‘Let’s go to the coffee shop,’ said Luke. He waved his arm at Crafts and Bob across the road, two figures in khaki looking hot even at this distance. ‘We might also get the little French priest. After all, the Press will be on to this in no time … we must get some sort of coherent story for the headlines, eh Daley?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I expect,’ said Luke, sitting down gratefully and wiping his sweating hairy arms with a handkerchief, and then opening his shirt and wiping his neck and chest, bright with sweat, ‘I expect you’ll be asked to cope with Todak now, Daley. We haven’t got anybody … but I guess you might like to have a go at this place, your own way …’

Daley’s tongue licked his dry lips, he polished his glasses, put them back. Straightened. Take over Todak. The toughest eight thousand. He remembered their faces. Just above Luke’s shoulder he could see the square, the people from here so placid, moving obediently, in files, the vans …

He felt empty, marrow hollow, but he said: ‘I can try.’

And his faith flooded him again. I will try. I will win them over … God … Love … He became confused with his emotion and his weariness.

‘That’s good,’ said Luke. ‘Try. Try to win them over. That’s the slogan now, you know … we can’t win without the cooperation of the people … so we’ve got to win the hearts and minds of the people … the hearts and the minds,’ he repeated, ‘not that we haven’t done our best at times to lose them, but you have a try, Daley. I’m cheering for you.’

Meanwhile there was so much work to do. A nuisance, as Crafts thought, this murder. First of all the Press, thinking up a lot of nice kind things to say about the late Tommy Uxbridge, R.O., killed by terrorists while courageously doing his duty in the fight for freedom in Malaya. He always was a good sport, reveals ex-China missionary … Dastardly murder of Resettlement Officer … Achievement of Tommy Uxbridge praised by Government … we shall all miss him, weep the mothers of Todak … He was my friend, says French priest … Thus the headlines would read.

That afternoon the bombing began, of the jungle and the swamp which continued it for miles along the seeping river, swamp held together by mangrove roots tenacious of mud, and now the mud went up in heavy liquid brown clouds as plop, plop, plop, the bombs fell. For three days and nights the strafing continued, until the R.A.F. could claim itself well-satisfied with the result of its battering exercises on the swamp.

Todak, now a New Village, became interesting. First the inhabitants were punished with a curfew of twenty hours a day, lasting ten days. During those days each family in Todak was furnished with a questionnaire printed in Chinese, which asked: