No More Learning

‘Got to put up with it, I suppose,’ he said. ‘B — s of natives are getting into all the Clubs
nowadays. Even the Pegu Club, I’m told. Way this country’s going, you know. We’re
about the last Club in Burma to hold out against ‘em. ’

‘We are; and what’s more, we’re damn well going to go on holding out. I’ll die in the
ditch before I’ll see a nigger in here. ’ Ellis had produced a stump of pencil. With the
curious air of spite that some men can put into their tiniest action, he re-pinned the notice
on the board and pencilled a tiny, neat ‘B. F. ’ against Mr Macgregor’s signature — ‘There,
that’s what I think of his idea. I’ll tell him so when he comes down. What do YOU say,
Flory? ’

Flory had not spoken all this time. Though by nature anything but a silent man, he seldom
found much to say in Club conversations. He had sat down at the table and was reading
G. K. Chesterton’s article in the London News, at the same time caressing Flo’s head
with his left hand. Ellis, however, was one of those people who constantly nag others to
echo their own opinions. He repeated his question, and Flory looked up, and their eyes
met. The skin round Ellis’s nose suddenly turned so pale that it was almost grey. In him it
was a sign of anger. Without any prelude he burst into a stream of abuse that would have
been startling, if the others had not been used to hearing something like it every morning.

‘My God, I should have thought in a case like this, when it’s a question of keeping those
black, stinking swine out of the only place where we can enjoy ourselves, you’d have the



decency to back me up. Even if that pot-bellied greasy little sod of a nigger doctor IS
your best pal. / don’t care if you choose to pal up with the scum of the bazaar. If it
pleases you to go to Veraswami’s house and drink whisky with all his nigger pals, that’s
your look-out. Do what you like outside the Club. But, by God, it’s a different matter
when you talk of bringing niggers in here. I suppose you’d like little Veraswami for a
Club member, eh? Chipping into our conversation and pawing everyone with his sweaty
hands and breathing his filthy garlic breath in our faces. By god, he’d go out with my
boot behind him if ever I saw his black snout inside that door. Greasy, pot-bellied little —
! ’ etc.

This went on for several minutes. It was curiously impressive, because it was so
completely sincere. Ellis really did hate Orientals — hated them with a bitter, restless
loathing as of something evil or unclean. Living and working, as the assistant of a timber
firm must, in perpetual contact with the Burmese, he had never grown used to the sight of
a black face. Any hint of friendly feeling towards an Oriental seemed to him a horrible
perversity. He was an intelligent man and an able servant of his firm, but he was one of
those Englishmen — common, unfortunately — who should never be allowed to set foot in
the East.

Flory sat nursing Flo’s head in his lap, unable to meet Ellis’s eyes. At the best of times
his birthmark made it difficult for him to look people straight in the face. And when he
made ready to speak, he could feel his voice trembling — for it had a way of trembling
when it should have been firm; his features, too, sometimes twitched uncontrollably.

‘Steady on,’ he said at last, sullenly and rather feebly. ‘Steady on. There’s no need to get
so excited, / never suggested having any native members in here. ’

‘Oh, didn’t you? We all know bloody well you’d like to, though. Why else do you go to
that oily little babu’s house every morning, then? Sitting down at table with him as
though he was a white man, and drinking out of glasses his filthy black lips have
slobbered over — it makes me spew to think of it. ’


‘Sit down, old chap, sit down,’ Westfield said. ‘Forget it. Have a drink on it. Not worth
while quarrelling. Too hot. ’



‘My God,’ said Ellis a little more calmly, taking a pace or two up and down, ‘my God, I
don’t understand you chaps. I simply don’t. Here’s that old fool Macgregor wanting to
bring a nigger into this Club for no reason whatever, and you all sit down under it without
a word. Good God, what are we supposed to be doing in this country? If we aren’t going
to rule, why the devil don’t we clear out? Here we are, supposed to be governing a set of
damn black swine who’ve been slaves since the beginning of history, and instead of
ruling them in the only way they understand, we go and treat them as equals. And you
silly b — s take it for granted. There’s Flory, makes his best pal a black babu who calls
himself a doctor because he’s done two years at an Indian so-called university. And you,
Westfield, proud as Punch of your knock-kneed, bribe-taking cowards of policemen. And
there’s Maxwell, spends his time running after Eurasian tarts. Yes, you do, Maxwell; I
heard about your goings-on in Mandalay with some smelly little bitch called Molly
Pereira. I suppose you’d have gone and married her if they hadn’t transferred you up
here? You all seem to LIKE the dirty black brutes. Christ, I don’t know what’s come over
us all. I really don’t. ’

‘Come on, have another drink,’ said Westfield. ‘Hey, butler! Spot of beer before the ice
goes, eh? Beer, butler! ’

The butler brought some bottles of Munich beer. Ellis presently sat down at the table with
the others, and he nursed one of the cool bottles between his small hands. His forehead
was sweating. He was sulky, but not in a rage any longer. At all times he was spiteful and
perverse, but his violent fits of rage were soon over, and were never apologized for.
Quarrels were a regular part of the routine of Club life. Mr Lackersteen was feeling better
and was studying the illustrations in La Vie Parisienne. It was after nine now, and the
room, scented with the acrid smoke of Westfield’s cheroot, was stifling hot. Everyone’s
shirt stuck to his back with the first sweat of the day. The invisible chokra who pulled the
punkah rope outside was falling asleep in the glare.

‘Butler! ’ yelled Ellis, and as the butler appeared, ‘go and wake that bloody chokra up! ’
‘Yes, master. ’


‘And butler! ’



‘Yes, master? ’


‘How much ice have we got left? ’

“Bout twenty pounds, master. Will only last today, I think. I find it very difficult to keep
ice cool now. ’

‘Don’t talk like that, damn you — “I find it very difficult! ” Have you swallowed a
dictionary? “Please, master, can’t keeping ice cool” — that’s how you ought to talk. We
shall have to sack this fellow if he gets to talk English too well. I can’t stick servants who
talk English. D’you hear, butler? ’

‘Yes, master,’ said the butler, and retired.

‘God! No ice till Monday,’ Westfield said. ‘You going back to the jungle, Flory? ’

‘Yes. I ought to be there now. I only came in because of the English mail. ’

‘Go on tour myself, I think. Knock up a spot of Travelling Allowance. I can’t stick my
bloody office at this time of year. Sitting there under the damned punkah, signing one
chit after another. Paper-chewing. God, how I wish the war was on again! ’

‘I’m going out the day after tomorrow,’ Ellis said. ‘Isn’t that damned padre coming to
hold his service this Sunday? I’ll take care not to be in for that, anyway. Bloody knee-
drill. ’

‘Next Sunday,’ said Westfield. ‘Promised to be in for it myself. So’s Macgregor. Bit hard
on the poor devil of a padre, I must say. Only gets here once in six weeks. Might as well
get up a congregation when he does come. ’

‘Oh, hell! I’d snivel psalms to oblige the padre, but I can’t stick the way these damned
native Christians come shoving into our church. A pack of Madrassi servants and Karen
school-teachers. And then those two yellow-bellies, Francis and Samuel — they call
themselves Christians too. Last time the padre was here they had the nerve to come up
and sit on the front pews with the white men. Someone ought to speak to the padre about
that. What bloody fools we were ever to let those missionaries loose in this country!



Teaching bazaar sweepers they’re as good as we are. “Please, sir, me Christian same like
master. ” Damned cheek. ’

‘How about that for a pair of legs? ’ said Mr Lackersteen, passing La Vie Parisienne
across. ‘You know French, Flory; what’s that mean underneath? Christ, it reminds me of
when I was in Paris, my first leave, before I married. Christ, I wish I was there again! ’

‘Did you hear that one about “There was a young lady of Woking”? ’ Maxwell said. He
was rather a silent youth, but, like other youths, he had an affection for a good smutty
rhyme. He completed the biography of the young lady of Woking, and there was a laugh.
Westfield replied with the young lady of Ealing who had a peculiar feeling, and Flory
came in with the young curate of Horsham who always took every precaution. There was
more laughter. Even Ellis thawed and produced several rhymes; Ellis’s jokes were always
genuinely witty, and yet filthy beyond measure. Everyone cheered up and felt more
friendly in spite of the heat. They had finished the beer and were just going to call for
another drink, when shoes creaked on the steps outside. A booming voice, which made
the floorboards tingle, was saying jocosely:

‘Yes, most distinctly humorous. I incorporated it in one of those little articles of mine in
Blackwood’s, you know. I remember, too, when I was stationed at Prome, another
quite — ah — diverting incident which — ’

Evidently Mr Macgregor had arrived at the Club. Mr Lackersteen exclaimed, ‘Hell! My
wife’s there,’ and pushed his empty glass as far away from him as it would go. Mr
Macgregor and Mrs Lackersteen entered the lounge together.

Mr Macgregor was a large, heavy man, rather past forty, with a kindly, puggy face,
wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. His bulky shoulders, and a trick he had of thrusting his
head forward, reminded one curiously of a turtle — the Burmans, in fact, nicknamed him
‘the tortoise’. He was dressed in a clean silk suit, which already showed patches of sweat
beneath the armpits. He greeted the others with a humorous mock-salute, and then
planted himself before the notice-board, beaming, in the attitude of a schoolmaster
twiddling a cane behind his back. The good nature in his face was quite genuine, and yet
there was such a wilful geniality about him, such a strenuous air of being off duty and
forgetting his official rank, that no one was ever quite at ease in his presence. His



conversation was evidently modelled on that of some facetious schoolmaster or
clergyman whom he had known in early life. Any long word, any quotation, any
proverbial expression figured in his mind as a joke, and was introduced with a bumbling
noise like ‘er’ or ‘ah’, to make it clear that there was a joke coming. Mrs Lackersteen was
a woman of about thirty-five, handsome in a contourless, elongated way, like a fashion
plate. She had a sighing, discontented voice. The others had all stood up when she
entered, and Mrs Lackersteen sank exhaustedly into the best chair under the punkah,
fanning herself with a slender hand like that of a newt.

‘Oh dear, this heat, this heat! Mr Macgregor came and fetched me in his car. SO kind of
him. Tom, that wretch of a rickshaw-man is pretending to be ill again. Really, I think you
ought to give him a good thrashing and bring him to his senses. It’s too terrible to have to
walk about in this sun every day. ’

Mrs Lackersteen, unequal to the quarter-mile walk between her house and the Club, had
imported a rickshaw from Rangoon. Except for bullock-carts and Mr Macgregor’ s car it
was the only wheeled vehicle in Kyauktada, for the whole district did not possess ten
miles of road. In the jungle, rather than leave her husband alone, Mrs Lackersteen
endured all the horrors of dripping tents, mosquitoes and tinned food; but she made up for
it by complaining over trifles while in headquarters.

‘Really I think the laziness of these servants is getting too shocking,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t
you agree, Mr Macgregor? We seem to have no AUTHORITY over the natives
nowadays, with all these dreadful Reforms, and the insolence they learn from the
newspapers. In some ways they are getting almost as bad as the lower classes at home. ’

‘Oh, hardly as bad as that, I trust. Still, I am afraid there is no doubt that the democratic
spirit is creeping in, even here. ’

‘And such a short time ago, even just before the war, they were so NICE and respectful!
The way they salaamed when you passed them on the road — it was really quite charming.
I remember when we paid our butler only twelve rupees a month, and really that man
loved us like a dog. And now they are demanding forty and fifty rupees, and I find that
the only way I can even KEEP a servant is to pay their wages several months in arrears. ’



‘The old type of servant is disappearing,’ agreed Mr Macgregor. ‘In my young days,
when one’s butler was disrespectful, one sent him along to the jail with a chit saying
“Please give the bearer fifteen lashes”. Ah well, eheu fugaces! Those days are gone for
ever, I am afraid. ’

‘Ah, you’re about right there,’ said Westfield in his gloomy way. ‘This country’ll never
be fit to live in again. British Raj is finished if you ask me. Lost Dominion and all that.
Time we cleared out of it. ’

Whereat there was a murmur of agreement from everyone in the room, even from Flory,
notoriously a Bolshie in his opinions, even from young Maxwell, who had been barely
three years in the country. No Anglo-Indian will ever deny that India is going to the dogs,
or ever has denied it — for India, like Punch, never was what it was.

Ellis had meanwhile unpinned the offending notice from behind Mr Macgregor’ s back,
and he now held it out to him, saying in his sour way:

‘Here, Macgregor, we’ve read this notice, and we all think this idea of electing a native to
the Club is absolute — ’ Ellis was going to have said ‘absolute balls’, but he remembered
Mrs Lackersteen’s presence and checked himself — ‘is absolutely uncalled for. After all,
this Club is a place where we come to enjoy ourselves, and we don’t want natives poking
about in here. We like to think there’s still one place where we’re free of them. The
others all agree with me absolutely. ’

He looked round at the others. ‘Hear, hear! ’ said Mr Lackersteen gruffly. He knew that
his wife would guess that he had been drinking, and he felt that a display of sound
sentiment would excuse him.
Mr Macgregor took the notice with a smile. He saw the ‘B. F. ’ pencilled against his
name, and privately he thought Ellis’s manner very disrespectful, but he turned the matter
off with a joke. He took as great pains to be a good fellow at the Club as he did to keep
up his dignity during office hours. ‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that our friend Ellis does not
welcome the society of — ah — his Aryan brother? ’



‘No, I do not,’ said Ellis tartly. ‘Nor my Mongolian brother. I don’t like niggers, to put it
in one word. ’

Mr Macgregor stiffened at the word ‘nigger’, which is discountenanced in India. He had
no prejudice against Orientals; indeed, he was deeply fond of them. Provided they were
given no freedom he thought them the most charming people alive. It always pained him
to see them wantonly insulted.

‘Is it quite playing the game,’ he said stiffly, ‘to call these people niggers — a tenn they
very naturally resent — when they are obviously nothing of the kind? The Burmese are
Mongolians, the Indians are Aryans or Dravidians, and all of them are quite distinct — ’

‘Oh, rot that! ’ said Ellis, who was not at all awed by Mr Macgregor’s official status. ‘Call
them niggers or Aryans or what you like. What I’m saying is that we don’t want to see
any black hides in this Club. If you put it to the vote you’ll find we’re against it to a
man — unless Flory wants his DEAR pal Veraswami,’ he added.

‘Hear, hear! ’ repeated Mr Lackersteen. ‘Count on me to blackball the lot of ‘em. ’

Mr Macgregor pursed his lips whimsically. He was in an awkward position, for the idea
of electing a native member was not his own, but had been passed on to him by the
Commissioner. However, he disliked making excuses, so he said in a more conciliatory
tone:

‘Shall we postpone discussing it till the next general meeting? In the meantime we can
give it our mature consideration. And now,’ he added, moving towards the table, ‘who
will join me in a little — ah — liquid refreshment? ’

The butler was called and the ‘liquid refreshment’ ordered. It was hotter than ever now,
and everyone was thirsty. Mr Lackersteen was on the point of ordering a drink when he
caught his wife’s eye, shrank up and said sulkily ‘No. ’ He sat with his hands on his
knees, with a rather pathetic expression, watching Mrs Lackersteen swallow a glass of
lemonade with gin in it. Mr Macgregor, though he signed the chit for drinks, drank plain
lemonade. Alone of the Europeans in Kyauktada, he kept the rule of not drinking before
sunset.



‘It’s all very well,’ grumbled Ellis, with his forearms on the table, fidgeting with his
glass. The dispute with Mr Macgregor had made him restless again. ‘It’s all very well,
but I stick to what I said. No natives in this Club! It’s by constantly giving way over
small things like that that we’ve ruined the Empire. The country’s only rotten with
sedition because we’ve been too soft with them. The only possible policy is to treat ‘em
like the dirt they are. This is a critical moment, and we want every bit of prestige we can
get. We’ve got to hang together and say, “WE ARE THE MASTERS, and you beggars —
’” Ellis pressed his small thumb down as though flattening a grub — ’“you beggars keep
your place! ”’

‘Hopeless, old chap,’ said Westfield. ‘Quite hopeless. What can you do with all this red
tape tying your hands? Beggars of natives know the law better than we do. Insult you to
your face and then run you in the moment you hit ‘em. Can’t do anything unless you put
your foot down firmly. And how can you, if they haven’t the guts to show fight? ’

‘Our burra sahib at Mandalay always said,’ put in Mrs Lackersteen, ‘that in the end we
shall simply LEAVE India. Young men will not come out here any longer to work all
their lives for insults and ingratitude. We shall just GO. When the natives come to us
begging us to stay, we shall say, “No, you have had your chance, you wouldn’t take it.
Very well, we shall leave you to govern yourselves. ” And then, what a lesson that will
teach them! ’

‘It’s all this law and order that’s done for us,’ said Westfield gloomily. The ruin of the
Indian Empire through too much legality was a recurrent theme with Westfield.
According to him, nothing save a full-sized rebellion, and the consequent reign of martial
law, could save the Empire from decay. ‘All this paper-chewing and chit-passing. Office
babus are the real rulers of this country now. Our number’s up. Best thing we can do is to
shut up shop and let ‘em stew in their own juice. ’

‘I don’t agree, I simply don’t agree,’ Ellis said. ‘We could put things right in a month if
we chose. It only needs a pennyworth of pluck. Look at Amritsar. Look how they caved
in after that. Dyer knew the stuff to give them. Poor old Dyer! That was a dirty job.
Those cowards in England have got something to answer for. ’



There was a kind of sigh from the others, the same sigh that a gathering of Roman
Catholics will give at the mention of Bloody Mary. Even Mr Macgregor, who detested
bloodshed and martial law, shook his head at the name of Dyer.

‘Ah, poor man! Sacrificed to the Paget M. P. s. Well, perhaps they will discover their
mistake when it is too late. ’

‘My old governor used to tell a story about that,’ said Westfield. ‘There was an old
havildar in a native regiment — someone asked him what’d happen if the British left India.
The old chap said — ’

Flory pushed back his chair and stood up. It must not, it could not — no, it simply should
not go on any longer! He must get out of this room quickly, before something happened
inside his head and he began to smash the furniture and throw bottles at the pictures. Dull
boozing witless porkers! Was it possible that they could go on week after week, year after
year, repeating word for word the same evil-minded drivel, like a parody of a fifth-rate
story in Blackwood’s? Would none of them EVER think of anything new to say? Oh,
what a place, what people! What a civilization is this of ours — this godless civilization
founded on whisky, Blackwood’s and the ‘Bonzo’ pictures! God have mercy on us, for
all of us are part of it.

Flory did not say any of this, and he was at some pains not to show it in his face. He was
standing by his chair, a little sidelong to the others, with the half-smile of a man who is
never sure of his popularity.

‘I’m afraid I shall have to be off,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some things to see to before
breakfast, unfortunately. ’

‘Stay and have another spot, old man,’ said Westfield. ‘Morning’s young. Have a gin.
Give you an appetite. ’

‘No, thanks, I must be going. Come on, Flo. Good-bye, Mrs Lackersteen. Good-bye,
everybody. ’

‘Exit Booker Washington, the niggers’ pal,’ said Ellis as Flory disappeared. Ellis could
always be counted on to say something disagreeable about anyone who had just left the



room. ‘Gone to see Very-slimy, I suppose. Or else sloped off to avoid paying a round of
drinks. ’


‘Oh, he’s not a bad chap,’ Westfield said. ‘Says some Bolshie things sometimes. Don’t
suppose he means half of them. ’

‘Oh, a very good fellow, of course,’ said Mr Macgregor. Every European in India is ex-
officio, or rather ex-colore, a good fellow, until he has done something quite outrageous.
It is an honorary rank.

‘He’s a bit TOO Bolshie for my taste. I can’t bear a fellow who pals up with the natives. I
shouldn’t wonder if he’s got a lick of the tar-brush himself. It might explain that black
mark on his face. Piebald. And he looks like a yellow-belly, with that black hair, and skin
the colour of a lemon. ’

There was some desultory scandal about Flory, but not much, because Mr Macgregor did
not like scandal. The Europeans stayed in the Club long enough for one more round of
drinks. Mr Macgregor told his anecdote about Prome, which could be produced in almost
any context. And then the conversation veered back to the old, never-palling subject — the
insolence of the natives, the supineness of the Government, the dear dead days when the
British Raj WAS the British Raj and please give the bearer fifteen lashes. This topic was
never let alone for long, partly because of Ellis’s obsession. Besides, you could forgive
the Europeans a great deal of their bitterness. Living and working among Orientals would
try the temper of a saint. And all of them, the officials particularly, knew what it was to
be baited and insulted. Almost every day, when Westfield or Mr Macgregor or even
Maxwell went down the street, the High School boys, with their young, yellow faces —
faces smooth as gold coins, full of that maddening contempt that sits so naturally on the
Mongolian face — sneered at them as they went past, sometimes hooted after them with
hyena-like laughter. The life of the Anglo-Indian officials is not all jam. In comfortless
camps, in sweltering offices, in gloomy dakbungalows smelling of dust and earth-oil,
they earn, perhaps, the right to be a little disagreeable.

It was getting on for ten now, and hot beyond bearing. Flat, clear drops of sweat gathered
on everyone’s face, and on the men’s bare forearms. A damp patch was growing larger
and larger in the back of Mr Macgregor’ s silk coat. The glare outside seemed to soak



somehow through the green-chicked windows, making one’s eyes ache and filling one’s
head with stuffiness. Everyone thought with malaise of his stodgy breakfast, and of the
long, deadly hours that were coming. Mr Macgregor stood up with a sigh and adjusted his
spectacles, which had slipped down his sweating nose.

‘Alas that such a festive gathering should end,’ he said. ‘I must get home to breakfast.
The cares of Empire. Is anybody coming my way? My man is waiting with the car. ’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Mrs Lackersteen; ‘if you’d take Tom and me. What a relief not to
have to walk in this heat! ’

The others stood up. Westfield stretched his arms and yawned through his nose. ‘Better
get a move on, I suppose. Go to sleep if I sit here any longer. Think of stewing in that
office all day! Baskets of papers. Oh Lord! ’

‘Don’t forget tennis this evening, everyone,’ said Ellis. ‘Maxwell, you lazy devil, don’t
you skulk out of it again. Down here with your racquet at four-thirty sharp. ’

‘Apres vous, madame,’ said Mr Macgregor gallantly, at the door.

‘Lead on, Macduff,’ said Westfield.

They went out into the glaring white sunlight. The heat rolled from the earth like the
breath of an oven. The flowers, oppressive to the eyes, blazed with not a petal stirring, in
a debauch of sun. The glare sent a weariness through one’s bones. There was something
horrible in it — horrible to think of that blue, blinding sky, stretching on and on over
Burma and India, over Siam, Cambodia, China, cloudless and intenninable. The plates of
Mr Macgregor’ s waiting car were too hot to touch. The evil time of day was beginning,
the time, as the Burmese say, ‘when feet are silent’. Hardly a living creature stirred,
except men, and the black columns of ants, stimulated by the heat, which marched
ribbon-like across the path, and the tail-less vultures which soared on the currents of the



CHAPTER 3


Flory turned to the left outside the Club gate and started down the bazaar road, under the
shade of the peepul trees. A hundred yards away there was a swirl of music, where a
squad of Military Policemen, lank Indians in greenish khaki, were marching back to their
lines with a Gurkha boy playing the bagpipes ahead of them. Flory was going to see Dr
Veraswami. The doctor’s house was a long bungalow of earth-oiled wood, standing on
piles, with a large unkempt garden which adjoined that of the Club. The back of the
house was towards the road, for it faced the hospital, which lay between it and the river.

As Flory entered the compound there was a frightened squawk of women and a scurrying
within the house. Evidently he had narrowly missed seeing the doctor’s wife. He went
round to the front of the house and called up to the veranda:

‘Doctor! Are you busy? May I come up? ’

The doctor, a little black and white figure, popped from within the house like a jack-in-
the-box. He hurried to the veranda rail, exclaimed effusively:

‘If you may come up! Of course, of course, come up this instant! Ah, Mr Flory, how very
delightful to see you! Come up, come up. What drink will you have? I have whisky, beer,
vennouth and other European liquors. Ah, my dear friend, how I have been pining for
some cultured conversation! ’

The doctor was a small, black, plump man with fuzzy hair and round, credulous eyes. He
wore steel-rimmed spectacles, and he was dressed in a badly fitting white drill suit, with
trousers bagging concertina-like over clumsy black boots. His voice was eager and
bubbling, with a hissing of the s’s. As Flory came up the steps the doctor popped back to
the end of the veranda and rummaged in a big tin ice-chest, rapidly pulling out bottles of
all descriptions. The veranda was wide and dark, with low eaves from which baskets of
fern hung, making it seem like a cave behind a waterfall of sunlight. It was furnished with
long, cane-bottomed chairs made in the jail, and at one end there was a book-case
containing a rather unappetizing little library, mainly books of essays, of the Emerson-
Carlyle-Stevenson type. The doctor, a great reader, liked his books to have what he called
a ‘moral meaning’.



‘Well, doctor,’ said Flory — the doctor had meanwhile thrust him into a long chair, pulled
out the leg-rests so that he could lie down, and put cigarettes and beer within reach.
‘Well, doctor, and how are things? How’s the British Empire? Sick of the palsy as
usual? ’

‘Aha, Mr Flory, she iss very low, very low! Grave complications setting in. Septicaemia,
peritonitis and paralysis of the ganglia. We shall have to call in the specialists, I fear.
Aha! ’

It was a joke between the two men to pretend that the British Empire was an aged female
patient of the doctor’s. The doctor had enjoyed this joke for two years without growing
tired of it.

‘Ah, doctor,’ said Flory, supine in the long chair, ‘what a joy to be here after that bloody
Club. When I come to your house I feel like a Nonconformist minister dodging up to
town and going home with a tart. Such a glorious holiday from THEM’ — he motioned
with one heel in the direction of the Club — ‘from my beloved fellow Empire-builders.
British prestige, the white man’s burden, the pukka sahib sans peur et sans reproche —
you know. Such a relief to be out of the stink of it for a little while.