‘I don’t like Mr Pollock much. He is so very sharp and pale and he so obviously thinks us fools (I mean Mr Bard and me and, of course, poor Miss R-C.) for not sharing his dislike of coloured people. Of course one does see that if they sing calypsos all night in the no doubt ghastly tenements he exorbitantly lets to them and if they roar insults and improper suggestions at non-black teenagers, it doesn’t send up the tone. But don’t non-black tenants ever send the tone down, for pity’s sake? And what on earth has all this got to do with Dr Natouche whose tone is superb? I consider that one of the worst features of the whole black-white thing is that nobody can say: “I don’t much like black people” as they might say: “I don’t like the Southern Scot or the Welsh or antipodeans or the Midland English or Americans or the League of British Loyalists or The Readers’ Digest.” I happen to be attracted to the dark-skinned (Dr Natouche is remarkably attractive) but until people who are or who are not attracted can say so unselfconsciously it’ll go on being a muddle. I find it hard to be civil to Mr Pollock when he makes his common little racial gestures.

‘He’s not alone in his antipathy. Antipathy? I suppose that’s the right word but I almost wrote “fear”. It seems to me that Pollock and the Hewsons and even Mr Lazenby, for all his parsonic forbearance, eye Dr Natouche with something very like fear.

‘We are about to enter our second lock—the Ramsdyke, I think. More later.

‘Later (about 30 minutes). Ramsdyke. An incident. We were all on deck and the lock people and our Tom were doing their things with paddles and gates and all, and I noticed on the far bank from the lockhouse a nice lane, a pub, some wonderful elms, a ford and a pond. I called out to nobody in particular:

‘“Oh, look—The place is swarming with Constables! Everywhere you look. A perfect clutch of them!”