Bowen said, “What about Phyllis Williams? She was a nurse here, wasn’t she?”
“Oh, her,” the sister said disparagingly. “She was here for the first part of the war until she married that man. She might know something about it.”
They left the hospital, and as they drove to find Phyllis Williams Mrs. Bowen enlightened Jean. “She’s a Eurasian,” she said. “Very dark, almost as dark as a Malay. She married a Chinese, a man called Bun Tai Lin who runs the cinema. What you’d call a mixed marriage, but they seem to get along all right. She’s a Roman Catholic, of course.” Jean never fathomed the “of course.”
The Bun Tai Lins lived in a rickety wooden house up the hill overlooking the harbour. They could not get the car to the house, but left it in the road and walked up a short lane littered with
