The children’s house is one of the railway bungalows on the hill. The roof is tiled, with glass skylights set in it through which light filters into the bedroom. There are no ceilings. The glass globed lamps hang from the rafters. The night lamp is brought into the bedroom at six o’clock in the evening. It is placed in a niche where it burns, flickering in the dark. Shadows dance against the whitewashed walls with their borders of black tar to keep away the termites. The rooms are full of furniture, the settees with cretonne-covered cushions, the centre table covered with brass ornaments and blue Chinese glass vases. There are heavy gilt-framed paintings on the walls, of Scottish landscapes, glens, forests, waterfalls. A leopard-skin backed with red felt lies on the floor, its jaws open in a grimacing snarl, its hard yellow-fanged teeth sharp against the exploring palm as the children thrust their hands inside its mouth.

Green tats hang in the verandah—rolled up and tied. They are pulled down to keep the sun out. Stepping out into the verandah, the children walk under the arbour of thumbergia into an enchanted world with thornless roses and hollyhocks, crimson dahlias, white mugerines, the Holy Ghost orchid, scorpion orchids; the world in which they played exploring every nook and cranny with Mungo.

The children walk along the path, a narrow earth path. They cling to those hard flat-palmed hands encircled by silver bracelets with a curious design engraved on them. They must have been put on Mungo’s wrists when she attained age or got married. Attaining age unlocked, through the puberty rites, the gates of womanhood. After the period of seclusion, when it was taboo for her to be with the rest of the family, she lived isolated and apart in a separate room of the hut, fed with special foods and then she had the ritual bath, the cleansing—pots of water poured over her head, her body laved with culled herbs. The pot was broken at her feet, she was dressed in new clothes, in her ears and on her wrists was put not gold but silver. She was ready for marriage.

Mungo is a simple village woman. But she is their guardian and protector. She looks after all their needs, tells them folk tales, lulls them to sleep chanting her stories as she sits beside them on long hot afternoons while they lie with their heads in her lap …

‘The fox wanted to eat the milk rice, the labu kiribhath, and so he waited and watched while the gourd, the labugediya, swelled and swelled and grew rich and round and the rakshasa, who was waiting to catch and eat the children, tempted the children with kewun, which he had placed on a tree, kewuns that were full of honey …’