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thing, this could be good, this could be all right.

 
    3
    The house took to Frida; it opened up. Ruth sat in her chair and watched it happen. She saw the bookcases breathe easier as Frida dusted and rearranged them; she saw the study expel its years’ worth of Harry-hoarded paperwork. She had never seen such perfect oranges as the ones Frida brought in her little string bag. The house and the oranges and Ruth waited every weekday morning for Frida to come in her golden taxi, and when she left, they fell into silences of relief and regret. Ruth found herself looking forward to the disruption of her days; she was a little disgusted at herself for succumbing so quickly.
    But Frida was fascinating. For one thing, her hair was always different: braided, curled, lacquered, soft. Each morning, just before nine, Ruth opened the lounge-room door she had been so careful to close the night before and went to the window to watch Frida’s emergence from the taxi. Frida’s hair might be piled on her head or straightened to her shoulder blades. It might be a new colour. One day she arrived with hair so blond, so cloudy and insubstantial, that her head seemed an unlikely match for the capable body beneath it. She was a little bleary that morning; she made a cup of tea first thing and sat on the back step drinking it with an air of bleached glamour; the cats took pains to avoid the chemical smell she gave off. The bright blond lasted only a few days before it became brassier, more yellow; then came a softer, whitish colour, more sophisticated and at the same time more childish. After this blond period came red, and burgundy, and a glossy true black, and back to brown, ready for the cycle to start all over again. Frida accepted compliments about her hair with a dignified smile and raised one careful hand to hover near it.
    “It’s my hobby,” she said. Ruth had never before met anyone who considered her own head a hobby.
    Frida’s magnificent hair never interfered with her duties. She worked in her first few weeks with a bright disposition, but was never what could be described as cheery. She had a determined efficiency about her, and at the same time a languorous quality, a slow, deliberate giving of herself. Her suitcase turned out to contain enormous bottles of eucalyptus-scented disinfectant; she cleaned the floors with this slick substance every morning, shepherding the mop with graceful movements of her tidy feet. The house at first smelled sweet and forested, and then so astringent the cats took to sleeping in elevated places, away from the scrubbed wood and tile. When Ruth drew attention to this, Frida only stood over the immaculate floors and inhaled deeply, with a nasal echo, to demonstrate the bracing bronchial qualities of her cleaning regime.
    “Smell that!” she cried, and made Ruth breathe in until her throat burned. “Isn’t it great? Isn’t it better than seaweed and flies?”
    Frida made it clear early on that she disliked the smell of the sea.
    While she cleaned, Frida carried out her assessment of Ruth’s “situation.” She noted the absence of rails in the bath and a fence around the garden. She quizzed Ruth about her medical conditions, flexibility, hair loss, sleeping patterns, eating habits (“You’re wasting away,” she accused, as if she had long familiarity with the shape of Ruth’s body), and frequency of social contact. She made Ruth fill out a number of questionnaires—“How often do you bathe? (a) Daily; (b) Every two to three days; (c) Sporadically; (d) On special occasions” and “Circle the box appropriate to your income in the last financial year.”
    At the end of her assessment, the first thing Frida announced was that Ruth wasn’t eligible for public housing. “People like you usually aren’t,” she said with apparent pleasure. When Ruth protested that she had no interest in public housing, Frida sucked in an experienced breath and said, “Beggars can’t be