‘Ha,’ said Jimmy, ‘that’s a communist song, little girl.’

But I remembered the song, many times heard during the war against Japan; in Chungking hummed by servants as they swept the courtyards.

‘Surely, Mr Lo, you remember this, our war song, yours too. It was not only a communist song.’

‘Yes, I know,’ replied Jimmy. ‘But many things which were nod communist have become communist now … in fact it is so difficult sometimes … but not for you,’ he added, his brow clearing. ‘Not for you or me … we are positively not communists.’ He meant to make me feel secure, above suspicion, in these suspicious days when all liberalism is suspect which is not tainted with servile acquiescence, but instead I felt suddenly a traitor, and nothing else.

‘I know another song,’ said Evangeline. ‘Our teacher in the jungle sang it, after lessons, playing it on the flute. He said it was old, from the ancestors’ country. But we could not march to iti He sang it alone, after food was eaten, and I listened.’

She sang in a harsh, unmelodic voice pitched higher thai normal, off-key and haunted with the old longing and grievance, old as the world of man:

I will go to the forest for justice,
For justice and righteousness,
And become a green-clad man.
The rulers pursue me with soldiers,
With riders, chariots, and spears.

I will go to the forest for justice,
The people will flock to me.
I right their wrongs from the green shade,
And kill the rulers with arrows.
The horsemen stumble with fear.

I will go to the forest for justice.
The wind for my garment I wear.
Together with my many companions,
The wind for my garment and the rain my drink,
We build a new heaven and earth.

‘Ah, how typical, isn’t it?’ mused Jimmy. ‘Justice … the justice of the forest. It’s old and steeped in tradition … A corrupt, incompetent government, and the just and good men going to the green forest and becoming bandits, but Right is on their side …’ Suddenly he became nostalgic, uneasy and fretful. ‘Of course we call them bandits, I don’t think the English understand their idea …’

‘Of course they do, they’ve got Robin Hood, you know,’ I said.

But there is nothing more futile than to discuss the rights and wrongs of the Emergency. Evangeline stopped singing, and I dressed her wound, which still oozed a little serum and needed occasional care. With the good life and the food she healed well and gained weight. We now ate three pounds of butter a week and Cookie had a new reason: ‘Evangeline eats such a lot of butter.’