The occurrence was sensational. Bretherton and Reppington looked at one another in shocked surprise.

Major Lepperidge, both in rank and personality, was the leading man in Matodi—in the whole of Azania indeed, with the single exception of the Chief Commissioner at Debra Dowa. It was inconceivable that Brooks should dine with Lepperidge. Bretherton himself had only dined there once and he was Government.

“Hullo, Brooks,” said Reppington “Didn’t see you there behind your paper. Come and have one.”

“Yes, Brooks,” said Bretherton. “Didn’t know you were back. Have a jolly leave? See any shows?”

“It’s very kind of you, but I must be going. We arrived on Tuesday in the Ngoma. No, I didn’t see any shows. You see, I was down at Bournemouth most of the time.”

“One before you go.”

“No really, thanks, I must get back. My daughter will be waiting. Thanks all the same. See you both later.”

Daughter…..?

There were eight Englishwomen in Matodi, counting Mrs. Bretherton’s two-year-old daughter; nine if you included Mrs. Macdonald (but no one did include Mrs. Macdonald who came from Bombay and betrayed symptoms of Asiatic blood. Besides, no one knew who Mr. Macdonald had been. Mrs. Macdonald kept an ill-frequented pension on the outskirts of the town named “The Bougainvillea”). All who were of marriageable age were married; they led lives under a mutual scrutiny too close and unremitting for romance. There were, however, seven unmarried Englishmen, three in Government service, three in commerce and one unemployed, who had fled to Matodi from his creditors in Kenya. (He sometimes spoke vaguely of “planting” or “prospecting,” but in the meantime drew a small remittance each month and hung amiably about the Club and the tennis courts.)

Most of these bachelors were understood to have some girl at home; they kept photographs in their rooms, wrote long letters regularly, and took their leave with hints that when they returned they might not be alone. But they invariably were. Perhaps in precipitous eagerness for sympathy they painted too dark a picture of Azanian life; perhaps the Tropics made them a little addle-pated…..

Anyway, the arrival of Prunella Brooks sent a wave of excitement through English society. Normally, as the daughter of Mr. Brooks, oil company agent, her choice would have been properly confined to the three commercial men—Mr. James, of the Eastern Exchange Telegraph Company, and Messrs. Watson and Jagger, of the Bank—but Prunella was a girl of such evident personal superiority, that in her first afternoon at the tennis courts, as has been shown above, she transgressed the shadow line effortlessly and indeed unconsciously, and stepped straight into the inmost sanctuary, the Lepperidge bungalow.

She was small and unaffected, an iridescent blonde, with a fresh skin, doubly intoxicating in contrast with the tanned and desiccated tropical complexions around her; with rubbery, puppyish limbs and a face which lit up with amusement at the most barren pleasantries; an air of earnest interest in the opinions and experiences of all she met; a natural confidante, with no disposition to make herself the centre of a group, but rather to tackle her friends one by one, in their own time, when they needed her; deferential and charming to the married women; tender, friendly, and mildly flirtatious with the men; keen on games but not so good as to shake masculine superiority; a devoted daughter denying herself any pleasure that might impair the smooth working of Mr. Brooks’s home—“No, I must go now. I couldn’t let father come home from the Club and not find me there to greet him”—in fact, just such a girl as would be a light and blessing in any outpost of the Empire. It was very few days before all at Matodi were eloquent of their good fortune.

Of course, she had first of all to be examined and instructed by the matrons of the colony, but she submitted to her initiation with so pretty a grace that she might not have been aware of the dangers of the ordeal. Mrs. Lepperidge and Mrs. Reppington put her through it. Far away in the interior, in the sunless secret places, where a twisted stem across the jungle track, a rag fluttering to the bough of a tree, a fowl headless and full spread by an old stump marked the taboo where no man might cross, the Sakuya women chanted their primeval litany of initiation; here on the hillside the no less terrible ceremony was held over Mrs. Lepperidge’s tea table. First the questions; disguised and delicate over the tea cake but quickening their pace as the tribal rhythm waxed high and the table was cleared of tray and kettle, falling faster and faster like ecstatic hands on the taut cowhide, mounting and swelling with the first cigarette; a series of urgent, peremptory interrogations. To all this Prunella responded with docile simplicity. The whole of her life, upbringing and education were exposed, examined and found to be exemplary; her mother’s death, the care of an aunt, a convent school in the suburbs which had left her with charming manners, a readiness to find the right man and to settle down with him whenever the Service should require it; her belief in a limited family and European education, the value of sport, kindness to animals, affectionate patronage of men.

Then, when she had proved herself worthy of it, came the instruction. Intimate details of health and hygiene, things every young girl should know, the general dangers of sex and its particular dangers in the Tropics; the proper treatment of the other inhabitants of Matodi, etiquette towards ladies of higher rank, the leaving of cards….. “Never shake hands with natives, however well educated they think themselves. Arabs are quite different, many of them very like gentlemen… no worse than a great many Italians, really… Indians, luckily, you won’t have to meet… never allow native servants to see you in your dressing gown… and be very careful about curtains in the bathroom—natives peep … never walk in the side streets alone—in fact you have no business in them at all… never ride outside the compound alone. There have been several cases of bandits… an American missionary only last year, but he was some kind of non-Conformist… We owe it to our menfolk to take no unnecessary risks… a band of brigands commanded by a Sakuya called Joab… the Major will soon clean him up when he gets the levy into better shape… they find their boots very uncomfortable at present… meanwhile it is a very safe rule to take a man with you everywhere…..”

And Prunella was never short of male escort. As the weeks passed it became clear to the watching colony that her choice had narrowed down to two—Mr. Kentish, assistant native commissioner, and Mr. Benson, second lieutenant in the native levy; not that she was not consistently charming to everyone else—even to the shady remittance man and the repulsive Mr. Jagger—but by various little acts of preference she made it known that Kentish and Benson were her favourites. And the study of their innocent romances gave a sudden new interest to the social life of the town. Until now there had been plenty of entertaining certainly—gymkhanas and tennis tournaments, dances and dinner parties, calling and gossiping, amateur opera and church bazaars—but it had been a joyless and dutiful affair. They knew what was expected of Englishmen abroad; they had to keep up appearances before the natives and their co-protectionists; they had to have something to write home about; so they sturdily went through the recurring recreations due to their station. But with Prunella’s coming a new lightness was in the air; there were more parties and more dances and a point to everything. Mr. Brooks, who had never dined out before, found himself suddenly popular, and as his former exclusion had not worried him, he took his present vogue as a natural result of his daughter’s charm, was pleased by it and mildly embarrassed. He realized that she would soon want to get married and faced with equanimity the prospect of his inevitable return to solitude.