The Rain Forest

by Olivia Manning

  Hugh appeared, looking flushed. The room they had entered was large and full of middle-aged men and women. They all stared at the Fosters and the Fosters, weary and travel-worn, saw no friendliness in their faces.

  Following Akbar, Kristy paused on the stair that led up from the main room, and said ‘Have we come all this way to meet these old boilers?’

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Kristy!’

  Akbar, waiting in the corridor above, threw open a door, switched on a light and said ‘Very nice room. Yo’ have balcony, yo’ have bath here, yo’ have desk, ottoman, bed, cupboards. Best room in Daisy Pension.’

  ‘Why should they give us the best room?’ Kristy asked.

  ‘Do shut up,’ said Hugh. ‘You’re never grateful for anything.’

  Downstairs again, they found the bar had opened and they had ceased to be of interest. The bar, that had been hidden behind an ornamental grille, was now a dazzle with fairy-lights and behind the counter there was a woman who could only be Mrs Gunner. Though less than five foot tall, thin and with the face of a mummified marmoset, she extruded authority and Akbar was her henchman. He stood beside the bar and with a movement of brow or forefinger controlled the half-dozen safragis who, their white kaftans sashed in red and each wearing a fez, carried the drinks on silver trays.

  Red, it seemed, was a colour favoured by Mrs Gunner. She herself was in red. The chairs and sofas were covered in bright red haleskin, the curtains were red and at intervals, on an embossed cream paper smudged with gold, gilded cupids held out lights with red plastic shades. It was a very bright room and the brightest thing in it was Mrs Gunner. As she moved, her jerkin and trousers flashed with sequins. She was said to run the best pension in the southern seas and Hugh, observing her with respect, whispered to Kristy ‘Should I introduce myself?’

  ‘I think you should.’

  Approaching her, Hugh saw that Mrs Gunner’s fingernails were as red as her hair, and her arms, bare from the shoulder, were as brown and wrinkled as cinnamon sticks. She was counting change when he came to the bar and she did not look up. After waiting some minutes, he said.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Gunner, I’m Hugh Foster.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ she kept her eyes down and her husky Cockney voice expressed no interest at all.

  ‘We want to thank you for giving us such a nice room.’

  ‘All the rooms are nice, dear.’ She turned back to her bottles and cash register without having given him a glance and he lamely made his way back to Kristy.

  Kristy, in his absence, had seated herself on a sofa between two women. The women, pointedly displeased, looked away from her and Hugh knew she felt, as he did, a sense of social failure. As he reached her, she sprang up and taking his arm, pulled him to an empty corner, breathing fiercely. ‘What do you think? I tried to be friendly. You saw those women? I sat down between them and said “I’m Mrs Foster. Who are you?” and they froze. You’d think I’d insulted them.’

  ‘They probably heard you call them “boilers”.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  Depressed, sweating in the humid heat, they sat at the back of the room, not knowing what was expected of them. The only positive emotion they could feel was exasperation with each other, so neither spoke. Beside them was an open doorway covered with a bead curtain. When Hugh lifted the curtain and looked into the garden, several near-by people stirred resentfully, and he let it drop again. A dinner-gong sounded and the others, rising, filed past the Fosters and went out through the curtain. Following the last of them, the Fosters found the garden air as hot and humid as the air of the room. They crossed the lawn to a large square tent which was, they discovered, the dining-room. Akbar placed them obscurely, close to the canvas wall. From where they sat, they could make cautious inspection of the other tables. On every table there was a bowl of fruit and another, smaller, bowl that contained some fragile leaves of lettuce. Mrs Gunner did not come to the tent for her meals. Akbar, presiding alone, stood by the serving-table and, when required, would pull the cork from a wine bottle. His main job, it seemed, was to keep the other safragis busy.

  The light bulbs were dim. The canvas, soaked by the rains, gave off a musty smell. Kristy, turning over the tropical fruits in their bowl, said: ‘This is the only encouraging sight I’ve seen here yet.’

  Listening to the conversations near enough to be overheard, the Fosters realized that here, as everywhere, the English talked about the weather. The Fosters had been advised that the hot wet season would soon be ending and cooler weather would be on its way. It would become dry but not very dry. Owing to the slant of the island and a quirk of the trade winds, there was rain all the year round. This was thought to be an advantage though they did not know why. The people about them were knowledgeable on this subject.

  ‘The rains were excellent this year,’ one said.

  ‘Oh, yes, and very well spaced.’

  There was turtle soup, turtle meat fried in coconut oil, sweet potatoes and yams. Those of the guests who had wine on their tables, took no more than a glass each and tightly recorked their bottles. Observing everything, Kristy asked suddenly: ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘Do keep your voice down. I have to work with these people. You know why we’re here: we’ve got to pay off our income-tax. And you didn’t have to come.’

  ‘This climate makes you bad-tempered.’

  ‘I’m cross for several reasons. To begin with . . . I had to give that taxi-driver five pounds.’

  ‘You gave him five pounds? You’re mad.’

  ‘What else could I do? We arrive in a small place where everyone gossips: can I start my career by having a row with a taxi-driver?’

  Kristy started to laugh.

  Apprehensively, Hugh asked: ‘What now?’

  She shook her head and went on laughing, making no noise but shaking helplessly while Hugh looked round to see who was watching. Only one person had noticed her and he smiled when Hugh caught his eye. He glanced away at once but the smile surprised Kristy into sobriety.

  The government officers in their suits of khaki drill, the wives all much alike in flowered, sleeveless dresses of unfashionable length, seemed to keep dry by a refrigeration of the will. The newcomer – who had entered late and whose table was close to the Fosters – glistened with sweat and his clothes, too heavy for the climate, were shabby, sweat-stained and, in places, split. Bent over his food, he was still smiling as though he remembered Kristy and her laughter with pleasure. He was so different from the other inmates of the pension that Kristy whispered: ‘A human being!’

  He was a man in middle age, of immense size, and his face, with its broad brow and short nose, looked like the face of the sphinx, blunted by blows and attritive time. His faded auburn hair was fine in texture but his skin, coarse-grained and sallow, was like the skin of some large pachyderm. ‘A white rhino,’ Hugh thought, never having seen one. The man, with his broad shoulders and chest, might have been a pugilist had he not had, when the smile faded out, an expression of reflective sadness.

  Hugh, having observed him, looked away but Kristy, confident of his interest in them, waited until he glanced their way, then smiled at him. He at once bent towards them, saying ‘I am Ambrose Gunner: not, as people are inclined to think, the husband of Mrs Gunner; merely the son. I keep the books here. I’ve been expecting you.’

  ‘I’m glad someone was expecting us,’ Kristy said.

  ‘Did you find Mrs G. abstracted? I fear she is before she’s had something to sustain her. She’s over eighty, you know.’

  ‘You live here?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘Not really. I come and go. My father settled here when he retired from the navy. When he was a young man, his ship called in at Al-Bustan on the way to the China station and he was determined that one day he would come back to live here. He bought this house for a song.’ Ambrose Gunner’s voice was light and compelling, a beautiful voice and he was, Hugh felt, presenting it at its most subtle pitch so the Fosters migh
t know that Ambrose Gunner’s true world was not that of the Daisy Pension.

  ‘So you’re on a visit?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be returning to London in a few weeks’ time.’

  Hugh sensed an arrogance about the man but Kristy, watching the slight uptilt of Ambrose’s chin, the droop of his eyelids and the defensive set of his delicate mouth, thought him sensitive and vulnerable. They both regretted that he would be leaving so soon.

  There was a pause then Ambrose suggested that they take their coffee together in the main room. This arrangement made, the tension of their mutual curiosity subsided, and the Fosters left Ambrose to finish his supper alone.

  Out in the garden, they stopped, startled by the change in the exterior scene. The sky had cleared and they saw, for the first time, the unfamiliar stars of the southern hemisphere. The sky was indigo, of a glassy clarity; and the stars so large they seemed to be rushing towards the earth, pulsing and scintillating as they came, and casting a bluish twilight over the garden. In this uncertain light, the trees seemed monstrously tall and the fruit-bats, sweeping from tree to tree, as large as pterodactyls.

  The air whined and wheezed and clicked and creaked with night creatures. Under all the noises was the steady sibilation of the cigalas. Small grey objects sat on the lawn like a concourse of mushrooms and some of the noise came from them. Moving cautiously forward, the Fosters saw they were frogs, their moving throats glinting in the starlight and giving out a unison of croaks.

  Kristy, putting her hand under Hugh’s arm, said ‘The isle is full of wonders’ and felt, when they went indoors, that the room looked more like home. Mrs Gunner appeared through a door near the bar and moving with an unsteady swagger, clanged the grille open and shouted: ‘It’s m’birfday.’

  A small, moustached man, pink and bristling like a shrimp, took this up flirtatiously: ‘Not your birthday again, Mrs G.?’

  Humorously belligerent, Mrs Gunner said: ‘I suppose I can have another birfday if I want, can’t I?’

  The guests were quick to agree and several of the men invited her to take a drink.

  The Fosters, outside the circle of jocularity, seated themselves where they had sat before and waited for Ambrose. Near them another room, entered through a glass door, ran at an angle to the main room. Though it was unlit, it sparkled for it was a glass room and the harbour lights shone through it. When Ambrose joined them, Kristy asked why there should be a conservatory on an island that was itself a conservatory.

  ‘That,’ said Ambrose, ‘is the Lettuce Room – where Mrs G. grows lettuce. She’ll tell you that the Daisy is “a little bit of England on the Equator” and what would England be without lettuces?’

  As he sat down, Hugh was aware of an observant shuffle among their neighbours. From glances received, he could guess that, despite Ambrose’s impressive bulk and air of intellectual and social superiority, he was not approved. Hugh, knowing that unpopularity was a catching condition, felt uneasy, remembering his first term at school, when, coming in late on a row between two older boys, he had been ordered to choose whose side he was on. In his innocence, he had chosen the wrong boy then obstinately refused to repudiate him. That tormented year as follower of the outcast had, Hugh felt, set a pattern for his whole future. He was perforce a nonconformist and still did not know whether nature or circumstances prevented him from conforming. But there it was! In a strange place where they knew no one, Ambrose alone had welcomed them and Hugh was again on the wrong side.

  Ambrose was eager to know exactly where the Fosters had lived in London. Kristy was telling him that they had lived at Beaufort Street. They had had a large, costly, leasehold flat that had been no asset when their money ran out.

  ‘The lease was nearly at an end and the owner said he wanted the place for himself. Not true, of course: but it meant we had nothing to sell or let, and we had to store our furniture.’

  Unaware of the misfortune contained in these facts, Ambrose said longingly: ‘Chelsea! My old stamping ground. My place was off the Fulham Road. Did you drink at the Birdie?’

  Kristy shook her head, not caring to admit that they had drunk, much too expensively, at a Curzon Street club frequented by film people. It was too early to confide all their follies but Ambrose was so much part of their social scene, she could tell him of her encounter with the two women on the sofa. The same women were back on the same sofa and Ambrose viewed them through oblique eyes.

  ‘How did I offend them?’ Kristy asked.

  ‘Ah! They’re very important ladies. The thin, gingery, sharp-nosed one is Mrs Axelrod, leader of Daisy thought. The soft, silly-looking one is her stooge, Mrs Prince. Their husbands are ‘Superscale’ and you must understand that no one not Superscale can speak to a Superscale lady unless first spoken to.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No, I assure you.’ Ambrose turned to Hugh: ‘Where do you come in the service hierarchy?’ Hugh did not know and Ambrose said ‘You must look up your contract. It will tell you when you may speak and to whom, which parties you have a right to attend and, should you give a party yourself, whom you are obliged to invite. This and much else is implicit in your code.’

  Kristy said: ‘I can’t believe it. How could people tolerate such restrictive snobbery?’

  ‘Tolerate it? They live by it. They’re displaced persons. Without service conventions, they wouldn’t know how to behave.’

  ‘Surely the young . . . ?’

  ‘But there are no young. It’s a dying service. You’re the youngest people here. I’m afraid you’ve come the wrong way on the time machine and you’ll find you’re back in pre-war days. If you want to be accepted, you must respect the rules.’

  ‘I never respect rules.’

  ‘You’ll get used to them.’

  ‘But will they get used to me?’

  Ambrose laughed uncertainly, not knowing what government society would make of a young woman as rash as Kristy Foster.

  Hugh said: ‘But we’re not limited to these people. Surely there are others around? I met a man on the boat called Hobhouse.’

  ‘Hobhouse?’ Ambrose, who had been urbane as a giver of information, frowned now, much ruffled: ‘Is that one back?’ He began to rise as though Hobhouse were a contagion and he in danger from it.

  Hugh, holding to him, said: ‘Don’t go. Tell us about Hobhouse. Who is he? What does he do?’

  ‘He’s mad. He’s a medical man without a practice. A sort of amateur scientist who despises money yet has private means. He’s full of nonsense – and vicious. An impossible person.’

  Disconcerted, Hugh said: ‘I rather liked him.’

  ‘I thought you did,’ Kristy spoke sharply then, pretending more amusement than she felt, said teasingly: ‘In fact, I rather thought you’d fallen for him.’ She explained to Ambrose as though making light of the situation: ‘The fact is, Hugh doesn’t trust women. What he really wants is a man friend: an ideal friend. A hero.’

  Ambrose was not amused and did not pretend to be. He said in a remote and lofty tone: ‘I doubt whether Hobhouse would suit his book. That one doesn’t want friends.’

  Kristy, knowing they had upset Ambrose, felt too tired to improve matters and took herself to bed.

  Ambrose, though still put out, sat on. In the same remote and lofty tone, he asked what Hugh had done before joining the service. On hearing he had once been a writer and then a script-writer, Ambrose relaxed and said with enthusiasm: ‘We have a great deal in common. I, too, belonged to the literary scene. And I often felt the urge to write, but did not.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I’m so self-critical,’ Ambrose sighed. He pondered his condition for several moments, then added: ‘But I was in publishing. And I have reviewed novels. I had a regular column once. I think I can truthfully say I was an influence, even a power. I’ve a friend I’d like you to meet. Would you feel like strolling down to the harbour for a drink?’

  Hugh felt more like following Kristy to bed b
ut, relieved by Ambrose’s returned spirits, said: ‘If we don’t stay long.’

  ‘One drink,’ Ambrose promised, ‘only one drink.’

  2

  In the open air, Hugh was ravished by the night scents of the island. He asked: ‘What scent is that?’

  Ambrose sniffed vaguely: ‘Probably jasmine. It’s all over the place. But do tell me why you, a script-writer, wanted to come to a place like this?’

  ‘My script-writing career collapsed. I had to get a job.’

  Ambrose murmured his sympathy: ‘I, too, was let down. I, too, helped the wrong people.’

  ‘No.’ Hugh did not wish to be misunderstood: ‘No one let me down. The bottom fell out of the film-industry. Suddenly – or so it seemed. Chaps like me were doing all right so when the final collapse came, none of us was prepared for it.’

  ‘You had nothing saved?’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid. We lived like everyone else. You had to show up at expensive clubs and restaurants or you were counted out. And we had a heavy insurance so Kristy would have something if . . . and, of course, income-tax. Our only asset was an Aston Martin and when I got this job, we sold the car to buy tropical kit.’

  ‘But this collapse of the film-industry! How did it happen?’

  ‘I wish I knew. I’d been asked to write the script for a big film – a “super colossal film”, as they used to say – based on the “Pilgrim’s Progress”. I was seeing my agent to sign the contract when he rang and said there would be a few days’ delay: the company saw a change coming and had decided to secure the money before going ahead. I waited. A fortnight later I was told they intended borrowing from other companies, then that they were trying to get the cash in the city, then that they were approaching private investors. A couple of months went by. My agent was optimistic: he thought a money shortage was no bad thing. He said “the industry’s riddled with hangers-on, scroungers, chaps on the fiddle. This’ll sort the men from the boys.” Meanwhile, we were living on capital. After about three months of this, my agent stopped telephoning. When I rang him, he didn’t know what to say. He told me to wait – but one can’t wait for ever.’