Part 10 (1/2)
”What is it?” Ruth felt at that moment more curious than concerned, but she made herself lift her hands, in horror, to her mouth.
”He may have hurt me, but I scared the bejesus out of him.”
”Who?”
”Who do you think?” snapped Frida.
Ruth couldn't think. George? Richard? She gathered blankets into her hands.
”I don't know how he got in,” said Frida, ”but I sure as h.e.l.l know how he got out. I opened the door and he bolted right through. Knocked me a.r.s.e up on the sand, as a matter of fact, and I'm lucky I've still got all my parts. But he gave me a good swipe. A parting gift.”
Ruth sat up as best she could and looked at the curtained window. She half expected to hear three taps against it. Frida was crus.h.i.+ng Ruth's legs, and Ruth's heart pumped a strong, slow beat. ”There's no tiger,” she said.
”You think I clawed my own arm?”
”He's not real.”
”He's real, all right, but he's also gone, and he won't be back in a hurry. Scared him right off.”
”The cats?” Ruth asked in a small voice.
”Don't you want to know how I scared him off?” Frida propped herself up with her uninjured arm and made a terrible face at Ruth: she bared her teeth and gave out a noise somewhere between a growl and a hiss, and her face was so human that Ruth was frightened. ”He ran off with his tail between his legs. Ha! Some tiger.” Frida lay back on the bed and laughed, as if it were typical of Ruth to have been harbouring such a timid tiger. ”But”-Frida raised her wounded arm so that it waved above her like a cautionary stalk-”that doesn't mean the danger has pa.s.sed.”
”Let me see your arm,” said Ruth. She tried to s.h.i.+ft her legs. Frida was a set stone.
”Don't you worry about my arm. It's seen worse than a few fingernails, believe me. Stop wriggling!”
Ruth stopped. Frida, completely horizontal, shrank in on herself; her belly flattened, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her delicate ankles jutted out over the floor. Her hair looked black, as if she'd chosen this colour specifically for the advantage of nocturnal camouflage, and was pulled back into a jaunty ponytail. She shook her sandshoes off and fanned her toes like a peac.o.c.k's tail.
”You actually saw it?” asked Ruth, whose legs were beginning to fall asleep. She could feel her buzzing blood. Frida didn't answer. ”Frida?”
Frida smiled. She closed her eyes. ”Oh, Ruthie,” she sighed. ”What on earth would you do without me?”
Ruth had no idea.
12.
Frida spent the next morning building tiger traps around the house.
”I thought you scared him off,” said Ruth.
”Scared him off for now,” said Frida. ”Tigers can be patient. They know all about lying in wait.”
She invested most of the morning on the largest trap: a hole halfway down the dune, in the middle of the rough gra.s.sy path to the beach. When the hole was deep enough to satisfy her, she walked along the sh.o.r.e gathering fallen pine boughs and brought them back to fill it with. Her left forearm was bandaged to cover last night's tiger scratches, and she stretched it out to look at it from time to time, as if inspecting an engagement ring; otherwise, her arms seemed normal, capable, as she carried the branches with the sprightly bustle of a nesting bird.
”Don't walk there,” Frida said, pointing out the pit.
No tiger will fall for that, thought Ruth. Already the dune was subsiding into the hole. Ruth went inside and wrote her letter to Richard. It was only supposed to be a short note, designed to seem casual and pretty, in which she would suggest they start out by having her visit for a weekend, to see the lilies, at least. ”At least the lilies,” she wrote, noticing, as she did so, that her handwriting was not what it once was. It was quite inexpertly square now; Mrs. Mason would be disappointed.
George's taxi rolled up to the front of the house. Ruth watched from the lounge room as Frida chattered through his open window before hauling a bundle of barbed wire from the boot. George reversed the car expertly down the drive; only then did Ruth go outside.
”Did you say anything about the tiger?”
”What do you take me for, an idiot?” said Frida, but she wasn't angry. She was genially indignant, which was one of her best moods.
”Then what does he think all this is for?” Ruth asked, indicating the wire.
”I told him it was to stop erosion.” Frida smiled, as if the gulling of George was one of life's simple pleasures. She took the wire out onto the dune and wrestled with it in the gra.s.ses. Ruth worried about cats caught on hidden barbs, but Frida dismissed her fears.
”Look at them watching every move I make,” she said. ”They know what's going on.”
The cats did sit in watchful poses, very still, which they occasionally animated with the urgent bathing of a paw.
”So the tiger is biding its time, is that it?” Ruth asked.
Frida nodded. She wore thick gardening gloves-Harry's-and they seemed to require a strict rigidity in her arms and shoulders. Only her head could move freely.
”How will we know when the time is up?”
”We won't,” said Frida. ”He'll just show up.”
”Like a thief in the night.”
”Exactly,” said Frida. ”Therefore: traps. I'd love to rig up a whole video system, like I bet they have in zoos.” She explained to Ruth that surveillance was a hobby of George's; she looked philosophically out to sea. ”A cabbie can't be too careful, you realize. Poor Georgie.” Ruth felt a s.h.i.+ver of jealousy at this affectionate name. ”He's no green thumb when it comes to growing money.”
Frida was finished with her traps by early afternoon. The sky had clouded over.
”That's good,” said Ruth, looking out at the garden from the dining room. ”Clouds mean a warmer night.”
Frida shook her head. ”Tigers need shelter from the rain, just like the rest of us.”
The tiger was Frida's now; and not just this tiger, but the entire species. She was proud of him, and of her arm; the heroics of the night before seemed to give her precedence in all household matters. She took milk in her tea, which she drank in front of the mirror in Ruth's bedroom-she preferred the light in there, she said, for arranging her hair-and closed the door so that Ruth knew not to follow her. When Frida reemerged, she wore her grey coat and a green scarf over her hair; under the influence of the green, her hair verged on a dark, distinguished red.
”Chilly this arvo,” she said, tilting her head towards the back door, which was open and admitting a stiff wind. ”Let's close this, shall we?”
”The cats are still out,” said Ruth, who was a little cold herself; she was wearing a thin summer dress. She sat with her chair pulled up to the dining table, reading The Term of Her Natural Life. The letter to Richard lay at her elbow, snug in an envelope, addressed, and awaiting a stamp.
Frida smothered a cough. ”I have a weak chest.” Frida had a chest like the hull of a s.h.i.+p. She stood at the back door and called, without conviction, ”Here, kitty kitty.” Then something approximating a miaow.
”You'll scare them,” said Ruth.
”All this fuss over cats, for G.o.d's sake.” Frida began to gather things into her handbag. ”They're not sheep, are they-now sheep are dumb.” She swayed through the kitchen, gathering, gathering. She plucked the spare keys from the top of the fridge. ”And I have plans this afternoon. I am going O.U.T.” And on that final, plosive T, she pulled the door shut, flung its bolts home, and deadlocked it.
”I want it open,” said Ruth.
”I know you do, but I can't leave you here all alone with the door open and a tiger on the loose, can I?” said Frida. ”What's this? A letter for Prince Charming? Shall I post it, Your Highness? Yes, no? Shall I?”