The White Pearl (55 page)

She could feel his gaze on her body, thick as tar on her breasts, and her throat refused to swallow. The boys stared – she
could see the moist insides of their open mouths – and the men breathed hard, edging closer. She brushed against Badan’s arm
and walked her fingers through the trickles of blood up to his wrist. She twitched her chest muscles to a steady rhythm, making
her small breasts dance, until she could see the flesh around Badan’s mouth grow slack with desire and his spectacles mist
over with the heat of it.

She reached for the rope. The dog’s eyes were starting to bulge and small coarse coughs rose from its throat but she scarcely
heard them because there was a voice screaming inside her head, demanding to know why it was she couldn’t bear for the animal
to die. She grasped the rope. It was abruptly ripped away, jerked from her hand as someone behind her seized her arm and dragged
her backwards. It was Razak, his face dark with fury.

‘You shame me, sister!’

He yanked down her
kebaya
to cover her breasts, and shook her ferociously so that her bones rattled like twigs and the thoughts in her head crashed
into each other. Dimly she was aware of a sudden shouting outside in the clearing, of loud voices and rushing figures. Someone
screamed. She tried to think straight, but the shame in her brother’s eyes had scorched her mind to ash. Through the grey
dust of it she saw Badan tighten his mouth and release his hold on the dog so that it swung loose at the end of the rope,
its back legs kicking frantically. Teddy lunged forward, but too late. Badan tugged hard on the animal’s tail and the small
black body grew limp.

He did not even glance in Maya’s direction, but wiped his spectacles and hurried from the chamber with the men and the boys
behind him to join the commotion outside. In the dim wretched place of death Maya watched the Hadley boy, his thin limbs stiff
and spiky. He stood beside the dog where it hung like a piece of meat, but he didn’t touch it.

‘Pippin,’ he whispered once, but nothing more.

Mute and tearless. No longer a boy. Maya saw something die in him, and her chest hurt for its loss. Angrily she shook herself
free from Razak’s grip and was about to go to the boy, when her brother spoke sharply with a nod towards the door.

‘
Tuan
Teddy, it’s your mother out there.’

The boy’s face crumpled for a moment and then he gathered himself together, the way a newborn calf gathers its gawky legs
under itself, and ran from the room. Razak followed. Maya was left alone with just the dead dog and her shame.

They believed her. Connie had feared they would think she was lying – to frighten them. But they didn’t. They believed her
when she stumbled into camp, scratched, torn and frantic, drenched in sweat, and swore that assault boats had landed Japanese
troops on the island. Immediately chaos broke out around her, people shouting and running in all directions, the dank green
world bursting with sudden energy, and it took a while for her to recognise that there was order within the chaos.

A chain of men passed boxes containing god-knows-what down to the jetty in a disciplined line of hand-over-hand conveyance.
Tea chests vanished on board boats, and sails were hoisted at a speed that spoke of the whole manoeuvre being well rehearsed.
A brigade of men carrying rifles took up prepared positions around the camp, and machine guns appeared from under green canvas
on specially reinforced platforms up in the trees. Through the heart of all the noise and activity strode Fitz, a quiet, controlling
presence. He ordered men to remove the covers from the stake pits, to raise the tree ladders, to set the spring mechanism
of the capture nets. He sent some boats further upriver and others out to sea to make a run for it.

‘How long?’ he asked Connie. ‘How long have we got? How far away are they?’

‘An hour at most. I ran back as fast as I could but … not always on the right trail.’

She didn’t tell him. About slashing out a path with the bayonet, about her panic when she found the sun behind her instead
of ahead of her. Or about falling down a gulley and fighting her way out through giant ferns, red earth sucking like quicksand
at her feet. Now when he gripped her shoulders tight and held her close, her body moulded to his.

‘Connie, you’re exhausted.’

‘I’m fine. Go and do whatever you have to do.’

‘First I’ll take you down to the workshops. You and Teddy will be safer underground.’ He kept one arm in a protective loop
around her, and headed towards Teddy.

When she arrived at camp, her son had run to her and flung himself into her arms, his face buried in her filthy shirt before
withdrawing abruptly and without explanation. He stood silent and uncommunicative in the shade of a rambutan, while others
hauled on a rope to raise a box of hand grenades to one of the platforms. He didn’t offer to help. Something in his young
face had changed. She had only been gone a few hours, yet she felt a lurch of sorrow at the disappearance of something precious
from her son’s face. She would talk to him when the time was right.

‘Come quickly,’ she said to him. ‘Bring Pippin.’

But he shook his head, and she assumed the dog was up in the safety of the tree hut. In single file they ran behind Fitz along
the trail that skirted the river, and that was when they heard the sound. Fitz reacted first. He swung around to her.

‘Hide! Keep out of sight!’

‘Planes,’ Teddy shouted. He scanned the sky.

Connie felt the air vibrate as the roar of engines enveloped the forest, swooping down on them, tearing at the treetops. Then
the rattling noise of machine guns started up.

‘Stay here,’ Fitz shouted, and thrust her with Teddy down behind a broad tree trunk. ‘Don’t move from here.’

‘Fitz!’

He kissed her mouth. Quick and urgent.

‘Fitz, don’t …’ She wanted to say
Don’t go
.
Don’t die
, but she forced the words down and instead she took his face in her hands and smiled into his eyes. ‘Don’t forget … I
love you.’

She saw something open inside him, some dark secret place that had been hidden away, and he leaned his forehead against hers.
A rawness seemed to ache within him.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

He held her close. For one brief moment she stroked the long tendons at the back of his neck and soothed the jagged nerves
of his skin. She did not know what demon her words had let loose within him, but she knew he needed her.

‘Fitz,’ she said, ‘take me with you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘I won’t get in your way.’

From somewhere he found a smile, but it lay crookedly across his face. ‘I can think of nothing better than having you in my
way all the time.’ He took her hand in his and touched his lips to her palm, then gave it back to her. ‘I am a greedy man,
Connie, but I can’t let you take that risk. You have your son to think of.’ He turned to Teddy. ‘Stay with your mother, Teddy,
look after her until I …’

His final words were swallowed by an explosion that blasted the forest, tearing limbs from the trees.

‘Bombs!’ Fitz shouted.

More explosions. A tidal wave of sound. Screams erupted around them in all directions, and Fitz pushed Connie and Teddy to
the ground at the base of the tree.

‘Don’t move!’ he yelled.

Connie hooked an arm around his neck and placed a kiss, full of heat and fury, on his lips. A smile flickered, and then he
was gone.

The Japanese planes came one after another, a flock of great black birds whose wings spread the shadow of death. Connie dodged
between trees, Teddy at her heels, his small hand gripped firmly in hers. She couldn’t remain where she was, however much
Fitz had asked her to, because to remain there would be to wait to die.

Around her the destruction was relentless. Trees were ripped from the ground, broken walkways dangled like cobwebs and bullets
tore great holes in the forest. Each time a bomb exploded Connie felt cold with fear for Fitz, but she had to get Teddy to
safety. She raced for the underground workshop, but a direct hit had blasted the chamber wide open and its contents of timber
and workmen were strewn in a tangled mess over the forest floor.

‘Teddy, hide here.’

Connie pushed him into a tangle of bamboo, but as she checked each body, searching for a flicker of life, the small figure
of Teddy bobbed up at her side, his need to be with his mother overwhelming all else. So she didn’t shut him out. This was
his world even more than it was hers. He helped her shift lengths of wood and seize hold of hands that were already turning
cold. Not until every chance of finding someone alive
was exhausted did they stop. Only then did Teddy start to cry, a shuddering release of grief as he told her that Pippin was
dead too. She took him in her arms and tried to hide her rage.

How can I teach my son to deal with death when I can’t deal with it myself?

She soothed his quivering back and spoke to him quietly about his father and about how much his father loved him, told him
how proud he would be of his son today. And when the tears finally stopped, she kissed his sweet damp forehead.

‘Teddy, my love, we have to leave now. We have to escape from here. We need to find Fitz.’

They retraced their steps, but as they emerged from the trees she felt her son’s hand tremble in hers. Ahead of them the river
was on fire. The wingtip of an aircraft reached up out of the water like a plea for help.

‘It’s a Zero,’ Teddy whispered. ‘Shot down by the machine guns in the trees.’

Its fuel had spilled onto the surface of the river and caught fire, sending flames streaking across the narrow inlet, so that
several boats now burned. Smoke wreathed the air and a grey shroud had dimmed the sun. The acrid stench of it scoured their
nostrils and their gaze turned immediately to
The White Pearl
. Miraculously she was still riding at anchor, unharmed, but on deck Connie could make out movement, and when a gust of wind
stripped the smoke from the yacht for a moment she saw at least twenty people crammed on deck – among them the bespectacled
face of Badan.

‘Look, Mummy!’

Teddy pointed to the stern, where someone was preparing to weigh anchor. It was Henry Court – he was running out on them.

‘Wait!’ Connie shouted across the water, but it was lost in all the noise. ‘Wait for Fitzpayne!’

But she knew it was too late. The yacht would glide downriver without her. She was no longer Mrs Nigel Hadley, owner of
The White Pearl
; no longer the woman who had set out from Palur.

‘Teddy,’ she said urgently, ‘where do you think Fitzpayne could be?’

His brown eyes glittered. ‘He’ll be with the rifles.’

‘Where?’

‘In the gun pit.’

‘Show me.’

Together they started to run through the smoke, but were stopped by
the sudden sight of Maya. She was darting in panic back and forth along the riverbank in full view, her long hair loose and
tangled, and she was screeching her brother’s name. ‘Razak! Razak!’

‘Oh, Maya, no,’ Connie cried, and quickly pushed her son to the ground. ‘Wait here, Teddy,’ she ordered, and started to run
towards the girl, just as a Japanese plane swept down into the narrow river valley and opened up with its guns.

Kitty couldn’t swim. Madoc cursed her foolishness. He had told her a thousand times that it was dangerous to live in this
land of infinite waterways without learning how to swim.

‘Only people who can swim end up drowning,’ she used to laugh. ‘People who can’t swim – like me – never go in the water. Anyway,
you can always rescue me. Don’t let me drown.’

Now, at the water’s edge, it had come to that. She looked at him with steady eyes and said again, ‘Don’t let me drown.’ Then
she wrapped her arms around the plank of wood he had thrust at her and threw herself into the river. She flailed like a newborn
kitten, let go of the timber and promptly went under, scaring the bloody life out of him. He grabbed a hank of her thick hair
and yanked her back to the surface, his heart beating again only when he saw her gulp in air.

‘Hold on!’ he ordered as he jammed the baulk of timber under her arms and started to kick out for the central channel, towing
Kitty with one hand.

Her eyes were panicked.

‘Kick!’ he shouted.

She kicked, feebly at first, then harder. They began to move against the tidal current. Oil and debris littered the surface
of the river, and Madoc steered her clear of the floating remains of contraband that had been blasted from the burning boats:
hundreds of brandy bottles and long bolts of silk that drifted like bright blue tentacles and tangled around their legs.

‘Madoc.’

‘What is it?’

She was swallowing water and shaking her head like a dog. ‘I don’t like this.’

‘Kitty, my love,’ he lifted her chin higher, treading water at her side, frightened sick for her, ‘it’s a bloody stink hole
for all of us.’

‘No, I mean …’ she spat out a mouthful of slime, ‘… this.’ She nodded at the yacht just ahead of them. The wind
had shifted, and
The White Pearl
was half hidden once more in the pall of black smoke billowing from the junk anchored alongside her, so that her gleaming
white hull was masked from sight. But Madoc had spotted the men on board who were eager to make off with her, and now that
he and Kitty were this close, he could hear raised voices on deck.

‘I can handle them, Kitty.’

‘No.’ She had stopped kicking. One hand clung to his shoulder, holding him back.

‘It’s ours,’ he snapped impatiently. ‘
The White Pearl
is meant for us.’

‘Not this time, Madoc.’

‘I tell you, I can …’

‘It’s a death ship.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

A wave hit him in the face. Kitty deliberately released her hold on the timber and grabbed at his neck, her full weight dragging
him down. For fifteen seconds they were drowning, but he fought back to the surface, hauling her with him, and they both gasped
air into their lungs. The timber was gone. His fear turned to anger.