The Rain Forest Read online

  When she returned, Hugh, confident she would come out reassured, looked into her face and knew that her fear had been confirmed.

  Blundering downhill, head hanging as though nothing could ever rouse her again, Kristy would not let him take her hand. He felt guilty, having wished the child away. He blamed himself as though, by wishing, he had killed it; and, at the same time, he shared the shock of loss. He had, he felt, rejected the one thing that would have brought purpose into their lives and his punishment was the sight of Kristy, desolate. But too late was too late. And now he must comfort her as best he could. He felt an acute pity for her, an acute sense of his responsibility. He caught her hand and held to it against her inclination and gradually her fingers relaxed in his hold. When he saw she was weeping again, he put his arm round her shoulders and drew her close to him.

  8

  It would be a week or two before Kristy could go into hospital. Dr Mueller had to send to Durban for the drug that would induce delivery. He warned her that as she was nearly seven months’ pregnant, the induction would take a little time.

  ‘But only a little time,’ he said, still trying to put a smiling face on things. ‘You must not be afraid. There is nothing in this to harm you.’

  ‘I am not afraid for myself.’ Kristy was very dull these days, letting herself be examined and organized as though she had lost the incentive to live.

  Mueller, whose concern was with life, was at a loss with her. He tried to revive her spirits by telling her: ‘This is something that does not happen often. It is, indeed, rare. Next time, it will not happen, I promise you. So do not worry. You feel well, don’t you?’

  ‘I feel like a walking cemetery.’

  The simile shocked him yet she realized that other people were inclined to the same idea. From the furtive glances of the women in the dining-room she knew the matron had put the news around: the child, though still inside her, was dead. She was a curiosity. Even Hugh could not reassure her about this. In Mrs Gunner’s day they could have taken their meals in their room but now they could neither ask for privileges nor hope they might be granted.

  Kristy no longer went for morning walks but sometimes, in the afternoons, Hugh would persuade her to go down to the harbour or up to the plantations. He began to be oppressed by these two walks, all that the island could offer, and said: ‘When this is over, let’s go away somewhere.’

  ‘Where could we go?’ Kristy spoke as though the island had so narrowed in on her, there was no escape from it. Still she trudged uphill or downhill, making no complaints. Hugh would have preferred a stream of self-pity which he could try to combat, but she said nothing. When he talked, he wondered if she were listening, if she were there at all. It was as though, unable to live with the dead, she had moved out of herself.

  For moments her depression weighed on him so he became exasperated and said: ‘Don’t take it so badly. After all, you have a life of your own.’

  They had reached the plantations. She said: ‘I’d like to walk to the mango tree.’

  ‘I really haven’t time.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I can go alone.’

  She hurried across to the lane, moving, for once, as though she had some reason for moving. Contrite, he followed her and caught her up when she stopped in front of the tree. She was staring up into the branches.

  ‘What have you found?’

  She shook her head: ‘Nothing. The bird has gone.’

  On the way back they met three young Arabs; three Arabs like the three who had met Lomax under the bread-fruit tree. Not only that, but two of them were the men he had seen working in Sir George’s room. He was surprised that they recognized Kristy and stopped to speak to her.

  One of them, who wore Arab dress, said with a half-humorous irony: ‘Have you been looking for our friend Gopal? He is not here, you know. He has been sent on an important mission to the coast. He has taken the ministers to observe parliament sitting in Nairobi.’

  Kristy introduced the men to Hugh. Musa looked him over with a smile of sardonic interest then said: ‘Will you come with your wife to visit me? Please come. I would like you to come on Thursday at six o’clock.’

  Kristy explained that she would be in hospital at that time. Musa, swinging round on Hugh, said: ‘Then you will come alone, Mr Foster. I should be honoured by your visit.’

  ‘It would be impossible. I have to be in my office at six o’clock.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that.’

  Throughout this fervent invitation, Musa smiled his sardonic smile and was still smiling when he lifted his hand to Kristy and walked away. Hugh felt that Musa was laughing at him but the other two men, when he looked at them, were regarding him with reflective seriousness. He said: ‘I saw you working in Sir George Easterbrook’s office.’

  One of them replied: ‘I am an engineer’, and they hurried after Musa.

  Hugh, bewildered by the invitation, made so precisely for a certain day and hour, said: ‘Is he usually as strange as that?’

  ‘Was he strange?’ Kristy asked, her mind on other things.

  Required to spend the day fasting, she went early to the hospital on Wednesday. Hugh, alone at the breakfast-table, feeling conspicuous and futile, was thankful when Ambrose came in looking for him.

  Ambrose had a solemn expression, conveying the fact that whatever had got him up and dressed and to the Daisy at that hour, was weighty business. He sat opposite Hugh and bending across the table, said in his smallest voice: ‘I’m leaving on the boat. I’ve a taxi waiting. I just looked in to say my adieux. How’s Kristy?’

  Hugh described the calamity that had come down on them, not out of a clear sky, but a sky so occluded with vexations and tensions, he had not, at first, been able to comprehend Kristy’s sense of loss.

  ‘But I feel it now, more than I would have thought possible.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Deeply sorry.’ For a moment Ambrose hung his head in sorrow but there was the pressing matter of his imminent departure: ‘I’m afraid I can’t stay. I must . . .’

  ‘But where are you going? When are you coming back?’

  ‘I can’t tell you at this juncture, but I’ll write. I’ll explain everything.’ Ambrose squeezed Hugh’s hand.

  ‘You’re not in trouble, I hope?’

  ‘No. Au contraire.’

  ‘What about the treasure? You’re not dropping that?’

  Ambrose laughed: ‘What a piece of nonsense that was! I must fly. We’ll meet again one day. I’ve always been fond of you.’

  ‘And I of you. Let me come down to the Harbour and see you off.’

  ‘Dear friend, no,’ As Hugh made to rise, Ambrose pushed him back into his chair: ‘I’m not alone. A lady. Three ladies, in fact. Three delicious girls. When we meet, I shall have not only a wife but two daughters. But, meanwhile, good-bye and love to Kristy.’

  Hugh was not much surprised when Lomax rang him at the office and asked him to luncheon. He was about to refuse when Lomax said: ‘I beg you to come. I must talk to someone.’

  With a desolating sense of being forced to add to his own unhappiness, Hugh accepted and was picked up by the chauffeur at one o’clock.

  Lomax sat alone in the brown gloom of the Praslin’s main room. He was drinking a martini. Hugh, served with the same, found it was practically neat gin.

  Lomax looked unusually flushed: ‘Do you know that Ambrose has left the island? My friend, Mrs Namier – we were on the point of becoming engaged – is with him. Her daughters, too. They all went without a word. I came down to find them gone. Mrs Namier left a letter which was handed to me. I wish you to read it.’

  The letter, on three sheets of hotel writing-paper, was in Ambrose’s small hand. Taking it reluctantly, Hugh asked: ‘Must I read all this?’

  ‘If you would be so kind.’

  The letter, which had been written to Mrs Namier, was a declaration of love. ‘A blinding attraction,’ Ambrose called it. ‘Truly love at first sight.’ His passion, he said, had
developed rapidly until he was possessed by only one wish in life: to make her his wife. He was not the most handsome of men, or the youngest, or the richest, but he could offer her his experience and a devotion in the highest traditions of an English gentleman. He was a squire and his understanding of estate management would be of considerable use to her. Till recently, he had kept up the family home of the Gunners . . .’

  ‘I can’t read any more.’

  ‘Please read the last page.’

  The last page began: ‘. . . but you will say “What of Lomax?” I feel bound to tell you that Lomax is an abnormal man. His desire to marry you is a last desperate throw. He is a depressive and a homosexual who, having failed to attract me and the male sex in general, now wants to try his luck with the female. . . .’

  Hugh put the letter down and took up his drink: ‘Why do you show me this?’

  ‘Ambrose was my friend. He was also yours. I thought you should know his true character. There is no truth in what he says about me. It is slander. I have no abnormal tendencies.’

  Acutely embarrassed, Hugh said: ‘He may have misunderstood you. You did tell me that you loved him.’

  ‘Is it abnormal to love a friend? In Shakespeare a man will say he loves another man.’

  ‘Yes, but nowadays we do not use the word so widely.’

  Lomax called the safragi to bring more martinis. He drank, staring reflectively before him and after long consideration of his case, said sadly: ‘So I was misunderstood. I am afraid that must happen very often. I am very much alone. I know how to make money but I do not know how to spend it. I do not know how to make friends. It is not that I do not want people: I feel they do not want me. When Ambrose approached me, I was pleased. . . . Yes, I was pleased.’

  Hugh saw that Lomax knew too much about himself. Had he been less sensitive, he might have blundered through as well as another. He went on talking, explaining that when he was young, he thought he had only to make money and everything else would be added to him. He had been surprised to realize that it was the poor who attracted friends, not the rich. Hugh, hearing his voice coming as from the other side of a chasm, thought: ‘That is tragedy: to be aware of one’s shortcomings yet unable to surmount them.’ He soon grew bored with Lomax’s tragedy and his thoughts went to Kristy. What was happening to her at that moment? He remembered her grief when she knew the child was dead. He had been moved at the time but now she was in Mueller’s hands, he could ask why so much love had been wasted on a creature she had never seen? A burden that had brought her creativity to a stop? Certainly she had wasted no love on him. He was like Lomax, a loser where relationships were concerned.

  Lomax, smiling his agonized smile, said: ‘I suppose I suffer from the disease of the rich. If anyone approaches me, I think “He does not want me: he wants my money.”’

  ‘Does it matter so much what someone wants? Is it better to be wanted for your looks? Looks are the result of a genetic accident: they don’t last. Money, if you take care of it, is yours for life.’

  Lomax, merely puzzled by this attempt to reassure him, sighed, perhaps feeling he had called across the chasm and found nothing there. Hugh wondered if Lomax had hoped he might replace Ambrose. He thought: ‘poor devil’ and liked the man no better than before.

  Lomax took out a packet of Gauloises and was about to light a cigarette when the luncheon bell rang. He put the cigarette carefully back into the pack and lit, instead, Ambrose’s letter to Mrs Namier. They left it burning in the ash-tray.

  Luncheon was a strained and depressing meal. Lomax, laughing suddenly, said: ‘There will be no treasure hunt!’

  ‘You did not give Ambrose the money?’

  Lomax made a movement of the head that did not say yes or no. Hugh, realizing the man could not bear to say more, let the matter drop.

  When they had eaten, Lomax strolled out on to the terrace and walked on over the grass, under a sky so brilliant the eye avoided a direct glance. He seemed not to know what he was doing and Hugh followed, concerned for him. At the pool, the bathers had retreated under awnings but Lomax walked on beneath the white-hot sky and came to a stop beside the mangosteens. He stood in the wind blowing hot off the blaze of the shore. The sea had the blue-blackness of ink. Occasionally the long rollers bent the surface, moving slowly and frothing in whiter than the sand.

  Finding the light acutely uncomfortable, Hugh said: ‘I have to go to the hospital to see my wife.’

  ‘Ah! Your baby is coming?’

  ‘No. We have lost him.’

  Lomax contracted his shoulders regretfully: ‘I will send for my chauffeur and he can drive you.’ When they parted, he held out his hand: ‘You were kind to listen to me. I appreciate your kindness.’

  Hugh was not allowed to see Kristy. The matron told him she was too drowsy to recognize him and her condition was unchanged.

  9

  The Indian nurse told Kristy that the room she was given had been Mrs Gunner’s room.

  ‘You mean, she died here?’

  ‘This very old hospital. In every room people die.’

  The small cream-washed room with its brown hospital furniture looked towards the cemetery. The nurse thought this an advantage as the front rooms, exposed like bird-cages on the island’s façade, could be unpleasantly hot. The back room, though in shadow, seemed suffocating to Kristy as she lay sweating in the unfamiliar, narrow bed, the pitocin drip passing into her outstretched arm. The only effect of the drug was to deaden her consciousness. The day wore on: the spasms started and stopped, started and stopped, and the matron, annoyed by the perversity of Kristy’s pelvic floor, increased the drip and tried to speed the birth for Dr Mueller’s sake. Even so, it was midnight before he need be summoned and dawn was breaking when he at last managed to drag the unaiding foetus out of the birth canal.

  Kristy, feeling she had reached the limit of human endurance, whimpered: ‘Put me to sleep. Why don’t you put me to sleep?’ but no one listened to her. Dr Mueller, his shirt-sleeves rolled above the elbow, sweated in the heavy night-time air. The matron stood by, exhausted but determined to see what there was to be seen.

  To Kristy it seemed she had become for them no more than an awkward portmanteau that had to be unpacked. Feeling a raw and crunching sensation as the flesh was pulled from her flesh, she ceased to control herself and screamed aloud.

  The matron had no ears for her but Dr Mueller looked surprised as though he had forgotten he was handling a sentient being. As the matron stared keenly at the product of so much pain, Kristy turned her face from it and said: ‘I don’t want to see it.’

  The matron said: ‘It’s a girl,’ adding reflectively but reluctantly: ‘It’s perfectly formed.’

  ‘Let me sleep. Only let me sleep,’ Kristy said. ‘Why didn’t you give me an anaesthetic?’

  ‘Oh, come, come, Mrs Foster!’ Now that he had earned his fee, Mueller was his old jolly self: ‘It was so quick.’

  ‘It took all day.’

  Kristy slept till the early afternoon when she was awakened in the mysterious half-light of her small room by the opening of the door. Dr Dixon looked in and, satisfied she was awake, nodded to her and said: ‘I have examined the foetus. The cord was around the neck so the child was strangled. I thought you should know it was not your fault.’

  Kristy tried to find strength to ask: ‘Who said it was my fault?’ but she did not need to ask. Behind the old doctor as he moved away, she saw the matron’s simpering, sheepish face.

  The Indian nurse came to tell Kristy that, as a government wife, she might lie on the balcony. She accepted the privilege but it did not mean much to her. She scarcely bothered to glance down on the Residency garden and the idyllic shore where the Chief Secretary and his friends went water-skiing.

  Hugh, coming to see her before going to the office, saw she was once again the thin, pallid young woman he had married, but her vitality had not returned. Dr Mueller was sitting beside her. Patting her hand, he cheerfully said: ‘Yo
u must be pregnant again straight away. Now, at once, immediately. Do not wait. And next time, I promise, all will be well.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I am sure. You can believe me.’

  Kristy did not believe him. She gave him a stare of dislike and took her hand away. She wanted no more of Dr Mueller with his self-confidence and the physical intimacies of pre-natal examinations. She was disgusted by all of it.

  Disconcerted by her coldness, he rose, saying: ‘For a little while, good-bye. Soon I shall see you again.’

  When he was out of hearing, Kristy said: ‘I want to go back to England, it doesn’t matter how. I’ll go steerage from the Cape, if that’s the best we can manage. You’ve only got another five months here. I’ll find us a flat. I’ll see you have a job to come home to. I’ll rally the friends. Something is sure to turn up.’

  Greatly relieved that she was again her managing, independent self, he said: ‘Yes, it’ll take your mind off things.’ He knew he would return to find the world organized for him.

  The matron, excusing herself, came out and shook up Kristy’s pillows, then said with an insinuating sweetness: ‘So Mr Gunner has left us? I’m told he went with a lady and those who saw them said they seemed very close.’

  Hugh said: ‘The lady and Mr Gunner are about to be married.’

  ‘You don’t say! Who’d’ve thought it?’

  She took herself off and Hugh and Kristy sat in silence. They could go, they could start again, but here they had been defeated. Hugh felt the inertia of low spirits, thinking of the dull evening ahead and the lonely supper-table. Realizing that that would be his whole life after she had gone, he was dejected, feeling that without her, he would be in limbo.

  She put out her hand to him and asked: ‘What has happened to your friend Hobhouse?’

  ‘I think he’s camping on the other side of the island.’