At this time of the morning, all over Malaya’s gigantic monotony of rubber trees, tappers were tapping, like Neo and his wife, gouging the bark, stripping, and sprinting to another tree; a performance repeated hour by hour, tree after tree after tree. Cut, strip, sprint; cut, strip, sprint. All over Malaya, rich and creamy, languorously drop by drop, the white latex dripped into the cups. Ten o’clock. Neo had finished five hundred trees and his wife three hundred. They stopped, trembling with weariness, unable to wipe the sweat off their faces, licking their dry lips with dry tongues, tasting the salt on their skin. Son and Daughter lay on the ground. Silently, they all shared the water from the bottle. Aching cramps in their muscles, aching bellies. Sweat and hunger. But they would have no food, and nothing else till two in the afternoon when they returned. For such now was the harsh law: No food out of the fence; to starve the People Inside. Now they would collect the latex from the cups, pour it in pails, carry the pails to the collecting shed for weighing, watch it immersed in the coagulating tank, hand in the scrap rubber. They would chalk up with the head of the labour lines their daily wage, paid to them once a month, within the fence, by the estate manager.

It was this afternoon, Neo remembered, that he was getting paid. The babies cried, and Neo Saw gave each a breast to ease them. Two o’clock in the afternoon before they would be back inside the fence, and hastily finish the remnants of the morning meal. Then Son would go to the schoolmaster whom the tappers paid to teach their children, Daughter would clean the house, Neo Saw would wash the clothes, go to the shop to buy food, and cook the evening meal. Two meals a day. Neo Saw found it hard taking the small ones with her to tap. But there was no one to look after them without money. And if she did not tap, there would not be enough money for food.

It was then they heard the screams. The first was the worst of all, a long, terrifying ululation, rising and rising and suddenly bent off in the middle, then two short screams, then moans, and silence.

Daughter and Son, still unguarded, looked up, grey-faced with fear and exhaustion, and Son said: ‘What is it?’

‘Hush,’ said Neo Saw roughly. ‘We have not heard. We never listen. We do not know.’

Neo turned to curse his daughter, meaning the words for his son. ‘Busying yourself with what is not your concern. Come and help me collect the latex, quick.’