The Rain Forest

by Olivia Manning

  Kristy said: ‘Even in paradise, I suppose there must be a reservation for the poor.’

  ‘What sort of people live here?’ Hugh asked, abashed by this aspect of Al-Bustan.

  Dr Gopal looked round: ‘Every sort. The Negroes came first, when they were released from slavery, but many have joined them. Here you will find Arabs, Malays, mulattos, even poor whites.’

  ‘But no Indians?’

  ‘No, the Indians have their own community. They live apart. The Dobo is where people come when they can sink no further. Here they are all one colour. They are not brown or white, they are grey.’

  A heavy stench of urine came from a line of communal privies, then the Dobo was left behind. The road turned. The shore, running into the remote distance, was fluted with small bays. Between road and shore there were old coconut groves where dying palms, like worn-out feather dusters, bent to touch the ground. Between the groves, old adobe villas were falling into ruin.

  ‘Arab villas,’ said Dr Gopal. ‘Once very pretty but now, you see! The district calls for much development.’

  Kristy was disturbed by the word ‘development’ but it was clear that a way of life had ended here and, whether she liked it or not, something would take its place.

  This western side lacked the flamboyance of the island’s façade but it was made remarkable by the distant prospect of the mountain ridge coming down to the shore. On the eastern side, the ridge had been cut through by some cataclysm, leaving an escarpment that dropped sheer into the water. Here the ridge fell in humps, like the spine of a dinosaur that, entering the sea, gave rise to a trail of rocky islets.

  Gopal, leaning forward, murmured to Lomax: ‘What do you think? A lot to be done, eh?’

  Lomax nodded without looking at him.

  They had reached another group of houses and Gopal said: ‘Here you see the Indian community.’

  The houses, that covered the hillside, were of adobe and surrounded by vegetable patches, palms and screens hung over with vines.

  Gopal said: ‘As you see, they are well kept, but there is no sanitation, no drainage and there are many diseases. I am pressing for a clearance scheme.’

  ‘But what would happen to the people?’ Kristy asked.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Foster, don’t worry. They will be well cared for. We would build them block houses up beside the police station. No doubt there are some who would be against it, but good sense must prevail.’

  ‘And if the people themselves don’t want block houses?’

  Gopal turned to smile at Kristy: ‘Why should they not want them? They would be fine buildings, very clean, very hygienic.’ He held her with a bold, almost amorous, gaze and Hugh saw that with his confidence, his vitality, his large eyes and his silken black hair, Gopal could be attractive to women.

  Hugh would have been more irritated by Gopal had his mind not been on another thing. The approach of the mountain ridge reminded him that on the other side there was the rain forest, the mysterious back half of the island to which Simon had journeyed and from which he had not yet returned. Following the line of the ridge up to the point where the peaks stood, he thought he could see them, a shadow on the air. The track was so rough now that the big car rolled like a porpoise. As it bumped over a protruding stone, the occuptants were jerked out of their seats. In the moment of rising, Hugh thought that he had seen over the ridge, that he had glimpsed, for an instant, the forest, like a section through black fur. Whether he had seen it or not, he felt a frisson of fear and exhilaration: and a longing to see it again.

  Gopal was saying: ‘These slopes were cleared of trees, but the Arabs made little use of them. The rain washed the seedlings down to the littoral and the farmers, ignorant of our new methods, rented the land to the workers.’

  Gurgur said in his neutral voice: ‘Waste land; of no great value.’

  Kristy, looking out at the Indian settlement, asked: ‘Why do so many houses show the Nazi sign?’

  Gopal, with his smile and his large admiring eyes, jerked round again: ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no, Mrs Foster, not Nazi. Do not be mistaken about that. The swastika is an Indian sign. It is the sign of good luck.’

  Reaney sombrely added: ‘It is also the sign of the Jan Sangh, the Indian party that would like to take over our island.’

  Gopal laughed: ‘Come now, Mr Reaney! The Jan Sangh is formed of idealists: a little group that could take over nothing. All young people have their ambition, and all of them talk: but, in the end, they do no more than the rest of us.’ Gopal laughed again, apparently amused by Reaney’s remark but he was quick to change the subject. Turning again and this time looking at Ambrose, he said: ‘This is your fabled shore, Mr Gunner. You have not yet shown us where your treasure lies buried.’

  Ambrose, who had been held in dispirited silence, now looked annoyed: ‘It is not a buried treasure. It was lost on a ship at sea.’

  ‘Of course. So I heard. Forgive me. There were rumours of a chart. Is the chart in your pocket, Mr Gunner?’ When Ambrose did not reply, Gopal went on: ‘You are doubtless aware that they have invented a new kind of submarine that can locate ships lost at sea. From it you look down on the sea bottom and pick out all sorts of objects, such as ships, cannons, amphora and treasure chests.’

  This news so startled Ambrose that he gave an indignant squeak: ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Gunner, believe me, I do not tell lies. Why are you angry? Such a submarine would make your search more easy.’

  Lomax, as though to discourage this baiting of Ambrose, called from the front seat: ‘Come on, Ambrose. Where is Morgo’s Bay?’

  Ambrose looked uneasily out at the small sandy inlets: ‘It should be about here. My father once drove me round to show me the bay. At least, he thought it was the one.’

  The track was disappearing into scrub. When he could go no farther, the driver stamped on the foot brake, threw up his hands and shouted: ‘Intaha.’ The rocks of the ridge were a few yards ahead of them.

  At once, as though by pre-arrangement, Lomax, Gurgur and Gopal got out of the car. Lomax had a picnic basket which had been at the front and he handed it to the three on the back seat: ‘All for you. We have already had our little snack,’ then, with Gurgur and Gopal at his heels, he started walking back the way they had come. Their purposeful departure made evident that they had some business in this forsaken region. Ambrose looked out of the rear window, saying in an injured tone: ‘What are they up to?’

  Reaney may have known but he was silent in the middle seat, staring out through the window as though he wanted no dealings with those in the back. Kristy, opening the basket, offered him chicken sandwiches and a glass of white wine, cold from the Thermos flask, but, without turning round, he said he had already eaten.

  Ambrose, too upset to consider Reaney’s presence, said: ‘I might have guessed Lomax had some ploy on. He told me once he only bet on certainties. My quest – a quest for the Holy Grail, in a manner of speaking – is outside the scope of such a man. He has no imagination. What is he, after all? A rogue, a chiseller, a gutter-rat. . . .’

  While Ambrose’s small, suffering voice went on, Kristy sat half-asleep in her corner. Hugh was alert, but not to Ambrose. He was considering the rockfall, the only barrier between him and the forbidden territory on the other side. It looked an easy climb. He slipped off his silk jacket and put it on the back shelf of the car. Then he edged forward on his seat, preparing for action, but cautiously, knowing that what he wanted to do would seem odd and be impossible to explain. He murmured ‘Must have a piss’ and jumped from the car. Pushing his way through the scrub, too excited to fear the insect life, he came out to the shore. The sand was littered with rock pieces broken from the ridge. When he reached it, he found the headland was higher and more complex than it had looked from the car yet, having reached it, he felt compelled to climb it. His exhilaration carried him so, making his way up, he did not miss a foothold or the possibility of a foothold but when he came to what had seemed t
he top, he saw only rock and more rock; a waste of rock all riven through with crevices he could not hope to cross. There was no forest, no answer to his own confusion; only a louring heat mist that darkened the lower sky.

  Seeing nothing, he was unsure if he had, in fact, seen anything. What he had taken to be forest might have been one of the black cloud lines that, as the monsoon died out, formed on the horizon and dispersed; a storm frustrated.

  His shirt was soaked. He stripped it off and held it against the wind to dry. From where he stood, he could see Lomax, Gurgur and Gopal standing under a tree some three or four hundred yards down the road. The tree was one Hugh had noticed, an old breadfruit that had dropped fruits as big as footballs.

  Amused by his vantage point, from which he could view the inception of events, he sat down to watch what they would do next. A green van came round the corner and stopped by the tree and three more men came out of it. The newcomers seemed to be Arabs: two wore dark clothing but one had the white kefia and kaftan of the Medina Moslems. When he moved, there was a glint of gold about his head.

  A rendezvous, no doubt of it; a ploy, for which poor Ambrose’s project had been no more than a cover.

  Ambrose drooped into sulky silence while Kristy, waking up, started to talk to Reaney. As soon as she said. ‘Mr Reaney’, he jumped round and his delicate, nervous face turned pink.

  ‘Did you study theatre production in London?’

  ‘In London, madame?’ he laughed: ‘I have been nowhere. I have not even been to Réunion or Mombasa. But I see all the films at the cinema. You might say I have studied them, for every time I have said to myself: “Ah, yes, I see how they do it.” In this way I have learnt many things.’ In his eagerness to explain himself, he put his arm along the back of the seat and gesticulated with his long, fine hands: ‘And it is the only way to learn here if one has no family and no money.’

  ‘And when you have learnt, where do you go?’

  Reaney lifted his hands as though to say ‘Where indeed!’ He said: ‘I am of mixed blood, madame, which means I am not Arab or African or Indian or English. I am none of those things. Some of us are clever fellows. In another place we might be doctors or solicitors or grow rich in business. But here, what is there for us?’

  ‘When the English go, there will be more opportunities?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We are a little island in a big world: what does independence mean to us? It means we are pushed out like a small boat on a big sea. We do not know how to sail ourselves. The only thing for us is tourism, but we must have more hotels and diversions. So, we need money and we must look for people from the big world to give us patronage. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do.’

  A silence fell and Reaney, realizing he had told Kristy all he had to tell, let his arm drop and slowly, by stages, turned in his seat until he was looking out of the windscreen again.

  Ambrose said indignantly! ‘Do you realize: Lomax and his cronies have been gone half-an-hour. It’s extremely rude of him to treat you like this.’

  ‘Why me, in particular?’

  ‘Because you are a lady.’

  Kristy laughed and Ambrose bridled with annoyance. Lomax, returning a few minutes later, looked into the window and apologized for his absence.

  ‘We had to discuss a little matter of business. And now, Ambrose, are we to see Morgo’s Bay?’

  Ambrose mumbled: ‘I’ve forgotten which it is. I need the chart. If you flew me home, I could put my hand on it at once.’

  Not replying to this new suggestion, Lomax took his seat by the driver while Gurgur and Gopal got in beside Reaney. The driver at once backed the car to a space where it could be turned.

  Hugh, coming out of the scrub, saw the car running away from him and thought he had been left behind. A cold exultation came over him. He said aloud: ‘Even Kristy. Even Kristy!’ and it seemed to him he had discovered the worst in human nature. Then, as swiftly as it had departed, the car returned for him and he burnt with shame at his own suspicion.

  ‘So you have been exploring, Mr Foster?’ Gopal said gaily: ‘Tell me, what did you see? Did you see Mr Gunner’s treasure ship at the bottom of the sea? That would be useful for he has forgotten where it is.’

  Hugh watched for the bread-fruit tree but the Arabs had gone.

  The sun was setting when the party reached the Praslin. The glass doors stood open and the windows of the main room had been opened so that, for a little while before night fell, the wind could blow through it, bringing in the scents of wet grass and frangipani and flowering trees, and dispelling the dull atmosphere of the day.

  Lomax was a formal host. Leaving the men to follow, he escorted Kristy into the room and paused with her as she gazed at the walls, darkly covered with rich, chocolate-coloured silk, at the intricate lacings of the bamboo chairs and the gold metal of the tables. The glass of the windows had the same dark tinge as the walls and in daytime, she thought, the whole place must be as dim as an oubliette. The floor was of coral scooped out here and there to accommodate fish pools and fountains, and everywhere there were orange trees planted in wire baskets. When she had seen it all, Lomax took her out to a terrace where the awning had been pulled back to reveal the sumptuous colours of the sky.

  Lomax led the way to a group of chairs at the edge of the coral floor so they might look over the rear lawns towards the blue fog that was the sea. A tulip tree, planted in the lawn, dropped its flowers on to the terrace where they lay crumpled like swabs soaked in arterial blood.

  Lomax, when he had ordered the drinks, devoted himself to Kristy, asking her conventional questions about her sojourn on the island. In the uncertain light, his biscuit-coloured skin, smooth yet not young, looked to her like the skin of an embalmed corpse. He was amiable with an artificial amiability that made her want to get away from him.

  After they had had a drink, Gopal, Gurgur and Reaney left the party: Gopal to make a telephone call, the other two to attend to the cabaret. Ambrose, seeing Lomax’s attention fixed on Kristy, whispered to Hugh: ‘Walk down the garden with me. I want to show you the mangosteen trees.’

  Hugh followed him beneath the casuarinas that wavered like horse-tails in the wind. The lawn ended in a ha-ha with steps down to the star-shaped pool where the bathers lay in long chairs drinking drinks served from an outdoor bar. As Ambrose, in his old tweed suit, descended among them, they stared at him in amazement. The pressure of his belly had caused a slit down the side of his fly but so lofty was his mien that no one laughed or smiled or did more than glance at this revealing hole.

  Ambrose passed among them, apparently unaware of them, and descended more steps that brought him to land’s end. The screen of mangosteens stood at the very edge of the cape. Hugh began to praise their glossy foliage and purple fruits but Ambrose had forgotten them. Standing between two of the trees, he gazed out to sea and said: ‘At times, I can tell you, I’m bloody sick of this bloody paradise.’

  ‘You aren’t really leaving, are you? If you went, we’d have no one to talk to.’

  ‘What do you think he intends to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why didn’t you show him the bay?’

  ‘Because of those other bastards. I don’t trust Gurgur. And what about Gopal with that submarine contraption? Why should I show them where the treasure is? If Lomax wants information, let him put his money on the table. The least he could do is fly me back to find the chart.’

  ‘It’s an expensive trip.’

  ‘What’s a few hundred to him? Chicken-feed. You’d think he didn’t trust me.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  ‘I do – in a way. He’s a rainbow. You know what I mean? Some men are as crooked as corkscrews and others are bent like rainbows. He’s bent, but if you follow his line, it’s consistent. Length without breadth. Why I brought you here: would you do something for me? Have a word with him. Say I’m ill with worry. Tell him about Mrs G.’s attack. Say I’m under strain and he ought to le
t me know what he intends to do. Rouse his sympathy. Pin him down.’

  Hugh promised to do what he could then they stood together in friendship. The sunset was almost at an end. The western sky, a mackerel of glowing red and purple, was reflected in the east. The long incurl of the wave carried on its back a line of crimson. When, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the spectacle was switched off, Hugh said: ‘There is one thing you must tell me: has Lomax ever led you to believe he might invest in this venture?’

  ‘He did. He most certainly did.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll try and pin him down.’

  When they returned past the pool, the bathers had gone. The awning had been pulled down over the terrace and a beaded fringe, hanging from roof to floor, protected the guests against the night insects. The bathers were crowded into this enclosure and the air was heavy with their exposed flesh. Hugh, remembering what Simon had said of them, observed them critically. Some of the women were young but the men were all in the prime of early middle-age. They looked to him big, strong, brute creatures, noisy but perhaps too noisy to be as satisfied as they seemed. The men, muscular, sunburnt, manifestly virile, clearly had everything and wanted more. The women were blonde or red-haired, and even the youngest was raddled by the sun. Several of the women had come bare-breasted from the pool and the inexperienced safragis stared, thunderstruck, while the old hands grinned and dodged about the women like randy dogs. The women, knowing that no harm could come to them, were amused by the excitement they caused.

  Hugh told himself that Simon had been right. These people were the devourers, the enemy. They made a ruthless demand on life. For them the world was being squandered, its resources used up, its wildlife decimated, its seas polluted, the sea life destroyed and the seabirds in their thousands killed by their accursed oil-tankers.