Free The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane

that she had asked for, that she had planned.
    “You know what?” called Frida from the kitchen. She often delivered good news—gave of the bounty of herself—from another room, at high volume, so she needn’t be troubled by gratitude. “I could help out. You know, come over on the weekend. Not for free, mind.” Now she appeared, briefly, in the archway between the rooms. “But for a reasonable price, you know, I could cook and keep an eye on things.”
    “Would you really?”
    Frida made a clatter in the kitchen which meant “Yes, but don’t you dare start thanking me.”
    Frida seemed to think it was decided: Ruth would ask Richard to come, and Frida would keep an eye on things. She prepared an uncharacteristically festive meal: a curryish dish, with pieces of pineapple and indecipherable meat. It tasted like the distant cousin of something Fijian.
    “What do you call this?” Ruth asked as Frida fastened her grey coat and made for the front door.
    “Dinner,” said Frida.
    Later, lying in bed with the doubtful meat in her stomach, Ruth fretted about Richard. She wanted to think only of how fine he was, of how every girl had loved him, and of how he liked her best; how she would be walking with friends and his shabby truck would roll by, his mobile dispensary, lifting dust and rattling at the seams, and he would honk his horn or stop to talk and sometimes drive her home, or take them all in the truck to the beach, and when they swam, he stayed close to her, lay beside her in the sun, gossiped about Andrew Carson, poured sand on her feet, asked her advice about some faux pas he had made with the Methodist minister’s wife, told her she reminded him of a milkmaid on a biscuit tin, and finally, when the Queen visited Fiji and a ball was held in her honour at the Grand Pacific Hotel, invited Ruth to come with him—although he disapproved of queens—because he knew she wanted to go. And everyone waited for Ruth and Richard—their names were said together so often—to become an item; even when Richard began to disgrace himself by caring too much about the health of Indian women, by befriending the wrong Fijians (“agitators,” Ruth’s father called them), by staying at Ruth’s parents’ house too long (“saving money for the dispensary,” he said; “staying for me,” prayed Ruth), and by refusing church without even being a Communist, the women of Suva hoped to see happiness for Ruth with this “gifted but misguided” young man. She had given up the hope of converting him. She was no longer much sure of God herself. He came home late at night, and she listened for his soft walk past her door, and he never stopped. Not true: he stopped once. Her door was open. He came in to apologize; he had kissed her the night before at the Queen’s ball and would never do it again. People began to wonder if he was quite normal. They wondered about Indian women and Andrew Carson; they never suspected a Japanese fiancée.
    And how Ruth defended him to everyone! Because she was his favourite, his milkmaid on the biscuit tin. But that was exhausting, too. For example, he would lend her difficult books without her having asked for them and want to know her opinion; when the ocean liners docked in Suva carrying orchestras or theatre companies, he took her to see them perform. And if he didn’t like what he saw or read or heard, he would call it “a bad play,” “a bad book.” Bad in his mouth was the strongest of adjectives. He always had a definite view of the play or the symphony, and he would presage it with this declamatory staccato, as if helpfully summarizing his opinion before expanding upon it: “It was bad,” he would say, or “uniformly bad” if he considered it irretrievable. Or, if approved of, things were either “important” or “excellent” or “very fine.” Most of the events he took her to bored her even when she enjoyed them, and she felt Richard notice this whole world of his from which