next to her chair.
“Now look,” said Ruth, to nobody; to herself. She had forgotten Frida, and even the cats.
Everything was clean. Everything was laid out on the table, orderly and labelled; nothing touched anything else. Small bottles of brown and blue glass looked as if they’d been fished, moments before, from the sea. Inside each one, mysterious substances settled and slept. The shells were now pink and purple again, flesh-coloured, immodest. They nestled into themselves like ears.
Ruth wanted to share all this with someone. It should, she thought, have been Harry; she called Richard’s number. It rang four times and then clicked and popped; there was Richard’s voice, but with a mechanical buzz to it, as if he were still a smoker. I can’t come to the phone right now, he said, and his was an old man’s voice, an ending.
“Richard?” she said. “It’s Ruth.”
The line exploded with sound—there was that same young woman’s voice saying “Hello? Ruth?” and Ruth was sure she heard laughter in the background, and one laugh in particular: she rarely heard it, but when she did, it was a golden, bouncing swell, a brass ring, and unmistakable. It was—Ruth was quite sure—Frida. What could Frida be doing at Richard’s house? And in fright she hung up the telephone. It rang again, naturally; Ruth lost track of the number of times. She sat in her chair and watched a strange yellow haze pass over her eyes, as if a cloud, in crossing the sun, had been half burnt away by its light. Bright circles formed in this fog, and they pulsed in time with the ringing of the telephone. Ruth watched them even with her eyes closed; they seemed to stick to her eyelids, so she took another pill to make them go away. The phone stopped, finally, and she might have been asleep; her sleep was dusty and angular, punctuated by swimming light. Somewhere in it, she saw the sea running up and over the dune, muddying the carpets and rising and rising, until strange shelled animals clung to the lower walls and fronds that were either worms or the homes of worms beckoned from the skirting boards. Then there was nothing but wreckage and ruin. She saw herself and Frida floating on a raft fashioned from the back door. Frida used the broom as a pole and punted them, like a Venetian gondolier, towards the triumphant pennants of the surf club.
This vague sleep broke when Frida returned; Ruth heard her coming through the front door, and she noticed the end of the day’s light hanging reflected in the east.
“Ruthie?” Frida called, and she bustled into the dining room in a tremendous mood, unwrapping the green scarf from her hair. She looked browner than she had when she left, and her hair seemed a different shade of flattering bronze.
“What a day!” she sang.
She gave a girlish laugh and claimed to have gained two pounds, and she patted Ruth’s arm as she passed by on her way to the kitchen. It was as if she’d been away for three weeks. In her arms, she carried a load of pink lilies wrapped in Christmas paper. She dumped them on the countertop before fishing in the fridge for her yoghurt, which she ate straight from the container while leaning against the wall and explaining that George had taken her to a beach far away, “so I could sun myself like a frog on a log.” On some days Frida was furious with George; on other days he was inviolate. This was one of those saintly days. “It’s so necessary to be with family,” said Frida, her spoon dripping with yoghurt. “You know I’m crazy about you, Ruthie, but it’s not the same thing. And time away gives you a chance to think about what you want from life. Believe me, you’ll see some changes.”
“Those are beautiful lilies,” said Ruth. “Where are they from?”
“Mum’s house. What’s all this junk?”
“It’s my father’s. It isn’t junk.”
“Are they antiques?” Frida butted the table with one curious hip; a blue bottle began to roll. Ruth caught it with the tips of her fingers. Her head felt a little clearer now, but everything she saw was strangely luminous.
“I suppose they’re old. They’ve survived war and shipwreck, these things. Well, not shipwreck. But they did survive. Even just the sea they survived—the shells.”
“Are they worth anything?”
“Oh, now, Frida—goodness!” Ruth gave a miniature laugh. The lilies burned on the countertop; it was easier not to look at them. “I doubt any of it’s worth anything. Just personal value.”
“But you could take it to someone, couldn’t you, and find out? George’ll know. He knows about this stuff.”
“I wouldn’t sell my father’s things.”
Frida prodded a glittering rock. “This looks valuable. It looks like silver.”
“It�
�s only mica,” said Ruth. “Look at the label. Your mother grew lilies?”
“And then there’s the insurance. Think of that! What if the house burned down—this stuff might be worth millions.”
Frida touched the curve of a shell with her finger and watched it vibrate against the table.
“That’s pretty,” said Ruth. “Shell music.”
Frida touched another. It was a spotted shell, but she wasn’t really looking at it; something else had occurred to her. “Ruthie,” she said, “where did you find all this?”
“There used to be other shells, too—big ones. What do you call those big ones? Starts with a c? Not conches. Cowries.”
“Cowries aren’t that big.”
“We had some big ones with island scenes etched in. They must be around somewhere.”
Frida bent to the floor; the action seemed so effortless, so well-oiled. When she stood again, she had the box in her hand; she rubbed its sides with her big thumbs and looked into its empty corners. The expression on her face was one of recognition, as if she, too, remembered the box from childhood.
“That’s my father’s,” said Ruth. “It’s mine.”
Frida didn’t speak. She held the box to her chin to inspect it further; then she turned into the hallway, towards her room, and Ruth began to recall what she would find there.
“You locked me in!” Ruth called. She rose from her chair and hurried to the lilies—it was easy, when she had taken multiple pills, to rise and hurry. The lilies were still damp. Ruth tore the wrapping paper away in order to be closer to them. Each petal was flooded with pink, but the centres paled out to blond, and the stamens, which shook as Ruth held them to her face, were loaded with dusty yellow. Frida bellowed from her room; Ruth fenced herself in with lilies. They smelled both clean and definite. They smelled of a saltless garden.
Frida was quiet coming back down the hallway. Still holding the box, she stepped into the kitchen as if walking out onto a rickety jetty. Her shoulders were drawn back and her chest was full of air, as if she were about to recite the days of the week; but she didn’t. She didn’t even shout. She looked at Ruth among her flowers and said, “Those aren’t yours.”
Ruth held tighter to the lilies. “They’re from Richard,” she said.
“Poor dear crazy. Give them here.”
“I’m not crazy.”
“Confused, then. As usual, poor Ruthie’s just a bit confused.”
“No,” said Ruth, but she recognized the word confused as approaching what she was, after her sticky, bright dream.
“All right,” said Frida. “Let’s see. How old are you?”
“Seventy-five.”
“What colour are my eyes?”
“Brown.”
“And what’s the capital of Fiji?”
“Suva.”
“No it isn’t.”
“It is,” said Ruth. “I lived there. I should know.”
“You don’t know,” said Frida. “You only think you do. That’s what I’m talking about—confused! Now that’s cleared up, maybe you can tell me what you were doing in my room.”
“It’s my room. My lilies.”
“Give them to me. I’ll put them in some water.”
“No.”
Frida came no closer to Ruth. She held her arm out with the box at the end of it, as if it might be the perfect receptacle for flowers; then she turned and threw it into the wastepaper basket that sat beside Ruth’s chair.
Ruth winced. “I know you were at Richard’s house. Why? Why was my box under your bed?”
“What were you doing looking under my bed?”
“You locked me in.”
“I didn’t lock anybody in!” Frida cried. She was in the kitchen now, tearing at the wrapping paper, which was wet from the lilies and stuck to her angry fingers. She shook it off into the wastepaper bin. “I closed the door so you wouldn’t go wandering out there with all the traps in the grass. The bloody doors weren’t locked.”
But Ruth had tried the doors. She had tried them. “What do you want?” she asked, because it occurred to her that Frida wanted something from her—was always wanting, wanting, without ever quite admitting it.
“I want you to apologize for trashing my room,” said Frida. “For wrecking my stuff and for disrespecting my privacy. I want you to give me those lilies, and I want you to admit Suva isn’t the capital of Fiji.”
Ruth shook her head.
“All right then,” Frida said, and, her face expressionless, used her forearm to sweep the objects across the dining table. They clattered over the surface, catching and dragging, and the bottles tipped and rolled to the left and right, but they were all carried by Frida’s arm to the table’s edge, and then they fell into the wastepaper bin. None of the glass shattered; everything fell neatly and quietly, almost as if the objects were taking up their original places, snug in the bin as they had been in the box. It was like a magic trick. Then Frida lifted the bin and held it on her hip like an awkward baby; she opened the door with one quick hand and, still matronly, marched into the garden.
Ruth couldn’t understand how the door had opened; but she was safe behind her lilies. She followed and watched as Frida shook the contents of the bin out over the edge of the dune. Some of the shells and coral bounced a little before rolling, and all the grit and dust swarmed up in a grubby cloud before puffing away, abruptly, as if with a specific destination in mind. The box flew from the bin and caught a little in the coastal wind; it only subsided among the grasses after a short, desperate flight. Then Frida threw her arms out, so that the wastepaper basket swung high into the low sun and spun onto the beach.
Ruth stood beside Frida at the crest of the dune. The lilies were growing heavier in her arms. Down the slope, the coral and shells were beginning their primordial crawl back to the sea.
“Those things belong to my family,” Ruth said.
“A little life lesson for you, Ruthie,” said Frida. “Don’t get attached to things.”
Ruth began to test out the slope of the dune with one foot. Frida was grinning into the salt of the wind. There was a tremendous well-being about her, and she lifted her face to the sky as if feeling the sun for the first time in months. Frida often gave off an impression of posthibernation. She was a great brown bear, a slumbering hazard, both dozy and vigilant. And Ruth was used to her slow surety of movement; but now she had woken up.
“You’re an awful woman,” said Ruth, and Frida gave a gnomic titter. The chalky sand rubbed at Ruth’s bare feet. “A savage woman.” Frida laughed harder, with that same round gong Ruth had heard on the telephone. Ruth pointed down the dune with her lilies. “I want everything back.”
Frida dusted her hands and emitted the sigh she often did immediately before standing up. “Two things,” she said. “First of all, apologize. Second, tell me Suva isn’t the capital of Fiji. Then I’ll pick it all up for you. Otherwise, you can do it yourself.”
Ruth began to descend. She still clung to the lilies. This was the very worst request to make of her back: to walk down a steep slope with her arms full. She bent into the dune and it fell away beneath her; she kicked up whirlwinds of sand.
Frida watched from above. “Mind your step,” she said.
Ruth moved forward and the grass collapsed; she felt her feet slide, and then she was lying on the ground with the lilies scattered over and around her. She wriggled them off. She didn’t think she was hurt; it didn’t even feel like a fall. It was as if the dune had scooped her up, and she was caught in a shallow, sandy bowl.
“Oh, Ruthie,” said Frida from above.
“What is it?” asked Ruth from among the grasses, but she knew she had fallen into the tiger trap. It had filled considerably in the hours since its construction; now it cradled Ruth. It was fragrant with lilies. She closed her eyes and opened them again, and the world bumped up against her and tilted away. She was lying on her side. Ants moved among the sand, over and under each grain, and all of this was too
close to Ruth’s nose. Above her she saw the very edge of the lawn, or what remained of it. It was a frayed rug of green. It was the only kind of civilized grass that consented to grow here—a tough, shiny species with strenuous roots. Harry never liked it; it wasn’t soft enough, he said, and it contrasted too much with the sand. Ruth was able to roll onto her back, and then the sky appeared, a dark, blank blue. She felt a dizzy sting behind her eyes.
“Any bones broken?” called Frida.
Ruth looked to every bone for information, and each reassured her. But her back was burning. She felt around in the sand for some kind of handhold and found a small mineral lump with string still attached. A flurry of sand from above suggested Frida might be coming down the dune.
“Don’t!” Ruth cried.
“Please yourself.” Frida sighed again, and the sound was both resigned and happy. The sand settled. “You know, this is exactly what I said to Jeff. I said to him, it just isn’t safe to have an old girl like your mother living in this kind of environment. She walks in the garden, and what do you know, she slips and falls. I’ve seen a fall do someone in—never the same again. And that’s why I’m here twenty-four hours a day.” The sea sounded close, and something tickled in Ruth’s ear. “But does Jeff ever thank me? Does he ever ring me up and say, ‘Frida, you’re the ant’s pants’?”
Some sand scattered across Ruth’s forehead. She wasn’t sure if the wind was at fault, or Frida. She tried to sit up and found that she couldn’t. “I can’t get up,” she said, but not to Frida; to herself.
“Not with that attitude, you can’t.”
“I really can’t,” said Ruth, still to herself. She would have liked to see one cloud in the sky. That would have been fluffy and merry and in some way comforting. If I see a cloud, she thought, it means I’ll get up again. It means I haven’t fallen.
The Night Guest Page 15