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sandy face quite pink with rage, bringing a copy of a Burmese paper called the Burmese Patriot.
There was a libellous article in it, attacking Mr Macgregor. The rage of Ellis and Westfield was
devilish. They were so angry that Flory had the greatest difficulty in pretending to be angry enough to
satisfy them. Ellis spent five minutes in cursing and then, by some extraordinary process, made up his
mind that Dr Veraswami was responsible for the article. And he had thought of a counterstroke
already. They would put a notice on the board–a notice answering and contradicting the one Mr
Macgregor had posted the day before. Ellis wrote it out immediately, in his tiny, clear handwriting:
‘In view of the cowardly insult recently offered to our Deputy Commissioner, we the undersigned
wish to give it as our opinion that this is the worst possible moment to consider the election of
niggers to this Club,’ etc. etc.
Westfield demurred to ‘niggers’. It was crossed out by a single thin line and ‘natives’ substituted.
The notice was signed ‘R. Westfield, P. W. Ellis, C. W. Maxwell, J. Flory.’
Ellis was so pleased with his idea that quite half of his anger evaporated. The notice would
accomplish nothing in itself, but the news of it would travel swiftly round the town, and would reach
Dr Veraswami tomorrow. In effect, the doctor would have been publicly called a nigger by the
European community. This delighted Ellis. For the rest of the evening he could hardly keep his eyes
from the notice-board, and every few minutes he exclaimed in glee, ‘That’ll give little fat-belly
something to think about, eh? Teach the little sod what we think of him. That’s the way to put ’em in
their place, eh?’ etc.
Meanwhile, Flory had signed a public insult to his friend. He had done it for the same reason as he
had done a thousand such things in his life; because he lacked the small spark of courage that was
needed to refuse. For of course he could have refused if he had chosen; and, equally of course, refusal
would have meant a row with Ellis and Westfield. And oh, how he loathed a row! The nagging, the
jeers! At the very thought of it he flinched; he could feel his birthmark palpable on his cheek, and
something happening in his throat that made his voice go flat and guilty. Not that! It was easier to
insult his friend, knowing that his friend must hear of it.
Flory had been fifteen years in Burma, and in Burma one learns not to set oneself up against public
opinion. But his trouble was older than that. It had begun in his mother’s womb, when chance put the
blue birthmark on his cheek. He thought of some of the early effects of his birthmark. His first arrival
at school, aged nine; the stares and, after a few days, shouts of the other boys; the nickname Blueface,
which lasted until the school poet (now, Flory remembered, a critic who wrote rather good articles in
the Nation) came out with the couplet:
New-tick Flory does look rum,
Got a face like a monkey’s bum,
whereupon the nickname was changed to Monkey-bum. And the subsequent years. On Saturday nights
the older boys used to have what they called a Spanish Inquisition. The favourite torture was for
someone to hold you in a very painful grip known only to a few illuminati and called Special Togo,
while someone else beat you with a conker on a piece of string. But Flory had lived down ‘Monkeybum’
in time. He was a liar and a good footballer, the two things absolutely necessary for success at