Fong Kiap suddenly understood that baby was going into hospital. The held-back weeping gushed out in one long wail. All laughter gone, she clung to baby. He would die of fright without the comfort of her arms. She must be admitted with baby. Or let doctor give an injection, and she would nurse baby in the detention camp. Rosie told her in Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, and Malay not to be silly. (Rosie was obviously showing off.) Fong Kiap shook her head, tears rolled down her cheeks, and she appealed suddenly to her husband’s ghost. ‘He is dead and since then people have been harming me. They have falsely accused me and now I have been in prison for many months … I have never done anything wrong.’

‘Nothing wrong!’ shouted Rosie, boisterous but not unkind. ‘Then where did this baby come from, tell me that.’

‘We are between fire and water, we the people,’ wailed Fong Kiap. ‘We are caught between two terrors, the Police, and the People Inside. I do not want to live any more.’

‘Quiet,’ said Rosie Yip the policewoman. ‘Don’t bring shame on your ancestors with your big talk. Do you really want us to believe you were clever enough to get another male to do the work of your Old Man of the Jungle?’ She used an obscene, good-natured workaday word. ‘Consorting with bandits, that’s what you are in for, even if it is your husband.’

Ah Kam, the amah, guffawed at this, and translated in Malay to Doremy who looked suddenly tragic, as was her way with mirth. Fong Kiap grinned through her tears, and gazing fondly, passionately at baby, son of her man in the jungle, followed Doremy out of the room and to the ward. Adjusting her uniform belt after one last, sharp, rattling salute, Rosie went with them, completely forgetting Ah Mei, her other prisoner, who was thus left guarded by me.

While Betchine, with Ah Kam’s help, began sorting the patients, wading into the crowd and picking the obviously ill ones from those who came to acquire medicine for nothing, or to obtain sick leave, Ah Mei, in a corner, talked to me in standard Chinese. Like all Chinese in Malaya, Ah Mei knew at least three dialects, but she also spoke standard Chinese because she had been to a Chinese school for two years, and then in the jungle.