That afternoon I read the brief autobiography, lying on the bed under the gentle fan. I tingled cautiously. A novel about Raffles, an East India Company clerk who got Java out of the hands of the French during the Napoleonic wars, ruled it like an angel, then grabbed Sumatra, then negotiated the purchase of a lump of swampy land called Singapore. And what did he get out of it? Nothing except fever, shipwreck and an early death. The story to be told by this hypochondriac Moslem Abdullah. I could see my novel done, printed, bound, about a hundred thousand words, displayed in bookshops, rapturously praised or jealously attacked. King of the Lion City, by Kenneth M. Toomey. No, Man of the Eastern Seas. I held my novel in the fingers of my imagination, flicking, reading: ‘The fever bit badly tonight. The candles flapped in the first warning gust of the monsoon. His hand shook as he sanded the last page of his report to the EIC in London. A house lizard scuttled up the wall cheeping.’ My God, what a genius I had then, was about to have then. And, of course, besides, I clearly saw, the writing of a novel about that old Malaya necessitated staying here and staying put. Odd trips to museums somewhere, Penang, Malacca, but the writing done here, in this bare room, tuan mahu minum, a queer case of propro this morning at the rumah sakit, home. You could write short stories anywhere, a novel required a base. No, Flames in the Eastern Sky. No, He Built an Island. ‘I, who am called Abdullah and am by trade a munshi or teacher of language, sit here pen in hand remembering. The ink dries on my penpoint but tears remoisten it. I am remembering my old master, an orang puteh or white man from a far cold island, one who was father and mother to me but has abandoned me to a loneliness which only memory can sweeten.’ By God, I would do it. Novel in the morning, short stories in the afternoon. I must go halves with the rent and the provisions. Lion City, that was it. I saw the jacket illustration: a handsome weary man in Regency costume brooding over a plan with a Chinese overseer, a background of coolies hacking at the mangroves. By God, the book was ready except for the writing of it. I deserved a light sleep till Philip’s return and teatime.