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below; and trim, cool Javanese as the acceptable face of the East. The problem of a large but wealthy Eurasian family, the Niemeyers, always in white and displaying a beautiful chromatic range squeezed from the burnt sienna tube, was tactfully defused by allotting them their own dining table “to keep the family together”. As whiter than Cremnitz white and direct from the homeland, I was able to delude myself that I had opted out of any such classification – a citizen of the world. As a bachelor, I fell as prize to the shipboard spinsters, the Van Tonk sisters of Haarlem or tortoise-necked Miss Timms, on her way to rejoin her brother’s clerical vocation in Singapore following a little home leave in a missionary house in Stoke Newington. Endless games of deck quoits, bridge and sticky foxtrots were my penance, interspersed with coy jokes of romance: “I’m setting my cap at you Mr Bonnet”, “The ladies trump you again with their fluttering hearts, young man”, “A game of table tennis, Mr Bonnet, unless you are afraid of losing to love?” and so on. It was the most sustainedly athletic period of my life and I was glad to be accepted as part of this brave little community, to be assumed to be just another element of the normal world. Meanwhile, the real face of normality, Lieutenant van Gennep, sat at a corner table and sipped endless gins, crotch visibly bulging, as he appraised the Eurasian girls with hot, frustrated eyes and eased his tight colonial collar.
    We were to take the Cape route via South Africa and steamed slowly down the west coast, calling briefly at some of the minor ports – Dakar, Takouradi, Lagos, Fernando Poo – to embark deck cargo and a mass of seething steerage passengers. At the time, it was considered more healthy than the route via Suez, allowing a more gentle acclimatisation, as the thermostat was slowly turned up by divine hand and a plague of flies buzzed in from the armpit of Africa to crouch thickly on every surface. Having tired of jokes about Biblical plagues with Miss Timms, I sat in my cabin, or on the foredeck, batting the flies away and practising my Malay vocabulary with the stewards.
    â€œ Lalat , ‘fly’?” I pointed questioning at a huge bluebottle.
    â€œ Lalat! ” confirmed dark-eyed, smiling Hamid with a flick of a flyswat, plucked from his waistband, that sent it tumbling to the deck.
    As we eased towards Cape Town a sudden cold mist descended and as the sun burned it off the flies evaporated with it, revealing a deep and peaceful harbour and a town of neat Dutch buildings and tree-lined streets strung out along the foot of Table Mountain laid with its cloth of white cloud. Miss Timms and the Van Tonks embarked in an open horsedrawn cab on a tour of the cathedral and lesser places of worship, climaxing in tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel. I had intended to escort them but was surprised, at the last minute, to be waylaid by Lieutenant van Gennep who was waiting at the bottom of the gangway at the wheel of a large and disreputable Buick convertible, its engine already throbbing.
    â€œQuick Bonnet!” he hissed. “Before the old girls see you.” The door was thrown invitingly open and, without thinking, I got in. It was one of the more unusual days of my life.
    I had expected to be driven round the town centre, the little squares, the grandiloquent buildings of national identity, the odd monument to some person of inflated local importance before going somewhere dark and cool to taste the local wine. It was not to be.
    Van Gennep skirted all such temptations and headed inland with a purposeful look, crunching gears in the overworked gearbox. Over the roar of the engine, communication was difficult but there could be no doubt where we were heading – Table Mountain. He drew up and applied the handbrake with relish, as a man might apply sauce to a sausage and nodded at a sign indicating a hiking