Wu’s wife came again the next afternoon, and I saw her, a small-boned and pretty woman with three children and a loud flat voice which talked and talked. She wanted me to ask Wu to give her an allowance; she wanted me to tell the police red-hair Top Man to put Wu in prison for letting her starve, and her children. And then she threatened to hang herself under the honeysuckle over the front door, if Wu abandoned her and married Miss Lee. Finally she lost breath and I said: ‘You may hang yourself if you wish, but please not in my house. I shall not look after your ghost. Why don’t you hang yourself in the S.E.P. quarters where your husband lives?’

Miss Shen, my friend, the Chinese teacher at the rehabilitation camp (now staying with us for a few days or weeks or months), sat on the rattan sofa, listening to Mrs Wu, and rocked with laughter.

‘Aiyah,’ she said softly, putting her hand in front of her mouth, ‘I am glad you have given up talking noble principles to these people, and expounding the morals of the ancestors’ country, China.’

But she also whispered that the girl was arrogant to threaten suicide, and that someone must have put her up to it.

‘It is Ah Mei,’ said Miss Shen, who loathed Ah Mei for no reason at all. ‘Ah Mei loves to fish in troubled waters, and when the water is clear, she muddies it.’

But I did not believe her because of her loathing, and because for ever the touching innocence of Ah Mei’s face – that lovely mask of which she was not guilty, a physical structure condemning her to be believed and loved – would blur my judgement of her.

I called Ah Mei and said: ‘Tell Miss Lee to come upstairs,’ watching through the window Mrs Wu carrying her smallest child astraddle on her hip, small and defiant and forlorn, walking away.

Ah Mei replied gently: ‘Miss Lee is drunk, doctor.’

‘When she is a little less drunk, tell her to come up. How did she get drunk, anyway?’

‘Knowing Wu’s No. 2 would come, she bought two bottles of stout this morning. She got the habit of drinking this black beer from the red-hair police officer she lived with up north,’ added Ah Mei chattily, ‘the one who gave the bicycle and the radio. You know he was sent away …’

‘Yes, I know, I know …’ I was annoyed.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Miss Shen cruelly, ‘she does this to everybody now. What else can you expect? First to save her skin she betrays the People Inside, then the more she betrays the better paid she is … and Ah Mei is so clever, the game is easy for her … she can betray back and forth, and keep her head on her shoulders. I wonder what she really says about you …’ added Miss Shen pointedly.