The White Pearl (46 page)

Teddy jumped off the bed. He pulled on his shorts and shirt, eager to be involved, but she made him sit beside her and spoke
to him quietly.

‘Teddy, this isn’t a game. Not a pirate story in a book.’

‘I know.’ His young face looked hurt. ‘I’m seven now.’

‘You must remain down here. It’s safer.’

‘No, Mummy, please.’

‘We don’t know yet what they might do.’

‘I’ll be good, I promise, I’ll be quiet.’

She took his precious face in her hands and kissed his head, still
smelling of sleep. ‘I know you will. That’s why I want you to hide. They won’t even know you’re here.’

‘No!’

‘Yes, Teddy.’

‘No!’ He gripped her hand and pulled it from his face. She was astonished at his strength. ‘Mummy, I don’t want to lose you
too. Let me stay with you,’ he burrowed his shoulder tight against her. ‘Please, Mummy, please.’

She wrapped her arms around his slight frame, rocking him, rocking herself. ‘All right, Teddy,’ she murmured into his hair,
‘we’ll do this together.’

They sat locked together, listening for noises from above but there were no voices, no footsteps, no sounds of life except
the shriek of gulls as they wheeled overhead.

‘Teddy,’ she said softly.

He tilted his face up to hers, and with her thumb she smoothed out the neat little furrow between his eyes once more. It felt
gritty with sorrow. She managed a smile for him.

‘Teddy, these men could be …’ she didn’t want to say the word
dangerous
, so she changed it, ‘… could be unpredictable. Do nothing to antagonise them, nothing to annoy them. They are not in
any way like Long John Silver or Captain Hook. Do you understand?’

‘Don’t worry, Mummy, Mr Fitzpayne will make his friends be nice to us.’

‘Of course he will.’

He gave her a tentative smile. ‘But Daddy wouldn’t like them on our boat, would he?’

‘No, I don’t think he would.’

An image crowded her mind. It was of Razak on his knees, his forehead pressed to the deck, praying aloud and calling out in
an eerie wail to the spirit of his dead mother to save
Tuan
Hadley in the water. It jolted her; added to the weight of her sorrow. She wiped a hand across her face as if she could physically
wipe it away like a smear of blood.

When she looked down, Teddy’s concerned eyes were staring up at her, and she wondered how long she had been silent. She cupped
his chin in her hand.

‘Teddy, there is no second chance in life. We have to get this right.’

*

On deck, nothing was happening.
The White Pearl
’s sails lay furled, and the boat rolled like a drunk on the great swell of the waves that barrelled in from the Pacific Ocean.
The sun broke free of the horizon and began to haul itself up inch by inch. Today it seemed a huge effort.

Fitzpayne was pacing the deck of the
pinisiq
in deep discussion with Nurul, the man with the gold teeth who had come on board. The other boat’s hull was longer than
The White Pearl
’s, with raw, salt-stained timbers and a patched mainsail. The expanse of its deck was divided up by two large hatch covers,
and Connie wondered what lay beneath them in the hold – something heavy enough to make the
pinisiq
ride low in the water. Maybe Fitzpayne is telling the truth when he maintained it was a trading vessel, sailing out of sight
of Japanese attack planes, dodging between islands as they were doing themselves. Maybe.

Or maybe not.

She approached Johnnie and Henry Court, aware of the Japanese pilot eyeing her warily from his usual position at the base
of the mast. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She had put Pippin on a lead and placed the end of it firmly in Teddy’s hand.

‘Johnnie, what’s going on?’

‘We think Fitzpayne must be making some kind of deal with them.’

‘What kind of deal?’

‘We don’t know. But we’re guessing it’s to his advantage, not ours. These men mean trouble for us, that’s obvious.’

Henry leaned forward, his forehead moist, and in a low voice suggested, ‘Let’s make a run for it. While this Fitzpayne chap
is on their boat, let’s hoist
The White Pearl
’s sails and make …’

‘No,’ Connie said sharply. ‘I hired him because he knows these waters. We don’t know them at all. I trust him.’

‘Nigel didn’t,’ Johnnie pointed out gently.

‘That’s not fair, Johnnie. Nigel is not here.’

‘I know.’ He shook his head, his lips tight. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

She nodded. Sorry was a slender word.

‘Listen to me,’ Henry insisted, ‘we have charts. We can navigate ourselves away from here.’

‘Henry, talk sense.
The White Pearl
is taking on water. She’s unstable and slow and in serious need of repair. The other boat would overhaul us easily.’

‘So what the hell is your Fitzpayne talking about to men of that kind? I don’t like it.’

Connie didn’t like it either, but she didn’t rise to the provocation. ‘We shall have to ask him,’ she said sourly. ‘I’m sure
he has a good reason.’

But when Fitzpayne leaped back over the rail, she had her doubts. She had a strange sense of losing the man with whom she
had shared cigarettes and sat up drinking whisky after the storm, a feeling that the figure standing before her now – with
his dark hair turning to copper in the rising sun and a new, unfamiliar energy to his limbs – was a stranger. Someone who
had been hiding inside the man she thought was her friend. Was this the real Fitzpayne? Wilder and more unpredictable, someone
she didn’t know? I trust him, she’d said, but now …

He stood on the deck, legs astride, balancing effortlessly on the balls of his feet as each wave swept under the boat, thumbs
tucked into his belt, and waited for the barrage of questions.

‘Who are these men?’

‘What do they want?’

‘For God’s sake, are they really your friends?’

‘Can’t you get rid of them?’

But Connie said nothing. She saw the exhilaration in his face, the desire to push ahead with whatever plan he had hatched
with his gold-toothed friend, and she knew that whatever they said – Johnnie or Henry or Madoc – he was set on a course.

‘So what next?’ she asked quietly when the others had finished. It wasn’t the past that mattered to her now, it was the future.

He smiled at her. ‘Next, we change boats.’

‘No,’ Henry said vehemently. ‘I’m not leaving
The White Pearl
.’

‘I knew you’d say that.’

‘Well, you were damn right,’ Johnnie jumped in. ‘We’re not leaving this boat.’

Fitzpayne plucked a cigarette from his lips. ‘Just calm down.’

‘Have you betrayed us?’ Connie asked flatly.

‘Of course I haven’t.’ His words were stiff and angry, but his expression was oddly gentle as he looked at her. ‘The skies
will be packed with Jap bombers today, heading for Singapore. Every inhabitant who possesses a boat will be taking to the
water to flee the attacks. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel for the Japs. No chance of escape.’ He lit himself another
cigarette, and she picked up the tension in his hands as he
struck the match. ‘Boats like yours,’ he chose his words carefully, ‘sleek, elegant craft that shout of white ownership, will
be first in the gunners’ sights.’

‘We could hide. Like we did before, in an inlet somewhere.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t you realise?’ Fitzpayne looked with exasperation at the faces around him. ‘This boat of yours is sinking. I have done
the best repairs I can but it’s not enough. So I have come to an agreement with Nurul that we will exchange boats. We board
the
Burung Camar
and sail at speed with a following westerly straight to the island where there is protection for you, while Nurul and part
of his crew take
The White Pearl
into hiding. From the island I will send a vessel under cover of darkness carrying sufficient equipment for more repairs
to
The White Pearl
, so that she can creep to us one night when she’s patched up.’

‘Why would Nurul help us?’ Connie asked.

He laughed, with no attempt at making it convincing. ‘I’ve promised him you’ll pay him well for his services.’

She shook her head. ‘How do we know we will ever see
The White Pearl
again?’

The question hung between them in the overheated air. His expression of impatience barely altered, except for a shift of focus
in his eyes as he stepped closer to her on deck. He said quietly, ‘I give you my word.’

‘That’s all very well,’ Henry blustered, ‘but can we trust it?’

Connie ignored him. ‘What is the real reason?’ she asked. ‘If it is so dangerous to be in a white man’s boat in these seas,
why would Nurul take such a risk?’

The slate-grey eyes grew paler as his eyelids lowered and his lips parted in the beginning of a smile that he refused to let
out. ‘Nurul does it because he is my friend, and because I ask him to.’ He shrugged his shoulders in mock disdain. ‘And the
money helps!’

They argued in private, Connie as the official owner of
The White Pearl
and Fitzpayne as official navigator, both enclosed in the confines of the master cabin. Words were spoken in undertones,
fierce and hostile. For Connie, Nigel seemed to rise up in the bed, observing them with his lips pulled into a disapproving
line.

‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ Connie accused Fitzpayne. ‘One of
the pirates, part of their thieving band. I must have been mad not to suspect earlier.’

‘I work with boats, as do they. They are traders.’

‘Buying and selling boats, you told me.’ She flicked her head aside, strands of hair clinging to her damp neck. ‘You lied
to me.’

‘No, it’s true.’

She wanted to shake him, to place her hands on him and shake him till the truth rattled through his teeth. She wanted him
to say that he hadn’t deceived her, that she could trust him with her life and with her son’s life, and that he wasn’t just
an opportunist making money out of her. She wanted him to make her believe him. But instead, he nodded and offered no explanation
for his association with Nurul and his thieving band.

‘Connie, you and your son have suffered a terrible blow, and it seems to me that it would help if you …’ He stopped,
his mouth tightening over the unspoken words, and she realised he was conscious of a line between them that he was wary of
crossing.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘If I what?’

‘If you get yourself and your son off this cursed boat just as fast as you can.’

He turned away from her, and ducked his head to gaze out of one of the portholes. He scanned the sky for several moments while
she stared dumbly at the flat wall of his back in his black shirt, her mind spinning. Was that it? Was
The White Pearl
carrying Sai-Ru Jumat’s curse? Connie touched a finger to the gleaming timber wall and felt the heat of it slither under
her skin. She snatched it away. What did he mean? Cursed by bad luck, or cursed by this relentless war, or cursed by her own
ill-chosen actions? She was suffocating in the silence. With a quick stride he came towards her and the room seemed suddenly
too small, too intimate. Neither of them let their eyes stray towards the bed where she had lain with Nigel. Fitzpayne stood
close, so close she thought he was going to hold her, but he kept his arms at his sides.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘I’ll go with Teddy. And you? You’ll come on the other boat?’

‘I assure you, I have no intention of leaving you.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

He lifted her hand, turned it palm upwards and dropped her gold Cartier watch onto it.

‘They’re from Sumatra,’ Fitzpayne informed Connie, as if that explained everything.

He was referring to the three members of the crew who were sailing the
pinisiq
. He took her by the arm and gave her a quick trawl of the deck, showing her the small hut in the stern where the crew ate
and rested. Its roof was low and rounded, made of
attap
fronds.

‘No cabins, I’m afraid. When it rains hard they sleep in the hold with the cargo. You have to rough it here.’

He looked at her as if expecting an objection, but she made none. She peered into the shadowy interior of the hut. A hummingbird,
bright as a rainbow, fluttered in a bamboo cage that hung from a beam and she lowered her head intending to enter, but three
millipedes, the length of her hand, were crawling along the wall towards her hair. She stepped back. Fitzpayne laughed but
didn’t release her arm.

‘What’s in the boat’s hold?’ she asked.

‘Trade goods.’

‘What kind of goods?’

He gave her a look, but she didn’t realise what was coming.

‘Rubber.’

‘Rubber? Hadley rubber?’

‘Could be.’ He laughed again, softly to himself.

She pictured one of the commercial boats carrying Hadley rubber to the port of Singapore for shipment for the war effort,
for tyres and cables. Boarded by grappling hooks and nets, the cargo stolen and the boat sunk. It had happened before, and
driven Nigel to bouts of fury.

‘I see,’ she said, teeth clamped together. ‘What does the name of their boat, the
Burung Camar
, mean?’

‘The Seagull.’

‘She nodded. ‘The robber bird.’

He turned her by her elbow to face him. His expression was amused, but there was a tentativeness at the back of his eyes and
she realised he was unsure of her reactions, as though she too had changed.

‘Learn not to ask questions,’ he said firmly. ‘That way you’ll stay alive longer.’

‘Is that what you do? No questions, no lies?’

‘It’s safer.’

‘Safer? Nothing at all about this godforsaken patch of the world with its man-eating mosquitoes and its bombs is safe!’

‘You’re probably right,’ he said with a casual shrug.

But she wasn’t fooled. She’d watched him on the boat. There was nothing remotely casual about the way he had the men jumping
to do his bidding, loading on full sail, snatching every scrap of wind from the sky. Or in the way he let his eyes take a
break from scouring the clouds for any sign of aircraft, and gazed out over the stern. When she asked him what he was looking
for he seemed to withdraw within himself, and she felt a distance open up between them.