The Rain Forest

by Olivia Manning

  ‘Is there anything wrong, Mrs Gunner?’

  ‘Yes, I should blinkin’ well think there is.’

  Mrs Gunner, Hugh realized, was feeling as unwell as he did himself. Her skin looked jaundiced in the dull light and was so puckered that folds half hid her wet little eyes. She gave an exasperated laugh and Hugh felt queasy. Here he was, less than twenty-four hours on the island, and already in trouble. She said:

  ‘I want to know how you got in that room? It was reserved for a very senior chap and his wife.’

  ‘Akbar put us there. You remember I thanked you . . .’

  ‘Oh, he did, did he?’ The force of Mrs Gunner’s annoyance was at once deflected from Hugh and her voice softened. She patted her big double bed: ‘You can sit here, dear. Now tell me, did he meet you at the boat like I told him?’

  Seating himself cautiously on the lace counterpane with its trimmings of blue and pink rosebuds, Hugh tried, from habit, not to tell tales: ‘The boat was late so we did not expect anyone to meet us. We took a taxi.’

  Facing him there was a photograph of Ambrose as a youth. Ambrose, in his photograph, looked like a white bullock: a prize white bullock, one that should have been wreathed in flowers. Above the bed there was another photograph, that of a man in the uniform of a naval commander. The face was Ambrose’s face but the expression was humorous and placatory, and the eyes those of a simple man.

  ‘I’ll have something to say to Akbar,’ Mrs Gunner nodded significantly. ‘And now what about you? We may have to move you. Mr Ogden’s very senior: he’s retiring next year. Still, not to worry. The other room’s very comfortable.’

  Hugh jumped up eagerly: ‘I’ll move our stuff at once.’

  ‘No need just yet, dear. The Ogdens are thinking about it. They like the room they’ve got because it’s at the back. It’s quiet. They said they’d take a dekko at the balcony room before deciding whether to make the change. So, dear,’ Mrs Gunner sat up, ‘you get on with your work and leave me to get on with mine.’

  The rain had stopped but the monsoon clouds, black and bloated, lay like a weight on the atmosphere. Hugh, climbing the uphill road, felt his raincoat enclose him like a sweat-bath. The road was sheeted with water and bicyclists, speeding downhill, threw up water-fans so Hugh was soaked outside as well as in.

  The Egyptian safragi had told him where to find the Government Offices. Leading him out to the road, Hassan had pointed upwards: ‘All government in square.’

  Hugh was surprised that he was alone on his walk to the square. He had been told that it was government policy to limit the number of cars on the island so, as an example to the islanders, the officials were encouraged to walk to work. But no one seemed to be walking to work that morning.

  Reaching the square where the deposed sultan had reviewed his horsemen, Hugh saw that the tall building, the one that had beamed out unhelpfully the previous evening, was inscribed in letters of gold: GOVERNMENT OFFICES. Standing like an upended matchbox, it looked out to sea, five storeys high – the only tall building in sight – and built from coral blocks of a dazzling newness. The square was not a square but a wide semi-circle cut into the cliff-face, overhung by trees and lined with clinging vegetation that conserved moisture so the older buildings had the damp, greenish look of neglected tomb-stones. These buildings – there were three of them – appeared to be unused. Hugh guessed that all departments of government were now contained in the new Government Offices.

  Disliking the tall building for its high, blank face, its newness, its penitentiary air, Hugh lingered outside, putting off the moment when he must enter and introduce himself. The building showed no sign of life and no one moved in the square. It was so quiet, he heard a helicopter start up and looking towards the top of the island, saw the machine rise from the grassland behind the Medina. He watched as it flew over him and whirred away to Réunion and, looking after it, he felt the wistfulness of exile. When it was out of sight, he turned and looked at the rock ridge which had at its central point two great peaks. Now, where the peaks had stood up, boldly coloured by the sunset light, he saw only grey and empty air. No shadow, no outline. The peaks had disappeared.

  He entered the Government Offices. The hallway was spacious with a chequerboard floor of white coral and ebony. The lower flight of the stairway suggested that no expense had been spared. In the midst of this splendour, a half-Arab, half-Negro porter sat with his bare dirty feet on a desk. A white ledge ran round the wall on which sat a line of people, men and women, of all races and conditions, most of them ragged, who had, by shifting along it, covered the ledge with grime. The porter, manifesting his importance before them, kept his feet on the desk as Hugh approached him. When he heard Hugh speak an Englishman’s English, he put his feet down. Hugh asked for a Mr Pedley. The porter slowly stood up. He said: ‘All gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ Hugh asked.

  The man lifted hands and spread fingers as though to say the English had evacuated the island. Hugh, at a loss, asked for Pedley’s secretary, but the secretaries, too, had gone. Hugh asked to be directed to Pedley’s office. The porter pointed to the lift: ‘You go floor up three.’

  The Information Suite on the third floor comprised two rooms. One door was marked ‘MR PEDLEY’, the other ‘RECEPTION’. Hugh guessed he would be in Reception. There were three desks, typewriters on two of them. Beside the third there was a television set and Hugh knew it was his.

  The room was very large, made larger by the excessive light that came through three windows. Looking out, he saw, a long way below, the Indian Ocean, dark and stormy under the monsoon sky. He sat at his desk and waited for someone to arrive.

  An hour later, finding nothing on the television set, he started out on a tour of the silent corridors, occasionally knocking at a door and looking into a room as sterile as his own, all empty of human life. He went up flight after flight and on the top floor came on richness. The corridor was carpeted in ruby Wilton and the doors, of polished mahogany, were furnished with ornamental brass. Here, apparently, someone was at work. Tracing the sound of a typewriter to its source, he knocked on a door and was called into an office that was floored not with planks but parquet. A young African, sitting behind a portable typewriter, paused to gaze at Hugh.

  ‘I am Hugh Foster.’

  As one conscious of duty and power, the young man gave Hugh ready attention: ‘You are seeking me, Mr Foster?’

  ‘I am seeking someone. I’ve just arrived to take up a job here and I cannot find anybody about. Is there some function on somewhere?’

  The African took off his glasses and said gravely: ‘Yes, Mr Foster, there are functions. Today is St George’s Day and so a holiday. The senior officials attend a party to welcome Mr Ogden. So there is no one.’

  ‘Except you. Weren’t you invited to the party?’

  ‘Yes, I was invited but I prefer to work.’

  ‘Then I must not waste your time.’

  The young man smiled but did not detain Hugh. Outside, Hugh looked at the name on the door and saw he had interrupted no less a person than Mr Murodi, Minister for Culture. The name on the next door was Mr Aziz Iver, Minister for Home Affairs; on the next Mr Ogwulu, Minister of Finance. Here, he realized, was the seat of government: here were the men who would take over when the British left the island. One day even this fragment of empire would become foreign to the motherland. Feeling he was on alien territory, he hurried back to his own office.

  He was delighted, towards the end of the morning, to receive a visitor.

  ‘So here you are,’ said Simon Hobhouse, surprisingly friendly: ‘I’ve called to see if you’d do something for me?’

  ‘Certainly, if it’s in my power. I don’t know my way around yet.’

  Simon seated himself on the edge of Hugh’s desk and spoke in a casual manner: ‘It’s nothing. I need a permit to go to the rain forest.’

  ‘On the mainland?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. Only to the northern half of the island.
There’s a patch of primeval forest there; the last, or almost the last, scrap of the great forest that once covered the earth.’

  ‘You have to cross the ridge?’

  ‘Yes. That’s easy enough. There’s a pass which was the old escape route for slaves during the sultanate. I’ve been before and I’m going over again for a day or two.’

  ‘But why do you need a permit?’

  ‘It’s a formality. The area’s out of bounds because they don’t want amateur explorers getting lost. There’s no rescue team and people have to be protected against themselves. But in my case, it’s nonsense. I know the area and I can look after myself.’

  Simon smiled, his handsome, bearded face candid but amused that he, being the man he was, need explain himself to Hugh. Hugh did not doubt what Simon said but the smile and the inhuman blue of Simon’s eye worried him. He said: ‘I think you should see Mr Pedley.’

  ‘Pedley won’t be back today. I know these junketings. I’m planning to start at dawn.’

  ‘But I’ve no authority to hand out permits.’

  Simon laughed. ‘Anyone can sign these things.’ Rising in a single movement that was like the sudden, unpremeditated spring of a cat, he went to a cupboard and came back with a form which he placed in front of Hugh. ‘Come on. No more argument. Where it says “Destination” put “North”.’

  Hugh read through the form and feeling under duress, asked: ‘What shall I put for purpose of visit?’

  ‘Research. I’m a botanist among other things. I’m making a study of the Pteridophyta.’

  ‘The what?’

  Simon spelt out the word but did not explain it. When the form was filled in, he said: ‘Stamp it. You must have an official stamp in your drawer.’

  There was no stamp in the drawer so Simon, with his cat-like alacrity, went to Pedley’s office and came back with one. Hugh stamped the form but was reluctant to hand it over. As he hesitated, Simon pulled it out of his hand.

  ‘Thanks. That’ll do. It’s only something to show the goons at the road check.’ He pushed the form carelessly into the pocket of his bush shirt: ‘No point in your hanging around here doing nothing. Why not walk up with me to the Medina?’

  Hugh was grateful for any excuse to get away from the office. The sun was breaking through the mist. As the heat grew, the pools of rain on the road could be seen shrinking and rising in a vapour quiver that caused little mirages above the road surface. When the pools vanished, old women swept the lustrous sand surface. The women were as alike as sparrows, bound up in rusty black, and, standing aside to let the men pass, they bobbed and grinned behind their hands. Hugh smiled on them, discomforted by their servility, but Simon ignored them, hurrying by with his head in the air, taking the steep rises of the road with the stride of an athlete. He had nothing to say till they came to a gate in the long wall that rose above the square. The gate was an impressive wrought-iron double entrance from which a policeman looked out and around which were gathered sellers of ice-cream, liquorice and coconut milk. Evidently the gate was a place for sightseers. As Hugh and Simon approached it, the seller of liquorice clashed his brass measures invitingly.

  ‘In there,’ Simon said: ‘seldom seen but heartily disliked by all, lives your august governor and his fat donkey of a wife.’

  ‘I’m not likely to meet them, I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you are! Every official has to make his obeisances at least once.’

  Simon spoke with a gleeful contempt that was a challenge to Hugh. Knowing he was being mocked for the demands, restraints and absurdities of official life, he said: ‘My appointment is temporary. I don’t really belong to the service and I’m not likely to remain in it.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me what brought you here.’

  Hugh sighed and again went over his history, the rather ridiculous history of a man who had earned more than his due and foolishly wasted it. It would not have seemed so ridiculous had he been by nature a playboy, but he was not a playboy. He was, he sadly reflected, a serious, dull fellow who had gained little or no satisfaction from his way of life.

  ‘So, in the end, I had to find a job.’

  ‘But why four thousand miles from base?’

  ‘Perhaps . . . to get out of sight. It’s a dismal situation, being well off one day and poor the next. You become a sort of refugee. People expect from you what you can no longer give. You have to make excuses, you apologize and try to explain. You feel a fool. What happened was not my fault, but I began, somehow, to think it was. So I ran away.’

  Simon gave him a sidelong glance, amiable and amused: ‘You had a good time while it lasted, I suppose?’

  Hugh shrugged and said: ‘I’d call it a difficult time. You conform to a standard and then you have to keep it up.’ And, he thought, he had rejected the claims of a creative life. And why had he rejected them? He turned from this question, unwilling to inquire too closely into it, and laughed: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.’

  ‘Hah!’ Simon threw back his head in appreciation and dropped his bantering tone: ‘You may enjoy the life here. Things aren’t so bad. The government wants to do what is right. They’ve preserved the island, so far as any place can be preserved these days. You have to get a permit to build or cut down a tree. Buildings are kept to two storeys.’

  ‘What about the Government Offices?’

  ‘Hah, yes. The Offices are a sore point with a lot of people. The planners decided they were a special case as they’re intended for a future House of Representatives. The building is showy but it’s a flimsy structure. If there was an earthquake, the whole thing would come down like a stack of cards.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Don’t worry. There hasn’t been a serious earthquake in the last hundred years.’

  ‘So, on the whole, you approve of British rule?’

  ‘I don’t revel in the company of administrators but they’ve done their best to keep this place intact. God knows what will happen when they go.’

  Beyond the wall of the Residency, they came to the steep rise where the trees hung thickly over the road. Here the white sand surface came to an abrupt stop. Beneath it there was a rough track and at one point, where a stream ran across the road, a broad area of mud. African women, in robes of scarlet and indigo, were standing in the stream and slapping their washing against the riverside stones. They shouted and laughed when they saw the men and Hugh paused to watch them but Simon strode on, mounting the last of the slope as though on some mission that demanded haste. At the top they came out on to a wide, open plateau. What, the night before, had seemed a mysterious region of darkness was, Hugh now saw, the sugar plantations. The rows of cane stretched as far as the eye could see, a plain of dark green here and there set with an immense tree.

  ‘What are these trees?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘They’re forest trees: mahogany, ebony, amkoré, avodiré. The Arabs cleared the forest on this side but when they came on a particularly fine tree, they left it as shade for the workers. But come here! Come and survey the enemy.’

  Simon went to the side of the road where there was a drop down to the shore. It was, Hugh saw, less fearful than it had seemed the night before because a rail protected the wayfarer from the chasm. Simon pointed to a long, low building by the sea: ‘The Praslin.’

  The Praslin, very white against the green of its lawns, was built among casuarina trees on a stretch of land that ran out to the water’s edge. It looked to Hugh a simple, inoffensive building and he asked ‘Why do you say “the enemy”?’

  ‘You see the swimming pool? The people lying round it will destroy this place. There, on the right, is the basin for their private yachts. At the moment, only a few can afford to come here but if anyone built an air-strip, they’d come in droves. For a long time no one could see where to build an air-strip but, alas, the Seychelles solved the problem for all these islands. They reclaimed land from the sea.’

  ‘Where do these visitors come from?’

>   ‘The Rand, Kimberley, the oil states: anywhere where you can get money without working for it. They’re mostly South Africans but there are also English people, so rich they can’t afford to live in England. And there are always a few speculators trying to get permission to build bungalows and hotels. I call them the enemy because they are, by nature, wreckers. They’ll finish this place if it doesn’t finish them.’

  Hugh laughed: ‘How could it finish them?’

  ‘Easily enough. This is the slide area. The last earthquake brought down a chunk of cliff that formed the cape on which the Praslin is built. Look!’ Simon traced with his foot a crack that ran from the cliff edge towards the centre of the road: ‘And here’s another. And another. These indicate a movement in the rock below. Another earthquake could bury the Praslin.’

  ‘Why was it built there?’

  ‘People forget. Or they take a risk because it all happened so long ago. They build under Vesuvius. They build under Etna. And there’s a land shortage here. I doubt if there’s more than 40,000 acres of good soil on the whole island. And this is good soil.’ He crossed the road to a lane that ran through the plantation and picked up a handful of reddish soil: ‘It’s friable, the texture’s fine and it holds water. It has given the Praslin those green and pleasant gardens.’

  ‘I suppose the Praslin’s owner knows the danger?’

  ‘I doubt it. Who is there to tell him? I’m the only one who knows what could happen and I’m minding my own business. Are you worried about those people who have nothing but money to recommend them?’

  ‘They’ve as much right to life as we have.’

  ‘You’re a sentimental fellow. Come on.’ Simon strode off down the lane but half-way towards the Medina, he came to a stop and stood gazing into the branches of a tree. When Hugh caught him up, he said: ‘This is a bird tree. I’ve noticed that some trees attract birds more than others. This mango is particularly a bird tree.’

  The mango had a heavily noduled trunk of a purplered colour and its crown of leaves was dense and very dark. The leaves were thick and egg-shaped, with a high gloss so they looked like green lustres. The birds flashed in and out, yellow and black, maroon, amethyst, crimson and green. Simon, following their flight with a thoughtful interest, murmured: ‘An oriole, a cardinal, a black-headed gonolex, two parakeets, a sunbird . . .’