The Rain Forest Page 19

  On reaching the obelisk, the Reverend Pierce began the burial service. At the end of the path, a dozen or so acetylene lamps hung on the walls and the grave-diggers, who must have gone out at once on news of Mrs Gunner’s death, stood in a group awaiting the dead. They had not only dug the grave, but had cleared away the maidenhair and thorn-apple so the mourners would have space to stand. When they had helped the orderlies to lower the coffin, they drew back into the shadows, courteously inconspicuous, to watch the proceedings.

  Listening to Pierce’s monotonous mumble, Ambrose thought: ‘He believes none of it.’ His father’s stone – an angel pointing the way to heaven – stood near by and he remembered that Mrs Hampton, whose own husband lay under a plain slab, was said to have made fun of it. It had been his mother’s choice and if he added her name to it, it would save the cost of another.

  Sniffing the dawn, the Reverend Pierce speeded things up. Having said: ‘. . . in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life’, he gabbled through the Collect. He explained to Ambrose that he would have to hasten away because he was prone to stomach chills.

  Ambrose said: ‘I would have preferred Father Matthew to conduct the burial.’

  ‘But your mother was one of my congregation.’

  ‘Her heart was elsewhere.’

  Wounded, the Reverend Pierce went off, taking the women with him, and Ambrose, left alone, saw the sky break and dawn roll out in furbelows of violet and wine red. The graveyard that had been dark, quickly became over-light, the tombs and trees and weeds standing out with shocking clarity.

  The grave-diggers, downcast like men called on to perform a distasteful act, waited for Ambrose to follow the others. He decided to stay. Motioning them to continue their work, he watched as the earth fell on the paltry coffin and was troubled. Surely they could have found her something better!

  Someone had told him that the cemetery had been put up here because the site was away from the river and the land-crabs. But land-crabs were not the only predators on human flesh. As the grave filled, Ambrose saw an army of red ants marching out of the weeds and moving purposefully towards the broken earth. The leaders disappeared into the grave and the others followed in formation. Ambrose, enraged, made to stamp on the column but as he moved, he saw another army of ants advancing from the other side, then a third army and a fourth. The clearing was a-shimmer with ants. Uncountable numbers of them were pouring into the grave.

  Standing helpless against them, Ambrose watched the certainty with which they made their way underground. The grave-diggers, who were putting out their lamps and knocking the earth off their spades, noticed him with concern. Smiling apologetically, one of them, an old man, said:

  ‘Hadhihi iradatu’llah.’

  Ambrose nodded. Yes, it was the will of Allah. He felt in his pockets and found a few rupees which he distributed among the men who bowed and touched their brows and breasts. And that, he thought, was the end of that. In the face of penury, he felt a perverse satisfaction in having given away all he had. His satisfaction failed him when he saw his taxi under the eucalyptus trees. He had told the driver to wait for him and the driver had waited. He tried to slip by unseen but the man was on the alert.

  There was only one thing for Ambrose to do. He would drive down to the Praslin and make his peace with Lomax.

  4

  For a week the Daisy had been in a state of delayed revolt. The splendid kaftans still hung in the closet but Akbar himself could not be found. The police had been asked to search for him, assure him he had done no wrong and would be welcomed back at the pension whenever he chose to return. There were about thirty pure-bred Nubians on the island, all much alike and each, when questioned, swore he was not Akbar. One of them, cornered in the Medina, said: ‘Me no Akbar, me Akbar’s brother Amin’ and he promised to send Akbar back to the Daisy. But Amin, if he were Amin and not Akbar, did not produce Akbar and the guests continued to suffer Hassan’s muddle-headed rule.

  No one knew of Mrs Gunner’s death till the churchgoers saw the matron in church. The matron, giving out the sad news, added: ‘You’ve no idea how strange Mr Gunner was,’ and they listened, amazed by the story.

  In the dining-room Mrs Axelrod, too excited to take off her church-going hat and nylon gloves, waited till everyone was seated before springing on to a chair and shouting: ‘She’s gone and that’s the last straw. We’ve got to take action. We must have decent food and service. I vote,’ she held up her arms, hands hanging as though broken at the wrist, and jumped up and down, ‘I vote we send a round-robin. We’ll tell Gunner we’ll not pay our bills till things improve.’

  Ogden broke in gravely: ‘Mr Gunner has just lost his mother. I agree, we’ve been patient but we must be a little more patient. We must give him time to get over his loss.’

  Everyone looked at Ambrose’s vacant chair and Simpson asked: ‘Where’s he got to, anyway?’

  ‘I expect,’ Ogden said, ‘he’s shut himself in his mother’s room to mourn. Let us respect his grief.’

  Not much impressed by Ogden’s plea, Mrs Axelrod said fiercely: ‘O.K. We’ll give him twenty-four hours to get over it, but we’ve got to have a discussion. It’s service or else.’

  She would have gone on but Axelrod, a stout, genial man younger than his wife, seized her from behind and lifted her off the chair, thus diverting her rage on to himself.

  After luncheon – a deplorable meal of salt-fish with breadfruit sauce – there was a drift to the salon where the men sat silently, fearful of disturbing a mourning Ambrose; and the women, keeping well away from the door to Mrs Gunner’s room, awaited Mrs Axelrod’s directive. When she appeared, she led them into the Lettuce Room and closed the door. She could be seen talking vigorously inside.

  The Fosters, out of all this, were preoccupied with their own affairs. Hugh, thinking Kristy unnaturally resigned to her condition, had telephoned Dr Mueller and, as he pressed the urgency of the matter, had been given an appointment for that very afternoon.

  They set out at three o’clock. When they reached the square, they went left down a lane that overhung the cliff-face. The lane was planted with shade trees but the foliage seemed rather to keep in than exclude the afternoon heat that hung like a fog in the air. Though this expensive enclave was a residential stronghold of rich Moslems, Hindus and Jews like Dr Mueller, it seemed held in Sunday rest. No one sat in the flower gardens. There was quiet except for moments of flurry and panic, when the Fosters startled some brilliant bird.

  Though the lane had levelled out, Hugh noticed that Kristy walked in a plodding way, like someone much heavier and older, and suspecting she was deliberately adopting the rôle of gravid female, he could scarcely hold in his exasperation. Her silence, too, seemed to him no ordinary silence but a broody lack of will to speak. When they reached Mueller’s house, she paused beside the low front wall that held boxes of Cape primroses, claret, rose and rose-violet, and said: ‘Yesterday, Mrs Gunner advised me to come and see Dr Mueller. Well, here I am and she is dead and buried.’

  ‘It could happen to any of us,’ Hugh impatiently said and taking her by the arm, he led her into Dr Mueller’s compact, white house.

  For the sake of his Moslem patients, Dr Mueller kept the curtains drawn in his waiting-room but when he saw Kristy, he laughed and said: ‘No need for these precautions, eh?’ He pulled the curtains and they opened to reveal the great vista of the Indian Ocean, almost colourless in the blazing afternoon, with the ships at anchor in the harbour, all straining towards the south-west.

  Dr Mueller held out his arms towards Hugh and Kristy as though he would enfold them in his good-humoured vitality: ‘Now, what’s the problem?’

  His manner reminded Kristy of Dr Gopal and though she had no particular trust in Gopal, she took to Mueller because he seemed already familiar. He was a thin, small man with a large head, large nose and thick, reddish, curling hair. He led her off to the surgery, patting her shoulder to encourage her. Used to the formality of
English medical men, she was entertained by Mueller and felt at ease during the intimate, uncomfortable examination necessary to confirm pregnancy.

  When it was over, he patted her abdomen and laughed: ‘He is very happy in there, I think. And you are happy? That’s good. You feel well? For you, I think, pregnancy is the ideal condition. If you were always pregnant, you would have no worries at all.’ He laughed joyously at his idea of a permanent state of pregnancy and was still laughing when he returned her to the room where Hugh waited. Hugh moved forward, eager to hear that it was all a mistake. Instead, Mueller congratulated him, saying: ‘You will become the father of a fine child.’ Hugh, refusing to listen, interrupted to ask if the pregnancy could not be terminated.

  ‘Do not think of it,’ said Dr Mueller.

  Hugh insisted: ‘Supposing I flew my wife to Durban or Cape Town? There must be clinics where this could be put right, no matter how long it’s been going on.’

  Mueller patted Hugh as he had patted Kristy: ‘Come now, Mr Foster, this will not do. You would not submit your wife to a dangerous operation? That would be cruel. And she would suffer in other ways. She would suffer mentally for such a deprivation. But I do not think you are serious. Consider, rather, the joy of bringing up a family. Your wife is well and happy. Look at her! Would you take her child from her? No, I am sure you would not.’ He put out his hand to Kristy and led her to the front door, saying to Hugh: ‘She has fine health. She will do very well, I think.’

  Outside again, committed to parenthood, Hugh had a sulky sense that he had been fooled. Kristy, looking down on the harbour, saw that during her spell in the surgery, the tide had changed and all the boats now strained towards the north-east. When she mentioned this to Hugh, he refused to look or reply but at the main road, he said: ‘You’d better go back and rest. I want to walk to the Medina.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  He kept ahead of her all the way to the plantations. A delicate veil of smoke still hung over the sugar canes but the workers were elsewhere. The birds, too, had left the mango tree or were hidden in its foliage. Only the tree creeper was still clinging to the bark and moving upwards, catching food for its insatiable young. Kristy stopped to watch it and said in a tender voice: ‘She’s wonderful.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a female?’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  He realized she had come here only to look at the tree creeper. As she stood, hypnotized by the bird’s movements, swaying a little, her smile ecstatic and sleepy, he pushed her crossly and said: ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘Is there any hurry?’

  He walked away from her and she came plodding after him. Remembering how Mueller had said: ‘Your wife is well and happy’, he was resentful, feeling she had lost one creative dimension only to find another. He knew his resentment was unjustified. It could be explained by nothing but envy, the cardinal sin he most disliked.

  When she caught up with him, he said crossly: ‘If you’d stayed in London, we wouldn’t be in this fix. You could have written your book. And I wouldn’t be stuck . . .’ Stuck, it was in his mind, in the position of breadwinner, wasting his life so she could add to hers.

  She said nothing but followed him through the lanes to the market square. He said: ‘I’m going to see Simon Hobhouse.’

  ‘I guessed that.’

  ‘You don’t want to come, do you?’

  ‘Why not? I’d like to see how he lives.’

  Leading the way up Simon’s stairs, Hugh was discomposed, wondering how Simon would react when he saw Kristy. Till now, he had behaved as though she did not exist but he could scarcely keep that up when he came face to face with her in a small room.

  Hugh need not have worried for Simon was too preoccupied to notice either of them. A naked youth lay on the bed, the lower half of his body covered with a towel. Hugh stopped, shocked and embarrassed until he realized he had walked in on a doctor-patient session. Simon was intent on his subject.

  Kristy, unsure of her welcome, remained in the doorway while Hugh moved forward to say: ‘Hello.’ Simon, jerking round, greeted him as friend and comrade and called him over to the bed.

  The boy, if he were a boy and not an old man, strained his eyes in Hugh’s direction but remained otherwise motionless as though fearful of disaccommodating the doctor. He was a thin, small creature with one shoulder higher than the other. His face was sallow and flat, held in an expression of habitual suffering to which was now added the strain of a self-respecting person who is exposed before strangers. His clothes – the cheap dark Western suit which was the Sunday wear of the Christian Arab – hung on a chair. His shoes, shabby, the laces missing, stood beneath it.

  Hugh murmured: ‘Perhaps we should go?’

  ‘Don’t go. I have a very interesting case here. Rare, too. The mission has had no experience of it but I struck another in Sumatra once. Every time I come back, I take a look at him to see how the disease is progressing. Come closer.’

  Hugh edged unwillingly towards the bed while Kristy was careful to remain beyond range of the boy’s sight. She saw his eyelids flutter nervously as Simon threw back the towel and placed a hand on the boy’s abdomen. Hugh, a worried frown on his face, was doing his best to show interest in what he neither liked nor understood. Simon, speaking as to a fellow practitioner, said: ‘Polycystic disease. Kidneys as well as liver.’ Simon removed his hand and motioned Hugh to palpate the abdomen himself: ‘If you press there and there, you can detect the organic change.’

  Not having the courage to refuse, Hugh did as he was told. As he put his hand on the boy’s flesh, Kristy could see, even from the back of his head, his agony of distaste.

  ‘I give him another couple of years,’ Simon casually said.

  Kristy, who pitied the poor doomed creature on the bed, was angry that this prognosis should be declared so openly. Then she realized the boy knew no English. He saw both men as doctors, savants, people apart, conversing, as they might in the Middle Ages, in a learned language he could not hope to understand.

  Simon moved over to the window and Hugh followed him. As Simon discussed the case, Kristy, watching, saw that Hugh, giving his attention to Simon’s face, movements, the solemnity of his voice, did not understand a word of it. Kristy, who wanted to know more about the boy, felt again the assertion of a relationship that excluded her. If Simon had noticed her, he did not want her to be there. He ignored her, as he always did. The men wanted to be alone to pursue their homogeneous understanding.

  Very well, if they did not want her, she would go. She turned to go down the stairs and neither called after her. When she reached the sk, she looked up at the open window of Simon’s room but no one was looking out to see where she had gone.

  Not knowing what to do with herself, she wandered back to the market. She knew Hugh would expect to find her waiting somewhere near by, but she did not intend to wait. She had decided to return to the Daisy when she noticed Musa coming out of Gopal’s shop. He hurried towards her, smiling meaningfully: ‘How are you, Mrs Foster? Perhaps you are on your way to visit our friend. Dr Gopal? Alas, he is not here. He does not go very often to his office but it seems he has gone today.’

  ‘I had no intention of visiting Dr Gopal. I advise you not to let your imagination run away with you.’

  Musa’s smile widened: ‘Are you trying to shock me? I am not easily shocked. I know something about English freedom. I have other English friends.’

  ‘So you mix in government circles?’

  Musa burst out laughing: ‘Government circles? Do you think I would have anything to do with such people? But you are a government lady, so you think the officials are the only English people here. You should come and meet my friends, Mrs Foster.’

  ‘I’d be glad to.’

  ‘Then let us go. I wonder what you will think of them!’

  There was malice in Musa’s smile and his tone suggested to her that he was teasing her or intended to play some trick on her. Going w
ith him for lack of anything better to do, she went uneasily, noting how his manner had changed. In the company of the other young men, he had been aloof or angry but now there was something flirtatiously forward in his manner. She felt him giving her speculative, sidelong glances and when they entered the narrow sks, he kept beside her and several times managed to touch her hand with his own. She was not much flattered, knowing that in a restrictive society, young men were easily overthrown. As well as that, Ambrose had told her that the example of the Praslin inmates had led the Arabs to suppose that every Caucasian, female or male, was available at a price. Still, Musa’s looks attracted her. At another time, she might have responded to him but now she did not feel free to respond. There was another claim on her. She kept him at a distance by making fun of him:

  ‘How is it you and the others are influenced by Gopal? What have you got in common?’

  ‘He is our friend.’

  ‘And fellow conspirator?’

  ‘You are laughing, of course?’ Musa’s sidelong glance turned on her. His eyes were hard and she saw that for all his inculcated courtesy, he was a wild creature: ‘Do you think I intend to live like my father; spending the day in idleness, grateful for the patronage of that old man in the Residency? My grandfather died of ennui. My father is dying of ennui. But I shall not die that way. You think we are powerless. You think we can do nothing against you: but if you stay here, you may be surprised.’

  ‘Yes, you could stir up trouble if you wanted to. But you’re up against more than the British. The blacks say this is an African island and there’s Gopal. I suspect he has ambitions of his own. If it came to a struggle, you might wish you had the British back again.’

  ‘That remains to be seen.’ Musa hung his head, his playfulness gone: ‘The other day we spoke of the right of conquest, but there is another right: the right of ownership. The British government pretends to respect it. They did not seize our winter palace and say: “Now it is ours” – no. They gave us a lease and each year a little money and said: “It is still yours, but the Governor will live there for as long as he chooses.” In that way, they are within the law. But there is more to it than that. Most of the land here belongs to my family, to the Abubakr, but we have no right to develop it. The government does not take it from us. Instead, they say politely: “We regret we cannot let you build an hotel.” “We cannot let you build high-rise blocks.” “We cannot let you sell to a property firm”, and so on.’