Alexander diary, 1917-1918 / Roy Alexander - Page 88
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[Page 88]
The after-well deck (chiefly planter's apprentices, minor civil servants etc) is clinging to the outer semblances of civilisation to the last and still looks with horror at the sun-burnt semi-nudity on the poop.
This grim disapproval affected me to such an extent that I attired myself in a once-white tennis shirt and a pair of shoes in addition to the usual "shorts" when I visited the "well" to sit among the Highly Respectable and to munch crab-sandwiches with Webbie and Kennedy under the torpedo-tube this evening. Smithy quite blossomed out; he sailed out to meet Mrs Flood in an elaborate tennis negligee and a borrowed white topee! That lady, by some mysterious means, still appears in well-laundered whites resting usually on a foundation of cerise or emerald silk hose.
An admiring train usually follows bearing cushions, etc. (not forgetting the purple brolly.) In comparison with the other female-prisoners she looks quite brilliant. (The others are mostly "primly-respectable".