before it was too late. Although she did not even know the word ‘erotic’, Susan’s imagination was actually subtly eroticised, but the engine for it totally repressed. Brought up in a city it may have become something unusual but in the country it was abandoned.

Perhaps it was being in Cal in the heat - it made everyone sexy or something she thought. Too many hot bodies, the flesh heating up - white women glowing and tanned. And too many Indian babies around - on that journey from Howrah Station, girls with babies, begging or working. It had not been like that in the cool rational tea plantation. When her parents had sent her out here to be educated, surely they had not meant this?

But when she came to write to them the next morning her twice-weekly letter she didn’t mention any of this bother. Instead she wrote about the comic urban chaos of the city itself, its imperial history and the magnificence of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Her only concession was mentioning the flower market on the Armenian ghat, the heavily scented smells of which had put her in a sensual mood. But she had gone with Mrs Lewis who had chosen flowers for the supper party and Mrs Lewis had ruined the subtle sensuality of the market by remarking, with a wink, that

the smell was enough to drug a bride on her bridal night.

Susan didn’t mention this but only that Mrs Lewis had chosen white gardenias for the dining room table and they looked very fetching with the silver and would complement the fish. Then she had posted the letter herself with tears staining her cheeks in the big grubby central post office, hoping for a miracle that would get her away quickly.

That Saturday supper party was a great success.

The guest of honour was a man called Johnny Johnson - a big man in small Calcutta. No one was sure what he did, and his ability to escape labelling during the Raj had tremendous benefits for his career. He was English, about forty (the estimates ranged from thirty-five to forty-five) and solid as an oak. Handsome too, but in a middle-aged sort of way - hair coloured silver at the front, enough wrinkles to add the mysteries of life - and single.

He most definitely advised people.

He knew a lot about everything.