563296589345

‘Ah well. Let’s hope they’ll have the guts to show a bit of fight for once. Then we’ll call out the
Military Police, rifles and all. Plug a few dozen of ’em–that’ll clear the air.’
However, the hoped-for opportunity did not come. Westfield and the dozen constables he had taken
with him to Thongwa–jolly round-faced Gurkha boys, pining to use their kukris on somebody-found
the district depress ingly peaceful. There seemed not the ghost of a rebellion anywhere; only the
annual attempt, as regular as the monsoon, of the villagers to avoid paying the capitation tax.
The weather was growing hotter and hotter. Elizabeth had had her first attack of prickly heat.
Tennis at the Club had practically ceased; people would play one languid set and then fall into chairs
and swallow pints of tepid lime-juice–tepid, because the ice came only twice weekly from Mandalay
and melted within twenty-four hours of arriving. The Flame of the Forest was in full bloom. The
Burmese women, to protect their children from the sun, streaked their faces with yellow cosmetic
until they looked like little African witch doctors. Flocks of green pigeons, and imperial pigeons as
large as ducks, came to eat the berries of the big peepul trees along the bazaar road.
Meanwhile, Flory had turned Ma Hla May out of his house.
A nasty, dirty job! There was a sufficient pretext–she had stolen his gold cigarette-case and
pawned it at the house of Li Yeik, the Chinese grocer and illicit pawnbroker in the bazaar–but still, it
was only a pretext. Flory knew perfectly well, and Ma Hla May knew, and all the servants knew, that
he was getting rid of her because of Elizabeth. Because of ‘the Ingaleikma with dyed hair’, as Ma Hla
May called her.
Ma Hla May made no violent scene at first. She stood sullenly listening while he wrote her a
cheque for a hundred rupees–Li Yeik or the Indian chetty in the bazaar would cash cheques–and told
her that she was dismissed. He was more ashamed than she; he could not look her in the face, and his
voice went flat and guilty. When the bullock cart came for her belongings he shut himself in the
bedroom, skulking till the scene should be over.
Cartwheels grated on the drive, there was the sound of men shouting; then suddenly there was a
fearful uproar of screams. Flory went outside. They were all struggling round the gate in the sunlight.
Ma Hla May was clinging to the gatepost and Ko S’la was trying to bundle her out. She turned a face
full of fury and despair towards Flory, screaming over and over, ‘Thakin! Thakin! Thakin! Thakin!
Thakin!’ It hurt him to the heart that she should still call him thakin after he had dismissed her.
‘What is it?’ he said.
It appeared that there was a switch of false hair that Ma Hla May and Ma Yi both claimed. Flory
gave the switch to Ma Yi and gave Ma Hla May two rupees to compensate her. Then the cart jolted
away, with Ma Hla May sitting beside her two wicker baskets, straight-backed and sullen, and
nursing a kitten on her knees. It was only two months since he had given her the kitten as a present.
Ko S’la, who had long wished for Ma Hla May’s removal, was not altogether pleased now that it
had happened. He was even less pleased when he saw his master going to church–or as he called it,
to the ‘English pagoda’–for Flory was still in Kyauktada on the Sunday of the padre’s arrival, and he
went to church with the others. There was a congregation of twelve, including Mr Francis, Mr Samuel
and six native Christians, with Mrs Lackersteen playing ‘Abide with Me’ on the tiny harmonium with
one game pedal. It was the first time in ten years that Flory had been to church, except to funerals. Ko