- Mavis Norman: Do you care what stupid, prejudiced people think?
- David Boyeur: You've never had to fight stupidity or prejudice.
- Jocelyn Fleury: Whatever happens, I want you to remember one thing: you'll never be more loved than you are right now.
- [last lines]
- Mavis Norman: You're right and I'm wrong. I'm wrong and you're right.
- David Boyeur: And that's the end, is it?
- Mavis Norman: Yes, that's the end.
- Bradshaw: Is there much discontent in the islands, Colonel?
- Colonel Whittingham: Crime is my business Mr Bradshaw, not politics.
- Jocelyn Fleury: Tell me about Egypt. Was it madly dull?
- Euan Templeton: Too many pyramids.
- Jocelyn Fleury: And not enough girls?
- Euan Templeton: None to write home about.
- Bradshaw: Do you think the West Indian is ready to govern himself?
- Governor Templeton: When you get to know the island better, Mr Bradshaw, I shall be glad to discuss it with you.
- Maxwell Fleury: [reading from a newspaper] "Presumably they did not know that Julian Fleury's mother, who died in childbirth, was a Jamaican with native ancestry" Is it true?
- Julian Fleury: It's true.
- Maxwell Fleury: What were you lashing out when you tried to slap me? Your own guilt, your betrayal of us?
- Julian Fleury: Betrayal? Your mother never knew?
- Maxwell Fleury: She knew. Didn't you mother?
- Mrs. Fleury: I knew.
- Julian Fleury: But how?
- Mrs. Fleury: An anonymous letter. Came ten years ago.
- Julian Fleury: And you never mentioned it?
- Julian Fleury: I saw no reason to. I wanted to keep things as they were.
- Maxwell Fleury: Faithful wife. Noble mother.
- Julian Fleury: Maxwell, stop it.
- Jocelyn Fleury: How do you expect him to feel? How do you think I feel? To believe that you belong to one kind of a world and then suddenly... when I asked you if there was any reason that I shouldn't marry Euan, you said no.
- Julian Fleury: I said that was no *good* reason.
- Jocelyn Fleury: How can you say that? Euan's heir to a title. Can you picture a black man sitting in the House of Lords if we had a son?
- Julian Fleury: There's no need to exaggerate. My mother was three-quarters white, I've only one-sixteenth colored blood. The chances are your children will be *completely* white.
- Denis Archer: You don't seem very surprised? At our going to England together?
- Margot Seaton: Where you go, I go.
- Mrs. Fleury: I must ask you for the same consideration you asked me. I'd rather your father... I'd rather my husband didn't know.
- Jocelyn Fleury: You were always so devoted. I never conceived the possibility of another man in your life.
- Mrs. Fleury: Children don't. They think mistakes are their privilege.
- Sylvia Fleury: Poor chap - he came out here with such high hopes.
- Colonel Whittingham: Well a chap can't pick the way he'll die, or we'd all do better at it.
- David Boyeur: Mr. Fleury speaks as if traditions belong only to him. We have ours too.
- Maxwell Fleury: I'd be the last to deny him his traditions.
- David Boyeur: Which ones, Mr. Fleury? The ones we got on the slave ships - or in the cane fields working like beasts? Or, the ones we have now, the ones we're making every day, despite the slave ships *and* the cane fields?
- Denis Archer: I'm Denis Archer, the Governor's aide. Why is it I haven't seen you before?
- Margot Seaton: Maybe its because you buy your toothpaste at the wrong drug store.
- Governor Templeton: The press is a nuisance, but, it exists - and I believe in cooperating with what exists.
- Bradshaw: What would you say is the most important problem on the island?
- David Boyeur: Color, Mr. Bradshaw. Color.
- Maxwell Fleury: Your father, if I remember correctly, worked on my father's plantation.
- David Boyeur: Till the day he died.
- Maxwell Fleury: He was taken care of, whether he was sick or not, whether he worked or not.
- David Boyeur: That was charity, Mr. Fleury. What we want is equality.
- Hilary Carson: What I want is a drink.
- Maxwell Fleury: If I were a woman, I'd prefer Carson to Euan Templeton.
- Sylvia Fleury: But, it was Euan all the girls chased after.
- Euan Templeton: [lying on a sandy beach next to Jocelyn] When I was in Egypt, I used to lie out on the beach, close my eyes, and make a prayer to Allah. "Please Allah," I'd say, "when I open my eyes may there be a pretty girl lying on the sand next to me." Thank you, Allah.
- Euan Templeton: Ever think of getting away?
- Jocelyn Fleury: Constantly.
- Euan Templeton: Where?
- Jocelyn Fleury: Oh, I don't know. Paris. London. It really doesn't matter. You know, you get awfully tired of all this sun.
- Governor Templeton: What's your opinion, Denis?
- Denis Archer: About what, sir?
- Governor Templeton: Having the wrong sort of grandmother.
- Denis Archer: Well, it's difficult to select one's ancestors, sir.
- Hilary Carson: I don't believe in chaps drinking themselves to death. Leave that for retired Colonels.
- Mavis Norman: Do you think of me as an enemy.
- David Boyeur: No.
- Mavis Norman: What are you thinking?
- David Boyeur: That you feel you're lost. But, you're not. Because, you're looking for something real. And as long as you're looking for something real, you're not lost.
- Colonel Whittingham: Ever read a book called, "Crime and Punishment"?
- Maxwell Fleury: No. Why?
- Colonel Whittingham: Well, you should. It's about just this sort of thing. A man who's committed a crime and his relationship with a detective who knows he's committed it, but still can't prove it. There's a - they have a secret together. There's a - deep bond between them. It's rather like a love affair; because, the detective is the only man in the world who understands him - and in his heart, the murderer wants to be found out by the detective.
- Mrs. Fleury: I'd rather your father - I'd rather my husband, didn't know.
- Jocelyn Fleury: You were always so devoted. I never conceived the possibility of another man in your life.
- Mrs. Fleury: Children don't. They think mistakes are their privilege.
- Jocelyn Fleury: I won't have you humiliate yourself for my sake, or for Euan's, or even for Lord Templeton.
- Mrs. Fleury: Very well. I owe you this. You need have no qualms about marrying Euan. There isn't a drop of African blood in your veins. My husband isn't your father.
- Maxwell Fleury: I've had about as much as I can take from you, and from this island, you understand. Stay away from my wife!
- Hilary Carson: Look here - I'm fed up with idiots! Are you suggesting I...
- Maxwell Fleury: I'm not suggesting anything - I'm just telling you.
- Hilary Carson: Well you can ruddy well un-tell it and apologise. And get this into your stupid skull - I don't make passes at wives of acquaintances and I don't share my women. And even if I did, I wouldn't take something from someone like you with the tarbrush rolled across his face.
- [first lines]
- Governor Templeton: The island of Santa Marta is not very much different from any of the other smaller islands in the Caribbean. Towering mountains, white gold beaches, coconut palms, and hot, tropical sun. It has a population of about 100,000, nine-tenths of it colored or of mixed blood.
- Maxwell Fleury: You seem to know a great deal about him.
- Sylvia Fleury: Well, you know the island. A male, young, white, unmarried, titled, and comparatively rich. Good heavens, what else do you think the girls would talk about? Now, darling, you're not jealous are you?
- Maxwell Fleury: I could.
- Sylvia Fleury: Whatever of?
- Maxwell Fleury: Anybody with all those - virtues. That's the penalty for being so much in love with you.
- Sylvia Fleury: That's sweet.
- Sylvia Fleury: Maxwell, stop it, you'll tear my dress.
- Maxwell Fleury: But, you know, I've never torn a dress of yours.
- [aggressively tears Sylvia's dress]
- Sylvia Fleury: Take me home.
- Maxwell Fleury: Home? Women get bored making love in the same room. A change of scenery helps.
- [aggressively kisses Sylvia]
- Sylvia Fleury: Stop it!
- [he doesn't]
- Euan Templeton: What's your life like here? Gay?
- Jocelyn Fleury: Not very. This is a small island and there's a dozen girls like myself.
- Euan Templeton: And not enough men.
- Maxwell Fleury: Does he still smoke those cigarettes of his?
- Sylvia Fleury: What cigarettes?
- Maxwell Fleury: You remember those fancy gold-tipped ones that he has made up for him in Cairo. Perhaps that's what *I* need to be more successful with my own wife. A special brand of tobacco.
- Maxwell Fleury: What did you buy?
- Sylvia Fleury: A bikini. It's really something, isn't it?
- Hilary Carson: Right. You better rope off the beach, old man, when she wears it.
- Maxwell Fleury: I know what people say. I know what people think. I know what you think. I know what he thinks. I never lived up to the great Fleury name. I might have if I'd gone to Oxford and Eton, like Arthur did. Many things might have been different. But, instead, you sent me to school here with a lot of *colored* brats.
- Maxwell Fleury: I'm supposed to be grateful to be Julian Fleury's son. I'd been better off if I'd been born black!
- [Maxwell's mother rushes up and slaps him]
- Jocelyn Fleury: You think I'm rather useless, don't you. Parasitic. That all women of my kind are. Oh, no, it's true. Since we don't know anything. Oh, the ground rules for tennis or the recipe for shrimp curry, a little charity and nursing, but, nothing very important. I wish there were something worthwhile I could learn.
- Maxwell Fleury: I can see myself walking into the Club. "Anyone for tennis? There's Fleury. He's perfect for mixed doubles. His grandmother was a bit on the dark side, you know."
- Sylvia Fleury: Is there anyone you suspect, Colonel Whittingham?
- Colonel Whittingham: Now, Mrs. Fleury, you know policemen, they suspect everybody.
- Mavis Norman: Do you still feel that anyone whose skin is different from your's is an enemy?
- David Boyeur: Do you think I do?
- Mavis Norman: I don't know. At carnival time my brother-in-law's car was damaged, his telephone wires cut. You hate Maxwell, don't you? You think of him as an enemy.
- David Boyeur: I think of him as a snob! As an arrogant plantation owner.
- Colonel Whittingham: Patience, my boy, that's the ticket. I know that sounds dull to you impatient chaps, but, that's police work. Oh, he'll probably play into my hands whoever the fellow is. I'm in no hurry.
- Mavis Norman: It was destroyed during a slave uprising in 1843 during the French rule. I wonder what could have caused it?
- David Boyeur: A many number of reasons: a single insult, a whipping, a girl. Who knows?
- Colonel Whittingham: I said something like that to a bloke once. I can't remember who. Oh, middle age, my boy, no memory at all.
- David Boyeur: The only reason you want to be black is because you're afraid that the white world won't let you be white any more?
- Jocelyn Fleury: It's perfectly clear. A romance. Isn't that what you wanted? Eighteen months was such a long time in Egypt - and without a girl.
- Mrs. Fleury: Of course, you know that you've behaved stupidly. You've behaved like a peasant girl in the cane fields. Now, I suppose that's neither here nor there. It's the future that matters.
- Jocelyn Fleury: In about three months, I want to go to Canada. I want to start making the arrangements now.
- Mrs. Fleury: Canada? Why on earth do you want to go there?
- Jocelyn Fleury: Because I'm pregnant.
- Mrs. Fleury: Does Euan know?
- [Jocelyn shakes her head no]
- Mrs. Fleury: You're sure that you are?
- Jocelyn Fleury: There isn't any doubt.
- Mrs. Fleury: Well, you're certainly calm about it. You might show some shame, some guilt.
- Jocelyn Fleury: If it will make you feel any happier, I feel quite guilty.