Trade Wind (52 page)

Listening to that throbbing beat. Hero remembered an evening on the
Virago
and Batty Potter telling her some absurd tale of the sacred drums of Zanzibar that sounded a warning of their own accord when disaster threatened the Island. It did not seem quite so absurd now; though no ghostly hands were responsible for the present sound, for it did not come from some hidden cave in the hills near Dunga, but from the purlieus of the city: a rhythmic and familiar accompaniment to the no less familiar sounds of voices and laughter, the braying of a donkey and the squawling of a pair of alley-cats who were conducting a courtship among the pomegranate trees.

Hero blew out the lamp, and pulling back the thin muslin curtains, looked out into the hot darkness and thought how strange the night noises of the city sounded now that the surf and the palm fronds were silent And how far away Hollis Hill and Boston seemed—as though they were not only part of another continent, but part of another world: a new, clean world, uncluttered by the dirt and disease and the old, dark tyrannies and ugly superstitions that still crept and swarmed and spawned within a stone’s-throw of her window.

She shivered at the thought, and for the first time found it frightening rather than challenging. It was not going to be as easy as she had once imagined to clear away the dirt and delusions that men had lived with and tolerated and clung to for long centuries. Or to alter the rules and precepts that had governed the lives of countless generations.

Hero sighed, and was about to turn away from the window when a faint sound from somewhere immediately below her attracted her attention and made her pause to listen. It was only a very small sound, and had it not been for the humiliating memories it evoked it is doubtful if she would have picked it out from among the multitudinous night noises of the city. But the surreptitious rasp of that particular bolt being eased from its socket was familiar to her, for she had drawn it back herself, and with equal caution, on the fatal night when she had crept out of the house to go to Beit-el-Tani.

The Consulate was in darkness, and the last light to be extinguished had been Hero’s own. But the side door that led out of the hall on to the terrace was being quietly opened, and as quietly closed again.

Hero caught the muffled squeak of the hinge and the little click as the latch caught, and she leaned out to peer downwards. But nothing moved among the shadows, and when a moment or two later her ear caught the soft crunch of quick, cautious footsteps on the crushed shell of the garden paths, she was startled to realize that someone had walked softly along the terrace and down the steps without her seeing or hearing them.

A dark shape accompanied by a spark of light showed briefly against the paler masses of the flowerbeds, to be lost to sight almost immediately among the orange trees at the far end of the garden. Hero waited for the creak of the garden gate, and when it came was startled to find herself shivering. Which was, she told herself, absurd, because it could only mean that Uncle Nat’s personal servant Joshua, who was supposed to sleep at night on a palliasse on the back landing so as to be within call in case of emergency, had waited until his master was asleep and then left the house for some assignation in the city.

Had it been someone entering the house it would have been a different matter, for then she would have had ample cause for alarm. But someone leaving it could only be a member of the household who had crept out and intended to return, and it would be both foolish and unkind to go waking up Clay or Uncle Nat in order to get Joshua or the night-watchman into trouble. All the same the incident disturbed her, and the smell of the city and the scent of cloves and strange flowers that permeated every comer of her darkened room was suddenly a part of it: the odour of mystery and corruption, and the East…

Hero shivered again, and drawing the curtains against the night, went back to bed, but could not rest: until all at once it occurred to her that the man she had seen leaving the house so quietly had been smoking a cigar. Then it must have been Uncle Nat or Clay, and there was nothing to worry about. Except why should Clay…

Hero yawned and was asleep.

24

“‘
At sea north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the spicy shore of Araby the blest
,’” declaimed Emory Frost, gesturing with his glass. “And I wonder just what Milton would have made of the paradisiacal odours if he’d ever got a good whiff of Muscat on a hot night? Or of this salubrious spot, either!”

He lifted his head and sniffed the night air. “The wind has changed. There will be rain tomorrow—the monsoon is here.”

Majid licked his forefinger and held it up, and after half a minute dropped his hand and said: “You imagine it There is no wind: not so much as the smallest breath. You are drunk, my friend.”

“Possibly. But not too drunk to feel the air change. It will blow soon enough, and in a day or two your abominable sewer of a city will be fit to live in again.”

Majid shrugged and said carelessly: “A sensitive nose would seem to go with a white skin. A bad smell in the streets does not worry us over-much. It passes, and does no harm.”

“There you’re wrong: it does a deal of harm. It breeds sickness.”

“
Bah!
You are as bad as that English doctor and the good Colonel Edwards—and the new American lady who looks like a youth in women’s clothes and worries my poor ministers with complaints about the evil things that people throw into the streets or on to the beaches. Where else should they throw them? They cannot keep such stuff in their houses—imagine the odour! And when the rains come all will be clean again.”

“Until the rains cease and the dry season returns. I know! You’re an idle lot of ruffians.”

“Would you have me waste the revenues on pulling down old houses and building sewers? Or paying armies of slaves to carry away the refuse daily?”

“Good God, no! I’m not complaining. Or not much. There may be times when the stench gets a bit much for me, but rather that than a stink of Progress and Carbolic. Besides, I understand you’ve spent the revenues already. Or am I wrong?”

Majid sighed heavily. “Alas, no. You are right. But even if I had not, my people would laugh at me for wasting good money on such things as the removal of filth. Nor would they thank me for interfering with their ways. The English doctor tells me that if I would but force my subjects to keep the streets free of waste matter and evil smells there would be less sickness and fewer deaths, and more children would live to grow up and more men and women live to grow old. To heal the sick is good; but to tamper in such a manner with the plans of God is certainly foolish, since is not the All-Powerful also the All-Wise? If there were no more sickness, and no babes are carried off in youth but all live to be strong and old, there will arise great trouble in the world, for any fool can see that in time there will not be sufficient room for all.”

Rory said: “Allah will doubtless be able to devise other ways of keeping the population within bounds. And if he should not, they can safely be trusted to see to it themselves. It’s one of the things they’ve always been good at.”

Majid acknowledged the jest with a twisted smile. “That is true. It is because they will not learn to accept the world as God made it, but must for ever be meddling with it; as though Allah and his Prophet did not know what was best for them and for it. And the worst of the meddlers are those from the West. You may not believe me, but do you know what that tall woman who is the niece of the American Consul has been doing?”

“Only too well!” said Rory with a grin. “She conceived it her duty to assist your brother Bargash, in the expectation that he would prove a more enlightened ruler than yourself and agree to put an end to the buying and selling of slaves.”

“
Bargash?
But he would have She cannot have known his mind!”

“She didn’t I think your sisters and Madame Tissot gave her that impression for their own ends.”

“She must be mad, poor woman. I knew that she had interested herself in the affair, but I had imagined it to be out of affection for Cholé, who is very beautiful. But it was not that I meant No; she has been buying slaves through her uncle’s gardener, a rascally negro by the name of Bofabi. The man is himself a freed slave, and therefore she seems to imagine that because of this he will feel more sympathy for his own kind than an Arab, and thinks that once he has bought them they are free. She does not know that he owns a small shamba outside the town, and that with the money she gives him to buy these people, and to feed and keep those he buys, he has bought more land on which he makes these slaves work hard for him, so that soon he will be rich. He tells her that he has paid high prices and has bought more slaves than he has in truth done, and pays money to her woman, Fattûma, to tell her how well and happy are all those he has bought and freed. She must indeed be afflicted by Allah!”

“On the contrary,” said Rory. “She is afflicted by a desire to assist her fellow-men and help to right the injustices of the world. It is the crusading spirit. Very laudable—and damnably uncomfortable!”

“Not for Bofabi and the serving-woman,” commented Majid. “They are both most comfortable. Though I do not think the slaves are, for Africans are devil-worshippers and do not know how to treat slaves. Someone should tell her that.”

“She would not believe it. She believes only what she wishes to believe.”

“Then her relatives should get her a sensible husband. A strong man who would beat her when she behaves foolishly. All women need husbands.”

“This one is not a woman. She is an admirable piece of statuary, and what she needs is a Pygmalion.”

“A what? I do not understand.”

“According to the Greeks, a sculptor of that name fell in love with a beautiful ivory statue, and persuaded some Goddess—Aphrodite, I think—to breathe life into her. After which he married her and named her ‘Galatea.’ But the lady in question is probably doomed to remain ivory for the rest of her life, since I doubt if Mr Clayton Mayo will be sufficiently interested in turning her into a Galatea. I should say he is a deal more interested in her fortune: though I may be wrong. You know, this brandy of yours is quite tolerable. Over-scented, but I’ve tasted worse. Here’s to your very good health.”

The Sultan and Captain Emory Frost were seated in a private audience chamber of the Palace: a high white room with arched, open doorways hung with silk curtains, and wide windows giving on to a view of the sea. Oil lamps in pierced bronze holders hung motionless from the ceiling, reflecting themselves in the inevitable gilt-framed looking-glasses and attracting a horde of winged and crawling creatures from the darkness outside. Moths, beetles and other night-flying insects whirled and fluttered in a golden haze around each lamp, and a dozen gecko lizards darted and snapped on the ceiling, bloating themselves with the winged feast. But the lizards and the hypnotized insects provided the only movement in the hot night, for beyond the windows the black silhouettes of palm trees stood still and unstirring against the dark sky and the dim, unblinking stars, and inside the silk curtains hung motionless in the archways.

The two men lay relaxed in careless undress, the Sultan on a low divan among an assortment of cushions, and his guest, for greater coolness, on the floor. Rory had been drinking perfumed brandy for the best part of an hour, and though it had made him feel pleasantly carefree it had not yet thickened his speech or blunted his faculties, and studying Majid with half-closed eyes, he harked back to an earlier thought and said lazily: “Why should the prospect of the rains trouble Your Highness?”

“It is not the rains,” said Majid mournfully.

“What then?”

“The winds that bring them and the thought of what those winds will bring: the dhows of those
shaitans
—those devils from the Gulf.”

“They may not come,” said Rory easily. “After all, they didn’t come last year, did they.”

Majid made a small petulant movement. “That is why I am afraid. Because they did not, they will surely come this year—and be doubly rapacious.”

“With any luck they won’t, for they don’t like the British Navy and the
Daffodil
has been hanging about here too much of late.”

The Sultan sighed and relaxed. “That is true. She has been capturing many slavers of late. Six in the last month.”

“Hell-ships all,” said Rory cheerfully.

“So I understand. The Lieutenant is very lucky. Or else his information is unusually good. He is always there in the right place and at the right time.”

“Not always,” grinned Rory.

The Sultan gave him an odd oblique glance, and frowned. “You should be more careful, my friend, or one day someone will inform upon you. Then it will be your name that some waterfront idler will whisper to the Lieutenant as he passes, and your ship that he will be waiting for at the right time and the right place. It is a dangerous game that you play.”

“I know. That is why I play it carefully.”

“You have need to. The Lieutenant would give a great deal to catch you. I might even be tempted to sell you myself! How much do you think he would pay?”

He chuckled maliciously, and Rory laughed and said: “Not enough to make it worth your while, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps that is why I do not do it But I could wish the
Daffodil
were here now.”

“Personally, the less I see of young Larrimore the better. He’s one of the bulldog breed, blast him. Gets his teeth in and won’t let go. He’s got ‘em into me and he’s the very devil to shake off. Did Suliman get in safely?”

“So I understand. Officially, of course, I know nothing. But I hear that he landed a hundred and fifty slaves in excellent condition, and that all of them have fetched high prices. I cannot understand why Colonel Edwards should make so great a fuss about a few slaves. We Arabs have always kept slaves; it has been part of our life for a thousand years and more, and our whole concept of society is bound up with it. The Prophet himself did not forbid it—it is only their ill-treatment that is forbidden. Yet every day the Colonel worries me with complaints: I find it very tiring. You do not think that you could let it be known that you will take off some slaves in a few weeks’ time for sale in Persia?”