The White Pearl (21 page)

‘Good show,’ Nigel called and Teddy clapped.

Razak bowed, holding his catch aloft, a wide smile on his handsome face.

So why did she feel the need to insist on taking the knife away from him to gut the fish herself?

They made a fire – using her matches – and cooked the fish. Teddy caught a pair of speckled lizards with bright yellow eyes
but refused all his father’s urging to roast them over the fire. The rain sheeted down for an hour in the afternoon as it
did most days, and the four of them huddled inside the hut which, to Connie’s amazement, kept them dry with only a few drips
sneaking down her neck. At least it was cooler for a brief time, and Connie was grateful for that. When they emerged from
their cramped confinement into a green world that was waterlogged and steaming around them like a hot bath, she noticed a
restlessness surfacing in Nigel, as though he’d had his fill of this game, and she recalled Sho’s comment about her husband’s
passion.

‘Nigel’, she said, ‘why don’t you take the opportunity to teach Teddy about rubber trees?’

Nigel looked across at his son. ‘Good idea. Would you like that?’

Teddy didn’t exactly jump at the offer.

‘It’ll be your job one of these days,’ Nigel pointed out.

‘I like.’ It was Razak who spoke. He pointed to the rows of rubber trees. ‘I like learn.’

Nigel beamed at the native boy. ‘Come along then, chaps.’

He led them all on foot deeper into the plantation, occasionally touching the mottled bark of a tree as he passed, in the
same way that Connie would ruffle her son’s hair.

‘So, who can tell me their name?’ he boomed as if talking to a class of fifty.

‘They have names?’ Teddy asked.

‘
Pokok getah
,’ Razak offered.

‘Correct. That’s their native Malay name.’

‘
Hevea brasiliensis
,’ Connie smiled.

‘Well done. That’s the scientific name.
Hevea brasiliensis
.’ He repeated it because it sat well on his tongue. He drew them close to a tree to inspect the long diagonal cut that ran
around half the outer circumference like a massive appendix scar. ‘This,’ he said, ‘takes great skill. If a tapper cuts
too deep, he will destroy the productive life of a tree. He has a special knife to excise only a thin sliver of bark, less
than a quarter of an inch, and he makes an incision through the latex vessels. He mustn’t damage the cambium – that’s a paper-like
skin between the bark and the wood – or the tree is ruined. And he has to work fast. I expect a tapper to do between five
hundred and six hundred trees in a day, if he’s any good.’

Connie looked at the huge wound on each tree and felt sorry for them. Sliced open day after day, never allowed to heal. Around
every trunk was a metal wire that held a glazed porcelain cup to the base of the scar where the milky substance had gathered.
Teddy stuck his finger in it.

‘Latex,’ Nigel announced. ‘I make it into rubber down in the smoke-sheds. And do you know why it’s called rubber, my boy?’

Teddy was rolling the white coating on his finger into a tiny ball. ‘Because you can rub it?’

‘Close. It’s because the early growers found that you could rub pencil marks out with it. Simple.’ He pointed to a smear of
white latex that had gathered all down the length of the scar. ‘This is called tree lace.’ He
peeled it off. ‘Already coagulated.’ He rolled it into a sticky ball and tossed it to Teddy. ‘A rubber tree,’ he said, ‘has
enormous tenacity, though they look slender. Their timber is as hard as teak.’

Razak moved closer and tentatively ran his hand over the tree, touching its wound, stroking its bark. ‘How old?’

‘We start tapping seven years after planting, on alternate days throughout the whole year. Yields increase as the tree matures.
Each tree has a production life of about thirty years.’

‘It’s solid now,’ Connie pointed out to Teddy, ‘but it’s liquid when it starts to flow.’

‘Tree blood,’ Razak whispered.

‘That’s right,’ Nigel agreed. ‘It flows better before the heat of the day. That’s why tappers have to start before dawn. They
trek along their grove making the six hundred or so cuts, and then return a few hours later to collect it once the latex has
stopped flowing for that day. They empty each cup into pails and add ammonia if we want to keep it in liquid form. But this,’
he reached into the cup and scraped out a fistful, ‘is called
cup lump.
’ He tossed it to Razak.

‘Thank you.’ Razak bowed. ‘
Terimah kasih
.’

‘It has coagulated.’

Connie smiled.
Coagulated
was not a word that either Razak or Teddy would be familiar with. ‘It’s solid,’ she explained.

‘Coagulated,’ Teddy murmured. He ran to the next tree, his hand hovering over the cup as he looked across at his father for
permission.

‘Go ahead,’ Nigel laughed.

Teddy drew out the viscous substance and started moulding it into a ball. He held it to his nose and sniffed it. In the shifting
light that drifted between the trees, Connie saw something in his young face change, as if he had just smelled his future.

Nigel came over and sat with Connie on a thick branch that was lying on the ground. Not beside her, not close, but still on
the same moss-covered limb. He stretched out his legs in front of him, flicked a cluster of flies from his knee and together
they watched the boys laughing and throwing the rubber balls at each other. Nigel slapped his thigh with satisfaction each
time Teddy scored a direct hit.

‘It’s been a good day,’ Connie said, ‘for all of us.’

He nodded, his attention on the boys.

She waited. ‘What is it, Nigel?’

‘Johnnie Blake is in hospital. His plane crashed on landing. Apparently the undercarriage collapsed.’

Her heart thudded. ‘Oh, poor Johnnie. How badly is he hurt?’

‘It seems his shoulder is in pieces.’

She put a hand over her mouth. ‘But it could have been worse.’

He said nothing.

‘When did you hear?’ she asked.

‘Yesterday.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’

‘No.’ He applauded a good throw by Razak. ‘He’s leaving hospital but has refused to be sent back to England to recuperate,
so he’s coming to Palur. I’ve invited him to stay at Hadley House. I don’t want him stuck at the Victoria Club on his own.’

‘Of course not. When is he arriving?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Nigel, you might have discussed it with me earlier.’

‘I’m discussing it now.’

Connie could feel sweat gathering in the hollow of her collar bones and a beetle, the colour of dung and the size of a ping-pong
ball, started to crawl up onto her shoe. She kicked it off.

‘We’ll take good care of him,’ she said, and rose to her feet. ‘I’m going to check on the horses.’

As she started to move away, Nigel said behind her, ‘I’ll hold you to your promise, Constance. Don’t forget it.’

Without comment, she walked down towards the river.

She watered the horses and leaned her forehead against the hot hide of her mare.

‘Oh, poor Johnnie,’ she murmured.

She crouched at the river’s edge, a pair of bright yellow butterflies chasing each other around the rocks like children. She
dipped her hat in the tepid water of the river, shook it, then placed it on her head once more, cooling her thoughts, but
a rough noise nearby made her turn. A noise like a smoker’s gravelly cough. She opened her eyes.

Oh, Christ!

Six feet away from her crouched a giant monitor lizard. Connie didn’t move a muscle. The monster creature looked like the
cousin of a
crocodile, longer than a man, its huge scaly body built of solid muscle. Its narrow head darted forward, flicking out a grey
tongue, tasting the air, smelling her sweat while the tiny eyes remained fixed on her. Its massive tail started to whip back
and forth, shuffling the stones by the river, frightening the horses.

Slowly, Connie uncurled from her position at the water’s edge and rose to her feet. Not often did monitor lizards attack humans,
that’s what they said, unless the humans were small or wounded. Or dead. Its fleshy mouth opened and hissed at her. She started
to back up the slope from the river, and that was when a scream started somewhere behind her. A high-pitched scream that went
on and on and froze the blood in her veins. It was Teddy.

She forgot the lizard. She turned and flew up the bank, racing towards her son. At the top she saw that Teddy was running
towards her, his mouth wide open, showing all his small white teeth, his screams solidifying into one desperate word: ‘Mummeeee!’

He was covered in blood.

There was blood on his hands. On his shirt. On the V of his throat. Running down his small tanned leg into his shoe.
No, no, no!

He flew into her arms, stinking of blood and fear. She swept him up, racing back towards their camp hut. She saw Razak, standing
and looking down at something on the ground.

‘Mummy,’ Teddy screamed in her ear. ‘Daddy’s hurt.’

Connie held Teddy close, inhaling the heat of his skin and the dirt in his hair. ‘You’re bleeding.’

‘No. It’s Daddy …’ Tears were streaking down his cheeks.

She reached the hut.

‘Nigel!’

Her husband was on the ground, lying flat on his back, both arms wrapped around his face as though holding everything in.
‘Constance.’ The word came out through clenched teeth. ‘For God’s sake, help me.’

His trouser leg was soaked in blood from the ankle all the way up to the thigh. Quickly Connie stood her son on the ground,
kissed his cheek and knelt on the damp grass beside her husband. Already it was thick with blood under her knee.

‘It’s all right, Nigel,’ she said calmly. ‘Let me take a look at it.’ Without raising her head she said, ‘Razak, move Teddy
away, please.’ Her eyes
skimmed the immediate area and spotted the
parang
lying nearby. There was blood on the blade.

‘What happened?’

She started to lift the torn material off his leg. It was drenched in scarlet and stuck to his skin, but she eased it away
as gently as she could. She heard Nigel’s sharp intake of breath, his faint sob. What she saw made bile shoot up to her throat.
The flesh of one whole side of his calf was severed from his leg, hanging on by a flimsy flap of skin, blood pouring into
the cavity. Bone showed red and glistening, tendons drowning in the mess.

‘From
parang
,’ Razak whispered over her shoulder.

‘Who did it?’

‘
Tuan
, of course. He do it.’

‘Nigel,’ she bent over her husband’s face and peeled his arms away. The pallor of his skin shocked her. His lips were blue.
‘It’s OK, Nigel. Not too bad. I don’t think the bone is broken but you’re losing blood.’ As she spoke she tore off her blouse,
leaving her half decent in a damp silk chemise, and yanked out the leather cord that held her hat on. ‘I’ll do everything
I can.’ His brown eyes were so dark they were almost purple, and didn’t look like Nigel’s. ‘It will hurt, I’m afraid, but
…’ She touched his cheek.

He nodded and closed his eyes, sweat beading on his skin. Immediately she bound the hat cord around his leg just above the
knee, and fastened it as tightly as she could. She seized a thin stick from the ground, pushed it under the cord and twisted
until the tourniquet bit into his skin. Connie had never dealt with a wound before, nothing worse than a scratch or a shallow
cut, and the sight of this one terrified her. But her fingers were steady as she inspected it closely.

‘Nigel,’ she said in a firm voice, ‘don’t worry. It’s just a flap of flesh that is lying open. I’ll close it, bandage it up
and get you home. Doctor Rossiter will give you stitches. You’re going to be fine.’

Just a flap of flesh.
A lump of gore hanging by a thread.

I’ll get you home.
How? How, in this godforsaken country?

With relief she fetched the hip flask of antiseptic, poured a few drops over her fingers, then began picking out the snippets
of bark and leaf that the
parang
had deposited in the wound. Everything was soaked in blood, but the flow of it was definitely stemming now that she had tied
the strap around his leg. The tourniquet must be hurting Nigel, but it was
doing its job and only once did he let out a brief shout when she pulled a flake of bark and a length of muscle lifted up
with it.

She murmured to him non-stop, a gentle flow of words. She had no idea what they were, as she sluiced antiseptic over the raw
flesh and heard him grunt. Sweat was stinging her eyes. When she looked up she was astonished to see Razak kneeling on one
side of Nigel holding his hand and muttering to him in Malay, while Teddy knelt on his other side, gripping his hand as if
he were drowning, never taking his stricken eyes from his father’s face.

Nigel’s skin was gunmetal grey but his eyes were open, his mouth set in a tight line. Connie’s heart went out to him, as she
wiped the sweat from her eyes with the back of her hand and set about closing the wound. She lifted the loose chunk of his
calf and pressed it back on his leg, holding it down hard and trying to ignore the mute shivers that shook her husband’s body.
With care she smoothed the ridges from the skin, pulling the edges straight, and then bandaged her blouse around his leg.
She cut strips off the sleeves to use as ties to keep it tight.

‘There,’ she said and from somewhere the muscles of her face found the strength to smile. ‘All done. I’ve fixed it up as best
I can until a doctor can take a look at it. But the leg will be fine, I’m sure.’

‘Thank you.’

He said it so politely, she had to fight back tears.
I’m your wife, Nigel, your wife.

Her hands were smeared with blood, so she wiped them on the grass while Teddy rounded up the horses and led them over. She
gave him a hug. Razak was silent, still on his knees beside Nigel, but his large black eyes were on Connie. He gave no sign
of what was going on in his head and it took all her self-control not to shout at him the things that were going on in hers.