The White Pearl (41 page)

She watched him breathe, her eyes focused on his narrow chest. Such slight bones; he was scarcely more than a youth. His chin
was hairless, his skin as smooth as ivory, yet his hands were broad and capable, his fingers large-knuckled like a farm boy’s.
Is that what he is?
A farm boy torn off his land and thrown up into the sky by his glorious Emperor Hirohito?

She had bandaged his chest, a large dressing pressed down on the wound. Blood had flowed onto the bedsheets, but the damage
to him was less severe than she had feared. A large flap of skin had been gouged from his chest, hanging on by a narrow thread,
crinkled and slippery. She had to flatten it out and douse it with antiseptic, and as she did so she could make out the white
bones of his ribs, gleaming with the scarlet gore. But they seemed intact, and though his lungs were choked with sea-water,
they had recovered quickly when she breathed into them. His right collar bone was broken, rising at an odd angle, and his
forehead had been scraped and bruised under his flying helmet.

But he was alive. And she intended to keep him that way. So she watched him breathe, hour after hour.

A knock sounded on the bedroom door. It jerked her mind back to the present, to the stultifying little cabin that stank of
antiseptic and sweat. Through the porthole she could see a blazing blue sky.

‘Come in,’ she said.

The door opened and Teddy scampered in, his eyes darting from her to the Japanese pilot and back. There was something wistful
in the turn of his mouth, a quiver of loneliness, and she wrapped an arm around him, drawing him to her side. Behind him in
the doorway stood Fitzpayne. His quick eyes examined her more closely than she would have wished.

‘It’s too hot in here,’ he announced.

He was right. She was drenched in sweat.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

The question surprised her. She’d expected him to ask after the pilot.

‘I’m fine.’

Fitzpayne smiled. ‘So a bit of drowning does the intrepid Mrs Hadley no harm.’

‘Apparently not.’

Teddy patted her arm. ‘You’re well, aren’t you, Mummy?’

‘Yes, I am. I am also grateful to you, Mr Fitzpayne, for …’

‘It was nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘I couldn’t resist the chance of seeing Henry Court’s face when you dragged a Japanese
pilot on board.’ He chuckled. ‘So, is he awake?’

All three stared at the inert figure on the bed.

‘I think so,’ she said, ‘though his eyes are shut.’

‘Has he spoken?’ Teddy whispered.

‘Yes, several times. He suddenly flicks open his eyes, gives me a black stare without blinking for minutes on end and then
hisses something at me.’

‘What does he say?’ Teddy asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t speak Japanese. But it’s not good, that much I can recognise. He hates me.’

Teddy kissed her cheek. ‘Shall I bring you a drink?’ he offered.

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Fitzpayne said, and pulled a length of rope from his pocket. ‘Let’s all go up on deck where there’s
a breeze. Your mother needs some fresh air.’

Connie reluctantly shook her head. ‘I have to watch over …’

‘Your patient is coming with us. That’s what the rope is for.’

She looked at Fitzpayne, astonished. The eyes of the Japanese on the bed opened a narrow slit and Fitzpayne barked out instructions
in an unfamiliar language.

‘Is that Japanese you’re speaking?’ Teddy asked, impressed.

‘
Hai.
’ Fitzpayne bowed politely over his hands, exactly as Sho used to do. ‘Yes, it is.’

He dangled the rope in front of Connie and raised one of his thick eyebrows questioningly. She turned to regard the pilot.

‘
Hai
,’ she said at last. ‘Yes.’

Throughout the afternoon, waves of aircraft droned overhead. Teddy stayed glued to the binoculars and his high, excited voice
called out at regular intervals.

‘Six Brewster Buffaloes. Two Hurricanes.’

‘Eighteen bombers. Japanese.’

‘Ten Zero fighters. Japanese.’

‘Four Bristol Blenheim bombers. One C-type flying boat.’

The sight of them glinting like shoals of fish in the arc of blue beyond the trees induced a sombre mood on deck.
The White Pearl
was yet again tucked out of sight. She had nosed her way into a tunnel, where a silt-laden river was overhung by the jungle
canopy with long sword-shaped leaves rustling and birds whistling. A set of leopard prints stood out clear and fresh in the
mud on the bank. Again Fitzpayne had been patching up the damage to the hull with oakum and pitch, caused this time by the
Zero’s impact. Connie had watched him work, sweating in the heat. She thanked all the gods of Malaya that this resourceful
man had chosen to sail
The White Pearl
from Palur. Whatever his reasons.

‘I say we should dump the bastard here. He’d be picked up soon enough. The Jap troops are swarming all over these bloody islands.’

Henry and Nigel were arguing. Henry wanted to get rid of the Japanese pilot immediately, but to Connie’s surprise Nigel declined
to do so.

‘We hand him over to the proper authorities when we reach somewhere suitable,’ Nigel insisted.

‘And in the meantime, he eats our food and we have to watch out that he doesn’t murder us in our beds. You know how sly Japs
are.’

‘Henry,’ Connie pointed out, ‘he’s tied up. There is no danger. He is injured, and Fitzpayne says this island is uninhabited.
He would die here.’

‘So? One less to worry about.’

‘Henry,’ Nigel said curtly, ‘the man will be dealt with according to British prisoner-of-war standards. We all know the inhumane
things the Japanese troops did when they invaded China, but I will not stoop to their level.’

Henry stalked off across the deck, but Connie walked over to the bench to sit beside her husband and lightly touched his shoulder.

‘Thank you, Nigel,’ she said.

He looked up at her for a moment, squinting against the sunlight, the lines on his face growing deeper as he did so. ‘I want
you to be happy, Constance.’ He didn’t smile as he said it, and she felt the unexpected sincerity of his words.

‘And you, Nigel? Are you happy?’

His lips came together in a fixed line. ‘Of course. Except for this damned war.’

*

‘
Bushido
– it is the code of the samurai warrior.’

Connie was bandaging Fitzpayne’s hand, listening to his explanation of the Japanese pilot’s behaviour. A chisel that Madoc
was using had slipped and gouged a chunk of flesh from the base of Fitzpayne’s thumb, forcing him to come up on deck. Kitty
had apologised on her husband’s behalf, but Fitzpayne had given her a black look and suggested she save her apologies for
something accidental rather than intentional. And Kitty, instead of protesting her husband’s innocence, burst out laughing,
shaking her full bosom and wiping sweat from under her arms.

‘I’ll smack his bottom,’ she chuckled, and ambled below.

To Connie’s surprise, Fitzpayne had watched her broad hips squeeze down the stairway and grinned. ‘She’s too good for that
no-good drifter,’ he laughed.

Connie experienced a moment of surprise and she regarded him with amusement. ‘She’s a great help,’ she said, ‘to him and to
us.’

He nodded. ‘She can cook, and she knows how to haul a rope. Under all that flesh there are muscles a man would be proud of.’

The Japanese pilot was sitting in his patch of shade next to the mast, staring at her with implacable hatred. His hands were
lashed together in front of him, and his ankle was tethered like a goat to the main-mast.

‘
Bushido
,’ she echoed. ‘The Way of the Warrior. Tell me about it.’

‘It’s the ancient code of the samurai warrior, and is still taught to Japanese children from an early age,’ Fitz explained.
‘It emphasises loyalty, honour and obedience.’

When he spoke about such things, Connie liked the way his face became more expressive, more mobile.

She continued to wind a bandage around the bones of his wrist, aware of the weight of it in her hand. ‘Those are qualities
we all wish for in our children.’

‘Yes, the Japanese place great worth on filial piety and self-sacrifice.’

‘Ah, self-sacrifice.’ She glanced at the dark head beside the mast.

‘Even now they believe that their Emperor Hirohito is a god in human form. They worship him and feel honoured to die for him.
For them, life is a constant preparation for death, and to die a good death with one’s honour intact is the ultimate aim of
life.’

Connie thought of Sho, heard the thud of his head on the steps. A bad death. And now this pilot, desperate to die.

‘No wonder he hates me. I have robbed him of his glory,’ she
murmured, and tied the ends of the bandage together. For a moment he left his hand lying in hers.

‘Don’t think of that. It is a young man’s empty-headed idealism. When he is old and grey he will bow down and kiss your feet
with gratitude.’

‘You speak Japanese fluently.’

He reacted as if she had accused him of something unpleasant.

‘I lived there for a time,’ he said. ‘Not long. My Japanese is poor.’

It didn’t sound poor to her when he shouted orders at the pilot.

‘I see,’ she said.

But she didn’t see. Didn’t understand why the warmth had gone.

‘The monsoon rain is coming,’ he said abruptly. ‘You’d better get below. We’ll sail before dark.’

He was right about the rain. Vast, merciless sheets of it pounded the river into a swirling torrent, stirring up the mud and
hammering
The White Pearl
until her masts rattled in their sockets. But Connie liked monsoon rain. She welcomed its total commitment, no half measures.
It was all or nothing. She pulled on her yellow oilskins once more and climbed back up on deck to check on the Japanese pilot,
who was huddled under a stretch of canvas. She offered him a cigarette but he refused, saying nothing, his black eyes full
of hatred of her.

‘A life, whether good or bad,’ she told him, ‘is better than death of any kind. You are a prisoner-of-war. There is no dishonour
in that.’

But his hatred crawled all over her like lice. She turned her back on him.

‘They don’t think the way we do,’ Fitzpayne called out to her from the boat’s rail. He was encased in his own oilskins, but
without the ugly hood. His head was bare, his hair flattened to his skull, glossy as a seal.

‘Don’t let Madoc throw him overboard, will you?’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at him. He hates the Japs for what
they did to his home.’

‘Your friend Henry is the one to watch. He lost his wife to a Jap bullet. He’d feed that pilot to the sharks piece by piece
if he could.’ His gaze studied her through the veil of rain. ‘I can’t say I blame him.’

‘A life for a life, is that what you think? That it’s a fair exchange?’

‘Something like that.’

‘That’s harsh.’

‘So, what do you believe? That a person should turn the other cheek and embrace the enemy?’

‘No.’ She had to shout above the barrage of noise from the rain. ‘I believe everyone has their own path to walk. No one knows
what goes on inside someone else’s head.’ She paused and stared out across the churning river mouth. In the dark swathes of
jungle that climbed all over the island, birds called boisterously to each other, cocooned in a million different shifting
greens, the foliage so thick it looked solid. Connie found herself seeking faces within it. Japanese faces. Japanese guns.
‘I don’t know what goes on inside your head,’ she finished.

He laughed, a great roar of sound that startled a gibbon that was hanging by one skinny arm from a branch in the pouring rain.
It startled her too. ‘You wouldn’t want to know, I assure you,’ he told her. When he was amused his face changed shape, realigning
its bones. The hard edges of his jaw and even the deep sockets of his eyes softened as he looked at her. ‘It’s as dark and
misshapen in there as that patch of jungle you’re staring at. Too muddy for your pretty white hands.’

She looked down at her fingers. At the newly formed pads of muscle and the roughness of their skin from handling the ropes.

‘Is that what you think? Pretty and white?’ She said the last words with scorn. ‘I see them differently.’

She saw them covered in scarlet. Ugly hands.

‘What I think is that you should be kinder to yourself.’

Such unexpectedly gentle words from him. When she looked up again, his smile had transformed his eyes from their usual slate
grey to a pale silvery shade she had never seen before, the colour of the rain itself, and she forced herself to look away.
She didn’t want to make a fool of her-self. She didn’t want to cry. She had a question to ask him.

‘Why are they doing it?’ she queried. ‘You know this part of the world. Why did the Japanese launch into this war? I know
they are winning at the moment, and are seizing oilfields and other resources, but …’ She shook her head. ‘It’s suicidal.
How can they possibly expect to defeat the might of the British Empire and the United States in the long term?’

He accepted the change of subject with a shrug of his bright yellow shoulders. ‘It’s exactly the long term that they are aiming
for.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They want to launch a savage blow against white feudalism. To demonstrate to the Western world who is the natural leader
of the Asian races in the future.’ He glanced northward through the drenched green
hills, as though drawn by the force of Japan’s will. ‘They will win in the end, the Japanese. Whoever is victorious in this
war, it marks the end of Western dominance in the east.’

‘Good riddance to us, I say.’

He laughed again, an edge to it this time. ‘Your husband may not agree with you there.’

Connie said nothing. Because there was nothing to say.

I HATE RAZAK.

Below deck, the words jumped out at Connie from the page in big thick capital letters, black and spiky. Her hackles rose.
What had Razak done to warrant such an outburst in her son’s diary?

She knew she shouldn’t be reading it at all. It was private, and she was acutely aware of that fact. She had promised him
she wouldn’t do so when she gave the notebook to him, but he had left it on deck when Fitzpayne summoned him down below to
study the charts. He had scuttled at Fitzpayne’s heels, forgetting his diary. The rain had seeped into its pages. Connie held
it between two fingers, dripping, and knew that Teddy would be mortified, so she had slipped down to her cabin to dry it off.