The Rain Forest Read online

  Considering all this, Hugh felt such rage that the smell of their bodies sickened him. Ambrose, walking in front, pushed his way through them as though a herd of cattle. They did not give way readily but his weight defeated them and Hugh followed in his wake.

  Lomax and Kristy had retreated into the room. Hugh, seated among the fountains and orange trees, knew his reaction against the holiday-makers had been unreasonable. If those people were guilty, was he not guilty, too? Even Simon, angry because of the lost, beautiful things of the world, even Kristy who suffered for them, had a part in destruction. They were all guilty but he was the most guilty because, more often than not, he chose to put the destruction out of his mind.

  Gopal came hurrying back to the party and seated himself beside Kristy. Kristy, obviously weary of Lomax, turned to him, animated by his admiration. Lomax, who had been looking for Ambrose, got to his feet and going to him, asked: ‘Where have you been?’

  Overhearing the question, Hugh was surprised by its urgency, but before he could give much thought to it, Ambrose walked away, leaving Lomax to him.

  Dutifully, Hugh said: ‘I enjoyed the drive but it was sad, wasn’t it, not finding Morgo’s Bay?’

  ‘Did you expect to find it?’

  Hugh, fearing his question would irritate Lomax, nevertheless asked what he had promised to ask: ‘Do you really mean to invest in this treasure hunt?’

  Lomax took a gold cigarette-case from his pocket, opened it slowly and looked at its emptiness. He said: ‘You’re fond of him, aren’t you?’

  ‘We both are. He’s the only person at the Daisy who has even bothered to speak to us.’

  ‘But you know nothing about him?’

  ‘Not much, no.’

  ‘Excuse me, I must get some cigarettes.’ Lomax walked away.

  Gopal, who had been entertaining Kristy with some of the island gossip, suddenly touched her on the hand and said: ‘I’ve seen you before, you know! One day you were in the Medina and you looked into my shop. I saw you through the glass, but you did not see me.’

  ‘An antique shop? – with swords and carpets and silks?’

  He was pleased that she remembered: ‘When I saw your face, I said to myself, “A remarkable lady.” She is someone.’

  ‘Everyone is someone.’

  ‘There, you see! You are a philosopher. But I also asked myself: “Why is she alone and sad?” For you were sad, were you not?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I was. I was trying to decide whether or not to return to England.’

  Gopal’s eyes opened in astonishment: ‘But how could you return to England if your husband works here?’

  ‘I can move about on my own. I have a separate existence.’

  Gopal laughed as though at an uproarious joke: ‘So you thought you would return all by yourself? But why, why? The ladies here live pleasantly. I think they do nothing at all.’

  ‘Yes, they are like oysters.’

  ‘Oysters? You mean they are shut up this way?’ Gopal put his hands palm to palm.

  ‘No. I mean they have never developed. Oysters have remained the same for millions of years. They exist only to reproduce another generation of oysters identical with themselves. What point in it?’

  ‘You mean: what point in living to produce another generation? What else should a lady do? The rest they can leave to the men. We do everything and ask only that they have their children. In this they are fortunate, I think. Life is so easy for them.’

  ‘It may be easy but it turns them into a destructive force. The world is full of narrow, frustrated women eating up their children. In the end, they will eat up the world.’

  Gopal wiped tears of laughter from his eyes: ‘Oh, Mrs Foster, you are a funny lady. I am happy to talk with you. We must talk another time. Will you come again to my shop? Have you time?’

  ‘I have all the time in the world.’

  Lomax returned to his party. Ambrose, weary and inert, sprawled in his chair with eyes half-closed. He yawned: ‘I’m off as soon as my old mum’s better. My friends want me in London. I’ve had offers.’ Ambrose’s small voice tailed away as though he were already in flight.

  ‘What sort of offers?’ Kristy asked.

  ‘I have, among other things, been asked to edit a magazine of the arts. A lavish affair, covering not only poetry, prose, painting, sculpture and music, but architecture, interior decoration and . . . film.’ Inspired by the idea of this magazine, Ambrose sat up and looked about him. His eye lit on Hugh: ‘I want you in on this, Hugh. You’re the very one to do a piece on film. I’d like a survey of the most significant directors: Pasolini, Borowczyk, Pontecorvo, Antonioni, Visconti, Louis Malle, Rohmer, Vihanová, Chabrol . . .’

  As Ambrose paused, Hugh added: ‘Zeffirelli, Antonini?’

  ‘Indeed, yes. No doubt you’ll think of a few more – but only the Great. Only the truly Great.’

  Hugh, compelled by Ambrose’s small, dulcet voice, discussed the film article with enthusiasm. He began to think that writing about films might be exactly the sort of writing he was meant to do.

  Lomax who, at first, had had the air of a man not easily deceived, was obviously shaken by the fact that Hugh could not only accept but augment Ambrose’s litany of names. His expression seemed to say: ‘So they are real names? – the names of real people?’ Then, becoming conscious of his own ignorance with regard to them, he looked uneasy as though he were not only excluded but criticized. He broke in contemptuously, saying:

  ‘There’s no money in art magazines.’

  Ambrose returned his contempt: ‘We are not seeking money. Our purpose is to discover. Anyone can buy a Renoir: all you need is cash. It’s another matter when you lay out a few thousand on a Rothko or a de Kooning. There you’re exploring a dark continent. You must have instinct.’

  Lomax, as though impressed against his own judgement, turned his face from Ambrose and again took out his cigarette-case. It was still empty.

  He stood up and said to Hugh: ‘I think I left some Gauloises in the Rain Room. Perhaps you would walk through with me?’

  Feeling that some revelation was about to be made, Hugh followed Lomax down the length of the main room into a large domed glass-house filled with flowering plants. It was not air-conditioned. Fans blew the air about but it was very warm and filled not only with flower scents but a wet, earthy smell that verged on decay. The room, Lomax explained, was intended as an indoor garden which could be enjoyed when the rain kept guests indoors.

  In the centre of the floor there was a large pool filled with many coloured fish. Lomax sat on one of the chairs beside the pool and asked Hugh to sit beside him, then he pulled a blue packet from an inside pocket: ‘So my Gauloises were here all the time. Shall we stay a little minute and have a smoke? Now! I see you feel I am unjust to our friend Ambrose?’

  ‘I feel you have teased him enough.’

  ‘So, what am I to do next? Give him money and say good-bye to him?’

  ‘Why “good-bye”?’

  ‘If he could get away, do you imagine he would come back here? I am fond of Ambrose, and so are you: but are we deceived by him? Would you call him an honest man?’

  Hugh reflected on this and wondered what he would call Ambrose. Remembering the suitcase packed with stones, he thought: ‘A leg-puller, a persifleur, a practical joker?’ and in the end, said lamely, ‘I would not call him a crook.’

  ‘When I first met him, I asked myself what is such a man doing, marooned on this island? I wrote to my London agents and ordered them to make inquiries and I found that in the world he had left, he had destroyed himself. He owed money so he dared not show his face in places he had frequented. More than that, with his persuasive tongue, he had won confidence and betrayed it.’

  ‘How “betrayed it”?’

  ‘This magazine he was talking about a short time ago: a fantasy. He was always projecting such fantasies. He had such enthusiasm for a time that he could persuade people to invest money in almost anything. T
hen, when the money was spent, his enthusiasm died and that was the end of it. He was made bankrupt. He ran up debts in a different name. Someone else tried to bankrupt him and, of course, it all came out. To save him from prison, his mother sent him his fare and he came here; and here he has to stay.’

  ‘I knew none of this.’

  ‘So, what would you have me do? Give him money? Risk losing him for ever?’

  Bewildered, Hugh asked: ‘But why do you care whether he goes or stays?’

  Lomax stubbed out his cigarette then rubbed the base of his palms into his eyes. He stood up, sighing, and said: ‘Because I love him.’

  Dr Gopal, keeping his hold on Kristy as they went to dinner, explained that a real salle verte was a temporary structure made of bamboo and palm leaves: ‘They make them in the Seychelles for weddings and parties, but the Praslin’s Salle Verte is a permanent room so the palms are of plastic. The owner here named the hotel after his birthplace: a small, not important island but certain people have called it the Garden of Eden and perhaps the hotel is an Eden of sorts. Tonight, the food will be excellent. There is to be a special buffet with a hundred sorts of sea-food. Are you tempted by such food, Mrs Foster? Here we say you must eat it before it eats you.’

  Had it not been for Gopal, Kristy thought, Lomax’s table would not have been very vivacious. Gurgur, his bleak head hanging, had returned to the party but contributed nothing. Hugh, disconcerted by all he had heard about Ambrose, avoided his eyes and Ambrose, knowing himself avoided, went down in sulks.

  The table, which Lomax had chosen earlier in the day, was beside the cabaret floor but separated from it by gardenia shrubs in pots. The heavy scent of the gardenias blotted out the flavour of the food but Lomax seemed satisfied that he and his guests were on the threshold of events.

  The cabaret floor was raised and steps went up from it to a small stage. They were all reminded of Reaney and Gopal asked where he was.

  ‘He cannot eat,’ Gurgur said. ‘He suffers from tension. The entertainment is highly cultural.’

  ‘Cultural!’ Ambrose gave a laugh of bitter contempt.

  Gopal also laughed: ‘Ah! I hear Mr Gunner slip the safety-catch of his revolver.’

  Ambrose gave a snort.

  The women who had been undressed on the terrace were now, in Kristy’s opinion, over-dressed. Only a few of the men wore dinner-jackets but the women were all gowned and jewelled as though for a court ball. There were three parties of officials from the villas and Dr Gopal said he espied the Chief Secretary. Hugh had seen the Chief Secretary once in the office lift but for Kristy he was still a fabled character. Cautiously looking in the direction indicated by Gopal, she saw, for the first and last time, a plump, fair, youngish man who had the peculiar serenity of inherited wealth.

  ‘The one like a cream-fed pussy?’ she asked.

  Gopal pretended to be shocked: ‘Oh, you must not say that, Mrs Foster. He is a charming man.’

  Mrs Hampton, on her way to join a party, paused to speak to Ambrose just as the ceiling lights began to dim. Leaning towards him in a cloud of scented chiffon, she earnestly asked: ‘How is your mother?’

  Shuffling and grunting with gratification, Ambrose managed to get to his feet as she said: ‘Oh, please don’t get up. I heard that Mrs Gunner had gone to hospital. Not terminal, I hope?’

  ‘Dear me, no. She’ll be up and about in no time.’

  ‘I’m thankful to hear it. She’s still a young woman.’

  ‘She’s eighty-three.’

  ‘No age at all. Younger than I am.’

  When Ambrose gallantly protested that she still looked a girl, she pushed him skittishly from her and disappeared into the dark.

  ‘Charming woman!’ said Ambrose, gazing longingly after her as she made her way to more elevated company.

  A blue light flooded the floor and Reaney was discovered with a ghostly face, rolling his handkerchief between his hands. He opened and shut his lips several times before coming to the point of speech.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said: ‘Our cabaret is designed to honour the world’s great writers. Therefore, the artistes will represent for you Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Voltaire and Goethe. They are in chronological order and Dante is first. From such a cultural feast, I will not detain you.’

  Reaney walked backwards and took his place near the steps. The stage lit up and from somewhere behind it came the deep and awe-filled strains of the Adagio assai of the ‘Eroica’. A young woman came from behind the back curtains.

  ‘Dante,’ Reaney spoke as though from underground.

  The woman, a big, full-bosomed, brown-skinned girl, posed in the centre of the stage. She was wearing a red Renaissance head-dress, but for the rest she was naked except for three red diamanté stars, one on each nipple and one on her navel. A narrow diamante strip half hid her pubic hair and her shoes had heels four inches in height. A red cloak lined with frills of lace hung from her shoulders, throwing into relief her heavily powdered flesh.

  The diners, that had been bemused by the mention of great writers, applauded Dante in clamorous relief.

  Severe behind her make-up, she came down the steps with a solemn high-stepping walk, crossed the floor and stood a few yards from the gardenias.

  There was a pause in the music while Reaney announced: ‘Cervantes.’ The music banged on and Cervantes, a stout African girl with a green cloak, made her appearance wearing a helmet and carrying a lance.

  Shakespeare, like Cervantes, was identified by his most famous character. Wearing a lace-frilled black cloak, the Shakespeare girl carried a skull.

  ‘My God,’ muttered Ambrose: ‘The gloomy prince.’

  Candide, in purple, carried a garden rake and Faust, in brown, with a white wig, held up a phial that possibly contained the elixir of youth.

  When they were all in line, the girls put down their props, and stood straight-faced until the ‘Eroica’ faded; then, taking off their cloaks and draping them skirt-fashion from the waist, each girl lifted a leg into the air. Offenbach’s Can-Can was heard at top pitch and at once the girls swung into a furious routine of high kicks, cartwheels and swirling skirts that caused the audience to rise, stamping in delight at this comment on the world’s great writers. Shakespeare and Dante, becoming over-excited, began to make reverse V-signs and Ambrose twitched in disgust.

  ‘Rather bad taste,’ he said to Kristy but Kristy was laughing too much to reply.

  Reaney, after he had taken his bows and thrown kisses to the audience, moved about among the tables collecting the congratulations that were shouted at him. Flushed and elated, he seized on the hands held out to him and turned his head this way and that as though searching for some further triumph that must surely be due to him. But where was it? How could he ever find it? Kristy noticed that the women, especially the older ones, touched him familiarly and when he bent to their hands, they ruffled his hair with contemptuous affection. She could imagine that the better-looking mulattos were fair game at the Praslin and, thinking of his talent wasted, his ambition lost in the rôle of amorist, she said to Gopal:

  ‘Something must be done for him. If he gets the chance, he might do remarkable things.’

  ‘If he gets the chance.’

  ‘But surely Lomax will help him?’

  ‘Every clever young fellow thinks the rich exist to help him. It is my experience, dear Mrs Foster, that the rich help only themselves. And now let us help ourselves. I insist you must try a mangosteen.’ Gopal took up a purple fruit and opened it to show her the segments of brilliantly white flesh: ‘Try it. The flavour is cool and delicious.’

  The evening was ending and even Dr Gopal was beginning to flag. When his talk ceased, Kristy realized how sleepy she was and wished she were in bed. A giant moth had managed to get in through the bamboos and after blundering about among the lights, dropped down to the table in front of her. Its body was as large as a large cigar and the long closed wings of fawn and grey were delicately netted ove
r with black. It sat, stunned by the fall, and she put her hand down beside it, gradually edging closer until she could feel the powdery wing filament against her skin. As she bent over the creature, Hugh saw that her face, though pale and peaky with tiredness, was transformed by a tenderness that she had seldom shown to him.

  The moth turned its long antennæ to explore the object next to it and as it touched her, she bent to breathe on it, thinking to communicate with it. At once, it made off, its heavy body hitting against the table things as it searched for its natural world of night. Its wing touched Gurgur on the face and he jumped up in anger and slashed at it with his table napkin.

  Kristy also leapt to her feet and snatching the napkin from him, shouted: ‘Stop that. Do you want to injure it?’

  ‘Why not?’ Gurgur turned his anger on her. ‘The thing makes a nuisance of itself.’

  ‘It’s confused. It’s frightened. You should help it, not torment it.’

  ‘What do I care for such creatures?’

  ‘Then you should care!’ Kristy stared at Gurgur in a fervour of rage at his indifference. ‘Then you should care. Cruelty begins with animals and ends with concentration camps.’

  Gurgur gave her a malign stare from oblique eyes that were, Hugh noticed, of a reddish-brown flecked with grey. They reminded him of a medicine – brown with a grey precipitate, blandly distasteful – that he had been given at school. So much menace came from the man that Hugh pulled Kristy down to her chair and patted her hand.

  Gurgur said quietly: ‘Do you imagine I am a Jew?’

  ‘I doubt whether the Jewish race would own you.’

  Gurgur caught his breath then, letting it out, looked down at Hugh’s hand on Kristy’s hand and said: ‘If this lady is your wife, you should control her.’

  Hugh laughed at the idea of controlling Kristy but said: ‘Come now, Kristy, the moth’s unharmed. We can put it outside. Don’t be upset.’

  Hugh’s mildness was more than Gurgur could bear. He said to Lomax: ‘I go now,’ and he went off with the stance of an outraged funeral mute.