LITMIR.BIZ

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beautiful.’

      ‘But has it got untidy? Smooth it for me, would you, please?’

      She bent her head towards him, and he smoothed the short, cool locks with his hand. The way she bent her head to him gave him a curious feeling of intimacy, far more intimate than the kiss, as though he had already been her husband. Ah, he must have her, that was certain! Only by marrying her could his life be salvaged. In a moment he would ask her. They walked slowly through the croton bushes and back to the Club, his arm still round her shoulder.

      ‘We can talk on the veranda,’ he repeated. ‘Somehow, we’ve never really talked, you and I. My God, how I’ve longed all these years for somebody to talk to! How I could talk to you, interminably, interminably! That sounds boring. I’m afraid it will be boring. I must ask you to put up with it for a little while.’

      She made a sound of remonstrance at the word ‘boring’.

      ‘No, it is boring, I know that. We Anglo-Indians are always looked on as bores. And we are bores. But we can’t help it. You see, there’s—how shall I say?—a demon inside us driving us to talk. We walk about under a load of memories which we long to share and somehow never can. It’s the price we pay for coming to this country.’

      They were fairly safe from interruption on the side veranda, for there was no door opening directly upon it. Elizabeth had sat down with her arms on the little wicker table, but Flory remained strolling back and forth, with his hands in his coat pockets, stepping into the moonlight that streamed beneath the eastern eaves of the veranda, and back into the shadows.

      ‘I said just now that I loved you. Love! The word’s been used till it’s meaningless. But let me try to explain. This afternoon when you were there shooting with me, I thought, my God! here at last is somebody who can share my life with me, but really share it, really live it with me do you see?’

      He was going to ask her to marry him—indeed, he had intended to ask her without more delay. But the words were not spoken yet; instead, he found himself talking egoistically on and on. He could not help it. It was so important that she should understand something of what his life in this country had been; that she should grasp the nature of the loneliness that he wanted her to nullify. And it was so devilishly difficult to explain. It is devilish to suffer from a pain that is all but nameless. Blessed are they who are stricken only with classifiable diseases! Blessed are the poor, the sick, the crossed in love, for at least other people know what is the matter with them and will listen to their belly-achings with sympathy. But who that has not suffered it understands the pain of exile? Elizabeth watched him as he moved to and fro, in and out of the pool of moonlight that turned his silk coat to silver. Her heart was still knocking from the kiss, and yet her thoughts wandered as he talked. Was he going to ask her to marry him? He was being so slow about it! She was dimly aware that he was saying something about loneliness. Ah, of course! He was telling her about the loneliness she would have to put up with in the jungle, when they were married. He needn’t have troubled. Perhaps you did get rather lonely in the jungle sometimes? Miles from anywhere, no cinemas, no dances, no one but each other to talk to, nothing to do in the evenings except read—rather a bore, that. Still, you could have a gramophone. What a difference it would make when those new portable radio sets got out to Burma! She was about to say this when he added:

      ‘Have I made myself at all clear to you? Have you got some picture of the life we live here? The foreignness, the solitude, the melancholy! Foreign trees, foreign flowers, foreign landscapes, foreign faces. It’s all as alien as a different planet. But do you see—and it’s this that I so want you to understand—do you see, it mightn’t be so bad living on a different planet, it might even be the most interesting thing imaginable, if you had even one person to share it with. One person who could see it with eyes something like your own. This country’s been a kind of solitary hell to me—it’s so to most of us—and yet I tell you it could be a paradise if one weren’t alone. Does all this seem quite meaningless?’

      He had stopped beside the table, and he picked up her hand. In the half-darkness he could see her face only as a pale oval, like a flower, but by the feeling of her hand he knew instantly that she had not understood a word of what he was saying. How should she, indeed? It was so futile, this meandering talk! He would say to her at once, Will you marry me? Was there not a lifetime to talk in? He took her other hand and drew her gently to her feet.

      ‘Forgive me all this rot I’ve been talking.’

      ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured indistinctly, expecting that he was about to kiss her.

      ‘No, it’s rot talking like that. Some things will go into words, some won’t. Besides, it was an impertinence to go belly-aching on and on about myself. But I was trying to lead up to something. Look, this is what I wanted to say. Will——’

      ‘Eliz-a-beth!’

      It was Mrs Lackersteen’s high-pitched, plaintive voice, calling from within the Club.

      ‘Elizabeth! Where are you, Elizabeth?’

      Evidently she was near the front door—would be on the veranda in a moment. Flory pulled Elizabeth against him. They kissed hurriedly. He released her, only holding her hands.

      ‘Quickly, there’s just time. Answer me this. Will you——’

      But that sentence never got any further. At the same moment something extraordinary happened under his feet—the floor was surging and rolling like a sea—he was staggering, then dizzily falling, hitting his upper arm a thump as the floor rushed towards him. As he lay there he found himself jerked violently backwards and forwards as though some enormous beast below were rocking the whole building on its back.

      The drunken floor righted itself very suddenly, and Flory sat up, dazed but not much hurt. He dimly noticed Elizabeth sprawling beside him, and screams coming from within the Club. Beyond the gate two Burmans were racing through the moonlight with their long hair streaming behind them. They were yelling at the top of their voices:

      ‘Nga Yin is shaking himself! Nga Yin is shaking himself!’

      Flory watched them unintelligently. Who was Nga Yin? Nga is the prefix given to criminals. Nga Yin must be a dacoit. Why was he shaking himself? Then he remembered. Nga Yin was a giant supposed by the Burmese to be buried, like Typhaeus, beneath the crust of the earth. Of course! It was an earthquake.

      ‘An earthquake!’ he exclaimed, and he remembered Elizabeth and moved to pick her up. But she was already sitting up, unhurt, and rubbing the back of her head.

      ‘Was that an earthquake?’ she said in a rather awed voice.

      Mrs Lackersteen’s tall form came creeping round the corner of the veranda, clinging to the wall like some elongated lizard. She was exclaiming hysterically:

      ‘Oh dear, an earthquake! Oh, what a dreadful shock! I can’t bear it—my heart won’t stand it! Oh dear, oh dear! An earthquake!’

      Mr Lackersteen tottered after her, with a strange ataxic step caused partly by earth-tremors and partly by gin.

      ‘An earthquake, dammit!’ he said.

      Flory and Elizabeth slowly picked themselves up. They all went inside, with that queer feeling in the soles of the feet that one has when one steps from a rocking boat onto the shore. The old butler was hurrying from the servants’ quarters, thrusting his pagri on his head as he came, and a troop of twittering chokras after him.

      ‘Earthquake, sir, earthquake!’ he bubbled eagerly.

      ‘I should damn well think it was an earthquake,’ said Mr Lackersteen as he lowered himself cautiously into a chair. ‘Here, get some drinks, butler. By God, I could do with a nip of something after that.’

      They all had a nip of something. The butler, shy yet beaming, stood on one leg beside the table, with the tray in his hand. ‘Earthquake, sir, big earthquake!’ he repeated enthusiastically. He was bursting with eagerness to talk; so, for that matter, was everyone else. An extraordinary joie de vivre had come over them

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