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‘Aren’t they too simply dreadful? So coarse-looking; like some kind of animal. Do you think
anyone could think those women attractive?’
‘Their own men do, I believe.’
‘I suppose they would. But that black skin–I don’t know how anyone could bear it!’
‘But, you know, one gets used to the brown skin in time. In fact they say–I believe it’s true–that
after a few years in these countries a brown skin seems more natural than a white one. And after all, it
is more natural. Take the world as a whole, it’s an eccentricity to be white.’
‘You do have some funny ideas!’
And so on and so on. She felt all the while an unsatis factoriness, an unsoundness in the things he
said. It was particularly so on the evening when Flory allowed Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, the two
derelict Eurasians, to entrap him in conversation at the Club gate.
Elizabeth, as it happened, had reached the Club a few minutes before Flory, and when she heard his
voice at the gate she came round the tennis-screen to meet him. The two Eurasians had sidled up to
Flory and cornered him like a pair of dogs asking for a game. Francis was doing most of the talking.
He was a meagre, excitable man, and as brown as a cigar-leaf, being the son of a South Indian
woman; Samuel, whose mother had been a Karen, was pale yellow with dull red hair. Both were
dressed in shabby drill suits, with vast topis beneath which their slender bodies looked like the stalks
of toadstools.
Elizabeth came down the path in time to hear fragments of an enormous and complicated
autobiography. Talking to white men–talking, for choice, about himself–was the great joy of Francis’s
life. When, at intervals of months, he found a European to listen to him, his life-history would pour
out of him in unquenchable torrents. He was talking in a nasal, sing-song voice of incredible rapidity:
‘Of my father, sir, I remember little, but he was very choleric man and many whackings with big
bamboo stick all knobs on both for self, little half-brother and two mothers. Also how on occasion of
bishop’s visit little half-brother and I dress in longyis and sent among the Burmese children to
preserve incognito. My father never rose to be bishop, sir. Four converts only in twenty-eight years,
and also too great fondness for Chinese rice-spirit very fiery noised abroad and spoil sales of my
father’s booklet entitled The Scourge of Alcohol, published with the Rangoon Baptist Press, one
rupee eight annas. My little half-brother die one hot weather, always coughing, coughing,’ etc. etc.
The two Eurasians perceived the presence of Elizabeth. Both doffed their topis with bows and
brilliant displays of teeth. It was probably several years since either of them had had a chance of
talking to an Englishwoman. Francis burst out more effusively than ever. He was chattering in evident
dread that he would be interrupted and the conversation cut short.
‘Good evening to you, madam, good evening, good evening! Most honoured to make your
acquaintance, madam! Very sweltering is the weather these days, is not? But seasonable for April.
Not too much you are suffering from prickly heat, I trust? Pounded tamarind applied to the afflicted
spot is infallible. Myself I suffer torments each night. Very prevalent disease among we Europians.’
He pronounced it Europian, like Mr Chollop in Martin Chuzzlewit. Elizabeth did not answer. She
was looking at the Eurasians somewhat coldly. She had only a dim idea as to who or what they were,
and it struck her as impertinent that they should speak to her.