The enthusiasm evoked among the Indische Jongens on seeing Tari’s short dance on the stage made it comparatively easy to persuade Tari to try and train volunteers to do a really big dance. He decided, in the end, to try to copy a famous palace dance that Europeans can see – if they are lucky – performed several times a year at the Javanese Keratons in the central states. The work entailed to make this dance possible strained Tari’s patience and perseverance to the utmost, and made me cadge and steal as Stage Manager as I’d never done before.

In this dance, Tari was going to use six girl dancers, four men dancers, two sword dancers, two spearmen, two clowns, and himself; and he required a gamelan, or Javanese orchestra, of at least five instruments. The décor required on the Set meant painted elephants, a Royal Dais, and magnificent looking draperies; and the design of the clothes, with the huge Wayang hats, slinky dresses, flowing selendangs, bracelets and ornaments seemed at first glance more than we could possibly hope to imitate. But we got them all.

It happened at the time that the Nips were calling in all the old mosquito nets from the hospital, huge green things that covered about a dozen people’s beds. By arrangement with a corporal in the Q.M.’s Store, the ‘return’ given in was two short, and one dark night Metz and I stole those two nets from outside the doctors’ hut where they were lying and rotting. Then I wheedled 60 thin sacks and about 15 large cardboard boxes out of Bill King; it was a point of honour with Bill to produce the most unlikely things when asked, but I had to conceal now how much I was getting from the knowledge of other producers. A few rice sacks, a little paint, some silver paper and a needle then turned all these raw materials into the gaudy Wayang dresses we needed.