MRS SWAN Dak was the post; they were post-houses, when letters went by runner.

PIKE Ah …

MRS SWAN I like to have two kinds of cake on the go. The Madeira is my own.

PIKE I’m really not hungry.

MRS SWAN I wouldn’t let that stop you, Mr Pike, if you hope to get on my good side.

PIKE I would love some. The Madeira. (She cuts him a slice.) And won’t you please call me Eldon? (He takes the slice of cake.) Thank you. (He takes the bite and gives a considered verdict.) Wonderful.

MRS SWAN I should think so.

PIKE It’s the excitement. There’s nothing like these in the British Library, you know!

MRS SWAN (Amused) The British Library!

PIKE The University of Texas has Flora Crewe indexed across twenty-two separate collections! And I still have the Bibliothèque Nationale next week. The Collected Letters are going to be a year of my life!

MRS SWAN A whole year just to collect them?

PIKE (Gaily) The notes, the notes! The notes is where the fun is! You can’t just collect Flora Crewe’s letters into a book and call it ‘The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe’. The correspondence of well-known writers is mostly written without a thought for the general reader. I mean, they don’t do their own footnotes. So there’s an opportunity here. Which you might call a sacred trust. Edited by E. Cooper Pike. There isn’t a page which doesn’t need—look—you see here?—’I had a funny dream last night about the Queen’s Elm.’ Which Queen? What elm? Why was she dreaming about a tree? So this is where I come in, wearing my editor’s hat. To lighten the darkness.

MRS SWAN It’s a pub in the Fulham Road.

PIKE Thank you. This is why God made poets and novelists, so the rest of us can get published. Would that be a chocolate cake?

MRS SWAN Why, would you … ?

PIKE No, I just thought: did your sister like chocolate cake particularly?

MRS SWAN What an odd thing to think. Flora didn’t like chocolate in any form.

PIKE Ah. That’s interesting. May I?

Pike takes the next page of the letter from the tea-table.

Flora approaches, accompanied by Coomaraswami, who has a yellow parasol.

FLORA ‘The sightseeing with picnic was something of a Progress with the president of the Theosophical Society holding a yellow parasol over me while the committee bicycled alongside, sometimes two to a bike, and children ran before and behind—I felt like a carnival float representing Empire—or, depending how you look at it, the Subjugation of the Indian People, and of course you’re right, darling, but I never saw anyone less subjugated than Mr Coomaraswami.’

COOMARASWAMI We have better temples in the south. I am from the south. You are right to be discriminating!

FLORA (Apologetically) Did I seem discriminating? I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. The insides of churches …

COOMARASWAMI I understand you completely, Miss Crewe!

FLORA But I don’t know what I’m trying to say!