‘Sakit, very sick,’ repeated Fong Kiap, gurgling with pure misery. The baby had a shrunken, wizened face, a glaze drawn tight over its open eyes.

‘Haha,’ laughed Rosie Yip, whose round Chinese face and boot-button eyes, neat as her uniform, made her the Asian counterpart of a typical London bobby, ‘Fong Kiap said “sakit, sakit” yesterday to the red-haired devil newspaperman who came to the detention camp to write about it. “Sakit, sakit,” said Fong Kiap. The red-haired devil thought she was telling her name. “That’s a pretty name, Sakit,” he told her.’ Rosie Yip slapped her thighs at the story, and laughed again.

Ah Kam guffawed and translated into Malay to Doremy. Rosie, surmising that Betchine would object to the term red-haired devil, the current name for Europeans, had switched to the Cantonese dialect for this story.

‘Laugh, laugh,’ said Betchine, who had been examining the baby and was not happy about it, ‘you Chinese always laugh. It’s nearly unnatural vice with you. We Indians’ (Betchine was one of those post-war Eurasians who would rather be all Asian) ‘cry. We weep and wail. It’s more realistic. Come, hold your baby, while I write the admission form.’

Fong Kiap took over baby, and started putting on baby’s clothes, the belly band, the little wool cap, the wool socks, and the small quiltwork blanket. Baby began to shrink. He suddenly looked tiny bundled against Fong Kiap’s large breasts. Round baby’s neck hung a small cross, present from the Catholic priest; a tiger’s claw, silver mounted; a wisp of feathers and a silver lock; talismans and safeguards of another tradition. On baby’s left wrist was tied a yellow thread. How many devious small bribes, how many whispered supplications had been accomplished by Fong Kiap, through how many wardresses and attendants at the camp had these charms been relayed to reach, at last, the baby; to ward disease and death from baby. But here he was, very sakit, very ill.