DURANCE (To hell with it) Come on! Our road is due west—if you know how to drive a car we’ll make it.

They dash towards the car … the car doors are heard slamming, the engine roars into life and the Daimler takes off at what sounds like a dangerous speed.

Flora, with her suitcase packed, is writing at her verandah table.

FLORA ‘Oh dear, guess what? You won’t approve. Quite right, darling. It’s definitely time to go. Love ‘em and leave ‘em.’

PIKE (Entering) The man was most probably the Junior Political Agent at the Residency, Captain David Arthur Durance, who took F.C. dancing and horseriding. He was killed at Kohima in March 1944 when British and Indian troops halted the advance of the Japanese forces.

FLORA ‘I feel tons better, though. The juices are starting to flow again, see enclosed.’

PIKE ‘Pearl’, included in Indian Ink (1932).

FLORA ‘I’ll send you fair copies of anything I finish in case I get carried away by monsoons or tigers, and if you get a pound for them put it in the Sasha fund.’

PIKE The reference is obscure.

Pike leaves.

Mrs Swan and Anish enter. He carries his briefcase. She has Flora’s copy of Emily Eden.

ANISH Mrs Swan … Flora’s letter said, ‘Guess what—you won’t approve …’ … and Mr Pike’s footnote implies that it was the Political Agent, Captain Durance, who …

MRS SWAN Mr Pike presumes too much.

ANISH Yes! Why wouldn’t you approve of Captain Durance? Surely it’s more likely she meant …

MRS SWAN Meant what, Mr Das?

ANISH I don’t mean any offence.

MRS SWAN Then you must take care not to give it.

ANISH But would you have disapproved of a British Army Officer, Mrs Swan? More than of an Indian painter?

MRS SWAN Certainly. Mr Pike is spot-on there. In 1930 I was working for a communist newspaper. Which goes to show that people are surprising. But you know that from your father, don’t you?

ANISH Why?

MRS SWAN He must have surprised you too. The terror of the Empire Day gymkhana, the thrower of mangoes at the Resident’s Daimler.

ANISH Yes. Yes. He must have—altered.

MRS SWAN Yes. One alters. (She gives Anish the book by Emily Eden.) This is yours. It belonged to your father. It has his name in it. (Anish takes the book wordlessly and opens it.) I hope you’re not going to blub. And you musn’t make assumptions. When Flora said I wouldn’t approve, she did not mean this man or that man. Cigarettes, whisky and men were not on the menu. She didn’t need Dr Guppy to tell her that. No, I would not have approved. But Flora’s weakness was always romance. To call it that.

ANISH She had a romance with my father.

MRS SWAN Quite possibly. Or with Captain Durance. Or His Highness the Rajah of Jummapur. Or someone else entirely. It hardly matters, looking back. Men were not really important to Flora. If they had been, they would have been fewer. She used them like batteries. When things went flat, she’d put in a new one … I’ll come to the gate with you. If you decide to tell Mr Pike about the watercolour, I’m sure Flora wouldn’t mind.