‘abc, abc’, she shouted, akimbo on her tiny feet (upon which she had hobbled behind the soldiers, asking to be taken, when they scooped her village in a raid), ‘abc, abc. I am an old woman, come sixty years from the ancestors’ country, a whole life behind me, clean and hard with sons and grandsons, and a thin death in front of me, and all you do is to tell me abc, abc. Of what use is abc to me?’

Rosie went to see Commandant Hinchcliffe.’ Sir … about these classes in English, I think some of the women are too old for learning, they are quite dumb too …’

‘But it’s regulations, Wardress, look: here’s the booklet on rehabilitation: classes in English, domestic crafts …’

Rosie thought: Domestic crafts! These women have sewn and washed and cooked all their lives. ‘Perhaps we could have a small holiday from English, lah, and do more embroidery,’ she suggested.

And let it be known among the detainees that embroidery was much prized by the whiteskins, and suitable presents for them.

Now presents and gifts though forbidden by the law were commodious and indispensable, and the whites always somehow accepted what was given, so long as it was done in a roundabout way with liquor, banquets, and embroidered tablecloths hot favourites. The policewomen under Rosie often brought some dishes for her, for they were all housewives with children; cooked chicken sprinkled with chopped ginger and sesame oil; duck’s feet simmered and steeped in thick black soy sauce, smoked ham, stuffed mushrooms, crinkly pork with red sauce, and sweet confections of lotus roots.

These slight easements to Rosie, symbolic wielder of power, made everyone believe that they bettered their lot, smoothed the wheels of fate, and cast the spell of a mutual relationship upon the Wardress, and through her upon the whites who made the sun and the rain for their days and their years.

In many departments, Asian secretaries and clerks, interpreters and translators, saved dollars out of their pay at Christmas and Easter, at birthdays, at the arrivals and departures of their often changed white bosses, to buy gifts for the tuan, the mem, and the children of the mem. A previous officer had been given a rousing send-off with two crates of whisky and a gold cigarette case. It was their profound conviction that they obligated the receiver, bound him in honour to some slight leniency should occasion arise; a conviction always defeated by the superb belief of the just white master that these presents were manifestoes of well-deserved love and gratitude for their rule, involving no personal obligation at all.