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But as a matter of fact, Ko S’la’s alarm was premature. After knowing Elizabeth for ten days, Flory
was scarcely more intimate with her than on the day when he had first met her.
As it happened, he had her almost to himself during these ten days, most of the Europeans being in
the jungle. Flory himself had no right to be loitering in headquarters, for at this time of year the work
of timber-extraction was in full swing, and in his absence everything went to pieces under the
incompetent Eurasian overseer. But he had stayed–pretext, a touch of fever–while despairing letters
came almost every day from the overseer, telling of disasters. One of the elephants was ill, the engine
of the light railway that was used for carrying teak logs to the river had broken down, fifteen of the
coolies had deserted. But Flory still lingered, unable to tear himself away from Kyauktada while
Elizabeth was there, and continually seeking–never, as yet, to much purpose–to recapture that easy
and delightful friendship of their first meeting.
They met every day, morning and evening, it was true. Each evening they played a single of tennis
at the Club–Mrs Lackersteen was too limp and Mr Lackersteen too liverish for tennis at this time of
year–and afterwards they would sit in the lounge, all four together, playing bridge and talking. But
though Flory spent hours in Elizabeth’s company, and often they were alone together, he was never for
an instant at his ease with her. They talked–so long as they talked of trivialities–with the utmost
freedom, yet they were distant, like strangers. He felt stiff in her presence, he could not forget his
birthmark; his twice-scraped chin smarted, his body tortured him for whisky and tobacco–for he tried
to cut down his drinking and smoking when he was with her. After ten days they seemed no nearer the
relationship he wanted.
For somehow, he had never been able to talk to her as he longed to talk. To talk, simply to talk! It
sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter
loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need
to talk is the greatest of all needs. Yet with Elizabeth serious talk seemed impossible. It was as though
there had been a spell upon them that made all their conversation lapse into banality; gramophone
records, dogs, tennis racquets–all that desolating Club-chatter. She seemed not to want to talk of
anything but that. He had only to touch upon a subject of any conceivable interest to hear the evasion,
the ‘I shan’t play’ coming into her voice. Her taste in books appalled him when he discovered it. Yet
she was young, he reminded himself, and had she not drunk white wine and talked of Marcel Proust
under the Paris plane trees? Later, no doubt, she would understand him and give him the
companionship he needed. Perhaps it was only that he had not won her confidence yet.