Summary

The chapter begins with Auntie May of the Baptist Mission striding up the gangplank, set to deliver a one-week-old baby home to his father. A week earlier, Mrs. Feathers had left from the same dock with a Malaysian wet-nurse to go have her baby in the hospital at the Port town. Though the mother-to-be had been serene throughout the journey, she contracted puerperal fever after giving birth and died shortly after meeting her baby son, whom she named Edward.

Edward’s father is Alistair Feathers, a shell-shocked Scottish veteran of WWI and District Officer of Kotakinakulu province in Malaya. When the boat docked, Edward was handed off to the only person awaiting their arrival: Ada, the wet-nurse’s 12-year-old daughter. Before she left again, Auntie May paid Ada to wait with the baby on his father’s porch every day...