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in the dialect of Hokkien by the Chinese servants, and Malay by the Malay gardener. Like many of the Europeans who considered Malaya their home, he had also insisted that all his children receive their education locally as much as possible. We grew up speaking the local languages, as he had himself. It would bind us to Penang forever.
     
     
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I was not close to my siblings before I met Endo-san, being very much the solitary type. I was not interested in the things that fascinated my schoolmates: sports and spider hunting and fighting crickets for money. And because of my mixed parentage I was never completely accepted by either the Chinese or the English of Penang, each race believing itself to be superior. It had always been so. When I was younger I had tried to explain this to my father, when the boys at school had taunted me. But he had dismissed my words, and said I was being silly and too sensitive. I knew then that I had no choice but to harden myself against the insults and whispered comments, and to find my own place in the scheme of life.
     
     
After school I would throw my bag in my room and head for the beach below Istana, climbing down the wooden steps built into the cliff. I spent my afternoons swimming in the sea and reading under the shade of the bowed, rustling coconut trees. I read everything that my father had in his library, even when I did not understand it. When my attention left the pages I would put the book down and catch crabs and dig for clams and crayfish hidden in the sea. The water was warm and clear and the tidal pools were filled with fish and strange marine life. I had a little boat of my own and I was a good sailor.
     
     
My brothers and sister were so much older than I that I spent very little time with them. Isabel, who was five when I was born, was closest to me in age, while my brothers William and Edward were older than I by seven and ten years, respectively. William sometimes tried to include me in whatever he was doing but I always thought he did it as a polite afterthought and, as I grew older, I would make excuses not to join him.
     
     
Yet, despite my preference for being on my own, there were occasions when I enjoyed my siblings’ company. William, who was always trying to impress some girl or other, would organize tennis parties and weekend retreats up into the cooler climate of Penang Hill where, in the olden days before I was born, before the existence of the funicular tram, travelers were borne up in sedan chairs on the shoulders of sweating Chinese coolies. We had a house up on The Hill, which clung on the edge of a sharp drop. It was cold at night up there, a welcome change from the heat of the lowlands, and the lights of Georgetown lay spread out beneath, dimming the stars. Once, Isabel and I became lost in the jungle that covered The Hill after running off the track in search of orchids. She never cried at all and even gave me courage, though I knew she was just as scared as I was. We walked for hours in that green and lush world, until she got us back onto the track again. There were also rounds of parties at Istana where my father entertained, and we were often invited to other parties and receptions, dragon-boat races at the Esplanade, cricket matches, horse races, and any occasion that could justify, even slightly, a reason to dance and drink and laugh. Although I was by necessity included in these invitations, I often felt they were due to the influence my father held more than anything else.
     
     
There was a small island owned by my family about a mile out, thick with trees. It was accessible only from the beach that faced out to the open sea. I spent a lot of my afternoons there imagining I was a castaway, alone in the world. I even used to spend nights on it during those periods when my father was away in Kuala Lumpur.
     
     
Early in 1939, when I was sixteen, my father leased out the little island and warned us not to set foot on it as it was now