Che Ahmad bows his head to hide a smile of ineffable sweet triumph. He is a man of seven sons and six daughters, two wives, and he is thirty-two. ‘I have too many children,’ he says, deprecating his prowess, and glowing with his last achievement. ‘I just came in to say hello, sir. I’ve brought you the file about Lee Kok, sir. It’s complete now.’ Che Ahmad turns to business, though it would give him great pleasure to speak of the son of his body. ‘The captured female prisoner Ah Mei is waiting to see you. I don’t think it is important. A personal request, I think.’

‘Again?’ says Luke Davis,’ what does she want now, I wonder? Come in!’ He shouts unnecessarily, for the girl has already slipped into the room.

‘Morning,’ says Ah Mei in English, grinning widely with all her face. ‘Morning,’ she repeats, and stands grinning there, contemplating us, obviously lost in delight at seeing us, as if her morning’s purpose were achieved, to walk into this office room and say ‘Good morning’.

Behind her in the door’s embrasure the Malay mata-mata who has brought her stands with a shuffled click of boots, salutes, and then withdraws.

Ah Mei is Captured Enemy Personnel No. 234, comrade taken in jungle combat, and in the dingy office, suffocating in spite of the fan, she stands, a patch of brightness, her white trousers and fitting coat with small collar joyful with pink chrysanthemums. Her hair is straight and soft and falls to the shoulders, held back from her face by two small pink plastic clips. It is not curled, for Ah Mei is out of the jungle and a puritan therefore, and ‘permanents’ are an Imperialist invention, as everyone knows. The day will come when Ah Mei will buy herself a ‘permanent’ and look like every other girl, rubber-tapper, baby-amah, factory worker, every other Asian girl in Malaya. But that day there will be symbolic meaning in the gesture, for that day, perhaps, she will no longer believe.

There is something extremely charming about Ah Mei’s face, so softly round, so smooth, that none will note beauty at first glance. Only later shall I see the wide brow, the chin, the up-curving cheekbone, and the large black eyes. Today I only remember the childish short upper lip giving her face an abiding air of enchanted wonder. Lam also looks at her, a connoisseur, and notes the faintly golden skin, the hands and feet very small, the diminutive toes perfect like a baby’s in her open rubber slippers.

‘You may ask her questions,’ says Luke Davis.’ She says she is now twenty and was two years in the jungle before capture a year ago.’ He adds that her sentence is ten years under the Emergency Regulations, for she was caught with a grenade in her hand.’ But she has been such a help to us that we are trying to do
something about it.’