The Rain Forest Page 10

  ‘I’d like to go to the Medina.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. You can get most things in the market, but be careful in them lanes,’ Mrs Gunner was in a pleasant mood. She smiled on Kristy and her smile, that was not seen every day, gave her face the mischievous gaiety of a little girl: ‘Arabs are funny people, dear. It comes of their women being shut up in that unnatural way. It’s this religion of theirs,’ she raised her voice and addressed Akbar’s posterior: ‘I don’t hold with it. What happens, in those lanes they push against you: but don’t you stand no nonsense. Be quite polite, of course. Just say, very dignified: “No jig-a-jig here.” That shakes them, I can tell you.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Never mind what it means, dear. They’ll understand.’

  Thus armed, Kristy thanked her and set out to walk to the Medina.

  The evening hours at the office were five o’clock to seven, but on the two afternoons when Hugh had to monitor a programme at four, he was free to leave at six. The first time Pedley found Hugh making his early departure, he said: ‘You’ve got jam on it: walking home in the sunset.’

  Hugh had come to realize that Pedley thought him not only inessential but overpaid. Temporary and without pension rights, the appointment carried a special salary nearly as high as Pedley’s own. Pedley’s resentment, usually hidden, would manifest itself suddenly, when he seemed at his most affable. The result was that Hugh was never certain of Pedley and never on guard. When least expecting it, he would suffer Pedley’s scorn.

  Pedley said: ‘A junior like you, living at the Daisy! I don’t know what things are coming to.’

  ‘Why? Where should we live?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. We haven’t had any juniors for years. The last lot took rooms in an Arab lodging-house and, even then, couldn’t make ends meet.’

  ‘You should be glad things have improved.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Pedley’s sullen tone seemed to suggest that no good could come of the Fosters’ affluence. So fixed were the rights and wrongs of service life that Hugh brooded a long time, wondering exactly what Pedley had meant.

  On the evening of the Residency visit, Pedley said: ‘You’re off again, are you?’ as though his earlier resentment should have proved to Hugh the unwisdom of leaving before seven.

  Hugh, who rejoiced in the sunset, made no reply but walked thankfully under the brilliant light that glistened through the pepper trees and reddened the sand of the road. He rejoiced, too, in the scents of evening.

  There was a bookcase in the Daisy salon where the inmates put books they did not want to keep. Hugh had found there a Victorian book of African flowers and had begun to name the flowers and distinguish the fragrances about him: the clove tree, the lily flowers of the white bauhinia, and the true lilies, arum and madonna, that grew everywhere, and gardenia, the red jasmine called frangipani, the white cleordendrum, the mahogany bean, ebony flower, African peach. He paused to single one from the other and would breathe them in until he was faint with scent.

  On some evenings, Kristy would walk up to meet him but that evening she did not come. Reaching the Daisy as darkness fell, seeing no light in their window, he expected to find her in the salon. She was not there. He went upstairs. Switching on the room light, he knew at once that something was wrong. Akbar had not pulled the blind against the night-flying insects but that was nothing new.

  He could see no immediate cause for unease and yet he stood in the doorway, unwilling to go into the room. Feeling the onset of his old suffocating anxiety, he threw up his head, attempting to resist it, and saw a black mark on the cornice. He could not remember whether it had been there before. It was the size of two clenched fists held together, and so intensely black, it looked like a hole through which the night could be seen. He suddenly realized what it was and darting out, slammed the door on it.

  Kristy was coming up the stairs. He caught her as she went to the door and held to her: ‘No, don’t go in. There’s a bat in the room. Where on earth have you been?’

  ‘I went for a walk. I’ve decided I can’t stay here. The place makes me ill and I can’t write. I’m going back to England.’

  ‘You don’t mean it. What about the fare?’

  ‘I’ve got a bit in the bank.’

  Her seriousness appalled him: ‘So you’d leave me alone here?’

  She gave an irritable laugh: ‘You didn’t want me to come: now you don’t want me to go. You don’t know what you do want. I’m sorry. Life here is futile. It’s a waste of time.’

  ‘How would you manage in London? You know what it costs to live there now? You’d have to stay with your parents.’

  Realizing he had jolted her, he adopted a tone of indifference: ‘Oh, well! If you must go, you must. What does it matter? You left me long ago.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You ought to know. You’re the successful one. You’re the one that’s praised for sensitivity and insight into character and all that jazz. We’ve always been saddled with your bloody writing. We could never go away for any length of time because you’re always starting a book, or working on a book, or finishing a book, or beginning another one. You’ve never been any sort of companion because you live in a private world. You don’t know what’s going on outside, and you don’t care. You’ve never given me the affection I need.’

  ‘And what have you given me?’

  ‘You’ve had everything you want.’

  ‘So you think. You’re so wrapped up in your deprivations, you can’t see beyond them. That business of your mother . . .’

  ‘Shut up. Don’t you dare mention my mother.’

  As Hugh’s voice rose, the Ogdens came out of their room and went to the staircase. Mr Ogden turned his head away from the Fosters but Mrs Ogden stared at them with lifted brows.

  Kristy whispered: ‘All right. I won’t go.’ She squeezed his hand to reassure him then opened the door of their room and called out cheerfully: ‘The bat’s gone. The light has driven it away.’

  7

  Kristy was drawn to the Lettuce Room yet hesitated to enter. Though the door was unlocked, the room had an aura of privacy. She noticed that the only guests who went into it were Mrs Axelrod and Mrs Prince, and they went only in the company of Mrs Gunner. Except when in use for a private party – the Ogdens’ party had been followed at intervals by similar parties – the room was unlit after dark, and the outside lights, shining through walls, reflecting and re-reflecting in glassy surfaces, gave it the depth and glimmer of a pond at night. Kristy was astonished one evening to find that phosphorescent lights had come on over the lettuce boxes and, looking through the door, she saw the small delicate plants glowing viridian green. The lights stayed on for three nights then went out. Six weeks later, they came on again.

  When the sun shone, Hassan pulled bamboo blinds over the glass roof and walls. It seemed the lettuces had to be protected against tropical conditions just as maidenhair fern, the bane of Al-Bustan, was cosseted and protected in English conservatories.

  One afternoon of heavy cloud, Kristy, depressed and solitary, wandered into the Lettuce Room. It disappointed her. It was smaller than she imagined and the slatted shelves took so much space, a party, she thought, must be a congested occasion. The atmosphere, cool and moist, had a chemical smell of artificial fertilizers. There were garden chairs set round a wooden table on which stood a box made of inlaid woods. She opened the box and found needles and reels of silk. She had never seen Mrs Gunner sewing in here but she knew it was Mrs Gunner’s work-box. Outside on the lawn, Mr Simpson had measured out a cricket pitch and having put up a walking-stick for a wicket, was bowling a cricket-ball at the trunk of a pepper tree. While she watched him through the glass, the sun came out and at once Akbar entered and, with an air of importance, pulled the blind down in front of her. Blind-pulling was ordinarily too menial a job for Akbar. She knew he had been watching her as she entered the room and now would urge her out of it. />
  Catching her eyes, he said severely: ‘Lettuce Room belong Mis’ Gunner. Yo’ no come in only with Mis’ Gunner.’

  Kristy retreated and it was a long time before anyone invited her in again. She did, however, hear Mrs Gunner asking Mrs Axelrod and Mrs Prince to ‘come and see the lettuces’. Mrs Gunner had a habit of snuffling her laughter back up her nose, intended to convey a gamin good-fellowship but its effect was insinuating. The invitation was always given with a snuffle and Kristy guessed it meant an exchange of all the gossip of the Daisy.

  The pension’s evening life centred on the bar. Some of the guests played bridge, others tried to follow the long-drawn-out dramas on Indian television, but for all of them, drink was the thing. They seldom went out. The Praslin was beyond their income level and Gurgur’s beyond their experience, but they needed no other resort. The Daisy gave them everything. Occasionally officers from a visiting ship, or old Dr Dixon, or the half-Indian harbour-master, would drop in for an evening’s drinking and the residents knew themselves privileged, living, as they did, at a centre of island entertainment.

  The Fosters, though they drank less, lived much like the rest. Ambrose, anxious for Lomax’s return, constantly begged Hugh to go with him to Gurgur’s where he pestered Gurgur for news of Lomax. Gurgur, his mind on other things, could only hunch his shoulders and say: ‘What do I know? He has big affairs in Beirut. When he comes, then you will see him.’

  Ambrose grumbled and threatened to take himself back to London but always, in the end, told Hugh: ‘Might as well wait till the old thing turns up.’ He once persuaded Kristy to go with them but the place disgusted her. She had been promised a night club and found herself in a brothel. Hugh, who liked the place no more than she did, refused to go more than once a week. At the end of the month he found that all Ambrose’s triple whiskies had been set against his account and he owed rather more than his month’s salary.

  Kristy had lost her taste for alcohol. Watching the Daisy’s guests pass from dull sobriety to alcoholic elation, from elation to alcoholic stupor, she saw the futility of the process. Tomorrow they would be sober again. At times, when Hugh was out with Ambrose, she would wander into the garden but the outdoor air was hot and heavy and few people passed on the road. The Indians kept to their quarter round the harbour and the blacks to a suburb called the Dobo. Only a few Arabs and mulattos commuted between harbour and Medina and, at night, they went by at a trot, heads down, fearful of the night spirits that the Arabs called afreets and the mulattos gris-gris.

  The outside world was so quiet, she could hear every word of the film being shown at the open-air cinema at the harbour. If she went to the edge of the road, she could look down on the harbour lights and the phosphorescent water shining like quicksilver. Once in a while, the richer officials went visiting and a couple, passing from one villa to another, might nod at Kristy as she stood on the lawn, but they did no more than that. Their silence, no doubt, was prescribed social behaviour yet she found herself oddly dashed by it. It was as though she had come out to find something and could find nothing. The outside world was as empty as the inside, and her own mind was emptier than either. At a loss, she would return to the salon where, if there was nothing else, she might hope for a row between Mrs Gunner and Akbar.

  These rows were a feature of the pension. Hugh deplored them and like the other guests, would move his chair in an attempt to repudiate sight and sound of the contestants bawling insults at each other. When the voices reached the highest pitch of acrimony, Mrs Axelrod might frown or click her tongue but the rest, with their ability to be unaware of what they chose not to see, behaved as though they heard nothing.

  The rows were occasioned by Akbar’s bills. The pension’s main items of food and drink were charged to an account at Aly’s. The small daily needs of the cook and cleaners were bought by Akbar who maintained his power by shopping around. This freedom required him to pay in cash and each evening he expected to be repaid. Mrs Gunner would leave the bar to check the bills and she dealt with them according to mood. If she laughed, saying ‘you’re a right old scoundrel, Akbar, but you don’t fool me’, Akbar would recognize her humorous intent with a tolerant smirk. But Mrs Gunner had another sort of laugh, a laugh of venomous anger and Akbar, when he heard it, would stiffen indignantly and prepare for a fight.

  The first of these rows overheard by the Fosters concerned a new baking tin. Mrs Gunner wanted to see the tin. With experienced cunning, she did not send Akbar to fetch it but sent the nervous, simple Malay who knew little English. The price on the bottom of the tin proved to be two rupees less than that on Akbar’s bill. Akbar was angry but his defence was weak: ‘You try make thief of Akbar? Yo’ no sense, no little sense, sayyida. Akbar best man in market. Akbar save money, all time.’ Mrs Gunner insisted on an explanation and Akbar accused the Malay of writing the price on the tin. The Malay, it turned out, could not write. Akbar then accused the shopkeeper of writing one price and charging another: ‘Why you go Indian shop? Indian cheat all time. Indian no good people. Indian bring malaria, bring many bad thing. Yo’ go Arab shop in Medina, you get good men. Yo’ too big fool, sayyida.’

  ‘You call me a fool and I’ll kick your fat arse.’

  ‘You tell Mas’ Gunner he kick Akbar arse? That too, too funny. Akbar kick Mas’ Gunner arse.’

  ‘I didn’t say Mr Gunner. I said I – I – would kick your arse.’

  ‘Yo’? Yo’ kick Akbar arse! Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho . . .’ Akbar’s basso profundo laughter rolled round the salon walls: ‘Yo’ little, little,’ Akbar indicated with a hand that Mrs Gunner’s height was about two foot from the ground: ‘Akbar knock yo’ with one finger. Yo’ no fit speak Akbar. Yo’ fool woman, sayyida.’

  This final impertinence stirred Mrs Axelrod who, looking at Mrs Prince with lips tight shut, jabbed a cushion with her crochet-hook. Thus would she deal with Akbar! But Mrs Gunner had her own methods. Coldly dismissive, she said: ‘That’s enough from you, you Egyptian bastard. Take your clobber and go.’

  Akbar threw back his head and walked to his domain and there, turning, he surveyed Mrs Gunner, his eyeballs standing out and stretched downwards so he could see her without lowering his head. He said firmly: ‘Me no Egyptian bastard. Me Soudanese man,’ then, gathering up his kaftans and prayer-rug, he flung open the kitchen door, admitting a smell of drains, salt fish and rancid coconut oil, and departed.

  That, the Fosters thought, was the end of Akbar and they felt no regrets. But, no. Next morning he stood at his usual place beside the serving-table, a composed and splendid figure, ruling the servants with an inclination of the head or a movement of a finger.

  Kristy said to Ambrose: ‘I thought he’d been turned out bag and baggage.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ambrose laughed, ‘Mrs G. would never let him go. He’s the Daisy’s pride and joy. Every large household wants its Akbar, and there aren’t so many of them here. He’s a pure-bred Nubian, directly descended from the blacks pictured in Queen Hatshepsu’s tomb. On Al-Bustan, where blood is so mixed, he has the authority of pure breeding.’

  8

  In the past, Kristy had been given to late nights but now, at ten o’clock, she was as sleepy as the salon’s hard-drinkers. She slept heavily and so long that, more often than not, Hugh would leave the breakfast-table before she came down. Ambrose, with no more occupation than she had, would remain at his table until she appeared.

  A few days after the Residency luncheon, seeing her push aside her breakfast coffee, he asked: ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think I’m sickening for jaundice or something. I can’t write and if there’s nothing to distract me, I’m usually half-asleep.’

  Ambrose sighed his sympathy: ‘Same here. It’s this bloody climate. If I were in better nick, I’d be writing myself. I’ve had it in mind to do a piece about island superstitions; a feuilleton only.’

  ‘The gris-gris?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, the gris-gris. The Dobo’s the place for
them. If you go there at night, you find all the windows shut because of the gris-gris. We might get a taxi and drive round there. I’d show you the turtle factory.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t want to see the turtle factory. I couldn’t bear it.’ Without warning, she burst into tears but talked fiercely as she cried: ‘I can’t bear the things human beings do to animals. I can’t bear cruelty to anyone, but especially animals or children. I loathe vivisection and experiments on living creatures. I can’t bear animals being hunted and killed by human imbeciles and show-offs. I hate the sight of the English papers. There’s always something in them to make you sick.’

  Ambrose’s gaze became luminous with sympathy: ‘I’m sorry. I should not have mentioned the factory. I did not know you felt so deeply.’

  ‘I do . . .’ But Kristy, too, had not known she felt so deeply. Lately it seemed, she had become unendurably tender in her feelings about small creatures, human or animal. Reported cruelties that before had roused in her a normal anger, now inflamed her with an agonized rage.

  Having started to cry, she could not stop. She cried because children were ill-treated and because animals were killed for their fur or used in futile experiments or wantonly tormented or wantonly hunted. Between her sobs she spoke brokenly: ‘You’ll scarcely believe what I heard: some accursed French scientist, in American pay, caught dolphins and cut them up alive. The idea was to discover how they breathe. He said they had to be conscious so he strapped them down and cut into the living, conscious flesh. Dolphins! Creatures that have always trusted and befriended human beings . . . saved human beings from drowning . . . Our friends, betrayed.’ She broke off, unable to go on for her tears.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘A young man. They went out on a yacht to catch dolphins. He was employed as a sailor. He saw it all. He told me.’

  Ambrose, who had watched her enticing the lemur until she had persuaded it into her hands, now watched her as she wept. When her sobs had subsided, he said: ‘You have no children, have you?’