There was a shuffling up the stairs as of my Siamese mother cat herding the kittens step by step in panic lest they should err from her milk-rich nipples. It was Miss Lee coming up swaying from side to side, black frizzed hair over her forehead, hands in front of her, groping blindly.

‘Drunk,’ said Miss Shen gaily, ‘and acting too.’

‘Miss Lee,’ I said, as loudly as I could, ‘please make yourself behave more tidily.’

‘I cannot,’ replied Miss Lee. I am drunk. I have drunk two bottles of strong stout.’

‘Well, you will make your body sick, and that is all. You are giving a lot of trouble, and I’ll have to complain to the police, and then you’ll have to go behind the wire again.’

Miss Lee hiccuped and beat her breast, but she was not very worried. She started lamenting her sad fate, and the injustice of Heaven. I could not help smiling, and anger faded.

‘I cannot prevent you marrying Mr Wu, who already has four wives.’

‘Three,’ amended Miss Lee.

‘That’s what he says,’ I replied. ‘Three, four, five … he will be adding to the number, I know.’

‘The others do not understand him,’ said Miss Lee, in the manner of the modern films she saw regularly.

‘Understand or not, you can do what you like, and throw yourself away on Mr Wu and his wives and his dozens of children. But I don’t want any unpleasantness in my house, I won’t have anyone hanging themselves at my door and leaving their ghosts about.’

And I sat down, feeling unpleasant and ineffective. But Miss Lee took the matter ill, and left me, removing her radio, her bicycle, and many trunks of luggage.

‘Pang’s wife,’ reported Ah Mei, ‘has found her a little room, near the prison.’ Ah Mei chatted away, sweeping a negligent feather duster, cunningly avoiding a spider’s web spanning the lampshade. ‘Pang’s wife and her sister run a small brothel in Singapore, you know, but she keeps it secret from Pang – anyway Pang is not a very good man either, always running after women, and sometimes he is very rough with people … especially people in the New Villages, but no one dares to report him, everyone is afraid, he is so mighty, and the red-hair officers in the Police trust him. It is as Fong Kiap always says, we walk between two terrors, the jungle and the Police, between fire and water …’