PIKE He must be pretty ancient.

The gramophone music creeps back in. Flora, alone, comes out onto the verandah.

DILIP No, not at all. He was only a small boy, you see. One day the Memsahib was sick and Ram Sunil Singh worked the punkah to cool the air. Mr Nirad Das gave him two annas. One does not forget such things. (Leaving now.) I won’t be a jiff. I must say, I could eat a horse!

Dilip leaves.

FLORA ‘My suitor—I suppose I must call him that, though I swear I’ve done nothing to encourage him—came to fetch me in an open Daimler which drew such a crowd, and off we went with people practically falling off the mud-guards, rather like leaving Bow Street—my God, how strange, that was ten years ago almost to the day.’

PIKE In fact, nine. See ‘The Woman Who Wrote What She Knew’, E. C. Pike, Modem Language Review, Spring 1979.

FLORA ‘And everyone at the Club was very friendly, going out of their way to explain that although they didn’t go in much for poetry, they had nothing against it, so that was all right, and dinner was soup, boiled fish, lamb cutlets, sherry trifle and sardines on toast, and it beats me how we’re getting away with it, darling, I wouldn’t trust some of them to run the Hackney Empire. Well, it’s all going to end. That’s official. I heard it from the horse’s mouth—’

The Resident and the Englishwoman dance into view, in a cheerful mood.

RESIDENT (Dancing) (a) It is our moral duty to remain and (b) we will shirk it.

The Resident and the Englishwoman, dancing, spin out of view. Durance appears now, followed by a SERVANT with two tumblers of whisky and a soda syphon on a salver.

DURANCE Here we are. Two burra-pegs.

FLORA Lots of soda with mine, please.

DURANCE I’ll do it.

The servant bows and leaves.

Dilip reappears.

DILIP Eldon! We can eat! I hope you will like my Club. The Jummapur Palace is a beautiful hotel, naturally, but this was the place in the old days when the palace was still the private residence of the rajah.

PIKE (Following him out) Where does he live now?

DILIP (Leaving) In the penthouse! The fish curry is usually good, and on no account miss the bread-and-butter pudding!

DURANCE Say when.

Durance deals with the drinks.

FLORA When … Cheers.

DURANCE Cheers.

FLORA I’m sorry I packed up on you.

DURANCE This is nicer. So you’ve come to India for your health …

FLORA Is that amusing?

DURANCE Well, it is rather. Have you seen the English cemetery?

FLORA No.

DURANCE I must take you there.

FLORA Oh.

DURANCE People here drop like flies—cholera, typhoid, malaria—men, women and children, here one day, gone the next. Are you sure the doctor said India?

FLORA He didn’t say India. He said a sea voyage and somewhere warm. I wanted to come to India.

DURANCE Good for you. Live dangerously. In a month, you can’t imagine it, the heat. But you’ll be gone to the hills, so you’ll be all right. (Referring to the chair) There we are. Long-sleever. Good for putting the feet up.