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XVIII
After the row overnight Ellis was looking forward to a week of baiting Flory. He had nicknamed him
Nancy–short for nigger’s Nancy Boy, but the women did not know that–and was already inventing
wild scandals about him. Ellis always invented scandals about anyone with whom he had quarrelled–
scandals which grew, by repeated embroideries, into a species of saga. Flory’s incautious remark that
Dr Veraswami was a ‘damned good fellow’ had swelled before long into a whole Daily Worker-ful
of blasphemy and sedition.
‘On my honour, Mrs Lackersteen,’ said Ellis–Mrs Lackersteen had taken a sudden dislike to Flory
after discovering the great secret about Verrall, and she was quite ready to listen to Ellis’s tales–‘on
my honour, if you’d been there last night and heard the things that man Flory was saying–well, it’d
have made you shiver in your shoes!’
‘Really! You know, I always thought he had such curious ideas. What has he been talking about
now? Not Socialism, I hope?’
‘Worse.’
There were long recitals. However, to Ellis’s disappointment, Flory had not stayed in Kyauktada to
be baited. He had gone back to camp the day after his dismissal by Elizabeth. Elizabeth heard most of
the scandalous tales about him. She understood his character perfectly now. She understood why it
was that he had so often bored her and irritated her. He was a highbrow–her deadliest word–a
highbrow, to be classed with Lenin, A. J. Cook and the dirty little poets in the Montparnasse cafés.
She could have forgiven him even his Burmese mistress more easily than that. Flory wrote to her
three days later; a weak, stilted letter, which he sent by hand–his camp was a day’s march from
Kyauktada. Elizabeth did not answer.
It was lucky for Flory that at present he was too busy to have time to think. The whole camp was at
sixes and sevens since his long absence. Nearly thirty coolies were missing, the sick elephant was
worse than ever, and a vast pile of teak logs which should have been sent off ten days earlier were
still waiting because the engine would not work. Flory, a fool about machinery, struggled with the
bowels of the engine until he was black with grease and Ko S’la told him sharply that white men
ought not to do ‘coolie-work’. The engine was finally persuaded to run, or at least to totter. The sick
elephant was discovered to be suffering from tapeworms. As for the coolies, they had deserted
because their supply of opium had been cut off–they would not stay in the jungle without opium,
which they took as a prophylactic against fever. U Po Kyin, willing to do Flory a bad turn, had caused
the Excise Officers to make a raid and seize the opium. Flory wrote to Dr Veraswami, asking for his