A servant, NAZRUL, carries Flora’s suitcase into the bedroom, and then retreats to his quarters, out of sight.

FLORA (Completing the handshake) Thank you!

COOMARASWAMI Welcome, my dear Miss Crewe! And farewell! A day of rest!

FLORA Thank you—you were so kind to …

COOMARASWAMI I will leave you! Tomorrow, a picnic! Do you like temples?

FLORA Well, I don’t know … I’m sure I …

COOMARASWAMI Leave everything to me. !

Coomaraswami leaves her, shouting in Hindi for his buggydriver.

The Shepperton garden is now visible. Here, MRS SWAN and PIKE are having tea while occupied with a shoebox of Flora’s letters.

FLORA ‘And in no time at all I was installed in a little house, two good-sized rooms under a tin roof … with electric light … (She tries the electric light switch without result.) … and an oil lamp just in case …’ (She looks out from the verandah.) … a verandah looking out at a rather hopeless garden … but with a good table and chair which does very well for working …’ (She tries out the chair and the table.) ‘… and a wicker sofa of sorts for not working … and round the back …’ (She disappears around the corner of the verandah where it goes out of sight, while Mrs Swan turns a page of the letter.)

MRS SWAN I wish I’d kept the envelopes, they’d be worth something now, surely, the Indian ones at least.

PIKE Oh, but it’s the wine, not the bottles! These letters are a treasure. They may be the only family letters anywhere.

MRS SWAN I dare say, since I’m the only family.

PIKE Her handwriting sometimes … (He passes a letter to her for assistance.)

MRS SWAN (Deciphering where he indicates) ‘… a kitchen bit with a refrigerator …’

FLORA (Reappearing) ‘… a kitchen bit with a refrigerator! But Nazrul, my cook and bottle-washer, disdains the electric stove and makes his own arrangements on a little verandah of his own.’ (She goes into the interior, into the bedroom, where she tries the switch for the electric fan, again without result.) ‘My bedroom, apart from the electric fan, also has a punkah which is like a pelmet worked by a punkah-wallah who sits outside and flaps the thing by a system of ropes and pulleys, or would if he were here, which he isn’t. And then off the bedroom …’ (She disappears briefly through a door. Mrs Swan passes the page to Pike and they continue to read in silence.) (Reappearing) ‘… is a dressing room and bathroom combined, with a tin tub, and a shower with a head as big as a sunflower—a rainflower, of course …’ (Pike grunts approvingly) ‘… and all this is under a big green tree with monkeys and parrots in the branches, and it’s called a duck bungalow …’

MRS SWAN Dak bungalow.

FLORA ‘… although there is not a duck to be seen.’

She disappears into the bathroom with her suitcase.