The Night Guest Read Online Free PDF Page B

car in the next ten seconds, she thought, I’ll tell her to go away. A white car burst from behind the hill; a dark one followed immediately behind it. Ruth hadn’t had time to prepare for two cars.
    “Teatime!” called Frida.
    Ruth found her bustling in the kitchen among tea bags and mugs.
    “How do you take it?” Frida asked. “Milk and sugar?”
    “Lots of milk, one sugar.”
    “Milky and sweet,” Frida said. The combination seemed to please her. Her own tea was strong and dark, and she wouldn’t sit to drink. She leaned against the kitchen counter.
    “So, tell me things,” she said, peering into her steamy tea.
    “What things?” Ruth’s tongue stammered; she felt something like stage fright.
    “I like to get a sense of my clients before we get started. Husband? Job? Family? Childhood? All that stuff.”
    “That’s a lot of stuff.”
    “You can keep it simple,” offered Frida. She was noncommittal; she wouldn’t sit, Ruth guessed, because she didn’t want this to take all day.
    “All right,” said Ruth. “Harry was a solicitor. He died of a pulmonary embolism five years ago. I told you about my sons. What else? I used to teach elocution lessons. I grew up in Fiji.”
    Ruth waited for Frida to react to the mention of Fiji, but she failed to do so. Instead, she narrowed her eyes as if trying to see farther. “You taught what? Electrocution?”
    “Elocution!” said Ruth, delighted. “Speech.”
    “Like speech therapy?”
    “No,” said Ruth. “The art of speaking. Of clear, precise speech. Pronunciation, vocal production—”
    “You mean you taught people how to talk posh?” It was difficult to tell if Frida was disgusted or incredulous or both.
    “To speak correctly,” said Ruth. “Which isn’t the same thing.”
    “And people paid you?”
    “I taught young people, usually, and their parents paid me.”
    Frida was shaking her head as if she’d been told a ludicrous but diverting story. “Is that why you sound kind of English when you talk?”
    “I don’t sound English,” protested Ruth, but she’d been accused of this before. Once, it would have been a compliment. There had been a schoolteacher: Mrs. Mason. She was of elegant, indeterminate age, had an intriguingly absent husband, and she was English; every rounded vowel that fell from her mouth was delivered like a sweet polished fruit to her students, who were the children of sugar-company executives, engineers, missionaries, and government officials: the children of the Empire. They must be trained to speak correctly, so far from home. Mrs. Mason taught them rhymes, tongue twisters, and tricky operetta lyrics and made her students recite the days of the week, over and over, four, five, seven times on the strength of one deep breath. She discouraged the use of pidgin, slang, or Hindi; she was vigilant against the lazily dropped t ’s of her Australian students; she pounced on the use of would of and should of and was unfailingly specific about which contractions she would and wouldn’t allow. Ruth was her prize pupil.
    “You sound pretty English,” said Frida, scooping up Ruth’s empty mug. “You sound a bit like the Queen.”
    Ruth had a soft spot for the Queen. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Listen: ‘How now brown cow.’ That’s how I say it. And this is how the Queen would say it: ‘How now brown cow.’ Listen to her diphthongs! Completely different!”
    “Dip-thongs?” Frida snorted over the sink. And suddenly it was a funny, stupid, dirty word, and Ruth was laughing, and she loved it, although it hurt her back. Frida laughed, too, and rising from her capacious chest, her laugh seemed a rare and lovely object; it seemed to spread, like wings. Her whole face was transformed: she was warm and pretty, she knocked the mugs together in the sink, and she raised a tea towel to her face to cover her widening smile. Ruth felt buoyant in her spindly chair. She smiled and sighed and thought, Yes, Ruth, silly