The White Pearl (26 page)

She had a second for thought, a single spike of clarity.
Take care of Teddy. I’m sorry, Nigel, but take good care of my precious son.
Then the wall leaped forward and rammed into the side of her head. She felt her ear split. Blackness, thick as soot, stifled
her mind and she forgot how to breathe.

When Connie led Teddy out of the library basement after the air-raid, the sight of the wanton destruction of Palur tore at
her heart. Bodies were being extracted from the rubble but ambulances were caring for the living, so the dead were being laid
out on the backs of trucks, each covered respectfully with a layer of sacking.

Fitzpayne insisted on accompanying Connie. ‘To see you safe,’ he said with a frown. ‘Looters are around.’

Teddy was pale and clung to her hand. ‘What are looters?’

‘People who take what is not theirs.’

‘Like pirates?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Will they go to jail?’

‘If they’re caught.’

All along the street people were bent over, sifting through broken masonry and girders. Looters? Or rescuers? Connie didn’t
know and didn’t care. She just wanted to get Teddy home. Shadows had formed under his eyes that had never been there before.

‘Look,’ Connie pointed up ahead. ‘There’s our Chrysler.’ It was parked at the kerb exactly where she had left it.

‘I’ll see if Ho Bah is there,’ Teddy said and ran towards the car, eager for the journey home.

Fitzpayne glanced sideways at her. ‘Don’t look so worried. He’s young, he’ll get over this.’

‘I hope so.’

‘I see your windscreen is shattered.’

‘Damn them! Damn all Japs to hell!’

He made no comment on her sudden outburst. Ahead of them, Teddy had reached the car. She saw his mouth open and shut, and
his stringy legs grow rigid as he stared through the side window. She broke into a run.

‘Oh, Ho Bah!’ she moaned.

He was there. In the car. Lying slumped across the front seat, a bullet wound in his forehead, almost no blood, just a neat
round hole. Teddy uttered a single harsh cry when she wrapped her arms around him. Fitzpayne lifted the
syce
’s scrawny old body as easily as if it were a chicken’s carcass and placed it on the rear seat of the Chrysler. Connie covered
it gently with a rug from the boot while Fitzpayne swept the glass from the shattered windscreen off the front seats. She
climbed into the front passenger seat, pulling Teddy onto her lap, and Fitzpayne took the driver’s seat.

It took a long time to drive out of Palur. Roads were cratered, streets blocked by collapsed buildings and fallen telegraph
poles, but with patience and care Fitzpayne eventually made it onto the road that ran through the plantation to Hadley House.
On the front seat Connie cradled Teddy’s head on her shoulder and told her son how proud of him she was. He didn’t cry.
He didn’t moan, but all the way his teeth chattered fiercely.

After the fight with Sho in the hut, Connie had come back to consciousness with a start. Her head hurt. When she opened her
eyes she realised she was sprawled on her back on the floor of the hut, her hands roped together in front of her. Her whole
face throbbed and her nose was blocked with blood so she breathed softly through her mouth. Her heart was banging in her chest.
Shohei Takehashi was sitting on the bed fully dressed, studying her with an expression that was so sad it frightened her.
She thought about sitting up, but wasn’t sure she could make it yet and didn’t want him to see her fail, so she stayed where
she was.

‘Sho,’ she said. Her voice came out thick but steadier than she expected. ‘You said you loved me.’

‘I do.’

‘Then let me go. I will tell no one what I saw in your diary.’

He smiled, a slight twitch of his lips. ‘We both know that isn’t true.’

‘If you let me go I will come with you to Japan.’

For a moment something flared in his dark eyes, something like triumph. He had got what he wanted. ‘You would come?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can I trust you?’

When he moved off the bed and crouched close beside her, she quickly pushed herself upright. She didn’t want his help.

He stroked her hair. ‘You look a mess, my sweetheart.’

The room and his face were swaying in and out of focus. ‘Please, untie me.’

He continued to stroke her hair, but all the time shook his head slowly. She knew then. Knew that the hardness in his eyes
and the sad shake of his head were not about the rope around her wrists. She was too much of a threat to him now – he intended
to rid himself of her. With quiet determination she forced her legs into action and managed to stand. He rose to his feet
and stared at her cautiously.

‘Sho, there’s no need to make this worse than it is.’

She tried to remember where her car keys were. How far down the jungle track was the Chrysler parked? Could she run?

Yes. Yes, I can run. I can run for my life, for Teddy’s life.

‘Sho, don’t do this. Let’s both leave our relationship here and walk away.’

‘I can’t walk away from you, Connie. You have bewitched me, and because of you I made mistakes. Because of you I wrote too
much in English in my notes. Maybe …’ he leaned forward to caress her damaged face but she backed away, ‘maybe somewhere
deep in my heart I wanted you to know.’

‘Why would you want me to know?’

‘Because then I would have to kill you, and that’s the only way I can be free of you.’

He said it calmly. No fuss, no threat. As if he were talking about kissing her.

‘I’m leaving, Sho. Don’t try to …’

Before the words were out of her mouth he had a knife in his hand. She had no idea where it came from but its blade was wafer
thin, the kind of stiletto that she imagined assassins of popes had used in Italy through the centuries. She could picture
the steel sliding neatly between her ribs. She drew a deep breath and prepared to scream, to batter him with her roped wrists
and hurl herself out of the hut. She stood little
chance, she knew that, but she wasn’t going to stay here and do nothing.

It was the Malayan jungle itself that came to her aid, the jungle she hated so much. A troop of gibbon monkeys came crashing
down from the trees, howling and screeching at each other as they hounded an intruder out of their territory, filling the
air outside the hut with their noisy aggression. Sho turned his head and glanced out of the window at them, but the moment
his attention shifted, she raised her hands and slammed them between his shoulder blades to force him out of her path. He
grunted and stumbled. She raced for the door knocking against him as she ran. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him lose
his balance and topple forward, but she didn’t slow down till her hand was on the door.

Then a sound stopped her. Through the fog of pain and rage and fear, it penetrated. It was a thin, eerie scream. She looked
back. Sho was lying flat on his face, a crimson flower blossoming around him, and from his throat came a sucking, gurgling
noise that turned her stomach.

Run! Don’t stay!

But she stepped back into the room. Warily she bent over her lover and turned him over. The knife was sticking out of his
throat, his hand still clutching the ivory hilt, and blood was pumping in a torrent over his shirt front. He had landed on
the blade when he fell.

‘Sho!’

She tore her blouse over her head, thwarted by the rope on her wrists, and jammed it against the wound but air continued to
bubble out of it, gurgling as he fought to breathe. Quickly, she withdrew the knife from his throat. It slipped out with a
soft squelch that was to haunt her dreams every night for months to come. With her blouse clamped tight to try to stem the
blood, she leaned close, her heart frantic in her chest, and she placed her lips on his. Slowly, she breathed out into his
mouth, again and again.

‘Breathe, Sho!’ she cried. ‘Breathe!’

But there was no response. His body shuddered, then lay still. Within seconds she saw all signs of life slide out of his eyes.
They became nothing but black holes in his skull, and she knew he was dead.

‘Sho!’ she screamed.

Yet she kept breathing air into his mouth. Harder and faster. As if she could force life back into his limp body against its
will.

‘Sho, don’t go,’ she whispered.

She wiped the blood from his lips and tasted it on her own teeth as she drove air relentlessly into his lungs, hearing it
escape in a whistle from the hole in his throat. Eventually, her chest heaving with exhaustion, she sat back on her heels
and stroked his lifeless cheek.

‘Sho,’ she said softly, ‘I can’t let you take my son from me.’

Connie sat on the floor beside Shohei Takehashi’s body for three hours. The blood dried around her, turning as black and sticky
as molasses. She felt his skin grow cold despite the heat of the afternoon, his flesh starting to shrivel on his bones as
she fanned away the insects. A yellow lizard sidled across the dark patch on the boards beneath him, lifting its feet daintily
one at a time. Glossy-backed flies came in swarms, drawn by the stink of fresh blood, and she flapped them away from Sho’s
throat but they settled on her own face instead.

Finally, she rose to her feet and wrapped a pillowcase around Sho’s head. She used the blade, holding it awkwardly, to cut
the rope around her wrists and then, tucking his feet under her armpits, she hauled him on his back out of the hut. His head
bounced down the three steps,
thump, thump, thump.

Her knees grew weak beneath her but she dragged him to the river’s edge. If she rolled the body into the brown, muddy river
it might be devoured in hours and vanish. But it might also float like a log and wash up somewhere downstream where it could
be found by villagers or fishermen. She squatted beside him with her face in her hands, rocking back and forth, a low keening
sound escaping from her throat. She knew that if she told the police what she had done she would lose her son for ever.

She pushed herself to her feet, entered the hut, gathered up all their belongings, including the attaché case and diary, and
made a bonfire of them. Then she scattered the ashes on the water’s surface in a kind of burial service for her Japanese lover.
Several times in the past month she and Sho had watched a monitor lizard, a huge seven-foot carnivore, emerge from the mangroves
and pace out the beach as he marked his territory. She acted rapidly now. With the knife she made a diagonal cut across
her left arm, and when the blood was flowing fast she threaded a trail of scarlet droplets all the way from the mangroves
to the body of Sho on the riverbank.
Come and eat me.

Her hands were shaking as they held the keys to her car, and to Sho’s
Ford. She set off walking down the track, unaware of the tears streaking her face.

Nigel had been standing on the doorstep waiting for her when at last she drove home from the jungle that day.

‘What in God’s name has happened to you, Constance?’

‘I went for a walk. I climbed up the rocks around Malu, trying to find somewhere cool to sit and catch the breeze up there.
I fell.’

‘You look as if you’ve been hit by a bus.’

‘I must go and wash. I don’t want Teddy to see me like this.’

‘I’ll call Dr Rossiter.’

‘No, don’t. I’m all right.’

‘No, I insist.’

‘Nigel, please.’

‘Look at you. You’re hurt. I’m telephoning …’

‘No. This once. Just … let me rest.’

‘Constance, other people’s wives don’t arrive home covered in blood. Why is it that it is always you who are different, always
you who never fits in?’

‘No, Nigel, you’re mistaken. I’m not the one who is out of step with the rest of the world. It’s the rest of this damn world
of Malaya that’s out of step with me.’

This time, when Fitzpayne drove her home from the raid in Palur, it was Johnnie Blake waiting on the doorstep, shading his
eyes against the sun’s glare with his good arm. Fitzpayne made no move to climb out of the car.

‘Thank you, Fitz,’ she said gently.

‘Take care of that son of yours.’

‘I will.’

‘I’ll leave the car behind the stables.’

‘No, take it. Use it to go back to town; I don’t want you to have to walk the eight miles. You’ve done more than enough today,
and anyway there might be another air raid.’ She peered sadly over her shoulder at the rug on the back seat. It was rumpled
where the car had jolted over ruts, and the
syce
’s hand had fallen into view. ‘Ho Bah will be buried on the estate here. We’ll give him a good funeral, won’t we, Teddy?’
She ruffled her son’s dusty hair.

Teddy didn’t reply. The boy suddenly tore himself from her embrace and leaped out of the car as if he couldn’t bear to sit
in it a moment longer. He rushed past Johnnie into the house. Everything seemed to be tearing apart.

‘Constance!’

Nigel was standing in the drawing room, propped up on a wooden crutch. His other arm encircled his son, crushing the slight
figure to his chest, and Teddy leaned against him, face buried, his small shoulders quivering. At the sight of them so close,
Connie felt an overwhelming wave of love that stifled any words.

‘Constance!’ Nigel said again.

His face was grey and he needed a shave. It was unheard of for Nigel not to shave. The expression on his face shocked her.
It was one of utter anguish, and she quickly crossed the room to him.

‘I’m so glad to be home,’ she said truthfully.

He let the crutch fall to the floor with a clatter and draped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her into a tight circle
with himself and Teddy. Nigel’s chest was heaving. Connie rested her cheek against his, felt the roughness of his stubble
and rubbed her skin over it again and again.

That night, a storm hit. Rain sheeted down, hammering at the shutters and drowning any expectation of another air raid. The
wind hauled at the trees, ripping off branches and hurling them through the blackness with cracking and thumping sounds that
made Connie’s heart pound. She couldn’t sleep, with or without the storm. She paced the bedroom. Damn it, she wanted a cigarette.
A small lamp cast a dim light on her side of the bed and shadows sneaked around the room, creeping up on her like thieves.