So now we had to decide what to do when we had our between-fever periods of comparative health. George Tilly decided to carry water for a couple of hours a day to the hospital, and the rest of the time he slept, occasionally emerging to write some poem that sounded fine from its rhythm and style of English, but which even to his closest associates was quite incomprehensible. Henry, whose stomach still troubled him, carried water with George, read numerous books, and did P.T. in the afternoons with Jim. Jim had already got himself a good job collecting wood, which entailed wading the river daily and collecting firewood along the far bank. This meant having a pass, and they were able to pick up plenty of that peculiar fruit – ‘Bale’ (?) fruit – which had a hard yellow shell and a pithy sticky yellow substance inside which was excellent to bind the stomach with; and Jim also used to get mangoes that would sometimes ripen in the dark, and which, if they were too young, we could chop up and eat with the midday rice.

The food at Chungkai was most disappointing, for it wasn’t even up to our recent Takanun standards; and had it not been for sambals and the P.R.I., it would have been very dull indeed and very bad. And though the P.R.I. had all those good foods in it, you were liable to be broke before the middle of the month, because still, out of your 30 dollars a month, and although the Nips had said that they would in future be entirely responsible for supporting the hospital and sick, you had to pay 10 dollars a month for Hospital Messing – five dollars to our own mess – 50 cents to our Mess Orderlies – and one dollar, 50 cents for a half share in a light-sick batman to wash your clothes. It was the social thing to do to pay a batman because all the sick and light-sick received no I.J.A. pay at all. That left us 13 dollars a month to spend and the dollar was by now worth about 7d.