He and Betty were going to the solicitors to make their Wills. Downstairs in the hall Betty, perfectly ready, sat waiting on a sort of throne of gilded wood and faded, shredding silk which had been scarlet when they bought it in Bangladesh. She had found it in a cavernous incense-smelling shop in the backstreets of Dacca’s Old Town. Stroking the pale rose satin now with her fingertips, she tried to remember what it was that had made her buy this chair. A bit of showing off, she thought. Well, some people brought back stuffed animals. She had asked if she might try sitting in it. It had been right at the back of the shop and she had looked out from it down the blackness to the dazzle of the doorway and the passing show of the street, the tangle of the rickshaws, the dignified old gentlemen in turbans, the women like briskly floating butterflies, the clusters of black heads in all the high windows. A procession of princelings had gone by, each carrying a silver dish piled with steaming plum pudding.
