‘Tidapah, doctor,’ said Staff Nurse Doremy, she of the immense and doleful eyes. Doremy was Tamil. She had mothered dozens of medical officers, English, Chinese, Indian, Eurasian, and an occasional Malay, serving their turn of duty in Outpatients. Her years in government service numbered twenty-three. Because of the lack of nursing staff, she had been called from retirement to serve again. During the Japanese occupation she had planted tapioca, dug for yams, walked miles for a little black market rice, sewn jute bags, cut grass as a labourer. She had eight children of her own, and four adopted ones. She dealt with one hundred screaming patients with complete calm, but became an incoherent, stuttering incapable in front of the English Sister-in-charge, who strode briskly into Outpatients at ten o’clock, scolded Doremy, glared at the doctor, counted the syringes, ordered the amah to sweep the floor under the patients’ feet, then, with a look at the round wall clock (always fast), departed to her other charges, the Senior Officers’ special doctor, the Male Outpatients, the Ante-natal Clinic … there were not enough Sisters to go round the mammoth Hospital.

‘Tidapah, doctor,’ said Staff Nurse Doremy, and the word on her lips was sonorous consolation. ‘Doctor must not excite herself, lah. Will get all heaty in this weather. Anger is weakening to the body. We should have a big waiting-room, like the men. But what to do? Many doctors must write many, many letters to the Department before can get, lah. But patients are quite happy, doctor. They are happy so long they see woman doctor. Man doctor they don’t like. Before you we had poor Dr Sandrishan. He good man doctor, but patients never let him examine them. So what can he do? He has to guess every time.

‘Dr Sandrishan attempted one day to examine a Malay girl suffering from what he thought might be heart disease, and got sued for outrage to modesty,’ said Betchine to me.

‘Anyway, doctors must have some coffee now,’ ordered Doremy, looking at the clock. ‘After ward round, coffee, then Outpatients. Otherwise cannot stand it. This place not healthy,’ she told me. Doremy was a genius at stating the obvious in such a way that one felt like exclaiming: ‘How true!’

‘Diphtherias sitting with whooping coughs, and t.b. old ladies spitting on the floor, and little babies being sick at both ends at the same time. I always tell the amah, Ah Kam, to put more lysol in the water to wash the floor, but Ah Kam is lazy, too, and sometimes forgets. Ah Kam, Ah Kam!’ she shouted suddenly in Malay,’ make some coffee for doctors.’