Matthew was talking to Jonsen at the foot of the steps.
‘You will leave us all your furniture, then,’ he said. ‘We will take on the house just as we find it.’ It seemed to be the end of a discussion.
They went up the steps and into a bare hall with a flight of bare wooden stairs rising. On each side, left and right, was a tattered bead curtain indicating a doorway. There were no doors except the outer door through which they had just entered. Jonsen led the way into the left-hand room. This was the drawing-room. It was a fair-sized apartment with a stone floor: white walls with a kind of shelf of brown wood running round, and wooden-shuttered windows, rather small, and glassless: a little cheap cane furniture: a huge punkah made of some brownish fibre hanging motionless in the middle of everything. It was rather like a room in some poverty-stricken hospital, doleful and bare, without carpets or curtains or ornaments of any kind.
‘Would you like some tea?’ said Jonsen, doubtfully, to Anna.
‘Yes please,’ said she, rather dazed. It was all unreal and astonishing to her. Outside the window she could see the gleaming, darkening sky. And a cluster of strange long leaves, long and pointed, like a handful of drooping swords, brilliant lemon colour. She felt she was lost, utterly lost. She had travelled away from the normal world, the world of Oxford and Blue Hills, and come to this other strange, strange place, this world of unreality.
Matthew stood beside Anna, smiling. He had taken off his hat and seemed quite at home already.
‘What do you think of it?’ he asked her.
Which, in her present state of astonished bewilderment, was the last thing she could have told him. But he did not wait for an answer. He smiled complacently.
‘It’s quite a good bungalow,’ he said.
Anna examined the room. There was a cane lounge in front of the window, jutting stiffly into the room. Near the door was a wooden table with scattered papers, an ink-bottle, pipes and a tin of tobacco. Round the walls ran the narrow shelf upon which various small articles — tools, cartridges, magazines — had been allowed to accumulate. There were also two cane arm-chairs, a small cane table, two wooden chairs, and an ugly china vase pushed into a corner. And there was the punkah.
A servant came in with a tray.
‘I’m afraid you will find my arrangements rather primitive,’ said Jonsen. ‘The crockery has nearly all been broken. I have lived here alone for so long.’
He set one of the cane chairs for Anna. It looked dusty and the seat was broken, there were sharp ends of cane sticking up. She was afraid of spoiling her dress. But she sat down and poured herself a cup of tea from the hideous enamel teapot. Her cup was chipped and ugly. The men sat facing her with their whiskies and sodas. They would not drink tea. A tin of biscuits was on the table. Anna took one, but it tasted musty and rather unpleasant. There was nothing else to eat. Matthew seemed quite at home.
‘It’s good to be back,’ he said.
She looked at him with grey, astonished, doubtful eyes. She did not know what to think.
‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked, smiling.
‘It seems very extraordinary,’ she said. She really could not think of any other comment.
Jonsen continued to look her up and down with surreptitious amazement. He had small, twinkling eyes in a puffy, reddish face, and was a man of about fifty — but with a simple, almost childish expression. The good-humoured simplicity seemed a little deceptive, though. There was a suspicion of malice somewhere about him.
‘I expect you will find it strange at first,’ he said to Anna. ‘When you get used to the life you will like it.’
But she felt sure he was thinking she would not like it, and was taking a malicious pleasure in the prospect of her discomfiture.
Matthew began to ask questions about the work. The two men drew their chairs to the table and embarked on a technical conversation, making notes on the backs of crumpled papers. Anna was left alone with the dregs of her tea. She sat motionless, thoughtless, feeling dazed. The room grew darker.
Presently a servant brought in a lamp. It was an old-fashioned oil-lamp with an ugly, white, mushroom-shaped shade. He placed it on the table beside Matthew’s arm. The boring drone of conversation went on. Crowds of insects began to circle round the lamp, the table was soon strewn with an irregular circle of singed corpses. No one took any notice of Anna.
At last Matthew pushed back his chair.
‘We’ve been neglecting you,’ he said, smirking at her with his curious imitation gallantry that took no heed of her at all, really.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said stiffly.
‘There is so much to discuss,’ said Jonsen, apologetic. ‘And so little time before I leave.’
She could feel the prick of malice underneath his apology. He resented her youth, her assurance, her attractiveness. He was glad that she should be neglected. He wanted her to be taken down a peg. Anna eyed him distastefully.
‘Shall we go along to the club?’ said Jonsen. ‘It’s getting rather late.’ He gathered the papers into an untidy pile, and stood up. Matthew, too, seemed ready to make a move.
‘I had better go upstairs and tidy myself,’ said Anna.
‘You’re quite all right as you are,’ said Matthew. ‘Quite smart enough for Naunggyi.’
Which she felt was even more than the truth. She shivered a little. She went towards the doorway.
‘I should like to go upstairs, all the same,’ she said, coldly asserting herself against the two males.
So up they all clattered, up the bare wooden stairs to the floor above.
The upper floor of the house was simply divided into three large rooms — the middle one, into which the stairs directly led, and one opening out of it on each side. Here also was an absence of doors. Instead, there were in the middle of each doorway two small wooden panels, like flaps, arranged with some sort of a spring, to spring back into place after one had pushed through. Above and below the flaps was a foot or two of vacancy. Anna looked at this arrangement in amazement.
‘Why are there no doors?’ she asked, rather dismayed.
‘Too hot,’ said Jonsen laconically. His small eyes twinkled in the lamplight. Matthew looked on, smiling blankly.
Anna took the lamp and went away from them, into the room which would be hers. It was a biggish room with a wooden floor and whitewashed walls and long windows opening on to a little veranda. There was a tall cupboard in one corner and a brown wooden bed under a mosquito-net in the middle of the room — a single bed she was glad to see. The white mosquito-net was turned up to form a sort of canopy over the wooden poles, giving the bed an incongruous old-world look. The bathroom was a separate closet-place at the end.
It was not such a bad room — barn-like and bare, to be sure: but it had possibilities. With curtains and so on, it could be made habitable. But no privacy, not the least in the world. Anna looked askance at the spring-flaps of doors.
She unlocked her dressing-bag and took out soap, powder, and a hair-brush. Then she went into the bathroom. Here was a tin tub on the floor, a huge earthenware jar full of water, and a shelf with a basin and a tin dipper.
She looked round. There was nothing to do but dip some water out of the jar. It looked muddy in the basin and had a stale smell. It was cold, dead cold, but she washed her hands and face and dried herself with handkerchiefs. There was no towel.