‘I’m tired hearing the Emergency blamed for everything that is not done in Malaya,’ I replied. ‘Because of the Emergency, many things which otherwise would not have been tackled at all, have now been done. The trouble with this country is not only the Emergency. I know a town up north where it takes nine months and many thousands of dollars’ bribes to get a licence to run a truck. I visited a hospital where the attendants wait three to five months to get their first month’s salaries paid to them. Meanwhile they borrow from money-lenders to live. I hear that in a certain State hospital the nurses have not had their increments paid to them for the last two years. You can’t blame this sort of thing on the Emergency. It’s red tape and the cancer of corruption, not the terror of the jungle.’

‘We have a word for it here,’ said Betchine. ‘“Tidapathy” is the name. It’s the most important word in the Malayan vocabulary, and the sooner you learn it, the quicker you’ll feel at home in Malaya. Tidapah. It means never mind. It’s compounded of jem’en fiche and mañana. It’s also the Will of God. Tidapah. The less you do, the less you show up your colleagues’ “tidapathy”, and the sooner you’ll get promoted. Do nothing, and you can’t do wrong. I used to row with people, wear myself out with work and worry, until the Medical Superintendent warned me. “You are an over-zealous young lady,” he said. Now I say tidapah with the best.’

But I knew that Betchine went on pitting herself against sloth, against tidapathy; lashing out with her tongue, tearing off the masks of make-believe; crashing through the strangling crisscross of pull, influence, and family connexions, so important in securing service, or position, in some government department; rising at two in the morning to check the babies’ feeds … Betchine was a good doctor. I wondered how long it would take before she broke down again.