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company.’ His indifference to his effect was laudable.
    He was more forthright talking about the Russians (‘no better than the Japs’). Or cricket (keeping wicket for his regiment). Or – after several beers – the sorry state into which Burma, where he had distinguished himself with General Wingate’s Chindits, had disintegrated. The problem was: these days Hugh’s bosses at Makertich & Co. were less subtle in their demands for him to exploit what they supposed – absurdly – to be his lucrative Burmese contacts.
    â€˜Burma’s a place not many people know much about, but a lot of people are interested in for the wrong reasons,’ he told me, during one of Sylvia’s trips to the bathroom. ‘Its history is rather more hopeful than its future. I wouldn’t rush back. If you like people who hate each other, it’s paradise. But give ’em democracy and they use it to fight a civil war. Plus, it’s not an easy place to get into. If they don’t want you to come, they don’t answer.’
    Hugh implied that they had not answered.
    *
    Our second meeting was the one that took place a week later, on the morning of VJ Day. I had come to the pool to be on my own, but as I crossed the lawn I heard Sylvia say something in an unpleasant tone. Heads turned, and I caught sight of Hugh’s harried face. I saw that he wouldn’t mind if I came to his rescue.
    So instead of walking on to the chair that I’d earmarked, I stopped at the Billingtons’ table and interrupted their argument.
    â€˜Look who’s here,’ said Hugh.
    â€˜Hello, you …’ The effect was a little theatrical since Sylvia had watched me approach.
    Whatever ploy I used to dissolve their tension, I can’t recall, but soon there was laughter. Once the heads had turned back, I felt I could smile: ‘There, what was all that about?’
    I was aware of the noon heat and the unresolved domestic humidity in the air and Sylvia telling me how outrageously Hugh had been treated. She was so forward, so un-English, that it crossed my mind she had been drinking.
    â€˜Hugh won a Victoria Cross for what he did there,’ she said. ‘A fat lot of good that is. It means when he applies for a visa they don’t even reply!’
    â€˜A Victoria Cross?’ I was unable to mask my admiration. I’d imagined a DSO, something like that.
    â€˜See!’ Her irritation was vindicated. ‘But if Hugh had his way, he’d forget the whole thing. He won’t even attend the annual church service any more.’
    â€˜You sure you won’t have one of these, dear?’ said Hugh.
    â€˜No, I’m going for a swim. But he might,’ and she beseeched me to pull up a chair and join her husband in a toasted sandwich.
    Sylvia grabbed her bathing cap, which was covered with imitation petals, and turned it inside out before stretching it over her head.
    â€˜Tell him, Hugh. Don’t tell me. It’s not all stuff you can’t speak about.’
    She stood and manoeuvred her toes into a pair of flip-flops.
    â€˜My husband can tell you what he did on the night of June 15 1944.’
    So over a glass of beer and a buffalo-steak sandwich, which we both agreed was, as always, overcooked, Hugh opened up, without too much prodding from me. I wondered if it was VJ Day that had stirred him. Or whether it was to satisfy his wife. Some sort of concession for which the uneven calculus of marriage had ordained me the receptacle, like a loose volleyball punched in my direction which I had no alternative but to catch. Or maybe he was bored and sick of the heat and being stuck in Bombay.
    â€˜My wife wants me to jump up and down and make a fuss. Truth is, I don’t want to go back to Burma. Not even for her.’ He flicked his eyes to the pool where the orb of her cap stood out like a bullseye. Then, in the same tone with which he had made his crack about the