“‘Tall and extremely stout, she would have been an imposing presence if the great good nature of her face had not made it impossible for her to express anything but kindliness. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave you an impression of almost indecent nakedness and vast chin succeeded vast chin.’
“This may seem a small matter in a great world. Tahiti is a small world, and this became a great matter. I read the book twice, decided that Somerset Maugham could no longer be regarded as a pleasant liqueur, but rather as the joint of a meal requiring steady digestion, and suppressed The Moon and Sixpence on Tahiti. The temptation to lend it to a kindred spirit was almost unbearable, but the thought of Lavina hearing of the above description of her person frightened me and I resisted. For kindred souls, on Tahiti as elsewhere, have their own kindred souls, and slowly but surely the fact that a writer had described her arms as legs of mutton (perfect!) and her breasts as huge cabbages (even better!) would have oozed its way to Lavina, sending her to bed for six days, with gloom spread over Tahiti and no cocktails.
“All of which is a trifle by the way. Yet in writing of Somerset Maugham one must gaze along all lines of vision. And it seemed to me that Tahiti in general, and Papeete in particular should supply a clear one; for here, certainly, in the days when Maugham visited the island a man could be mentally dead, spiritually naked and physically unashamed. I therefore sought Lavina one afternoon as she sat clothed as with a garment by the small side verandah of the Tiare Hotel. (Lavina was huge; the verandah was a small verandah as verandahs go; there was just room for me and a bottle of rum.)
“‘Lavina,’ I remarked; ‘many persons who write come to Tahiti.’
“‘It is true,’ she admitted, ‘but not as the heavy rain, rather as the few drops at the end.’
“‘Do you like them?’ I enquired.
“One makes that kind of remark on Tahiti. The climate demands such, since the answer can be almost anything, a meandering spreading-of-weight kind of answer.
“‘These are good men,’ said Lavina steadily, wandering off into the old and possibly untrue story of a lady called Beatrice Grimshaw and her dilemma on a schooner in mid-Pacific, when the captain, a gentle ancient, thinking that the dark women were having it all their own way, offered to embrace Miss Grimshaw, finding in return a gun pointing at his middle, filling him with quaint surprise that anyone could possibly offer violence in defence of a soul in so delightful a climate.
“After which and a rum cocktail, I said: ‘Lavina, did you see much of M’sieur Somerset Maugham when he was here?’
“‘It is the man who writes?’ she inquired lazily.