The Rain Forest

by Olivia Manning

  Gopal murmured: ‘She is very strict. She thinks that by admitting such a one as myself, a mere Hindu, the ladies are too free.’ He made some facetious remarks in Arabic to show Kristy that he did not take his treatment seriously, but the woman was sternly silent.

  The whole courtyard was scented with jasmine and citrus blossom. The area, a very large area, was tiled in blue and white with here and there beds for flowers and the citrus trees that were hung with green limes. In the centre there was a small revolving platform intended, Gopal, explained, for female musicians who came to perform here.

  They were led towards a pavilion, the front of which was open to the courtyard but shaded by the overhang of the roof. Set in the pavilion floor there was a fountain and Gopal, taking advantage of the splashing water, whispered a warning: ‘You understand, the sisters are beautiful?’

  ‘That fact has been conveyed to me.’

  The woman waved them to the divans that stood round the fountain and left by the door at the back of the pavilion.

  The pavilion, like the music stand, was decorated in red and gold, its walls closely stencilled with strings of flowers small enough to escape the Prophet’s proscription against living models. Gopal, as though overwhelmed by the imminence of the sisters, had lapsed into silence. He and Kristy sat listening to the pitter of the fountain and the occasional growl of a bee that found its way in, panicked, and then found its way out again. To Kristy it seemed they were kept waiting an unconscionable time.

  She asked in a low voice: ‘What do the sisters do all day?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I suppose they will soon be married?’

  ‘Not they. They are too noble. Who would be worthy of them?’

  A delicate rustling was heard at last. The door opened and the sisters entered. It was clear they saw their entrance as a condescension and an occasion but it was spoilt by Musa who, coming at their heels, threw himself down on a divan with an exaggerated air of boredom. He made no attempt to acknowledge the visitors but the sisters did all that courtesy required.

  They smiled on Kristy, bowing slightly, and assured her that the house and everything in it was hers. Their manner of doing so was off-hand and when the greeting had been made, they sat down and carefully arranged their gauzy veils and robes as though preparing to pose for a photograph. When satisfied, they let their hands drop into their laps and, looking up, seemed to present their beauty for admiration.

  And they were beautiful, Kristy agreed. They were the moon-faced beauties of Persian paintings but the face of the elder was becoming a little too full and showed the slight softening and fretting of a balloon that was slowly losing air.

  The interval before they made their appearance had probably been spent on their faces: the pink of their cheeks was beautifully blended in, their eyes and lips were drawn with academic care, their long, centre-parted black hair shone like liquorice. As Gopal had promised, they were not veiled but each had on her shoulders a veil, transparent except for its gold embroidery, that could, at the first alarm, be pulled across the face. They wore green, the colour reserved for descendants of the Prophet, and their hands, lying idle before them, had the glowing whiteness of lilies on grass.

  How sad that this beauty could not last! Uncertain how much English they knew, Kristy said to Gopal: ‘Tell them that I think they are very beautiful.’

  Repeating the message, Gopal spoke in English and the elder girl bowed her head in acknowledgement.

  She said: ‘Thank you,’ as one who well knew that she was beautiful and both of the girls seemed pleased that the interview was going as it should. Then Gopal, in his ebullient way, said the unexpected:

  ‘And Mrs Foster – she, too, is beautiful, don’t you think?’

  The sisters were startled but giving Kristy a glance, they politely agreed: ‘Yes, she is beautiful.’

  Gopal beamed his congratulations on Kristy, who said: ‘I was asking Dr Gopal what you do all day.’

  Musa, lying prone on his stomach, his chin on his arms, buried his face and sniggered. The sisters, shaken out of their composure, looked at each other as though baffled by the question. Kristy, realizing she would have to explain herself, said: ‘I mean, do you play music or paint or do embroidery?’

  Musa snuffled into his arms: ‘A little of everything.’

  The elder girl said, rather stiffly: ‘We do many things. Yesterday, for instance, we made an excursion and visited our cousins.’ She spoke rapidly to Gopal in Arabic and he told Kristy that the visit had been paid to the daughters of Yusef Pasha’s brother who had a villa on the Abubakr estate. The ladies, of course, had been carried by howdah.

  ‘Do you never walk through the bazaars? For fun, I mean.’

  The younger girl, speaking more slowly than her sister, asked: ‘Why should it be fun? The bazaars are hot. They smell bad. There is too much noise.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be an adventure?’

  ‘An adventure?’ the younger girl turned her puzzled glance on Gopal: ‘What is this: “an adventure”?’

  After he explained in Arabic, the elder girl told some story that caused him to raise his hands into the air in shocked astonishment. As he did so, his cuffs fell back and Kristy saw that he wore a gold chain tightly clasped round his arm, half-way between wrist and elbow. From the chain hung a small gold swastika, the insignia of the Jan Sangh.

  When the story was ended, Gopal translated it for Kristy: ‘A lady of high birth – but much spoiled, you understand, being the only child of her father – read of the freedom of ladies in Cairo and persuaded two of her friends to go with her, unveiled, into the bazaars. They suffered very much. The men jeered at them and encouraged the boys to throw stones at them.’

  Kristy said: ‘But this is monstrous! I hope they fought back.’

  ‘The friends were too frightened and would not go again, but the girl, the leader one might call her, took her father’s horse-whip and went out again. When the boys threw stones, she beat them.’

  ‘How splendid!’ Kristy laughed with delight at the girl’s action but the sisters were displeased.

  The elder said: ‘It was scandalous. And no good came of it. The girl became ill with her nerves and, in the end, her father sent her to Beirut. She now attends the university.’ The girls seemed to see attendance at the university as a well-deserved punishment for revolt.

  ‘You feel you are happier as you are?’ Kristy asked.

  ‘We are happy,’ the elder inclined her head in agreement. ‘You must understand that Moslem ladies have privileges not known to English ladies. We are allowed to own our property and when we marry, we continue to own it. In England it is different, I think.’

  Kristy laughed: ‘No. In England it is the same. The old laws concerning married women’s property were repealed a long time ago.’

  ‘We have been told differently.’

  ‘Then your informant was wrong.’

  The sisters smiled their disbelief.

  A safragi, led in by the old woman, brought coffee and sugared fruits for Kristy and Gopal. The Moslem ladies kept their eyes averted as the guests drank. When Gopal put down his cup, he nodded to Kristy and she knew it was time to go. As she rose, the sisters made a slight demur but they rose with her and Musa at once swung himself off the divan. The audience was over. The girls said good-bye with regal nods and retired through the door at the back. Musa came with Kristy and Gopal to the gate then they all stood and waited till the old woman arrived to open it.

  On the way back to the market square, Gopal said: ‘I can tell you, Mrs Foster, it is not often they say so much to a visitor. You stirred them. You were, as they say in your newspapers, controversial. They will be discussing your ideas for months.’

  ‘It depresses me to think they have so little to discuss.’

  ‘Oh, why be depressed? As I said to you, ladies are fortunate. They have all they want. They are secure and treasured.’

  ‘The treasured heart of an unreal world.’


  ‘Ah, you are witty, Mrs Foster, and for myself, I agree you are right. This world is unreal. It is at a standstill. The Arabs here are behind the times and only the young, like Musa and Khalil, have advanced ideas.’

  ‘Musa said he would kill his sister if she went off with Nimr. I did not find that idea very advanced.’

  ‘But he would not wish to, you understand? His relatives would force him to do it. There you see the dilemma of these advanced young men.’

  ‘Yes. I want to ask you, Dr Gopal, why do you wear the insignia of the Jan Sangh party? I noticed it when you raised your arms.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Foster, nothing is hidden from you.’

  ‘I don’t believe that any party, any political party that is, exists without a desire for power; yet you encourage Musa and his friends to see power here as an Arab right.’

  ‘But the Jan Singh is not political, I assure you. It seeks only to remind us of our ancient cultures.’

  ‘Then why keep your swastika out of sight?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, Mrs Foster, you look into my soul. I wear it out of sight to save dissensions. But I will not deceive you. It has come into my head at times that what is needed here is one who would hold a balance of power. Neither Arab nor African. An outsider, you may say. Why not an Indian? But if I assumed this responsibility, what would happen? They would be jealous because I am too clever and someone would kill me. Then what would we have? Chaos. Better, perhaps, for the British to stay. Their backs are broad. They can take the blame for everything and no one cares.’

  Coming out into the open square, Gopal became uneasy, as though Simon Hobhouse or some other informant were likely to see him with Kristy. Yet he felt responsible for her and said he must walk with her to the plantations. His unease worried her, so she felt him like some tacky substance of which she could not rid herself. When they reached the south side of the market, she said firmly: ‘Now I can go alone.’

  He looked both worried and relieved by her determination and let her go. Having shaken him off, she hurried through the lanes, feeling the resilient lightness of her own company. Gopal had made her promise to visit the shop again but it was a promise she did not expect to keep. This, she thought, was the last outing of her freedom, her last venture before she was too dull and lethargic to go anywhere.

  Her habit of freedom was such that she was astonished when, in the darkness of the lanes, she was seized from behind in a strong grip and a body was pressed against her. She felt the man’s genitals through the thin material of her dress. A rapid assault. She had no time to apply Mrs Gunner’s formula before the man was gone. She swung angrily round but only saw him for an instant, a shadow scuttling away between the walls. Her anger passed and she realized she was frightened. But why? No harm had been done. She had been held by a poor, frustrated wretch of the safragi class who had fled, more agitated than she was by his action. Yet she was shaken. She had seen herself as invulnerable and now it was plain she was not. She was no longer a self-contained unit that existed according to its own will. She had been invaded and now, inside her, there was another unit. This fact had so jolted her confidence that she felt anything might happen. It occurred to her that here, alone, in these dark and narrow lanes, she could be robbed or raped. She was not safe. She started to run and went on running till she reached the open, sunlit air on the other side of the city wall.

  2

  Returning that evening, Hugh found Kristy lying on the bed. When he switched on the light and pulled down the bamboo screens, she lifted her head and looked at him from smudged, wet, swollen eyes. She sat up, looking so tragic and despairing that he was alarmed.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  He did not speak but went to the bathroom. Turning on the washbasin tap, he let it flow until the water ran cold. He was irritated, chiefly because Kristy, by nature self-reliant, had sunk into this helpless state. He held his hands under the tap until his resentment subsided then he went calmly into the room.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s not the end of the world. I’ll try and get an advance on salary and a few days’ leave. We can fly to Durban and get you fixed up.’

  ‘It’s no good. It’s too late.’ Speaking in a lifeless voice, she described her visit to Mrs Gunner: ‘She says it’s too late.’

  ‘But you must have known weeks ago. Why did you leave it so long?’

  ‘I thought it would come all right. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve no friends . . . no one I could speak to.’

  ‘What about me? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You’re the last person I’d go to for sympathy.’

  ‘Sympathy? What’s sympathy go to do with it? The situation calls for action. Unless . . .’ he stopped and stared accusingly at her: ‘You knew – but didn’t want to be sure till it was too late. Consciously or unconsciously, you knew and did nothing because you wanted to keep it.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head but he was not impressed.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘you’re all upset. It’s an act, to disarm me.’

  ‘No.’ She drooped on the bed, looking, with the smudges under her eyes, like some frightened animal at bay. He realized she was frightened of him and he felt ashamed, recognizing the unnaturalness of his own behaviour. As he stood without moving, she asked:

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  The dinner-bell rang and, turning petulantly from her, he went to the drawer for a clean shirt, saying: ‘I’m not thinking. You’d better wash your face.’

  His tone roused her and she said: ‘You’re afraid to think. It’s your bloody mother again. Did anyone else ever have a mother who deserted her child because a worthless husband had found another bird. Hadn’t she any idea what she was doing to you?’

  ‘Your remarks are obscene.’ He was trembling so violently, he could not do up his shirt buttons. He let them go for the moment and picked up his hair-brush. Recovering, he said sharply: ‘And how did you get the facts so neatly lined up? I told you nothing. I suppose you went to my father, or my ghastly step-mother: two people I haven’t spoken to since I left home. I don’t even know if they’re alive or dead, yet you tracked them down and talked about me behind my back.’

  ‘I’ve never met either of them.’ She went into the bathroom and when she came out, he was ready to go down to dinner.

  Now that the cooler season was established, the garden tent had been dismantled and meals were served in a room that had once been a coach-house. It was white-washed and had still the spare, raw look of an outbuilding.

  Hugh, at table, was sufficiently himself to ask in a low voice: ‘Well, where did you get that information about my mother?’

  ‘From your school-friend, Meaker. If you remember, he introduced us.’

  ‘And he talked about me?’

  ‘Everyone talks about everyone. You know that.’

  Having approached the subject as closely as he had ever done, Hugh retreated into silence. Watching his shut, pale face, Kristy knew that had she written and published the suicide novel, it would have been the end for them. Once she would not have thought this mattered but now? – could she afford a break-up? There was a story lost. She had always been impatient of considerations that hampered her work, and now she was hampered as she had never been hampered before. ‘I’m hobbled,’ she thought, ‘I’m caught by the foot’ and she could have wept before the whole bloody pension.

  Towards the end of the meal, Hugh spoke in a coldly level voice: ‘I suppose you know you’ll have to go home? English infants don’t thrive in this climate. I’ll have to see if I can get my contract extended. I might get a semi-permanent post at a reduced salary.’

  ‘You’re certainly making heavy weather of all this. The film business will pick up again. Why shouldn’t you go back to writing scripts?’

  ‘Because, whatever happens, the good days are over. It would be too precarious. We’ll need a regular salary. And . . .’ he lost control and
his tone became anguished. ‘I don’t want to go back. I had hoped, if we managed to save while here, that I would have a few months for creative writing. This is the end of that.’

  ‘I’d no idea you had this in mind. If you feel you can write another novel, why not write it here and now. You’ve plenty of time.’

  ‘I haven’t plenty of time. And I’ve the nagging responsibility of another job. No one could write under these conditions, as you’ll find out yourself when you’re a mother. Motherhood’s a pretty demanding job.’

  ‘Why are you being so bloody minded?’ Kristy’s voice rose and Hugh became conscious of the listening silence about them: ‘Anyone might think you’d nothing to do with this. Good God, you’ve always had my cunt when you wanted it.’

  The listeners stirred. Hugh let out his breath and whispered: ‘Be quiet.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with this lot.’

  Sullenly, in a state of mutual hatred, the Fosters went into the salon, and saw Simon Hobhouse sitting near the bar. He had been waiting for Hugh and gave a delighted laugh at the sight of him. Hugh expressed equal delight. Stretching out his hands in welcome, he hurried away from Kristy and joined Simon. Holding to each other, the pair laughed with pleasure. To Kristy they appeared jubilant. It was like a meeting of lovers.

  She remained at the back of the room where she and Hugh usually sat, wondering if Gopal had been right and Hobhouse had indeed come to inform on her. Watching them as they sat talking together, she saw that, whatever they were saying, she had no part in it. They were rejoicing in each other, a male co-operative designed to exclude her and all other females.

  She knew that exclusion. She had experienced it more than once during her married life. Hugh had what she called ‘a trick’ of picking up men who, for a while, became heroes to him, and using them as a shield against her. She suddenly felt a bitter anger that she had been foolish enough to marry against her own instinct. She had been told the suicide story. Meaker had warned her that Hugh was not the mild, kindly, uncomplicated man that he seemed. Beneath that gentle manner, those golden benign looks, he was, in fact, one of the deranged.