DURANCE No, no, just sit. He’s a chair. Breathe in. India smells wonderful, doesn’t it?

FLORA Out here it does.

DURANCE You should smell chapattis cooking on a camel-dung fire out in the Thar Desert. Perfume!

FLORA What were you doing out there?

DURANCE Cooking chapattis on a camel-dung fire. (Laughs) I’ll tell you where it all went wrong with us and India. It was the Suez Canal. It let the women in.

FLORA Oh!

DURANCE Absolutely. When you had to sail round the Cape this was a man’s country and we mucked in with the natives. The memsahibs put a stop to that. The memsahib won’t muck in, won’t even be alone in a room with an Indian.

FLORA Oh …

DURANCE Don’t point your toes out. May I ask you a personal question?

FLORA No.

DURANCE All right.

FLORA I wanted to ask you something. How did the Resident know I came to India for my health?

DURANCE It’s his business to know. Shoulders back. Reins too slack.

FLORA But I didn’t tell anybody.

DURANCE Obviously you did.

FLORA Only Mr Das.

DURANCE Oh well, there you are. Jolly friendly of you, of course, sharing a confidence, lemonade, all that, but they can’t help themselves bragging about it.

FLORA (Furious) Rubbish!

DURANCE Well … I stand corrected.

FLORA I’m sorry. I don’t believe you, though.

DURANCE Righto.

FLORA I’m sorry. Pax.

DURANCE Flora.

FLORA No.

DURANCE Would you marry me?

FLORA No.

DURANCE Would you think about it?

FLORA No. Thank you.

DURANCE Love at first sight, you see. Forgive me.

FLORA Oh, David.

DURANCE Knees together.

FLORA ‘Fraid so.

She laughs without malice but unrestrainedly. The horses trot.

Dilip and Pike are in the garden/courtyard of the Jummapur Palace Hotel, which was formerly the Palace of the Rajah of Jummapur. They are brought drinks—reassuringly American cola—served by a WAITER decked out in the authentic livery of the old regime. Thus, the SERVANTS operate freely between the two periods.

DILIP Poor Mr Nirad Das! Six months in the choky for throwing a mango!

PIKE It’s wonderful, Dilip. Subadar Ram Sunil Singh the toilet cleaner is a goldmine!

DILIP And he thinks you are one! How satisfactory.

PIKE Did I give him too much? The poverty here is so … Like the beggars at the traffic lights … I started off shoving rupees, you know, through the window … But it gets impossible. You can’t … there’s more of them then you can ever … I mean there’s nothing to be in between, you have to be St Francis or some rich bastard who ignores them, there’s nothing between that can touch it, the problem. Not St Francis, I didn’t mean any disrespect, they’re not birds—but Mother Teresa, some kind of saint. I lock the doors now. That’s the truth. First thing I do now when the taxi hits a red light, I check the doors, wind up the window. But this one, she had this baby at the breast, I mean she looked sixty, and—well, this is the thing, she had a stump, you see, she had no hand, just this stump, up against the glass, and it was … raw … so when the light changed, the stump left this … smear …