Elizabeth. [Smiling.] What’s wrong with England?
Teddie. I don’t think anything’s wrong with England. I expect something’s wrong with me. I’ve been away too long. England seems to me full of people doing things they don’t want to because other people expect it of them.
Elizabeth. Isn’t that what you call a high degree of civilisation?
Teddie. People seem to me so insincere. When you go to parties in London they’re all babbling about art, and you feel that in their hearts they don’t care twopence about it. They read the books that everybody is talking about because they don’t want to be out of it. In the F.M.S. we don’t get very many books, and we read those we have over and over again. They mean so much to us. I don’t think the people over there are half so clever as the people at home, but one gets to know them better. You see, there are so few of us that we have to make the best of one another.
Elizabeth. I imagine that frills are not much worn in the F.M.S. It must be a comfort.
Teddie. It’s not much good being pretentious where everyone knows exactly who you are and what your income is.
Elizabeth. I don’t think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
Teddie. And then, you know, the place is ripping. You get used to a blue sky and you miss it in England.
Elizabeth. What do you do with yourself all the time?
Teddie. Oh, one works like blazes. You have to be a pretty hefty fellow to be a planter. And then there’s ripping bathing. You know, it’s lovely, with palm trees all along the beach. And there’s shooting. And now and then we have a little dance to a gramophone.