Neville Williams

The abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean in 1834 prompts Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Company in Calcutta, a part of the East India Company, to recruit Coolies from India to fill the resulting labor void. The company hires Sinha, a fierce small-timer to sell dreams of El Dorado to the unsuspecting, impoverished Coolies who are signed to five-year contracts as indentured servants. Upon the Coolies' arrival in British Guiana in 1838, the British planters promptly enslave them to ensure that the growth of sugar in the British West Indies will continue uninterrupted. John Scoble of the British and Foreign Anti Slavery Society arrives on the colony a year later to discover a new form of slavery; this time on the backs of Indians.

Roland Moody is a newly divorced 42-year-old junk/antique dealer greatly anticipating freedom from matrimonial ties. Daphne Pegg, plain spinster and dedicated civil servant in her early thirties, leaves her home in Bolton after realising that her office boss will never agree to marry her. She heads for London and a clean break, but, owing to a rogue estate agent's dealings, finds that a man - Moody - also has a valid lease arrangement for the property she acquires. Unable to work out who is the squatter, they agree to be feuding partners and share, forging a very uncomfortable situation that is exacerbated by Moody's prodigious line of visiting girlfriends. With hilarious consequences.