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‘Oh, I simply adore gardening,’ the girl said.
They went into the veranda. Ko S’la had hurriedly put on his ingyi and his best pink silk
gaungbaung, and he appeared from within the house with a tray on which were a decanter of gin,
glasses and a box of cigarettes. He laid them on the table, and, eyeing the girl half apprehensively, put
his hands flat together and shikoed.
‘I expect it’s no use offering you a drink at this hour of the morning?’ Flory said. ‘I can never get it
into my servant’s head that some people can exist without gin before breakfast.’
He added himself to their number by waving away the drink Ko S’la offered him. The girl had sat
down in the wicker chair that Ko S’la had set out for her at the end of the veranda. The dark-leaved
orchids hung behind her head, with gold trusses of blossom, breathing out warm honeyscent. Flory
was standing against the veranda rail, half facing the girl, but keeping his birthmarked cheek hidden.
‘What a perfectly divine view you have from here,’ she said as she looked down the hillside.
‘Yes, isn’t it? Splendid, in this yellow light, before the sun gets going. I love that sombre yellow
colour the maidan has, and those gold mohur trees, like blobs of crimson. And those hills at the
horizon, almost black. My camp is on the other side of those hills,’ he added.
The girl, who was long-sighted, took off her spectacles to look into the distance. He noticed that
her eyes were very clear pale blue, paler than a harebell. And he noticed the smoothness of the skin
round her eyes, like a petal, almost. It reminded him of his age and his haggard face again, so that he
turned a little more away from her. But he said on impulse:
‘I say, what a bit of luck your coming to Kyauktada! You can’t imagine the difference it makes to us
to see a new face in these places. After months of our own miserable society, and an occasional
official on his rounds and American globe-trotters skipping up the Irrawaddy with cameras. I suppose
you’ve come straight from England?’
‘Well, not England exactly. I was living in Paris before I came out here. My mother was an artist,
you see.’
‘Paris! Have you really lived in Paris? By Jove, just fancy coming from Paris to Kyauktada! Do
you know, it’s positively difficult, in a hole like this, to believe that mere are such places as Paris.’
‘Do you like Paris?’ she said.
‘I’ve never even seen it. But, good Lord, how I’ve imagined it! Paris–it’s all a kind of jumble of
pictures in my mind; caféls and boulevards and artists’ studios and Villon and Baudelaire and
Maupassant all mixed up together. You don’t know how the names of those European towns sound to
us, out here. And did you really live in Paris? Sitting in cafés with foreign art students, drinking white
wine and talking about Marcel Proust?’
‘Oh, that kind of tiling, I suppose,’ said the girl, laughing.
‘What differences you’ll find here! It’s not white wine and Marcel Proust here. Whisky and Edgar
Wallace more likely. But if you ever want books, you might find something you liked among mine.
There’s nothing but tripe in the Club library. But of course I’m hopelessly behind the times with my
books. I expect you’ll have read everything under the sun.’
‘Oh no. But of course I simply adore reading,’ the girl said.