The Rain Forest
Page 12
In the saloon above the shop, the floor with its long flexing boards sloped down from east to west. Around the walls were old-fashioned washbasins and chairs like dentists’ chairs. In the centre of the floor there was a large table where the women could take coffee and read magazines and sit out the long process of Aly’s permanent wave. The two young male hairdressers, one Indian, one mulatto, each, at different times, told Kristy how he longed to work in the Praslin’s hairdressing saloon. The mulatto said: ‘There you find many beautiful ladies.’
Kristy laughed: ‘So you don’t find the government women beautiful?’
The mulatto gravely replied: ‘The government ladies are beautiful, it goes without saying, but the Praslin ladies are rich.’
Coming out of Aly’s, Kristy walked along the shore road and went across the white strand to the edge of the Indian Ocean. The strand was deserted and she felt it was deserted for some reason unknown to her. She asked Ambrose who said it was a haunt of water-snakes. She hated the small lukewarm pool at the club and wanted to bathe in the sea, but Ambrose said the sea was infested with sharks. Then, she asked, how was it the Chief Secretary and his friends were able to water-ski?’
‘He put up a shark net, and the water-snakes haven’t found his cove. It’s not a private beach, but if you went down there, you’d get a pretty cool reception.’
‘It’s monstrous he should have that place to himself. I’m surprised the others put up with it.’
‘They understand perfectly. The Chief Secretary and his friends are charming, but they have their own games. You’d need a lot of money to play with them.’
‘You mean, they gamble?’
‘I believe that’s their chief diversion.’
The diversion of lesser men was fishing, a diversion that Kristy greatly disliked. The giant game fish were coarse eating and she had noticed that after one had been put on show in the dining-room, the safragis, more often than not, took it out and buried it in the garden. The destruction of these creatures was killing for killing’s sake.
One day, meeting Simpson coming up from the harbour, an Arab boy, at his heels, carrying a blue marlin, she came to a stop in front of him. ‘That’s a disgusting sight,’ she said.
Simpson flirtatiously asked: ‘What is, young lady?’
‘That fish. What point in killing these harmless creatures? It’s slaughter. Savagery. It’s degrading.’
Simpson, his brows and moustache a-twitch, could not speak at first, and then broke out brusquely: ‘What’s it to do with you?’
‘Everything. The creatures of the world belong to all of us. When you kill them, you rob everyone.’
Simpson’s mouth gaped but he had nothing to say, and Kristy walked on.
News of this encounter reached Pedley before it reached Hugh. Hugh, hearing Pedley on the telephone, shouting: ‘I can’t believe it. I absolutely can’t believe it’, realized that someone had committed some heinous social trespass but knew no reason to relate it to himself. He was alarmed when Pedley rushed in on him and said: ‘Well, Foster, your wife’s really done it this time. She’ll be excluded from the club.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘She hasn’t told you she bawled out Simpson for catching a bally fish? Well, she did, and there’s a lot of feeling about it. She’ll have to apologize.’
‘Kristy?’ Hugh, resentful of the fear that Pedley had roused in him, laughed scornfully. ‘She wouldn’t apologize to God.’
‘If you aren’t careful, she’ll wreck your career.’
‘I haven’t got a career.’
‘Yes, that’s the trouble. You think you’re free to do what you like. I can tell you, the people you go around with aren’t the right people. That fellow Ambrose Gunner, he’s not liked. He thinks he’s a cut above his mother: he’s a bally snob.’
‘Nothing he’s ever said or done had led me to think so.’
Hugh was sorry that Kristy had picked on Simpson who sometimes seemed almost on the point of speaking. That evening, catching the man’s eye, Hugh realized he was more hurt than resentful. Hugh would have apologized himself had an apology not been a disloyalty to Kristy.
While he was considering what to do, Mrs Gunner and Akbar started to quarrel and Kristy’s peccadillo was forgotten.
The quarrel began mildly enough with Mrs Gunner giving a loud, critical sniff and saying half-humorously: ‘Crikey, old cock, you know how to lay it on.’ She tittered and it seemed all would be well, but suddenly, her cordiality was jolted by a mysterious item on Akbar’s list: ‘What’s this, I’d like to know?’
‘Pick-lees,’ Akbar said firmly. ‘Today I buy pick-lees.’
‘Pickles? It’s not your job to buy pickles. What sort of pickles?’
Akbar, his eyes rolling in search of an answer, said: ‘Pan-Yan.’
‘Go and get them.’
‘Not any more. All pick-lees in soup.’
‘You don’t put pickles in soup. And you didn’t buy none, neither. Pan-Yan, indeed! You saw that written up in the shop.’
Anger was mounting on both sides. ‘Me buy. Me buy,’ Akbar cried in anguish, striking his breast. ‘Why Akbar write pick-lees, if Akbar not buy?’
‘Because Akbar’s a shifty bastard, that’s why.’
‘Yo’ say Akbar “bastard”, Akbar break yo’ in two. Akbar tear out yo’s eyes. Akbar break yo’s neck like chicken.’
As the uproar grew, Ogden, sitting near the bar, looked appealingly towards it but the adversaries had no eyes for him. Threats were met with threats, insults with insults, and in the midst of the row, the telephone started ringing. Ambrose, who had come out of the office, went back to answer it.
Akbar, describing how he would put a rope round Mrs Gunner’s neck and pull it tight, tight, tight, broke off in mid-sentence. There was a silence during which Ambrose, his voice very musical, could be heard in charmed agreement with his caller. The silence went on so long that people turned to see what had caused it. Mrs Gunner had fallen to the floor.
Akbar was bending back in a pose of theatrical astonishment, his great eyeballs starting from his head. He remained fixed until Ogden jumped to his feet, saying: ‘Good God, man, what have you done?’
‘Me not done. Ya sayyidati stan’ there. Next time, ya sayyidati fall down dead.’
Mrs Axelrod, very excited, pointed at Akbar: ‘He’s murdered her. I knew it would happen sooner or later. I knew it. I knew it.’ She shouted: ‘You’ll pay for this.’
Akbar fled to the kitchen as Ambrose returned to the salon. Seeing his mother on the floor, Ambrose said crossly: ‘Really, mother, what a time to choose!’ and bending over her, he caught her hands and pulled her up. When he let her go, she fell down again.
Ambrose’s behaviour shocked everyone.
‘Have you no consideration?’ Mrs Axelrod asked. ‘Can’t you see your mother’s unconscious?’
Ambrose made a flustered attempt to defend himself: ‘When I was a child, she was always doing this to frighten me.’
‘You’re not a child now,’ Ogden said, ‘and she’s not trying to frighten you. Go and ring Dr Dixon. Better still, get the hospital to send the ambulance.’
Ambrose returned to the office. When he had made the call, he came to the Fosters and muttered: ‘This would happen just as Lomax comes back.’
Hugh and Kristy did not try to reply and Ambrose, looking aggrieved, went and stood alone near the piano. After a while, he furtively lifted the lid and, sitting down, brooded over the keyboard then, with a rapture that startled the room, he began to play the last movement of the ‘Eroica’. He played on as the ambulance arrived and the men lifted Mrs Gunner on to a stretcher, but as the front door was propped open and they were carrying her out, he came to an abrupt stop and hurried after them.
Next morning, he was at his table, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Fosters. ‘I have splendid news for you,’ he said.
Kristy said: ‘So Mrs Gunner is better?’
Hugh said: ‘It seems a bit heartless to have all this fun while Mrs Gunner’s ill in hospital.’
‘Would it help her if we refused the invitation?’
The Fosters had to agree it would not help and Ambrose was so excited about the projected party, they realized it would be even more heartless to disappoint him.
It was unfortunate that the Fosters and Ambrose, dressed for the occasion, were awaiting Lomax’s car just when the churchgoers returned to the Daisy. Entering the salon, they stared, astonished, at the three of them. No sooner had the churchgoers settled down to their pre-luncheon drinking than the ardent Catholics, who attended the mission church, returned by taxi from the Medina and the surprise and disapproval was renewed.
Akbar had disappeared and Hassan was struggling with the bar grille when Ambrose, his chin tilted up in an attitude of extreme hauteur, led his fellow guests out to Lomax’s Mercedes 600. The day was brilliant, the wind cool.
‘A perfect day for a picnic,’ said Ambrose who, having placed Hassan in charge of the pension, felt he had done enough.
But Hassan was not Akbar. Hassan had no presence. He was a small, sallow, pock-marked peasant from a poor village on the Upper Nile and though he was eager to excel, he lacked Akbar’s authority. Already there was disorder among the servants and Ali, unsupervised, had that morning sent up a consignment of frozen mutton so poor that Hassan came running after Ambrose.
‘Cook say only for stewing,’ Hassan cried.
‘Then let it be stewed,’ said Ambrose, who had no patience with the humdrum details of office.
The Fosters sat on the wide, broad back seat of the car while Ambrose, on the centre seat, sprawled in an opulent way, aglow with the munificence of success. For him the trip to Morgo’s Bay meant only one thing: the treasure project was in hand.
‘And this is the merest beginning,’ he said. ‘Once the treasure is secure, I mean to ease Lomax into publishing. That, after all, is my métier.’
‘I didn’t know you were in publishing,’ Kristy said.
‘Oh, dear me, yes. I did a couple of years in the army during the war. Rose to be lieutenant. When I was demobbed, I got a little gratuity in order to set up in publishing. I did a few choice books: poetry, essays and so on. The firm didn’t last long but the experience is there.’
Ambrose’s massively noble appearance had become more massive, more noble, in view of his prospects. As was usual with him when he felt satisfied with life, he assumed, as by right, the rôle of guide and mentor. Though the Fosters had come to know the Harbour as well as he did, he pointed out its sights as they drove past Aly’s and Gurgur’s and reached, at the end of the quay, the private houses of the Indian shopkeepers. The houses, of wood and ornamented like the shops, had balconies where the women lay in hammocks gazing lethargically at nothing. After the houses came tumbledown huts where the Malagasy women sat under canvas awnings doing embroidery, and the men, working on small pieces of ebony, carved elephants, giraffes, leopards and other denizens of a continent they had never seen. The huts and houses, backing against the cliff, were overhung by palms and fruit trees. Picking on one tree that was weighted down by large, noduled fruits, Ambrose said with imposing solemnity: ‘A bread-fruit tree.’
There was a fish-curing works at the farthest end of the quay and the whole district stank of fish and toddy. It was a relief to bump down on the sandy shore road and drive under the palms with the sea wind blowing through the car. Here there were no buildings, only the cliff on one side and the shore on the other. They drove in a silence that was shattered whenever the wheels struck a fallen coconut. The shell would break with a watery crackle that unnerved Kristy who feared they had gone over a landcrab.
The long white strand flashed between the palms. The sea, for once almost motionless, appeared to be banked up, coloured like a water-ice, a glassy wall in layers of violet, pistachio and indigo. Kristy meant to make a note of this but, drifting into a near-sleep, she forgot.
Ambrose gave them a dissertation on water-snakes: ‘A lovely shore,’ he said, ‘yet, as you can see, deserted. Once it was a playground, and fishermen would hang out their nets to dry, then, one day, two people were bitten by water-snakes; next day, two more were bitten. Then five were bitten. They all died. Men, wearing gumboots, were sent to dig out the snakes but as they dug, the snakes slid deeper into the sand. The men were unused to boots so took them off. One of them was bitten and died. The rest downed tools and now the water-snakes have the place to themselves. Look, look!’ Ambrose pointed to where a small silvery torpedo was launching itself from the water: ‘Things are so quiet now, the flying-fish have come back.’
One after the other, the winged fish rose and flashed like bows of light, a-dazzle in the dazzling air.
Kristy murmured: ‘How sad!’
‘Why sad?’
‘Sad that we had to go before the fish could come back.’
As the heat grew, drawing up moisture, mirages appeared on the road ahead: illusory lakes in which a stone or a piece of stick appeared to be a tall bird. When the long building of the Praslin could be seen through the palms, it, too, seemed like a mirage, fluid and wavering, with the intense whiteness of light.
The sight so excited Ambrose that he pulled himself up as though, like the flying-fish, he were about to launch himself into a more inspiriting element.
As the car stopped at the hotel steps, he opened the door and jumped out, saying to the Fosters: ‘You stay there. Don’t let us delay. I’ll fetch him out and we’ll drive straight on.’ Ambrose’s voice fluted with satisfaction and his hands patted the air as though shaping circumstances to his desired design. He went importantly through the dark glass doors. As they opened before him, the Fosters got a glimpse of the interior, shaded and dappled over with spots of gold.
The chauffeur put his head down on the wheel and went to sleep. Waiting, Kristy watched the sea-wind stirring the leafless, plumy filaments of the casuarina trees and the birds that darted in a worried way, whistling from tree to tree. The lawn sprays hissed and slurred as the wind caught them and hoopoes, running this way and that, tried to bathe in the caracoling water.
Hugh remembered what Simon Hobhouse had said about the cliff that overhung the hotel. Leaning from the window, he looked up at the weight of rock and earth that could be brought down by an earthquake. The cliffside was matted over with maidenhair and thorn-apple but there were no heavy bushes. He wondered if the earth were too friable to hold them. Something moved under the fern and seeing the claw of a crab, he twitched in disgust.
The doors of the hotel opened and Lomax came out with Gurgur. Behind them were an Indian and a light-skinned mulatto. Ambrose, bringing up the rear, had lost his air of importance.
The Indian knew who the Fosters were and, getting into the centre seat, he smiled back at them with an appearance of brilliant interest. When he was seated, he held out his hand to Hugh: ‘I am Dr Gopal. It is with great pleasure, Mr and Mrs Foster, that I meet you at last.’
Gurgur and the mulatto got in with Gopal while Lomax took the seat beside the driver. For Ambrose there remained only a space on the back seat between Hugh and Kristy. Diminished by the unexpected size of the company, he lifted an uneasy brow at Hugh. Why, he seemed to ask, were these interlopers coming with them to Morgo’s Bay? Hugh was wondering the same thing.
Lomax introduced the mulatto as Reaney, the producer of the evening’s cabaret.
The girls, it seemed, were to be Gurgur’s girls. At the moment, the girls were resting before the show, and the two men, finding themselves at a loose end, had accepted Lomax’s invitation to join the picnic. That accounted for Gurgur and Reaney, but why was Gopal there?
Whatever the reason, Gopal had all the confidence of a much wanted guest.
They drove past the yacht basin. Beyond that the road lost its sand surface and dwindled into a track. The cliff sank gradually until there was no cliff but, instead, a long slope up to the western end of the plantations. Above the plantations, the police barracks, a crenellated square like a little fort, stood alone on a plateau that was, Gopal explained, the helicopter landing-ground. On the sloping ground between shore and plateau were the villages of the workers. The first was the Dobo.
Dr Gopal tutted when they came to it. ‘The name means mud,’ he said. ‘During the monsoon, the whole place is a sea of mud.’
No one else made any comment on the Dobo. It was as though the place were a canker better ignored, though no one could ignore the smells from the factories. A row of buildings, one of them the turtle factory, stood, iron-roofed, down by the loading quay. The whole village seemed to be armoured with corrugated iron but between the shacks vegetation had forced its way so that even here there were creepers and palms and bread-fruit trees. Beside the road there were dumps of indestructible plastic containers, so many of them that it seemed, in the end, the waste must take over. People too old to work were picking about among the bottles and egg-boxes, and at the sight of the great car, they stopped to stare while dirty, naked children came running at it, screaming, ‘Rupee, rupee.’