Part 6 (1/2)
”How long did you live here together?”
”Just over a year,” said Ruth. Really, it was such a little time. ”I always planned to be one of those old women who kept very busy. You know-involved in things, taking cla.s.ses, cooking elaborate dinners, visiting friends. And I was, in Sydney. I was working-well, work isn't the right word-I was helping at a centre for refugees. I taught elocution, did you know? I still had private students, and I taught p.r.o.nunciation cla.s.ses at the centre. Then we came out here, because Harry was set on it. He retired so late, which I always knew he would, and what he wanted was to rest by the sea. He'd say, 'I'm ready to put my feet up, Ruthie.' But of course when we got here, Harry spent all day gardening and walking for hours every morning and fixing things up in the house, and we would drive to this lighthouse or that historic gaol, and the boys came at Christmas and we visited the city. He could just generate busyness for himself. But I'm not like that. Especially not without him. I came out here and just sort of-stopped.”
”That seems a shame,” said Richard. Ruth felt, for a minute, as if he had called her a bad book or a bad play, but he was no longer that man; he was tired, she thought, and it had loosened him. He had been tired by the difficulty of having to be something.
”I don't know,” said Ruth. ”Everyone expected me to go back to Sydney after he died. I mourned so beautifully in every other way, they expected me to be rational about that. Or they thought I should move to be near one of my boys, or that the boys should move back home. But Phil is completely tied up in Hong Kong, and Jeffrey's father-in-law is very ill in New Zealand, and I wouldn't let them. And I turned out to be the one who wanted to rest by the sea.”
The rain stopped in the afternoon. Ruth and Richard stood out on the dune with binoculars, looking for whales. Ruth was in suspense. If we see a whale, she decided, then nothing will happen between us. If we see two, then everything will happen. She was unsure what she meant by everything. There were no whales.
Frida had roasted a pork loin and sweet potatoes for dinner. She set it all out on the table and refused to eat, no matter how Ruth and Richard pleaded.
”No! No!” Frida insisted, and laughed as if she were being tickled; she sounded pained and unwilling.
”Then at least leave the dishes,” said Ruth. ”We can sort those out ourselves.”
Frida objected and then acquiesced. Ruth noticed that Frida had trouble looking at Richard. Whenever he spoke to her, she looked to the left of his face and patted her neat hair. She took her coat from the hook in the kitchen, mumbled, ”Bon appet.i.t,” and went down the hall. The front door opened and closed.
Now Ruth was ready for something to happen. She kept her hopes vague. Richard was in the best of health. He ate with good appet.i.te and laughed a great deal while telling her about the one and only time his daughter took him to a yoga cla.s.s. He promised to cook her a j.a.panese meal. It grew dark on the dune, and Ruth drew the lounge-room curtains while Richard closed the seaward shutters. Neither of them made any attempt to clear the table of dishes. They moved into the lounge room, where Ruth regretted her decision to sit in an armchair and not next to him on the couch. Her nineteen-year-old self would have made the same mistake.
”I was thinking the other day about that ball we went to for the Queen,” she said.
”So was I,” said Richard. He sat on the end of the couch closest to her, and his hands were clenched and unnaturally still on his knees. That's how he quit smoking, thought Ruth, by forcing himself to keep his hands still. That's how he would do it.
”I still have my menu somewhere. I saved it,” she said, although, now that she mentioned it, she was certain Frida had made her dispose of everything of that kind in the spring cleaning of her early employment.
”What were you thinking, about the ball?” asked Richard.
”I was thinking about you kissing me, of course. How much I liked it.”
”Why were we even there? Why was I even invited?”
”All kinds of people were invited. I remember someone getting upset about it-about your being invited, and my parents left out. Do you think they minded? I thought they probably didn't care.”
”And I whisked off their daughter and kissed her.” Richard laughed at himself. ”I thought I was so old and wise, and you were so young. I was very ashamed of myself.”
”So you should have been. With your secret fiancee and everything.”
”You're teasing me,” said Richard. ”And I think I was drinking. Was I drinking?”
”Everyone was drinking,” said Ruth. ”I never saw a group of people so willing to toast the Queen.” Ruth felt herself lit with the pleasure of laughing with him. It was so good to flirt; it made her think that flirting should never be entrusted to the very young. ”And listen-I told you a moment ago how much I liked you kissing me, and you didn't even say thank you.”
”What I should have said was how much I liked kissing you.” Richard bowed his head at her, courtly. It was ridiculous! And wonderful. Richard in his twenties would never have talked like this. When had he become so much less serious? Even their kiss at the ball had been serious. What we should have done, thought Ruth, was sleep together on the boat back to Sydney and then been done with it, since it would have been a mistake to marry his bad books and good plays. But this, now, was delightful.
”What made you do it?” Ruth asked.
”You were so lovely, of course. Like a milkmaid, remember? And I was thinking-well, I was drinking, but also I was thinking how sweet and straightforward it would have been to love you. You even looked like a bride, in your white dress.”
”It was pale blue,” said Ruth. ”And why straightforward?”
”Less complicated,” said Richard. He moved his hands; this movement was the first evidence of any nervousness. ”It's all so long ago, it's hard to imagine. Kyoko's family disowned her, and the first house we lived in together, well-the neighbours got together and put Australian flags in their windows and refused to speak to us. We expected it, but nothing prepares you. If I'd married someone like you, they would have come to us with cakes and babies.”
”So it wasn't me in particular,” said Ruth. He'd kissed her to see how it felt to be simple and safe; why hadn't she thought of that?
”It was n.o.body else but you,” he said. The room was quiet. ”I really was ashamed of myself.”
”I was heartbroken,” said Ruth. When she saw his genuine surprise, she smiled and cried, ”Let's have a drink! To toast our reunion. There's still some of Harry's Scotch.”
”All right,” said Richard.
”It's good Scotch.”
”Lawyers always have excellent Scotch.”
”Now where”-Ruth stood up with a small frown and moved towards the liquor cabinet-”has Frida put the tumblers? She's always moving things around.”
”You seem to manage very well out here,” said Richard.
Ruth was proud to hear this. She poured the drinks and sat down next to him on the couch. Proceedings had a promising air. The Scotch tasted shuttered and old, but golden.
”You seem very sufficient to me,” said Richard.
”Self-sufficient?”
”I think you and Frida together are a sufficiency. You're like a little world, a little round globe.”
”That sounds claustrophobic, actually.” Ruth added the cats to the population of this little world. They sat at Richard's feet without touching him. How still they were, how like artificial cats.
”I think it sounds wonderful. I like to think of her looking out for you at any given hour.”
”Not really at any given hour,” said Ruth. ”She goes home at night.”
”Really? I just a.s.sumed she lived in.”
”'Lived in'?” It's like we're discussing servants!”
”Isn't it,” said Richard, mildly.
”Believe me, Frida's no servant. She's usually only here on weekdays, just for the morning. She leaves after lunch and then her brother, the mythical George, brings her back in the morning in his golden taxi. Young Livery, he calls it. I think it makes him sound like a youthful alcoholic.”
”The driver who brought me here?”
”Yes, of course, you met George! What was he like?”
”He's Frida's brother? Well, he certainly looks Fijian. He seemed-I don't know, self-possessed. He didn't talk much. So Frida's just staying over while I'm here, is that it? She seems very settled.”
”She's not staying at all,” said Ruth. ”What gave you that idea?”
”Well, her bedroom.” Ruth lifted her head like a wary cat; Richard paused with his gla.s.s at his mouth, as if she could hear an alarm that he, deaf but alert, still listened for. He said, with apology, ”I just a.s.sumed it was her bedroom.”