ANISH Yes, the tea-tray …

MRS SWAN You spotted it. In India we had pictures of coaching inns and foxhunting, and now I’ve landed up in Shepperton I’ve got elephants and prayer wheels cluttering up the window ledges, and the tea-tray is Nepalese brass. One could make a comment about human nature but have a slice of Battenburg instead.

ANISH Thank you.

MRS SWAN I got it specially, an artistic sort of cake, I always think. What kind of paintings are they, these paintings that are not like your father’s? Describe your latest. Like the cake?

ANISH (Eating) Delicious. Thank you.

MRS SWAN No, are they like the cake?

ANISH Oh. No. They are all … like each other really. I can’t describe them.

MRS SWAN Indescribable, then.

Anish completes the drawing, and passes it to her.

ANISH There.

MRS SWAN (Pleasantly surprised) Ah. That’s a proper drawing. You could do portraits if you wanted.

She gives the drawing back to Anish.

ANISH Thank you.

MRS SWAN Now, what are we going to tell Eldon about your father?

ANISH Eldon?

MRS SWAN E. Cooper Pike. He calls me Eleanor so I have to call him Eldon, so as not to seem toffee-nosed. If he starts calling me Nell I suppose I’ll have to call him El. He’s waiting for me to die so he can get on with Flora’s biography which he thinks I don’t know he’s writing.

ANISH (Referring to his copy of the book) Oh yes. ‘Edited by E. Cooper Pike.’

MRS SWAN That means he does the footnotes.

ANISH Oh yes, I see.

MRS SWAN Far too much of a good thing, in my opinion, the footnotes; to be constantly interrupted by someone telling you things you already know or don’t need to know at that moment. There are pages where Flora can hardly get a word in sideways. Mr Pike teaches Flora Crewe. It makes her sound like a subject, doesn’t it, like biology. Or in her case, botany. Flora is widely taught in America. I have been written to, even visited, and on one occasion telephoned, by young women doing Flora Crewe. Almost always young women. And from all over, lots from America. Flora has become quite a heroine. Which she always was to me. I was only three when Mother died, so it was Flora who … Oh dear, I’m going to need a hanky.

ANISH Oh—I say! I’m sorry—

MRS SWAN Found it. (She blows her nose.) It makes me so cross that she missed it all, the Collected Poems, and now the Letters, with her name all over the place and students and professors so interested and so sweet about her poetry. Nobody gave tuppence about her while she was alive except to get her knickers off. How is your tea?

Das arrives at the guesthouse and props his bicycle against the verandah. Flora, working, barely acknowledges him.

ANISH It’s very nice. Mrs Swan … it says, ‘The portrait of Flora Crewe is reproduced by permission of Mrs Eleanor Swan.’ Does that mean you have it?