Part 5 (1/2)

”To whom?” asked Ruth, and Richard had to turn and ask her to repeat herself.

”Her name is Kyoko,” he said, which sounded to Ruth like Coco, and she pictured a bright blond girl with the kind of brilliant, beautiful face that produces its own light (Ruth's own face only reflected light, like the moon), and she was more surprised-at first-that Richard could love a girl called Coco than she was by the fact that Richard loved anyone at all. There was a strong gagging pulse in her throat.

”Congratulations,” she said, with a stiff smile; she didn't trust herself to ask questions. They were surrounded now by the schoolgirls, waving landwards with their paddles; Ruth felt much older than all of them.

The wind was making Richard's nose run. ”I met Kyoko in j.a.pan,” he said. ”She's a widow. She's j.a.panese.”

”That's nice,” said Ruth, tight-lipped but dignified, she thought, which mattered most. She thought.

”She's j.a.panese,” he said. ”Which is why I didn't talk about it. I wasn't sure-well-what you'd think. All of you.”

Ruth pretended not to have heard him. She shook against the railing but had no intention of crying. The main thing was to extricate herself without revealing the extent of her agony.

Now Richard turned to look at her-to properly look. He cleared his throat and squinted. ”I'm sorry,” he said.

”Oh, whatever for?” cried Ruth, smiling too much and taking a step away from him because she thought he was going to touch her arm. ”Maybe I should go and-” She couldn't think what she should go and do; she had told him a number of times how much she was looking forward to the pa.s.sage through the Harbour.

”She's going to meet the boat,” said Richard. ”I'd like to introduce you.”

So he and Kyoko had exchanged letters with plans and arrangements: I'll be on this boat, I can't wait to see you, there'll be a child with me, a silly girl who hates opera, I'm afraid you'll have to meet her. Ruth saw the soft, admiring faces of all those girls to whom she had boasted about sailing to Sydney with Richard Porter. At that moment, those faces seemed worse than Richard's. The green and grey city tilted at the end of the boat.

”That would be lovely,” lied Ruth.

She felt like stepping off the boat and walking back to Suva across the bottom of the sea. But she planned to be kind and unshakeable, an emissary from her parents, a testament to the marvellous work Richard had done among the Indian women of Fiji; she wouldn't have him think she disapproved of his marrying a j.a.panese widow, or that she cared about his kissing her at the ball when all the time he was engaged. Perhaps it might be possible, however, in the crowded rush to leave the boat, to meet her fl.u.s.tered uncle and collect her luggage, surely it might be possible to lose Richard, to look only halfheartedly for him-where could he have got to?-and not to meet Kyoko after all. And that turned out to be true. Richard was almost too easy to lose, as if he dreaded the meeting himself. Ruth stumbled among her luggage and in the arms of her sentimental aunt, and she was almost sure she didn't see Kyoko. There was a dark-haired woman waiting in a yellow dress, but she didn't look definitely j.a.panese. Ruth went home with her relatives to a street lined with heavy mauve jacarandas, to a borrowed bedroom warming in the mild sun, and cried into a pillow that smelled of someone else's hair.

That was a painful hour, and in the midst of it she was self-possessed enough to hope it had taught her humility. Really, her heart had been broken in the most inconspicuous way. She had never risked it (she knew this later and had moments of regret). That no one knew she was suffering was both her triumph and, in part, the cause of her torment. After a terrible week or two, it was a very governed torment. In some ways, she pa.s.sed with relief from the shadow of Richard's opinions, his disapproval and his industry. She was never quite sure how he had made her a less interesting person. Was it nerves? Or did he bore her? She attended his wedding four months later with a tight heart. His imminent wife had dark hair arranged around an oblong forehead. How would it feel to walk down the aisle towards his opening face? She refused all his attempts to see her, citing busyness; and she was busy, working as a secretary for her parents' missionary society, moving into a flat with some other girls, making resolutions to be like them, to wear the shoes they did and read their magazines, to be just like every other girl in wide, clean, temperate Sydney. She suspected, at times, that Richard would disapprove, and so she made an effort to think about him less, until eventually it was no effort at all. Ruth used to overhear her mother counseling the brokenhearted nurses. ”There are plenty of fish in the sea,” she would say, and from her biblical mouth it sounded like wisdom literature. Now Ruth said fondly to herself, ”There are bigger fish in the sea than me.”

For six months she wore the right shoes and read the right magazines and went out with the right men. Then she met Harry during a work event at which she was guardian of the sandwiches. He had come with his parents, who were missionaries in the Solomons. He seemed to have a great appet.i.te for sandwiches; he ate at least four before asking if he could see her again. And he was kind, and handsome, and effortless. It was as if they had both been raised in the same country-Missionary Childhood-and were now finding their way together in the real world. Harry liked to say, ”Isn't it amazing how normal we are?”-which prompted a happy spasm in Ruth's grateful heart. She liked to be rea.s.sured. They kissed and courted, and Richard receded; they married, and Richard wasn't invited. Although their parents were missionaries, religion was, for both of them, a private matter; in comparison to their parents' difficult, foreign faith and the vigour with which they had pursued it, their own attempts seemed feeble and best concealed. They fell, together, out of the habit of belief. They liked the same furniture and paintings, the same music, and the same food, and this made for the easeful establishment of their household. When Ruth recalled this early period of her marriage-and she often did-the impression was of an existing happiness that had only been waiting for them to enter into it.

Frida rocked back onto her heels. ”There,” she said, with the same beatific look on her face as when she finished cleaning the floors. She lifted Ruth's feet from the basin and dried them with a thorough towel, and then she rubbed in moisturizer. Her hands were slick and strong. Ruth rested her head against the recliner. She closed her eyes. Frida hummed as she rubbed, and there was only safety in the world, and Richard coming tomorrow, in the best of health for eighty.

8.

Ruth, stepping into the garden on the morning of Richard's arrival, was reminded of spring, as if spring were a season that took place distinctly in her part of the world. The air was sweet and dry and green. The house was clean, the cupboards were full of food, and a vase of wattle blossoms stood on the dining-room table. Frida had cut them from a tree at her mother's house; they emitted their own subtle light. Richard was due that evening.

The only flaw in all this beauty was the discovery of a sticky presence on one of the lounge cus.h.i.+ons: cat-deposited, which inspired Frida to a brief rant about the cats' gastrointestinal hold over the house (she was convinced their messes were deliberate attacks on her own person). But after all, that was easily solved: Frida sponged the cus.h.i.+on, turned it over, and seemed to forget it had ever happened. She was in an exceptional mood. She was busy and in control without being domineering; she asked Ruth's opinion on everything, fluffed cus.h.i.+ons and her currently curly hair, and fussed over Jeffrey's room, where Richard would sleep. She and Ruth made the bed together, using the best, slightly yellowed linen sheets-Frida had ironed them, and spread out and tucked in, they reminded Ruth of well-b.u.t.tered bread. The entire house waited expectantly, as if the food and ironed sheets and clean windows were secrets it would be compelled to reveal by delightful means. Frida spent the afternoon cooking, so Ruth swept the garden path clean of sand. She was proud of the smooth sun over her hair and shoulders, the familiar arc of the sea, and the beauty of her house on the hilltop. Her back hurt; she thought about taking an extra pill, but chose not to; she worried the pills made her foggy at times, and she wanted clarity this weekend. She changed into a blue skirt she could belt at her becoming waist and settled to wait in her chair. Waiting was difficult under these circ.u.mstances. The sense that something important was going to happen rose in Ruth's chest as if a wind were blowing there.

Richard knocked at the door rather than ringing the bell. Because Ruth didn't hear him knock, it was a moment before she realized that Frida's bustle to the front hallway was in response to his arrival. By the time Ruth reached the front of the house, Frida had taken his bag and coat, and the sound of a car in the lane was George's taxi driving away. Ruth stepped from the door into the front garden, where Richard waited for her. He was older, yes, and he wore gla.s.ses, but he was still discernibly Richard, and her heart quickened just as it had when she'd watched him run in from a Fijian rainstorm, except that she was not nervous, or frightened, and she intended to be bold. He held his hands out to hers, and she took them. They kissed on the cheek as if they had always greeted each other this way, and as Frida pa.s.sed through the door with his luggage, Richard took Ruth's arm to lead her into the house. They spoke together softly and with great happiness: it's so wonderful to see you, it's so good to be here, my goodness, you look marvellous, so do you, just like yesterday, I can't believe it.

”This is exactly how I imagined you to live,” said Richard. He stood without effort in the lounge room of Ruth's house, and Ruth surveyed with him the paintings of pale cattled hillsides, the antique masi framed above the fireplace, and the photographs of her children and grandchildren smiling out from among green gla.s.sware. She saw evidence of comfort, happiness, and a well-lived life. Richard seemed so inevitable in that room, so welcome, that she hugged him again, and he laughed at her; they laughed together and sat holding hands on the lounge. Frida was making noises in the kitchen.

”Let me look at you properly,” said Richard, and instead of hiding her face in her arm, as she might once have done, Ruth looked back; she held her breath and lengthened her neck while she did it.

His hair had thinned and whitened, but he still had a great deal of it, and perhaps for this reason he'd let it grow longish, so that it stood out from his head in an ectoplasmic cloud. His forehead was high, just as she remembered, and she felt relieved for him that his hairline had barely receded. They'd been young together, and now they were old; because there was nothing in between, this strange telescoping of time gripped Ruth's heart like vertigo. She was touched again by the flattening of his nostrils where they met his cheek, the particular tuck of his smallish chin, and the familiar way he smoothed his trousers out with the palms of his hands. It all reminded her of the night he'd criticized her father for was.h.i.+ng feet.

”Do you smoke still?” she asked.

”Not for years.”

”Good,” she said, mindful of his lungs, but she was also disappointed. She wanted to see him smoke again; she had a pretty idea that young Richard would rise up out of those specific gestures-the lift of his wrist and the tap of the ash-and declare himself. Then she remembered his wife had died of lung cancer, and was mortified; she recalled giving Harry this news, and Harry's responding by talking about the low incidence of lung cancer among j.a.panese smokers, so that Kyoko Porter's death seemed doubly unlucky, a terrible consequence of having left j.a.pan. Ruth sat, immobilized, while Richard told her about his journey: the traffic in Sydney, the train delayed. Perhaps he and Jeffrey would get on after all. She began to worry that he should never have come.

”Dinner is served,” announced Frida, and Richard stood; Ruth saw his hand go without thinking to b.u.t.ton a jacket he hadn't worn for decades.

”Oh, Richard, this is Frida, my dear Frida,” said Ruth. She was gus.h.i.+ng, but she pulled herself together. ”Frida Young, Richard Porter.”

Richard extended his hand to Frida, who took it with a solemnity Ruth had become accustomed to; she saw Richard's surprise at it. The two of them, shaking hands, seemed to be agreeing to a matter of national importance on which Frida had forced Richard to compromise. Ruth noticed how trim he still was as he held out his hand and was relieved by the size of her own waist, if not by the plump stomach that swelled underneath it. Richard offered her his arm, and she took it, and they walked that way to the dining table.

During dinner, Frida moved between the kitchen and dining room with an efficient, soundless skill. Ruth asked her to join them, but she shook her head and hands in a gracious pantomime. No, her smile said, softer at the corners than Ruth had ever seen, I wouldn't dream of it. Perhaps she was one of these women who behaved differently around men. Had Ruth really never seen Frida with a man? She thought of Bob Fretweed, who seemed too perfunctory to really count as a man; she thought of Frida bending into the taxi window to laugh with George. But George was her brother. Frida dished up beans and poured gravy and retreated to the kitchen, where she hummed as she went about cleaning counters that were already clean. Ruth disapproved of this pointless industry. A triple-cleaned house, in her opinion, looked too much as if it had been licked all over by a cat's antiseptic tongue.

Ruth found it strange to eat a meal with Richard, in a dining room, without her parents present. Because she was determined not to start out with reminiscences-she was afraid of seeming sloppy and sentimental-she was worried there would be nothing to say. Fortunately there were children to discuss. They both seemed to have raised rea.s.suringly ordinary children; there were no drastic prodigies among them. His eldest daughter was a doctor.

”Sometimes she reminds me of you,” said Richard. ”She's so stubborn, in the best way. I always thought you'd make a good doctor.”

Frida was clearing the plates now, and Richard leaned over the empty table to touch Ruth's hand. His skin hadn't spotted with age, as hers had; it was a clear, folded brown. From behind him, Frida raised inquisitive eyebrows. She shook her head as she went to the kitchen, as if tut-tutting the flagrant ways of the very young.

”What made you think I'd be a good doctor?” asked Ruth.

”I watched you help in the clinic. But it's not just that. You have the right sort of mind: so clear and kind.”

”Not clear anymore.” Ruth shook her head as if to settle a cloudy liquid.

Richard laughed. He said, ”I feel sometimes as if every part of me is different to what it was then. I feel unrecognizable.”

”Oh, no,” said Ruth. ”You're just the same.”

”Really? That's good to know.” He still held her hand, which Ruth found both delightful and embarra.s.sing. She wanted to point out that actually, as a young man, he had never touched her so readily as this. He needed something else from her now, or was more willing to demonstrate that need, or was softer and more sentimental. But he was still Richard. Ruth suggested they move to the lounge room; Richard sat beside her on the couch. Her leg touched his, so she s.h.i.+fted it. It was silly to be shy; she was annoyed at herself, but couldn't seem to help it. She asked questions about Sydney, and he asked questions about her house, and he didn't touch her again.

Frida came in to say good-night. She stood by the lounge-room door, demure in her grey coat, and Ruth went to her and put a hand against her cheek.

”Thank you for everything, my dear,” Ruth said, and Frida nodded. She seemed bashful. Then she moved out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

”You're very lucky to have found her,” said Richard.

”It was more the other way around,” said Ruth. ”She found me.”

”Tell me,” said Richard.

Ruth found she didn't want to. She disliked remembering the day of Frida's arrival, without being sure why. ”Oh, you know, the government sent her. Isn't it marvellous? She just showed up. She's basically heaven-sent.”

”A deus ex machina.”

”Yes, yes.” Ruth was annoyed by the flourish with which Richard produced this phrase; a phrase he had once taught her. ”But really, she just came from Fiji.”

”From Fiji? What an amazing coincidence. What was she doing there?”

”She's from Fiji,” said Ruth. ”She's Fijian.”