So his chums send him white feathers — the mark of a coward — whereupon, for no discernible reason, he pursues them, dresses as an Arab, performs insane acts of courage, and brings most of them home in time for tea.
But I never saw Naipaul attack anyone stronger than himself; he talked big and insultingly but when he lashed out it was always against the weak — women who loved him, his wife, and waiters: people who couldn't hit back, the true mark of the coward.
It has to be said that the temporary tattoo is the mark of a coward anyway: either get a real tattoo or don't get any tattoo at all.
In Julius Ceasar Mandela has marked the words: "A coward dies a thousand deaths".
"I'm not a coward, but the experience here will mark my life forever".
Jonathan Kent's Chichester Festival production, newly ensconced at the Gielgud Theatre, marks the fourth staging of Noël Coward's comedy in the capital within the last dozen years, and it's also by some measure the most lopsided.
The Islamists may be marked as cowards for recruiting boys to fight their war, then running away, or they may come to be seen as martyrs.
But their foolishness -- and in particular the gentleness and aversion to violence that might mark Jody as a punk or a coward -- is what saves them.
In the realm of comedies of bad manners, Noël Coward's 1930 play "Private Lives" set the high-water mark.
