These practicalities (and not the ethical scruples which also existed) convinced Rosie Yip that Authority wished to get rid of the camps as soon as possible, and that her duty was to help by making the processing smooth. Expediency is the chief ingredient of a successful administration, and Rosie prayed that until the camp closed no incident would mar the peace and inspire yet another police clampdown with its endless trail of complicated interrogations and investigations and probes ordered from On High.

Where once Commandant Hinchcliffe had struggled alone, infallible as any Infernal Magistrate, determining iniquity or redemption, there were now Interrogation Units, heavily padded with detectives, informers, and interpreters, unrolling the complicated tape of histories of the detainees, questioning and reclassifying suspects. To judge by the results (thought Rosie) Hinchcliffe achieved exactly the same with his simple, single-handed ‘they’re good if they smile and call me Sir’ standard, as the Unit with its offers of remission of sentences for help to the police as spies and informers on their fellow-detainees.

And now was the lunar seventh month, the Devil’s Jubilee, and the women’s camp was fearful and fear-making with word and gesture and thought of ghosts and demons and blood-drinking spirits, both Malay and Chinese; with apparitions in shadow and the mutterings and the waving of incense sticks and the warding of Evil Eyes and the chanting of Mother Wu, the witch, versed in the crafts of both races, consulted by both, and mixing Allah with Kuanyin; claiming herself the medium of the Third Grand Beldam of Heaven, handmaid of the Gods; compounder of love philters for the lascivious; midwife and abortionist; now detained as a communist suspect for possessing two unopened tins of fruit in a restricted area, and her power in no whit lessened by detention.

Mother Wu was peaceable enough, yet round her spread a hol-lowness of apprehension in this the seventh month. She was consulted for amulets and safe-keeping charms, not only by the prisoners but also by the policewomen. Even the woman interpreter, a hard-faced informer dismissed from another camp for corruption, now re-employed, obtained a straw-plaited male doll, complete with phallus, cinctured with a khaki strip of shirt from her ex-lover, a young British police lieutenant, and kept it under her pillow, reciting conjurations to regain his yearnings.

And the guards watched at night with a strong light, afraid.

With a great show of careless good temper Rosie watched, sprinkling her loud and agile talk with jovial salacity, knowing laughter an undoer of evil.

‘Still breast-feeding your Babee, Fong Kiap, and he like a pig suckling and two years old.’

‘Three years by our people’s reckoning,’ replied Fong Kiap, resolute and tranquil now that baby was a lusty bawling infant of enormous size.

‘How long will you give him your paps to suck? He’ll still be at them when he becomes a papa himself.’