The Tiger under the Bed

There are now nearly a million people suffering from dementia in the UK, and I feel as if most of my contemporaries have had some involvement in the affliction either through parents or friends. With my father, it came on very gradually, beginning with odd lapses of memory, repetitions in speech, loss of bearings, groundless anxieties. It was exhausting for my mother, so one afternoon we suggested we take her out for a break and arranged for one of the grandchildren to stay with my father for the few hours she was away. When we told him of this plan, my father was furious: he did not need watching over; he could perfectly well look after himself. Anger is common in the early stages of dementia, and it is fuelled by fear: a mental unravelling has begun, and from now on it will only gain momentum.

When Sydneysider Fiona McFarlane set out, in her mid-thirties, to write her first novel, she had witnessed two grandmothers dying with dementia. Wrapping herself in silence – she told nobody what she was working on – she set out to explore dementia ‘from the inside’. She was determined not to be sentimental, and instead succeeded in producing a dark, psychological thriller that is suspenseful, shocking and deeply unsettling. No wonder The Night Guest (2013) won prizes and was shortlisted for more. Ruth Field, a former elocution teacher, 75 years old and widowed (kind, gentle Harry is five years dead), lives in an isolated house on the New South Wales coast. Her sons, Jeffrey and Phillip, live in New Zealand and Hong Kong respectively, and, as her memory is beginning to slip, she has become rather afraid of them – ‘afraid of being unmasked by their youthful authority’. Her grandchildren breathe ‘Hello, Nanna’ down the phone, but it is clear that they have almost forgotten her: ‘She saw them at Christmas and they loved her; the year slid away and she was an anonymous voice, handwriting on a letter, until they arrived at her festive door again.’ Ruth’s house is so quiet that she can hear if a man whistles to his dogs on the beach below. She has been brought up to believe that boredom is unattractive and loneliness off-putting, so to get herself through the ‘gentle, bewildering expanse of the day’, she makes mental bargains with herself: ‘If she had dinner ready in time for the six o’clock news, both of her sons would come home for Christmas . . .’; if there were fewer than eight small waves before another big one, she would sweep the garden path of sand. But, in the midst of this carefully maintained order, Ruth is plunged suddenly into perplexity and panic. Waking in the middle of the night, she becomes aware of something large rubbing against her sofa and television. ‘Other sounds followed: the panting of a large animal; a vibrancy of breath that suggested enormity and intent; definite mammalian noises, definitely feline, as if her cats had grown in size and were sniffing for food with huge noses.’ She is convinced the intruder is a tiger: she had once seen one ‘eating at a German zoo, and it sounded just like this: loud and wet, with a low, guttural breathing hum punctuated by little cautionary yelps, as if it might roar at any moment except that it was occupied by food’. We are used to reassuring people that if something is ‘all in the mind’, it is not to be feared. Gerard Manley Hopkins knew better:

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne’er hung there.

Fiona McFarlane knows better too. Ruth’s encounter with the tiger is not just a bad dream but a presentiment of evil. In the morning, nothing seems out of place or out of the ordinary except, perhaps, for a yellow taxi idling at the end of her drive. And out of this taxi – the tiger, perhaps, in his daytime garb – steps Frida. If The Night Guest was a film – and it would make a really good one – then the background music for the first couple of chapters would be serene, if a little sad. But once Frida appears on the scene, it becomes hectic, jangling, discordant. She’s a nurse, she says, and she’s been sent ‘by the government: you were on our waiting list and a spot opened up’. She’ll start by looking after Ruth for an hour a day. Frida is large, with hair that she dyes a different shade of brown every few days, and that she wears sometimes loose, sometimes pinned up in complicated coiled braids. She sets about cleaning the house with a reckless, almost warlike energy. The smell of the sea is replaced by the smell of eucalyptus disinfectant – so astringent that Ruth’s cats are forced to find new, elevated sleeping places, away from wood and tile. In the morning, before her mood has solidified for the day, Frida acts on whim – kind, or sullen, or genially indignant, or with a Valkyrian aloofness. To the reader, her volatility rings alarm bells. But for Ruth, the easing of loneliness is a priceless boon. When Frida washes her hair, she realizes it’s been a long time since anyone had touched her. And the effects of the vigorous housework mean that the tiger fades in her memory. ‘A new atmosphere of calm settled over the house; it was cool and clean and noiseless in the night.’ It’s a skill well-honed by those who prey on the elderly to find a point of connection that makes them appear kindred spirits. It happened to my grandfather once, when he was sitting on Waterloo Station. A young man, rather a cheeky chappie, settled down next to him and fell into conversation. He persuaded my grandfather – who was slowly losing his memory and reason, like Ruth Field – that they had worked together, years ago, at Barclays Bank. And, guess what? This young man needed some cash, quickly. And guess what . . . Frida announces that she, like Ruth, grew up in Fiji – well, what do you know? So very soon, her arrival comes to seem not just timely but providential. And she’s indefatigable: there is no responsibility she isn’t prepared to shoulder – shopping, cooking, cleaning, the sale of Harry’s old car. And looking after the money. She confines Ruth to the dining-room while she pores over her bank statements. Very, very gradually, Ruth begins to sense that something is amiss. Frida begins by addressing her as ‘Mrs Field’, but this becomes ‘Ruth’ and then an aggressive ‘Ruthie’. Her language morphs from courteous to merrily insolent: ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Ruthie.’ And eventually, Ruth is not even Ruthie, but ‘the little old biddy’. When she finally becomes aware that Frida has actually moved into her son Phillip’s old bedroom, Ruth knows she must act. She rings her other son, Jeffrey, hoping to tell him in whispers what’s afoot. She dials, and the telephone is answered, but all she can hear at the other end is heavy breathing; and then Frida’s gusty laughter coming from the room next door. Anxiety and dread cause the dementia to gallop. At the start of the novel, it is as if someone is tiptoeing gently through the corridors of Ruth’s mind turning off the odd switch, but by now lights are fusing violently. When she comes across a box that Frida has crammed with her silver and jewellery, she cannot quite compute what has happened, and why it matters. The tiger returns, and when Frida learns about him she knows exactly how to ratchet up the terror. She takes Ruth, distrait and dishevelled, into town, to the bank, to make a whopping financial transfer. How beady is the bank manager? Will disaster be averted? Carers can often be far from caring. When my father finally moved into a home, he was miserable. I remember finding him, midmorning, sitting in front of a swollen Weetabix, while the nurse, heartless and controlling, laid into him for not eating it. Surely, when you get to your mid-eighties, you have the right to decide whether to have your breakfast or not? But then there are the angels. Another nurse working in the home would, during her free time, take Dad down the road in a wheelchair to visit some ponies to whom he had become unaccountably attached. Fiona McFarlane understands that goodness and cruelty can be inextricably intertwined. As The Night Guest reaches its troubling conclusion, treachery and tenderness march together – and the reader experiences at first hand the dementia sufferer’s confusion and uncertainty. I am not going to give away the ending of this page-turning, terrifying novel. But, in place of a spoiler, I’ll offer one urgent word of caution. If you have an elderly parent, living alone or with a carer, or even in a care home, be sure to ring her.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 78 © Maggie Fergusson 2023