The mysterious affair at Jeddah
Anita Brookner
EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET by Hilary Mantel Viking, £11.95, pp. 298 Devotees of Hilary Mantel's earlier novels will be surprised by this one, a horror story with an atmosphere as strange as that of a detective story, but a detective story that fails to tie up the loose ends. Clues abound and plots are plotted, but explanations are lacking. Before the last page has been reached one is fiercely uncomfortable, as if one had been trapped inside a complete delusional system. And the characteristic of delusional systems is that their logic is extreme but inaccessible to those on the outside. A peculiar fear emanates from this narrative: I dread to think what it did to the writer herself.
Frances Shore is off to join her husband, Andrew, in Jeddah, where he is supervis- ing the construction of a government build- ing. She is unafraid and unimpressed; references to Helen Smith merely evoke a weary smile. After five years in Africa nothing can dismay her. The Shores are billetted in a small block of flats which she christens Dunroamin. The first thing she notices is the lack of daylight. She cannot go out because Western women are not encouraged to walk on the streets; besides, there is nowhere to go. Traffic scorches past on the freeway, and the heat and dust are so oppressive that, even if it were permitted, walking would be hazardous. For fresh air she has to go up to the roof, and from the roof she can see the balcony of the flat immediately below, which she is told is empty.
Her neighbours are Yasmin, a Pakistani girl married to Raji, a fixer and something of a bon viveur, and Samira, who wears jeans under her abaya. These ladies offer instant coffee in their apartments which come complete with chandeliers and flock wallpaper. Both their marriages were arranged, but they are too delicate to discuss their marital affairs: the Koran keeps them dutiful and propagandist, and if they refer to 'conflicts' they are not specific. When Frances mentions that there are noises coming from the empty flat upstairs they defuse the conversation by telling her that no English girl over the age of 12 is a virgin. Yasmin, having lived in St
John's Wood for 18 months, knows this for a fact.
Frances, with too much time on her hands, keeps a diary and entertains other members of the expatriate community, boorish men who know their way around and their lethargic or officious wives. All are in this horrible place because they are earning a great deal of money, although not so much as they would have done when the oil business was booming and marble clad buildings of ideological magnificence were going tip every minute. The buildings are still going up but it now seems doubtful that they will be completed. Drink, of course, is banned, although everyone seems to have an illicit still. It is not advisable to ask questions, get into con- versations, or in any way infringe the rules.
In the empty days Frances' thoughts turn to the upstairs flat, which she assumes is being used as a love-nest by two people whom she never meets. Yasmin's maid is seen taking in food. The possibility that Yasmin is entertaining a lover, both of whom would be killed if they were disco- vered, cannot be ruled out, although Yas- min herself is a fundamentalist and speaks of taking to the veil, an unusual step for a woman with a progressive husband. A large packing-case appears in Yasmin's doorway: for some of Raji's things, it is explained. But the packing-case is next seen on the balcony of the empty flat. Then Frances speculates that the hideaway may be political. Dream-like comings and goings — of the landlord, of builders complicate the mystery. And one day Frances intercepts a visitor on the stairs and feels against her hands the barrel of a gun. It all gets much worse and it would be unfair to give away the details. I doubt, in any case, whether they are easy to de- scribe. An impenetrable air of mystery hangs over the whole affair. Who caused the death of the air-conditioning expert from England? What is in the packing- case? Who was in the empty flat? Why is everything kept secret, especially from the reader? How does one get out of the place without an exit visa? Why does Frances consent to being passively moved to a villa on a deserted compound? Andrew's con- tract runs out in July, but will they ever manage to get home? All these questions are unanswered, and in the meantime Frances becomes more and more inert, sitting on the patio in 100-degree heat, and no longer thinking of England and the flat they will buy with all the money they have saved.
The story is told very calmly, even flatly, by a narrator who has driven her heroine
into all sorts of trouble and refuses to get her out again. Hilary Mantel has lived in Saudi Arabia and presumably knows what she is talking about. The stoical Frances, not quite the naive protagonist who usually features in fictions of this type, gives little away; even her diary is uninteresting. Everything is withheld. This tightness of control is perhaps the novel's eeriest fea- ture. That and the nightmare of a city bristling with vacant lots, screaming tyres, cats with their fur torn away, and the ever-present penalties. The overriding boredom leeches away emotion, and this pervades the authorial voice, which is even and slightly monotonous. But the sheer fact of sustaining the mystery to the very end is brilliantly carried out. Readers looking for the manic black humour of Every Day is Mother's Day may be dis- appointed by Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, but they will certainly be impressed.
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