At that moment the thickset policewoman in khaki with black and silver badges on her shoulders and a beret smartly pulled on her curled hair, pushed her way through the crowd sitting, standing, squatting, or lying on the waiting-room floor among the pulped banana skins, the half-eaten oranges, the crumbled soda biscuits, the melting chocolate slabs, the vomits, and the urine; offal to be swept up at the end of the morning with a flourish of lysol in water by Ah Kam, the amah, who had tuberculosis, five dead babies, and was assigned to Outpatients, where work as an attendant (asserted the Regulations) was light.

Robustly, elbows outstretched, the policewoman advanced, disregarding the backwash of indignant mutters behind her. Authority meant priority. Close at her back came Ah Mei and Fong Kiap carrying her three-month-old baby born in the detention camp. Once in our small examination room, the policewoman clicked her heels and saluted. Doremy would have pushed out anyone else, but this was Police; she closed the door and wedged herself against it so that pressure from the waiting crowd would not send it flying open again.

‘This prisoner complains her arms are bad,’ said the policewoman in English, pushing Ah Mei forward.

‘There’s nothing wrong with her arms,’ said Betchine. ‘I’ve seen this girl before. I’ve told her so. These are only bite marks, leeches, mosquitoes, or what have you that bite in the jungle.’

I looked at Ah Mei and thought again: ‘How charming she is, such gentleness in her smile.’

Dr Betchine said to Ah Mei in rather bad Malay: ‘I’ll give you some more ointment to rub on your arms.’

‘The ointment smells bad, it makes my head giddy,’ Ah Mei said to the policewoman in Hokkien. The policewoman, whose name was Rosie Yip, and who spoke six Chinese dialects, Malay, and Malayan English, translated this into the latter language: ‘She says ointment makes her smell no-good, doctor.’

‘I suppose she’d like something special, with perfume,’ said Betchine, sarcastically. ‘Really, that girrl’s the limit.’

Doremy now took matters in hand by translating this briefly into Malay to Ah Mei: ‘Doctor says no can do, don’t be such a sombong (stuck-up) girl.’

Ah Mei, who knew Malay quite well, but scorned to show it, smiled.

‘There is also this babee, if doctor would see,’ said Rosie, pulling Ah Mei back by the arm and shoving Fong Kiap forward.

‘Sakit.’[1] Fong Kiap smiled broadly, her round pointing stomach, ill-covered by her short flowered top, shook with repressed laughter. She politely bared her teeth to the gums at us. The four top teeth were edged with gilded brass. The original enamel peered from heart-shaped windows cut out of the glittering metal framework. Hearts and diamonds were the commonest shapes found in Chinese mouths in Malaya, and I had discerned a stray spade on the top row of a Malay special constable.