That he sees as an unexceptionable part of the life of the white man in the islands. But he is unhappy about the phony marriage, although he rationalises and in the course of rationalizing unwraps a whole nexus of ambivalence and double Standards. ‘A man might easily feel cheap for less,’ is his comment on the worthless marriage certificate. ‘But it was the practice in these parts, and (as I told myself) not the least the fault of us White Men but of the missionaries. If they had let the natives be, I had never needed this deception, but taken all the wives I wished, and left them when I pleased, with a clear conscience.’

By any standards Wiltshire’s morality is dubious. He is ready to exploit the islanders both economically and sexually. When Uma first appears he and his supposed ally Case size her up like a marketable object, an impression confirmed by Case’s ‘That’s pretty’ – not ‘she’s pretty’. The image modulates from object to animal to child. Wiltshire describes her as having ‘a sly, strange, blindish look between a cat’s and a baby’s’ and then, ‘she looked up at men quick and timid like a child dodging a blow’. It is only later and, significantly, away from Case, that he sees her differently. ‘She showed the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious and still; and I thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house and before that grinning negro’ (the latter not an islander but an associate of the degenerate Randall). Wiltshire has not only become aware of Uma as an individual; that awareness has implications for his sense of himself.

The two strands of the story are closely interwoven, with Uma providing the binding force. One strand follows Wiltshire’s discovery of his love and respect for Uma, and his wish to do the decent thing by her. The other is the story of how he destroys Case, more out of self-preservation than a sense of public duty. He has considerable courage, but he does not see himself as champion of the native.

The story that Wiltshire tells proceeds like the peeling of an onion. With each episode, in themselves inexplicable and incomplete, he reveals more of himself and adds to his own understanding. He makes it quite clear that he acts throughout largely through self-interest, although concern for another, Uma, has translated self-interest onto a more heroic level. Yet he emerges as a decent and relatively honourable man, if not honest with the islanders at least honest with himself, and not attempting to disguise his prejudices.

The most striking feature of The Beach of Falesá, and the feature that disturbed some contemporary readers, is its frankness. Its frankness about sex distressed its first editor. Readers one hundred years later probably feel that the story’s frankness about exploitation and deceit is more significant. In many ways it is more direct than anything Conrad was to write later, and this is largely because Stevenson’s vehicle is a man of limited understanding and imagination. He is not preoccupied with his own soul or a struggle to come to terms with guilt or collusion. Wiltshire has no problems of that kind. He adjusts cheerfully. When his modest ambition of returning to England and running a pub fades, because of his commitment to his family, he accepts it. He lives comfortably with his own prejudices, assuming, probably rightly, that they are the norm. All this is clear in the final paragraph. But much more than that is clear. Stevenson, through his inadvertent hero, precisely exposes an ambivalence that is at the heart of imperialism.

My public house? Not a bit of it, nor ever likely; I’m stuck here, I fancy: I don’t like to leave the kids, you see; and there’s no use talking – they’re better here than what they would be in a white man’s country. Though Ben took the eldest up to Auckland, where he’s been schooled with the best.